Book Giveaway: ONE WEEK OF YOU by Lisa Williams Kline

Author Lisa Williams Kline has a new YA novel titled, ONE WEEK OF YOU. It is available in bookstores now. Lisa has agreed to share a book with one lucky winner. All you have to do to get in the running is to leave a comment. Reblog, tweet, or talk about it on Facebook with a link and you will get additional chances to win. Just let me know the other things you do to share the good news, so I can put in the right amount of tickets in my basket for you.

Sharing on Facebook, Twitter, reblogging really helps spread the word for a new book. Thanks for helping Lisa!

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

For Lizzy Winston, one week will change everything.

Fifteen-year-old Lizzy Winston has always been a good kid—and she sees the good in most everyone else, too. When she meets the charismatic Andy Masters, she starts crushing hard. She’s not used to attention from boys like Andy, and soon he distracts her from other parts of her life that she’s trying to hold together. Her grades start slipping, she makes a mistake that costs her mother her job, and her friends’ actions are making her question what’s right.

Andy seems like a great guy. He’s funny and charming, the Clown Prince of Lakeside High. He loves digging up news stories for the high school TV station, but he’s got some secrets of his own. As he and Lizzy get closer, she grows skeptical of his motives. When she does her own digging on Andy, she learns that everyone has secrets—no matter how good they seem on the outside.

Someone’s pulling pranks at Lakeside, and Lizzy thinks she knows who it is. When the pranks escalate and put students in danger, she must decide where her loyalty lies. She doesn’t want to get a friend in trouble, but if she keeps quiet, someone will get hurt. In one week, she learns that adulthood brings new, complicated responsibilities—and the line between right and wrong isn’t always so easy to see. Is she ready to do the right thing if it means losing her friends?

“In One Week of You, Lisa Williams Kline perfectly channels the inner workings of the young adult mind, complete with every quivering ounce of angst, fear, and self-doubt.” -Frank Morelli, author of No Sad Songs

BOOK JOURNEY:

More than ten years ago, my older daughter had to carry a bag of flour for her health class in 8^th grade to help students understand the responsibilities involved in caring for a baby. I was fascinated by this, felt it had comic possibilities, and wrote a story about it. The story wasn’t ever published, though, and so I put it away.

A few years later, when my youngest daughter was in high school, one week there were three bomb threats at her school. It was a week of high anxiety for the students, staff, and parents. I admired the stoic way the students and staff handled it, and wanted to write about it. Then I thought, “What if I tried writing a story that contained two story lines, one about the flour baby, that’s comic, and one about the bomb threats, that’s more serious?”

So back in 2008, I took on what I saw as a writing challenge to combine one comic storyline with another that was deeply serious. I wrote a first draft of a novel. One of my favorite things about the novel was the voice of my main character, Lizzy.

Meanwhile, my agent sold another novel I had written a few years earlier, Summer of the Wolves, and the publishers wanted me to write a series based on the characters. So, for about five years, I set the flour baby/bomb threat novel aside to write the Sisters in All Seasons series, five books about two stepsisters.

After the last of the series came out in 2014, I started an adult novel, but I also looked back at the draft of the flour baby novel, and found myself still really fond of Lizzy’s voice. I revised it and sent it to my agent. After a few revisions, my agent sent it out, and while it received some interest from editors and was taken to an editorial meeting, it did not sell.

I went on to other projects. I found a new agent, and she liked the flour baby book and sent it out. I did a revision for a big editor, and it got taken to a second editorial meeting, but I was hugely disappointed when still it did not sell.

Finally, after more revision, I decided to send to small publishers myself. And so, more than ten years after I’d written the first draft of this story, the editors at Blue Crow Publishing told me they loved Lizzy’s voice but they wanted her to be older. So I revised again, making Lizzy 15 instead of 14. And then they offered me a book contract! Working with the editors at Blue Crow has been outstanding. And now One Week of You has a gorgeous cover and I can hold Lizzy’s story in my hands, and to my great joy, I can share it with readers.

So, all I can say is, perseverance, people.

LISA’S BIO:

I grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and spent my childhood hanging around the Wake Forest University campus where my father taught Physics.

I always wanted to be a writer. In first grade, I wrote and illustrated a story called “The Adventures of Little Horse and Little Lamb” on wide-lined paper. In fifth grade I tried writing a novel about a girl and a boy who went on a grueling barefoot quest across North Carolina to find penicillin for their younger brother who had tonsillitis. Both stories lived in boxes in my old bedroom at my parents’ house for many years. That was probably a very good place for them to stay!

I graduated from Duke University and then received an MA in Communications with a major in writing for Radio, Television and Motion Pictures from UNC-Chapel Hill. After that, I worked for several years writing and researching public television programs for UNC-TV in Chapel Hill, and later worked in the training division of a large accounting firm. For the next 15 years I worked as a free-lancer, writing pretty much whatever people hired me to write — articles, speeches, training tapes, brochures, and even menus!

After our daughters were born, I remembered my childhood dream to write my own stories, and realized that time was going by and I hadn’t even tried. I began to take writing workshops at the Writers’ Center in Bethesda, Maryland. I practiced and practiced and practiced and finally, after I’d written about twenty stories, I published one. It was called “Under the Jello,” and it was later reprinted in Spider Magazine. The day I received that letter was one of the happiest days of my life.

In addition to my writing and writing-related jobs, I have also been a tongue-tied disc jockey, a radio copywriter, a zoned-out waitress, and a disorganized but trustworthy veterinary hospital payroll manager. For one job I even learned to drive a forklift! I was never very good at any of these jobs, so it’s a good thing the writing thing has worked out. Seriously, being part of the writing community is one of my greatest joys and I am very grateful.

I live in Davidson, North Carolina, with my husband, who is a veterinarian, a spoiled dogs and a talented cat who can open doors. We love our frequent visits from our grown daughters.

Lisa, thank you for sharing your book and journey with us. Can’t wait to read it.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy