Book Tour: Trapped - Carrie Grant - Guest Post + GIVEAWAY

Driving home from a high school math competition, the last thing Emily expected was to get trapped in a caved-in tunnel. Yet when the dust settles, she soon finds there’s even more going on than a math nerd could have calculated. Only a few other cars survived the cave-in, leaving her trapped with a team of plumbers, a cranky old man, a Governor, and a family of five. An older boy named Chris also managed to survive the cave-in...but his bright blue eyes seem to be watching everyone just a little too closely. 

As the hours tick by and the water runs out, the survivors struggle to wait for the rescue team. But Emily had seen something just before the tunnel collapsed, something that makes her realize that this cave-in was no accident. She is trapped with the killer of hundreds of innocent people–with nearly a mile of solid rock blocking every exit.

Author: Carrie Grant
Format: eBook
Publication Date: January, 2014
Publisher: Self-Published

Today I have the pleasure to welcome Carrie Grant!

Practical Advice for Beginning Young Adult Writers

- Carrie Grant

My advice for young adult authors is simple (and perhaps inspired by Finding Nemo) -- just keep writing.

I started writing my first novel when I was nineteen years old. School was out for the summer, I had very little to do, and I was reading so much (nearly two novels a day!) that even that became boring. So I thought I'd try my hand at doing something that had always rolled around in the dark corners of my mind--writing a novel.

For anyone who has written a novel, you know it's the most incredible experience. You are emotionally invested in your characters, and their pain and joy is your own. You start the seeds of a plot that may end up going a completely different direction, simply because your characters take it there. You develop a world in your mind's eye, and get enough words down on paper to make it come alive. 

But sometimes it doesn't come so easily. Sometimes it is painstaking and refuses to come out right, and you have to scrap thousands (maybe even half a novel's worth) of words. When I was writing Trapped, I had to re-do the ending five separate times. I wrote the first version, sat on it, and decided I hated it. I wrote the second, sent the book around to family and friends, and they hated it. It took me three more times to finally get the ending right, after so many false starts. But the key to all parts of a novel--including the ending--is to just keep writing. Don't give up and set your novel aside for good, just because it doesn't seem to be working. Don't settle, either, if there's a part of your novel that feels lackluster. The solution is somewhere in your head, ready to follow the characters down the path they want you to lead. Keep trying to follow it, even if it takes you five attempts. Write until your idea is all the way on paper, then evaluate it, and then write it again if it didn't live up to your vision. Keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. Because the end result is always worth it.

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