Lake of Sins Blog Tour! (+$50 Amazon Giftcard Giveaway!)

Title: Lake of Sins 

Author: L.S. O'Dea
Series: Lake of Sins #1

Date Published: 2015

Format: Kindle

Genre: Dystopian

Source: Goddess Fish Blog Tours

Synopsis:

In a world where class distinction means the difference between imprisonment and freedom and even life and death, being chosen to stay in the encampment and breed is the only way to guarantee survival for a teenage Producer.

Every year after harvest, the finest examples of teenage Producers are assigned mates; the rest are loaded onto carts and hauled away, never to be seen or heard from again. Trinity, a sixteen-year-old Producer, knows that she has no chance of being chosen to stay. She isn’t even full-blooded Producer. Her father is a House Servant and she’s spent her entire life hiding her differences, especially her claws and fangs.

She has one week to sneak into the forest and discover what happens to those who are taken. Her plan is simple, but she doesn’t count on being hunted and captured by predators long believed to be extinct. Can she elude her captors to uncover the fate of her kind and return to camp before her escape is discovered?

~Interview with the author!~

Do you ever wish you were someone else? Who?

No.  In general, I am quite happy with who I am.  I do wish I were thinner and richer, but not someone else.  I believe that this “acceptance” of me is because I am brutally honest with myself.  For the past eight years or so, I have ferreted out all the little parts of me which I had kept hidden in the past.  I examined them and either accepted them, modified them or I get rid of them (still working on some of these).  I’m not perfect, but I am content with who I am and who I am not.

What did you do on your last birthday?

Worked.  Sorry, this is so boring.  I’ll try and do something exciting this year.\

What part of the writing process do you dread?

Truthfully, at some point, I dread every aspect.  When I am getting ready to create the first draft, I dread jumping into the rabbit hole but once I’m there and working, I love it.  I get excited when I find a new twist or turn and can hardly wait to give it to someone to read, but I know that there is a lot of work before I am ready to hand it off to a beta reader.

That brings me to the next step:  revision.  I dread reading and reshaping the work.  At this point, I want to create not edit and revise.  Then I tighten it, cutting and adding, and the story takes a more defined shape.  Once again, I can’t wait to give it to someone to see if they catch all the little seeds that I’ve planted.  However, it is still not ready to hand out.

After many revisions, when I have the story in its final shape, I proof for redundancies, typos and grammatical errors (I do some of this all along but this is when I line edit).  I find that I see the errors better in a printed copy, so I get one and trudge through this part.  I never really enjoy this task but it is very necessary.

Now, I am finally ready to pass it out to my beta readers.  Even though I was excited at different points in the process, I dread this also.

What if they don’t like it?

Then I talk to the beta readers and take their suggestions, comments and rework the story once again.  Hopefully, this isn’t a major revision but it does start the process again with all the accompanying dread.

Then when it is finally ready for release there is the marketing.  That I truly don’t enjoy.

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it?

Yes.  During the creating stage, I often come to a section that just won’t flow.  I can’t get the words out.  So, I summarize what I want to accomplish in this scene and move on.  I’ll go back to it later when I revise.  A lot of times these scenes end up being unnecessary to the story.  Perhaps that’s why they refused to be created.

Tell us about your latest release.

It is going to be a while before I have book three done of the Lake Of Sins series, so I decided to write a short story (turned into a novella) about how Christian, Trinity’s River-Man, came to be.  I may even turn it into a graphic novel.

This story has some familiar characters (Professor Conguise, Laddie, etc) and some new ones.  It is the story of one poor Guard and his life once he meets the professor.  It is not a happy story (I mean, we know what ends up happening to him) but I think it is good (dark and tormented).  It also helps to paint a picture of what is happening in the forest.

~Try an Excerpt!~

She ran blindly away from the sound of the Guards, her backpack slamming against her spine with each stride.  If they catch my scent, they will find me.  She skidded to a stop.  The forest had ended.  A rock wall loomed in front of her, stretching to both sides as far as she could see.  Little crevices and divots peppered the wall, but it was too steep to climb.  She had to make a choice.  The wrong one would cost her freedom, maybe her life.

The trees rustled behind her.  Too late.  They found me.  This had all been for nothing.  Now, the best she could hope for was to be taken with the others.  Her chest tightened.  She had to make sure that her mom and Remy weren’t punished because she escaped.  She raised her hands to her shoulders and slowly turned.  Her breath caught in her throat.  A Tracker, the deadliest of predators, stood on its back two legs, towering above her, front legs hanging down like arms.  Brindle fur covered its body and its eyes glowed yellow in the shadowed forest.  Its tongue lolled out the side of its mouth, exposing a row of sharp teeth on the other side.  Someone should tell it that they no longer exist in the wild.

~Meet L.S. O'Dea!~ 

L. S. O'Dea grew up the youngest of seven. She always wanted to do what her older siblings were doing, especially reading stories.

Ill at a young age, she immersed herself in books. Her life changed when she read a short story written by her older brother and realized that normal (somewhat anyway, since her brother was a bit weird in her opinion) people created these amazing stories. From that day forward, she wanted to write.

However, as with all good stories, obstacles rose in her path (mostly self-created obstacles) and it took her many years to put finger to keyboard and type her first book.

 L.S. O'Dea will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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