I'm having Denise Grover Swank over at my blog!

So my first ever tour with Samantha from the ChickLitplus.

Thank you so much for having me over.

Today,

Ladies and Gentlemen

I bring to you...

Jake has visions of "Bad men" hot in pursuit of him. The first time this happened, his mum just laughed it off, until they really came for them. .....

Since then they have been on the run with suitcase in a Honda moving from motel to motel.

Until Will Davenport turns up and offers to help her. Unknown to her, Will has motives of his own.

He is here to catch Emma, who has been ransom-ed by very powerful people.

On a cross country road trip, Will's job to deliver Emma suddenly become very complex- with a 5 year old son who can see visions of gunmen hot on pursuit. And Emma- irresistible Emma.

Things get more complex when the gunmen pursue them for real and Emma begins to feel the heat too...

and when Jake reveals to him some secrets..

Chosen is an action packed book with a car chase, a paranormal essence, some feisty romance, guns and a cross country road trip!

Denise Grover Swank has also written

  

As part of a Book Tour hosted by Samantha over at the ChickLit plus, I got to have Denise Grover Swank guest posting for me!

So I asked her...

(more precisely got Samantha to ask her..)

 How Denise got into writing?

 and How she managed the variation in genres- Young Adult, Paranormal Thriller and a Mystery!

 And she said...

When I was a little girl, I lived in my head. My imagination was very vivid, often fueled by the books that I read, and a little Lost in Space thrown in. As I’m fond of telling my children in my infamous “when I was a kid” stories, we only had FOUR television stations back-in-the-day. And with four kids in a 900 sq foot house, my mother sent us outside to play more often than not. We would create elaborate make believe stories, a bastardized conglomeration of all kinds of ideas. The Lost in Space element always ratcheted things up a bit.

I was also a voracious reader. If it was in print and within in reach, I read it. So it was only natural with my overactive imagination and my love of reading that the thoughts in my head would end up on paper. My first novel was a sordid mess, based on a dream I’d had. While Twilight may have come to Stephenie Meyer in a dream about a sparkly vampire in a field, mine was cheesier. Which actually says a lot. But hey, I was in the fourth grade. Nevertheless, I wrote SEVENTY pages in a green spiral notebook before I lost interest and moved onto more pressing matters. Like bastardizing Huck Finn into something that wasn’t even close to the original other than we used the words “Huck” and “Finn.” (Trust me. Don’t ask.) 

As I got older, I continued to write and my high school English teacher saw raw talent. She assigned a simple project, which I skated through it and turned it in. To my horror, my paper came back with a C. When I asked Mrs. Davis “WHY?” She looked me straight in the eye and said not unkindly, “Because you are capable of more.” (I dedicated my first book Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes to her.)

But after graduation, life got in the way. I attempted a few novels, never making it past 30,000 words. This minor detail called a “plot” always seemed to bog things down. Like, seriously. How important could that thing be?

For several years, I forgot about writing until 2007, when I discovered blogging. I was in the process of adopting internationally for the second time, my fifth child. So I started a blog titled There’s Always Room for One More, which was kind of our motto back then. “What’s one more?” (After my third adoption, I swore I was going to hang a “no vacancy” sign on my blog title.) I started it to detail our adoption journey and also to write stories about the things my children did. (It’s now like a scrapbook of our lives. We love to go back and read old posts.)

A funny thing happened while blogging: I learned the art of storytelling. I realized a story has a beginning, middle and an end. (Even though I had learned that on Sesame Street when my boys were little with this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnoJwfnzmqA) But I found it easier to grasp this concept in a blog post that was 500-1000 words versus a novel. I also learned the art of pacing. Dialogue. Humor (full of sarcasm) I loved my blog, but after two years I began to live my life always searching for my next blog post.

Then the late summer of 2009, I heard about NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month. Writers sign up with the goal of writing a novel (50,000 words) in the month of November. I decided it was “put up or shut up” time. So I plotted out a story, with a much better idea of storytelling, and began on the morning of November 1. On November 30, I had 69,000 words. And I finished the book on December 10, with 96,000 words.

I did it.

I’ve completed four more books since then, and I’m 58,000 words into the third book in the Chosen series. (I also have a middle grade book waiting for my return, currently sitting at 20,000 words)  I needed to finish that first book to make me realize that I coulddo it.

But the funny thing about my books is that I rarely come up with the genre I plan to write. (My young adult book Here  is the only exception to this. My teenage daughter asked me to write a book she and her friends could read.)  I usually come up with the idea and the story and then ask myself, “What genre is this?” And while they may all be different, basically they’re all the same. 1) There’s some type of mystery involved. 2) There’s always some kind of thriller element (some more than others) 3) There’s always some type of fantastical or paranormal element. 4) There’s always some type of romance.

As I’m writing the last book of the Chosen series, I’m already thinking about what will come next to fill the void (in between my Rose Gardner mystery series and the next book in my YA series, On the Otherside)  Right now, it’s anybody’s guess. But I’ve finally found the thing that makes me happy and makes my heart sing. Whatever the genre is, one thing’s for certain: I’ll be writing the daydreams in my head.

***

And now I say...(to you! :D)

Want to know more?

Go here- Goodreads, here- Her Blog, here- Twitter, here- Facebook and here- Her Webpage.

Because, you know, Interent stalking is the new in! So are you stalking (her)?

Hey readers, if you want to enter yourself to win a 10$ Amazon gift card. Rush to here and leave a  comment. Once you there, you can find more instructions on how you can win five bonus entries! (Yup, like a treasure hunt!)

You could leave one for me to read to, down below..

and you say to me?

*hint hint*