Posts tagged Leah Brayton

My first day=made from Pinterest!  I love that site… 

Find me on Pinterest if you’d like: www.pinterest.com/ellebeauregard  I pin lots of random stuff, including character pics and stuff that reminds me of characters/locations, etc. from my books. Always love to follow more pinners!

Cassandra Clare said once, on her tumblog, that you can always tell an important character in a book because they have lots of names.  This got me thinking: Leah has had lots of names!  By the end of DRIFT (Shift Series #3) she’s been called:

Leah Brayton

Lee

Le-le

Laura Benton

Lorily Beignet

(WARNING: DRIFT SPOILER ALERT!!!)

Leola Sovereign

Which makes sense, I guess—she is the main character and all…

Here it is, the final snippet of the week!  Next up, the real thing!  :)  Stay tuned for updates! 

But before I could say anything more, Horrible-Glasses said, “because you didn’t want people to know about your…gifts?”  He twisted the last word, making ‘gifts’ sound like a dirty word.  “Why would you keep them a secret if not to use them for nefarious purposes without the risk of being caught?”

Nefarious purposes?  Was he being serious? 

“How do we know that every thief or murderer put behind bars based on eye witness testimony hasn’t been wrongfully incarcerated!” he went on, raising his voice.   He turned to his colleagues.  “The shifters make eye witness testimony obsolete!”

We’d had a dog, when I was a kid.  He’d died when I was little, but I could still remember this:  When my dad came home from work, be it for the night, or between week-long shifts at the fire station, the dog would bound out of bed at the sound of the garage door opening.  Then he’d press his wet, black nose to the seam of the door that led out into the garage.  His breath, while he sniffed at the crack made a close, insistent hiss.

The same kind of close, insistent hiss that came around the seam of the door I stood behind now.  But as it traveled back up the seam, I knew that whatever was making the noise—whatever was sniffing desperately at my door—was much too tall to be a pet.     

In countdown to the release of DRIFT (Shift Series #3) I’ll be posting three different snippets this week.  Enjoy! 

“You and Drake King were traveling together, though? Was he taken, too?”

“No.  He’s meeting me here.”  I should have figured she’d be all worried about Drake: most girls seemed to be.  I rolled my eyes internally.

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“That he hasn’t been taken?” she challenge, her voice a harsh, rasping whisper.  “If you’re traveling separately, anything could have happened.  And you’d never know it, would you?”

Cutting it close but here is my submission for the #giveaway=)
First off, let me just say that I am a HUGE fan of the Shift series! Am I the biggest Shift fan… I want to believe I am but I l am sure everyone who reads the series is. The reason I am a BIG fan of this series is because I felt like I was with Leah and Drake every step of the way. Giggling when Leah met Drake the first time, laughing at how shy and silly they both were, blushing like a school girl when they shifted together, cheering for them as they learned more about what it means to be Linked, and being sad for them as family and friends were taken. You tell it beautifully and I can get lost in that world forever!
What I hope will happen in Drift… Well, I am really hoping that they can get some family and friends back with them and I really would like to learn more about the Link they share and how significant it is.
And finally, Do you have any “rituals” that you do that get you geared up for writing?
Thanks for taking the time to read this!!! I love your books and can’t wait for Drift!!!
Hollie

As promised on Facebook, here are the chapter titles for DRIFT.  Hopefully they whet the appetite and tide everyone over for a couple of weeks until DRIFT hits the interwebs!

Chapter 1: Seattle and a Voice (watch me read this chapter on You Tube!)

Chapter 2: The Dangerous Void

Chapter 3: A Lone Tourist

Chapter 4: Melanie

Chapter 5: Illegal Tourists

Chapter 6: Help

Chapter 7: (not included because it’s spoilery)

Chapter 8: Protected

Chapter 9: Daylight Errands

Chapter 10: Questions

Chapter 11: Joshua Lane, i.e. Mythological Affairs

Chapter 12: Close

Chapter 13: Short Notice

Chapter 14: What Am I Doing Here?

Chapter 15: The View

Chapter 16: Rest, Leah.  Rest.

Chapter 17: No More Rest.

Chapter 18: Lift the Veil

Chapter 19: No Idea

Chapter 20: What is Wrong With Me?

Chapter 21: The Worst, the Best.

And, finally, tomorrow (Wednesday, 4/18) is the last day to enter the SHIFT Anniversary Giveaway!  I haven’t received too many entries so far, so your odds are pretty good!  It’s SO easy to enter, and I’d love to see what kinds of questions, theories, etc. you come up with, so please please please enter!  :) You have until 11:59PM tomorrow (Wed, 4/18/12)

Happy Reading!

Like most, I’ve been watching coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement with some interest. I won’t pretend that I’m as well informed as some, but I’ve tried to at least keep an eye on what’s happening with the local, Occupy Seattle demonstrations because, well, I admire people “flexing their collective political muscle,” to use Cecelia’s turn of phrase from SHIFT.  And, in fact, quoting Aunt Cecelia brings me to the crux of this post.

When I first saw coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, I was sitting in a breakfast pub in Vancouver, B.C., enjoying an order of eggs benedict and a glass of orange juice with my hubby.  What struck me, as I read the closed-captioning on the television, was how very similar the Occupy Wall Street movement was to the protests Leah learns about near the end of SHIFT. 

Well of course you’d think that, Elle, I thought to myself.  You’re just narcissistic enough to draw parallels between your imaginary worlds and this very real movement.  Sheesh. 

I dismissed the thought as silly.

But then other, local protests began cropping up—an odd coincidence. And, finally, someone asked me if I’d intended to draw comparisons to current events when I wrote RECAST.  That’s when I knew I wasn’t crazy. And that’s when I was reminded that my readers are brilliant—that of course they would see the parallels between the Occupy movement and the protests Leah observes in the Shift Series.  I realized, also, that if one person had that question, others most assuredly did, too, and that I should speak to it:  

I wrote SHIFT, and then RECAST (and the two upcoming books that follow them) during an 8-month bout of unemployment in 2009.  At that time, the economic slide was just beginning; everyone knew at least one person (probably more) who was jobless and the outlook was pretty grim.  (So, I guess things were pretty similar, then, to how they are currently…)  It was in this climate, sensing that the economy would not turn around in 3-5 years (as was initially expected) that I wrote SHIFT.  It was impossible for my story not to reflect some of that political-economic angst. As a result, unemployment and other signs of economic unrest are vaguely alluded to in SHIFT.  Leah is not even old enough to vote, however, so what would fiscal politics have meant to her, really? Not much, beyond the classroom. Which is why the allusions are vague, only becoming tangible when they pose a threat to her immediate situation.

In Leah’s world, as much as in our own, it was only a matter of time before a large-scale demonstration was organized.  So when I first wrote of economic unrest in SHIFT, it was with the intention of giving readers some context as to the larger world Leah was living in.  When I wrote about the nationally- televised protest in RECAST it was with the purpose of bringing that larger world home to Leah and her fantastic circumstances.  The protests in SHIFT and RECAST were not written with the intention of drawing parallels to any recent political/counter-political movements—it just so happens that they have.  In a way, the coincidence was unavoidable. 

To illustrate this point, I’ll let you in on a secret :  When I see people demonstrating in and around Seattle, a tiny sliver of me wants to go walk around in the crowd to indulge in the fantasy that preternatural groups—Mythologicals—exist and that a few of their kind might be walking through the same crowd… I know, I know, I’m an odd duck, but many of us writer-folk are.  Besides, you have to admit, what Leah witnesses in the first chapter of RECAST would definitely be news worth watching.  Don’t even try to pretend you wouldn’t be glued to the television.  I know I would be.  (And then I’d be glued to my laptop, madly drafting another blog post trying to explain how I’d predicted the future… which would be spooky.)

More good news!  RECAST (Shift Series #2) is now available on the Apple ibookstore!  So all of you out there who use the ibookstore app to read e-books on your ipads and iphones and ipod touches, you’re good to go!

Oh, and did I mention there’s a bit of exclusive content included at the end of ALL FORMATS of the RECAST e-book?  :) Just a little sneak peak of Harbinger, the first book in The Mythologicals Saga, which is a companion series to SHIFT. It should be out late this year!  

In celebration of RECAST in the ibookstore, here’s another excerpt! 

A RECAST Excerpt:

  The Memorial lawn around the reflecting pool was packed now—it was amazing how quickly that had happened—and the noise, even just what was picked up over the reporter’s microphone, was demanding. She had to press her feed into her ear to hear the anchor man’s question.

  The pause was a moment too long before she answered. “Yes, Jim. The organizers have said that they will address the gathering as soon as everyone has reached the lawn. Judging by the crowd here now, that should be any moment.”

“As you’ll recall, this group is marching on the platform of aid equality,” she used the time to provide background information. “Their chief complaints revolve around an accusation that our government could have done more to help those most affected by the recent set of economic downturns—had they not been able to prevent them, initially. They argue that those most helped by the aid package that was passed by congress just six months ago were the wealthy, and those who were least affected to begin with.”

  “And judging by the turn out, I’d say they’re not alone in that belief,” the anchorman interjected.

  “No, Jim, they are certainly not alone,” the reporter replied, again after a moment’s pause and with a smile.

  “And what about the rumors of those mysterious activities at some of the smaller protests?” Jim asked with a similar smirk.

  The left side of the screen, where the anchor man had been just moments before, was suddenly filled with a grainy picture of a man with long, curling hair, who had his mouth on the neck of a woman wearing jeans and a button-down blouse. She was gripping his arm, her lips stretched into a silent scream and blood was spilling from under the man’s lips, coating the woman’s throat and staining the front of her in a dark, vibrant red.

  “It’s so doctored!” one of the boys near me called out, making everyone laugh.

  “Freaks,” one of the other boys snickered to his friends, “just some stupid goths with too much time on their hands.”

  Looking at the picture, my initial reaction was disbelief, too. I mean, come on, really? Vampires? And if they did exist, wouldn’t they be a little tidier when they ate? Or drank, as it were?

  a little voice whispered in the back of my mind, stirring the cold water that had been lingering in my gut all morning.

  There was a commotion behind the field reporter, Karen, as she tried to answer the anchor man’s question with good humor.

  She turned toward the crowd, behind her, curious to see what the uproar was about. “Um, Jim, there appears to be something happening. I’m going to try to get a better vantage point.”

  Screams shot through the crowd, muted but still piercing as they reverberated through the reporter’s microphone. The horde started to jostle as individuals darted away, scrambling over one another in a frantic bid that could only have been for safety’s sake.

  My heart immediately went to hammering. No. No way. It was probably just some wackjob with a bomb—God, what a horrible thing to think…