YA Guy Participates in .... The Fall 2019 YA Scavenger Hunt!

YA Guy loves Fall, and YA Guy especially loves the Fall YA Scavenger Hunt!

As you can probably tell by all the blue lettering in this post (not to mention the banner at the top), I'm on the BLUE TEAM this year, along with the other awesome authors you see below:

The YA Scavenger Hunt is a bi-annual event first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes! Add up the clues on each BLUE TEAM page, and you can enter for our prize--one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on our team! There are four contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! But don't delay: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will be online only until noon Pacific time on SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6! (I'm also running a personal giveaway during the same period of time.)

HOW IT WORKS

Directions: In the author biography below, you'll notice I've listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the Blue Team, and then add them up (don't worry, you can use a calculator!). 

Entry Form: Once you've added up all the numbers, make sure you follow this link and fill out the form to qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally. Anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian's permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday, October 6, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered. For more information, follow this link to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.

Personal Giveaway: In addition to the prizes named above, readers who enter my personal giveaway will have a chance to win a signed copy of the three books in the Ecosystem series! Like the Hunt itself, the personal giveaway is open internationally. See below on how to enter!

Got all that? Then let's meet the author I'm hosting, C. Lee McKenzie!

C. Lee McKenzie loves to write for young readers. Mostly she writes contemporary/realistic Young Adult novels, but when she writes Middle Grade, they’re all about fantasy and adventure.

Sliding on the Edge, The Princess of Las Pulgas, Double Negative, and Sudden Secrets are four of her published YA novels. Her next YA book, Not Guilty, will soon be released by Evernight Teen. She has an MG trilogy: Alligators Overhead, The Great Time Lock Disaster, and Some Very Messy Medieval Magic. She also has a stand alone MG called Sign of the Green Dragon. Add them all up, and though it's not quite 22 novels, it's pretty close!

To find out more about the author, follow this link to her website or visit her favorite social media hangouts:

Twitter: @cleemckenzie
FB: https://www.facebook.com/cleemckenzie

About DOUBLE NEGATIVE: "My life was going, going, gone, and I hadn't been laid yet. I couldn't go into the slammer before that happened." —Hutch McQueen.

Sixteen-year-old Hutchinson McQueen is a big time loser. Trapped in a dysfunctional family, his one thought is escape, but everything he does to get away lands him in trouble.

Shackled by poor reading skills, he squeaks through classes with his talent for eavesdropping and memorizing what he hears. When he shoplifts and lands in juvenile detention, the court sentences him to a county youth program. There he meets the priest and Maggie, a retired teacher. They’re determined to set Hutch on a path leading away from trouble. Hutch is determined not to cooperate.

It isn’t until he’s facing serious charges that he confronts the truth—his own bad choices are trapping him. When he's offered the freedom he craves, all he has to do is take it.

To buy the book, follow this link!


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But wait, there's more! I'm also running a personal giveaway, in which one reader will win a signed copy of the three books in the Ecosystem series: ECOSYSTEM, THE DEVOURING LAND, and HOUSE of EARTH, HOUSE of STONE!

On a future Earth, Nature has evolved into a planet-wide predator, and only those with the psychic power known as the Sense can survive. When seventeen-year-old Sarah sets out into the Ecosystem on a mission of vengeance, she must face the Ecosystem's deadliest creatures and travel to its most terrifying places. And she must decide whether to save the boy she loves at the cost of losing everything else she holds dear.

You can enter my personal giveaway by using the Rafflecopter form below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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The Fall 2019 Hunt is over, but there are still a few hours to enter my personal giveaway. I'll announce the winner soon!

YA Guy Shares... Artwork from HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE!

If you've read HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE, the final novel in YA Guy's Ecosystem Trilogy, you know that there's an illustration at the end representing the family tree of the Queens who are featured in the trilogy. The artist, Jessica Khoury of Lizard Ink Maps, produced the stunning line drawing, and I couldn't be more thrilled with the results.

Or, then again, maybe I could--because as a special favor, she produced a mind-blowing full-color version of the illustration, using a technique that simulates the look of stained glass. Here it is in all its glory!

Nice, huh?

This is, by the way, one of the pleasures of self-publishing; though I enjoy publishing books the traditional way as well, it's unlikely I could have convinced a publisher to include an extra illustration in my book. With self-publishing, it's all up to me!

Enjoy the artwork, and let me know what you think!

YA Guy Proudly Presents... The Ecosystem Trilogy!

Well, it's finally done. The Ecosystem Trilogy, a project YA Guy's been dreaming about and working on for years, is completed, released, and launched. The three books are out there in the world, and I hope readers enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

To celebrate the completion of the series, I'm running a promotion for the Kindle e-books, each of which is on sale from May 2 through May 6 for only $0.99. By my calculations, that means you can buy the whole series for a mere $2.97. If you're interested, here's the link:

https://www.amazon.com/Ecosystem-Trilogy-3-Book-Series/dp/B07Q3YN7QB

Thanks for tagging along with me on this journey. Traveling through the Ecosystem with you has been one of the best adventures of my life.

YA Guy Launches... HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE!

YA Guy was happy to find a big box o' books on his doorstep a week ago, heralding the arrival of copies of HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE, the third (and hence final) book in the Ecosystem Trilogy.

That's a lotta books, isn't it?

Anyway, today--Earth Day, 2019--is the book's release date. (The first book in the series, Ecosystem, released on Earth Day last year, with the second book, The Devouring Land, tucked in between.) I'm personally very proud of this series, into which I poured a lot of my heart and soul, and I hope readers will enjoy its futuristic vision of an Earth in which the natural environment has become a collective sentience bent on humankind's destruction--and of the brave people who try to come to some sort of reconciliation with Nature. Yes, it's an allegory for our times--but even more, it's an exciting adventure story with a fiery protagonist, tons of action, and really cool monsters. So check it out and order a copy today!

Or, if you're in the Pittsburgh area and would like a signed copy, you can check out the book's launch party, which takes place next Tuesday, April 30. Here's all the information you need:

I hope to see some of you at the party, and I look forward to hearing from you about your reaction to the Ecosystem Trilogy!

YA Guy... Reveals All!

Okay, YA Guy admits right up front that the title of this blog post is misleading. I'm not revealing ALL (because trust me, you don't want to know!). But I am revealing the cover to the third book in the Ecosystem Trilogy, HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE, which releases April 22 of this year (Earth Day, of course). Here it is, in all its glory:

Two notes about this cover.

First, though I love all of the covers my design team produced for the Ecosystem series, I love this one the most. Something about the colors, the layout, and the totally cool circlet they created based on my description in the book--perfect! I hope you like it too.

Second note: this is yet another thing I love about self-publishing. I woke up this morning and said, "Gosh, I feel like revealing the cover to my book," and so I did it. No permission needed. No hoops to jump through. Just me, on my own, doing my thing. Nice!

Let me know what you think about the cover, and I look forward to releasing HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE to the world!

YA Guy Has... Trilogy Fever!

The final book in YA Guy's Ecosystem Trilogy is due out in April (on Earth Day, of course). Titled HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE, it completes a series I first dreamed up in 2011 and have been working on pretty much nonstop for the past two years.

So I figured, while we're waiting for Book Three, what better time than now to offer readers a discount on Books One and Two? From today (which also happens to be my birthday!) through February 11, you can purchase the e-books of ECOSYSTEM (Book 1) and THE DEVOURING LAND (Book 2) for only 99 cents each. That way, you'll be all caught up on the adventures of Sarah, Isaac, Miriam, Leah, and the rest as they battle the Ecosystem, search for love, and defend the City of the Queens--just in time for the release of HOUSE OF EARTH, HOUSE OF STONE!

Here are the links. Enjoy, and let me know what you think about the Ecosystem Trilogy!

Buy ECOSYSTEM here

Buy THE DEVOURING LAND here