Hello everyone!
Welcome to the No Angel Book Blitz & Giveaway stop!
I have included information about No Angel as well as an interview
with Helen Keeble and a giveaway of No Angel!
Thank YOU for stopping by!
Book & Author Details:
No Angel by Helen Keeble
Published by: HarperTeen
Publication date:
October 8th 2013
Genres: Paranormal, Young Adult
Rafael Angelos just got handed the greatest gift any teenage boy could ever dream of. Upon arriving at his new boarding school for senior year, he discovered that he is the ONLY male student. But what should have been a godsend isn't exactly heaven on Earth.
Raffi's about to learn that St. Mary's is actually a hub for demons-and that he was summoned to the school by someone expecting him to save the day. Raffi knows he's no angel-but it's pretty hard to deny that there's some higher plan at work when he wakes up one morning to discover a glowing circle around his head.
Helen Keeble's debut novel, Fang Girl, has been praised for its pitch-perfect teen voice, and VOYA called it "refreshing and reminiscent of Louise Rennison's Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series." No Angel brings you angels and demons like you've never seen them-complete with the wry humor of Vladimir Tod, sinfully irreverent romance, and some hilariously demonic teenage dilemmas.
Purchase:
AUTHOR BIO
Helen Keeble is not, and never has been, a vampire. She has however been a
teenager. She grew up partly in America and partly in England, which has left
her with an unidentifiable accent and a fondness for peanut butter crackers
washed down with a nice cup of tea. She now lives in West Sussex, England, with
her husband, daughter, two cats, and a variable number of fish. To the best of
her knowledge, none of the fish are undead.
Her first novel, a YA vampire
comedy called FANG GIRL, is out 11th Sept 2012, from HarperTeen. She also has
another YA paranormal comedy novel (provisionally titled NO ANGEL) scheduled for
Sept 2013.
Interview with Helen Keeble about No Angel
Boy thinks life at an
all-girls school will be heavenly, but it's hell on earth. And he's the angel
sent to fix things. Help!
2. Do we need to have
read your first novel, Fang Girl, to
enjoy No Angel?
Nope, they’re entirely unrelated to each other. Well, apart
from containing the same brand of humor!
Even though No Angel
isn’t a sequel to Fang Girl, I hope
that readers who enjoyed the way I affectionately mocked vampires in my first
book will get the same sorts of giggles from the way my new one makes fun of
the whole ‘angel boyfriend’ subgenre of paranormal romance.
3. Is No Angel a stand-alone novel or the
start of a series?
It’s definitely a stand-alone novel. Not to give away any
spoilers, but the plot is very much wrapped up at the end of the book.
4. Why did you decide
to set No Angel at a boarding school?
My dad went to various VERY traditional English boys’
boarding schools from the age of seven to eighteen, and although he doesn’t
talk much about it, he’s told me a few horror stories. I’m fascinated by
old-fashioned boarding schools as these little self-contained worlds, with
their own history and culture, completely isolated from normal life. Due to
Harry Potter, I think most of us now have a pretty romantic idea of boarding
schools as a magical wonderland, but they could just as easily be (and often
were) utter hell-holes. Bullying is bad enough, but when you can’t even get
away from your tormentors at the end of the school day…? Scary!
5. Your vampires in Fang Girl
have some unusual (for the paranormal genre) traits based on traditional
Eastern European folklore. Have you done anything similar with the angels and
demons in No Angel?
Definitely! I had a lot of fun
researching angels in early Christian traditions. I took a lot of inspiration
from De coelesti hierarchy, a 5th Century text on angels that is utterly cracktastic
to modern eyes. Let's put it this way: When you think "angel", do you
think:
a.
A noble, handsome/beautiful protector with big white wings, glowing with pure,
holy goodness
b.
Two massive bicycle wheels jammed crossways into each other, set on fire, and
COVERED IN EYES
… Yeah.
Let’s just say that Rafael Angelos, the hero of No Angel, is not exactly happy about his
newly discovered angelic tendencies…
6. Fun fact about No Angel?
I guarantee it’s the only light,
fluffy YA comedy you’ll ever read that includes higher-dimensional mathematics
as a pivotal plot-point.
(Don’t worry, there are no
equations)
7. Would you rather
be an angel or a vampire?
Definitely an angel! I’ve always wanted to fly. I, uh, may
have spent an entire year hooked on a computer game called Aion just because it let me play a character with beautiful big
wings. *blush*
Although I have to say I would prefer to be an angel from
someone else’s book, not my own. The angels in No Angel are… not exactly eye-candy.
8. What are your
favorite books, shows, or movies about angels and demons?
For books, Good Omens
by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I’m also very fond of The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan.
9. Favorite funny
movie or TV show?
Galaxy Quest,
which is a movie about a group of actors from a second-rate, long-cancelled TV
science-fiction series (which is of course in NO WAY based on a real TV show
*cough* Star Trek *cough*) who get abducted by real aliens, who have based
their entire culture on the show. Or, as the aliens call it, “the historical
documents”, as they believe it’s all real. Hijinks ensue!
If you are at all aware of science fiction fan culture, Galaxy Quest is screamingly funny. The fact that I went to Star Trek conventions as
a teenager, owned a lovingly-painted collection of Enterprise models, and once
won a Halloween costume competition with my home-made Spock outfit, may go some
way to explaining my deep and abiding love for this movie.
(no, you can’t see pictures of me in my Spock costume)
Interview with Helen Keeble about writing
No, they’re completely unrelated – no characters from Fang Girl show up in No Angel. There isn’t any mention of
vampires in No Angel, and Fang Girl didn’t have any angels or
demons in it, so the jury is out as to whether they’re even set in the same
world. (Even I haven’t quite made up my mind on that one)
However, for those who enjoyed Fang Girl, I can promise that No
Angel has the same sense of humor, including affectionate mockery of
ridiculous paranormal romance tropes! Basically, what I do to vampires in Fang Girl, I do to angels in No Angel.
2. What was the
hardest part of writing No Angel?
Working to a deadline! Because I had a two-book contract
with HarperTeen (the first being Fang Girl),
I actually had a deadline for No Angel
before I’d written a single word, or even worked out what the story was going
to be about! A very different experience from slowly writing Fang Girl in spare hours over the course
of several years, with no-one but myself caring whether or not it was ever
finished…
3. How did you become a writer?
The short answer is
that I wrote a lot of stuff, and eventually got good enough (and lucky enough)
to find someone that would pay me for it.
The longer answer
is that I’ve always written for my own amusement, but never let anyone read it
until I went to university and started writing fanfic based on a role-playing
game called Legend of the Five Rings. It was a rather unusual fanfic community,
because people generally used the game’s setting but invented their own
original characters rather than writing stories about pre-existing characters
(like Harry Potter or Twilight fanfic tends to do). It gave me a lot of
practice in inventing imaginary people! I then slowly drifted into writing
completely original stories, and was eventually lucky enough to be able to sell
some to magazines. After a few successes with short stories, and in a fit of
pique at the prevalence of both Twighlight-inspired novels in bookstores and
Twilight-bashing articles in newspapers, I decided to try writing a novel… and
that was Fang Girl!
So now, somewhat to
my bemusement, I seem to have become a YA comedy author. I still blink at my
own books sitting on my bookcase, amazed that they are really real.
4. Are you a full-time writer?
I wish! No, like
most writers I have a day job – I’m an industrial software engineer. It is a
very awesome career (where else do you get to play with oil rigs and nuclear
power plants) but does mean I have to squeeze my writings into the evenings. I
have a bad habit of forgetting to go to bed, so I’ll often be typing away at my
laptop well into the small hours of the morning.
5. Fun fact about
writing No Angel?
In order to keep
track of where all my characters were at different times in the school day, I
made timetables for them in Google Calendar… and then forgot to delete the
calendars after I'd finished the book. I was greatly puzzled when Google
started bombarding me with reminders to get to my history class.
6. Are you a pantser (just sit down and write) or a plotter (outline
everything first)?
I used to be a total pantser (the
first draft of Fang Girl was written
in a month, for NaNoWriMo), but these days I’m more of a plotter. It’s
something of a necessity when working to a deadline, with an editor who wants
to make sure you’ve actually got a plan, and are not just going to kill all the
characters in the last chapter out of despair.
7. What do you do when you’re not writing?
Apart from the day job, sleeping,
and taking care of my family? I read everything I can get my hands on,
especially fantasy and science fiction books. I’m also very into board games of
all descriptions, from light family fun like Survive! and Kingdon Builder
through to heavy strategic games like Tzol’kin
or Puerto Rico. In any spare moments,
I like to dabble in crafts – I recently learned to knit dolls and dolls’
clothes, and am now experimenting with making jewelry out of resin and plastic.
If only there were more hours in the day!
8. What books make
you laugh out loud?
I love Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. They’re an amazing
blend of so many different types of comedy: parody, political satire,
character-driven, situational, wordplay, puns… even slapstick! He’s a master of
messing with reader expectation to comic effect. I think my very favorite
example of this in the entire series is the character in Thief of Time who’s dialogue is all “----ing” this and “----ing”
that… but late in the book we find out (spoiler alert, look away now!) that all
he’s doing is pausing and saying “ing”. Genius!
Other writers I can consistently rely on to make me giggle
are Sarah Rees Brennan (though she’ll make you laugh in one paragraph and stomp
on your heart in the next) and Louis McMaster Bujold (who also manages to mix
high emotional stakes with very witty characters). I’m also very fond of the
classic P. G. Wodehouse stories, although some of them have, erm, really not
aged very well (why hello there, casual racism).
9. Can you tell us a
bit about what you’re working on now?
I'm currently
writing a YA dystopian comedy. No, really. If anything is ripe for a parody, it’s the
whole “THE GOVERNMENT CONTROLS X AND Y IS BANNED!!” genre! The working title is
Escaping Utopia, and it's set in an idyllic far-future society where
there is no war or crime as everyone’s needs are perfectly fulfilled by
government-issued androids called Soulmates. Unfortunately for one 16 year old
boy, his brand-new Soulmate tries to kill him on sight. Hijinks ensue!
The story also
features a grumpy girl revolutionary hacker, a ridiculous number of huge
planet-shaking conspiracies, and a bubblegum-pink battle robot named Candi who
just wants to be loved. Let’s just say I’m having a lot of fun with this
one!
These sound like super fun reads and remind me a lot of Bad Taste in Boys. Sounds like a good one to add to the list for a rainy day!
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