Blog Tour- JUBILEE MANOR by Bethany Hagen A Playlist and A Giveaway!

I am so excited to be hosting a spot on the JUBILEE MANOR blog tour! I adore this series it's full of mystery and romance and swoonworthy boys! I have Bethany's playlist to share with you today and of course I'll share the videos for them! And make sure to enter the giveaway to win a paperback of LANDRY PARK and an ARC of JUBILEE MANOR of the book!
Haven't heard of JUBILEE MANOR ? Check it out!

Title: JUBILEE MANOR

Author: Bethany Hagen

Pub. Date: August 11, 2015

Publisher: Dial Books

Pages: 400

Formats: Hardcover, eBook

Find it: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Goodreads

The thrilling conclusion to Landry Park is full of love, betrayal, and murder--perfect for fans of Divergent, The Selection, and Pride and Prejudice.

In Landry Park, Madeline turned her back on her elite family, friends, and estate to help the Rootless. Now, in Jubilee Manor, she struggles to bring the Gentry and the Rootless together. But when Gentry heirs—Madeline’s old friends—are murdered, even she begins to think a Rootless is behind it, putting her at odds with the boy she loves and the very people she is trying to lead. If she can’t figure out who is killing her friends and bring them to justice, a violent war will erupt and even more will die—and Madeline’s name, her estate, and all the bonds she’s forged won’t make any difference.

This conclusion to Landry Park, which VOYA dubbed "Gone with the Wind meets The Hunger Games,” is a richly satisfying, addictive read.

Now on to the playlist! 

Jubilee Manor Book Playlist

I had a lot of songs that I listened to while writing Jubilee Manor, and while some of it was the same music I listened to with Landry Park, a lot of it was very different since Jubilee Manor, in a lot of ways, is a much darker and more violent book.  And these are in no particular order, since I listened to all of them a million times!

1.       Ludovico Einaudi, any song from Divenire or In a Time Lapse.  There’s something so sweeping and cinematic about Ludovico’s music that just makes it perfect for writing fiction.  His music sweeps from urgency to beauty to quiet reflection, much in the way that my brain progressed while writing Jubilee Manor.

2.     Dario Marianelli, Jane Eyre.  This haunting soundtrack is full of introspection and raw emotion, toggling between a lonely piano and a lonely violin.  I probably listened to this soundtrack a thousand times while figuring out the initial storyline for Jubilee Manor, and I think something of the fear and longing in the music can be felt in certain parts of the book.

3.     Snow Patrol, “The Lightning Strike.” I first heard this song when I was in college, and it’s one of those songs that once you hear it, you feel like you’ve always known it, because it just fits that perfectly with you!  This one I listened to a lot (mostly the beginning section, “What If the Storm Ends”) while I was writing scenes where I had to visualize a lot of moving pieces—a ball or the massive fireworks celebration towards the end.  I really like music that makes me feel like I’m envisioning a movie in my head, and this is definitely that kind of music.

4.    Alt-J, “Tessellate.”  This is one of my favorite songs to write kissing to (I have many.)  There’s something really physical and raw about the way he sings and breathes in the song, and it reminds me of how intimate the act of kissing is—sharing air and sharing space.  Alt-J actually has a lot of fantastic kissing songs, now that I think about it. 

5.     Sonic Area, “Never Ever More.”  This is a creepy song.  This is my dead bodies song. Whenever it was time for me to think about dead bodies, I’d turn on Music for Ghosts.

6.    Melanie Martinez, “Toxic.”  I’m a huge Britney fan, and this cover just gave me the chills, it was discordant and girlish all at once—which was why it was a perfect Cara Westoff song.

7.     Ben Howard, “Call Me Maybe.”  This is another chill-inducing cover that I played on repeat, especially with David and Madeline scenes that would have both elements of conflict and connection, which is what I hear so much of in this version of the song.

And that’s my essential Jubilee Manor playlist!

photo by Ritu Nanos

About Bethany:

Bethany is a a former librarian living in the Kansas City area with her husband and two children.

Her debut novel Landry Park came out from Dial/Penguin in 2014, and the sequel, Jubilee Manor, will be out August 11, 2015. She is am represented by Mollie Glick of Foundry Media.

Find Bethany:

 website | tumblr | pinterest |twitter

Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a paperback of LANDRY PARK and an ARC of JUBILEE MANOR. US Only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Check out the Tour Schedule!

Week One:

8/3/2015-The Bibliophile Chronicles- Interview

8/4/2015- Fiction Freak- Review

8/5/2015- Two Chicks on Books- Guest Post

8/6/2015- Seeing Double In Neverland- Review

8/7/2015- Wishful Endings- Interview

Week Two:

8/10/2015- The Eater of Books!- Review

8/11/2015- Fiktshun- Guest Post

8/12/2015- WinterHaven Books- Review

8/13/2015- Magical Urban Fantasy Reads- Interview

8/14/2015- The Reading Nook Reviews- Guest Post

2014 Debut Authors Bash Featuring Bethany Hagen and a Giveaway!

I am so excited to have Bethany Hagen here today for the 2014 Debut Authors Bash! I freaking loved Landry Park and I had some burning questions about the book and book 2! Guess what we have a title woot! Make sure to enter the giveaway below for a copy of the book!
Haven't heard of LANDRY PARK? Check it out!

Landry Park

Bethany Hagen

Hardcover: 384 Pages

Publisher: Dial (Penguin)

ISBN: 978-0803739482

Goodreads/Amazon/Barnes & Noble

In a fragmented future United States ruled by the lavish gentry, seventeen-year-old Madeline Landry dreams of going to the university. Unfortunately, gentry decorum and her domineering father won't allow that. Madeline must marry, like a good Landry woman, and run the family estate. But her world is turned upside down when she discovers the devastating consequences her lifestyle is having on those less fortunate. As Madeline begins to question everything she has ever learned, she finds herself increasingly drawn to handsome, beguiling David Dana. Soon, rumors of war and rebellion start to spread, and Madeline finds herself and David at the center of it all. Ultimately, she must make a choice between duty - her family and the estate she loves dearly - and desire.

Now on to the interview

Hi Bethany! First I want to say welcome back to Two Chicks on Books! It feels like forever since I’ve had you or your characters here to visit! Thanks for stopping by to answer my questions! I loved Landry Park and can’t wait for its sequel!

For the readers: can you tell us a little bit about Landry Park and the characters?

Landry Park is about a girl named Madeline Landry, who is heir to a sprawling estate which is entirely dependent on nuclear power and a beaten-down caste of people called the Rootless, who have to handle all the nuclear waste from the luxurious mansions of the gentry.  After the arrival of David Dana, an army captain with a lifetime of secrets, Madeline discovers more and more about the world she lives in and the people in it.

What about the sequel? Do we have a title yet...ooh what about the cover?

We finally have a title!  After much deliberating, we've settled on JUBILEE MANOR.  I wanted something that had some historical and literary grounding to it, and I think the word "Jubilee," with its connotation of freeing slaves, was very apt.  Also, I wanted the title to look good in a pretty font.  So there's that.

As for the cover, I've seen a few of the comps, and while nothing is final yet, I can say that it is beautiful.  Like I-petted-the-computer-screen-when-I-saw-it beautiful.

Were any of the characters in the book inspired by people from your real life?

Bits of people inspire my characters.  For example, I had a teacher when I was in high school that used a cane and had a deep rumbling cough like Jack.  I sat behind a girl in college that had the glossiest, bounciest blonde ponytail and she helped me figure out exactly what Cara looks like.  I'm constantly robbing details from my everyday life to pepper my stories with; just the other day, a co-worker was telling me that her fiance had been rear-ended by a fruit truck (he's fine), and all I could think about was what an amazing detail that would be in a short story.  A fruit truck.  Come on.  I can't not put that in a story somewhere.

Has your writing changed at all from LANDRY PARK to JUBILEE MANOR?

Yes and no, I think.  I'd like to think that my storytelling ability has gotten tighter and that I'm able to write a stronger plot now, but at the same time, very little about my sentence structure or diction has changed, so maybe those two things cancel each other out?  Or maybe I've gotten worse, and I'm going to have Game of Thrones spoilers and spiders mailed to my house after it comes out.

What can readers expect in this next installment? Are we going to cry or want to kill any of the characters?

Mostly everyone dies, except for Cara, who in a strange twist becomes the mother of dragons and ends up invading Westeros.

I will say that there is a body count in this book, and that probably you will want to kill at least one person.  Maybe two, depending on how Cara is behaving.

What is your favorite passage/scene in LANDRY PARK?

Madeline's debut ball is probably my favorite scene--it was one that changed very little from draft to draft and is full of all the lush details that I love--dresses, food, cute boys in tuxedos...

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

I did a fair amount of research into radiation poisoning and nuclear energy.  I never became an expert in nuclear physics (shocking, I know!) but I wanted to know enough that the "fiction" part of my science fiction would at least seem plausible.  From a distance.  If you're squinting one eye.

What are you reading right now? Or what do you have on your TBR that you’re 

dying to read?

I love this question!  I'm always reading.  Right now, I'm double-fisting Tessa Gratton's The Strange Maid, which is the second book in her delectably imaginative United States of Asgard series, and also TheStory of Owen by Kate Johnson, which is about a dragon-slayer in contemporary Canada (yes, it's as awesome as it sounds.)  I'm also about to devour No Place to Fall by Jaye Robin Brown.

Who is your ultimate Book Boyfriend?

Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre.  The thoughts I think about that man would make the Victorians reach for their smelling salts.

What inspired you to write YA?

I'm not sure I know.  I guess when I was a girl in the '90s, the young adult genre was really starting to find its footing and was ripe with amazing authors like Christopher Pike and Ann Rinaldi and Francesca Lia Block.  And then when I got to college, I never stopped reading young adult novels.  Although I read over a hundred books a year and roughly half of those are adult fiction/non-fiction, the young adult genre is where I've found my home.  Those are the stories I'm drawn to.  It could be that the age of young adulthood is a time of intense transformation and discovery--which is why so many myths and fairy tales feature young adult protagonists.  It could be that young adult novels blend commercial and literary elements together so effortlessly.  It could be the tremendous amount of innovation in genre and form and character.  I think it's probably all of those reasons, all rolled into one messy ball inside my brain.

Thanks so much Bethany for answering my questions! I can’t wait to read JUBILEE MANOR!

About Bethany:

Librarian by day, Bethany Hagen is the author of the forthcoming LANDRY PARK, set to be released from Dial February 4th, 2014. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and two children.

WEBSITE/BLOG/TWITTER/GOODREADS 

Giveaway Details:

1 signed hardcover of LANDRY PARK. US/Canada ONLY.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Click on the banner for the full tour schedule. The event runs the whole month of September! There's going to be awesome posts and giveaways!

Blog Tour- LANDRY PARK Excerpt and a Giveaway!

I am so excited to have Bethany Hagen here today to share an excerpt from David Dana's POV! I freaking loved Landry Park! I know it's early into 2014 but I can definitely say this will make my top 10 of 2014 list! Make sure to enter the giveaway below for a copy of the book!
Haven't heard of LANDRY PARK? Check it out!

Landry Park

Bethany Hagen

Hardcover: 384 Pages

Publisher: Dial (Penguin)

ISBN: 978-0803739482

Goodreads/Amazon/Barnes & Noble

In a fragmented future United States ruled by the lavish gentry, seventeen-year-old Madeline Landry dreams of going to the university. Unfortunately, gentry decorum and her domineering father won't allow that. Madeline must marry, like a good Landry woman, and run the family estate. But her world is turned upside down when she discovers the devastating consequences her lifestyle is having on those less fortunate. As Madeline begins to question everything she has ever learned, she finds herself increasingly drawn to handsome, beguiling David Dana. Soon, rumors of war and rebellion start to spread, and Madeline finds herself and David at the center of it all. Ultimately, she must make a choice between duty - her family and the estate she loves dearly - and desire.

Now on to the excerpt

From Bethany- When I'm working on a project, I tend to crawl into a mental cave that's filled with music and movies and books and research, and then live in that cave until my clothes are all ragged and I can't remember what the sun feels like.  (This is only partly metaphorical.)  And in my mental cave are scenes and ideas and conceptualizations of other characters, because I try to be conscious at all times that each character has their own journey, their own arc.  Each character considers himself or herself to be the hero of their own story.  And no one more so than David Dana, the son of a decorated naval commander and new arrival to Kansas City.  David has a secret, one he can't share with anybody, and it weighs on him constantly.  But Madeline Landry is the first person he meets that he feels might understand.  This scene is a scene of their very first meeting at Wilder House, the location of a gentry girl's debut and also of a mysterious attack on a gentry girl named Cara Westoff.  It's this attack that sets off the action of the novel.

The plane from Atlanta was predictably delayed.  An ice storm over the Midwest, they said.  When he disembarked from the plane and climbed gratefully into the sleek black car that waited for him, David had half a mind to go straight to the penthouse his mother had rented and skip the debut he'd been solicitously invited to.  But after a crisp glass of gin, he decided to go.  He always liked a good party, especially one with lots of girls and dancing.  It didn't matter that he didn't know anybody yet; he found that more often than not mysterious, well-dressed men never lacked for dance partners.

The house was smaller than he expected, and no footman or butler welcomed him at the door...doubtless all the servants were busy with the crowded bustle of the debut.  He could hear the laughter and clinking glasses and lilting violins all the way from the front steps, which was probably a testament to how small the house was, not the number of guests.  God, this place is provincial, he thought, pausing to light a cigarette before he went inside.  Why his mother wanted to move back here was beyond him, especially when all their memories of Father were back in Georgia.  He'd been dead only a few months and already Mother seemed to have completely forgotten him.

A scowling grief accompanied thoughts of his father's death, a mixture of pain and confusion and anger.  His father had always been distant and reserved, his brief demonstrations of affection laced with a sense of duty, as if each pat on the head or each shake of the hand before dinner satisfied some internal quota he had created for himself.  But despite the distance, his father had been a fixed point in the constellation of David's life, and without him there, unmoving and unwavering, David felt daily life almost impossible to navigate.  As if the things he did in the shadows would now pull him under, and David Dana, handsome son of the gentry, would cease to exist, and he'd become someone else entirely.  The thought terrified him.  Being subsumed by anything--love, work, war, a cause--it was the deepest fear he had.  Maybe that's why he clung so tenaciously to this life of parties and booze and flirting.  It was an elaborate life raft.

His thoughts were interrupted by soft and hurried footsteps.  He looked up to see an unfamiliar girl, a year or two younger than him, rushing into the foyer.  Her silk and lace gown swished and rustled as she moved, and red hair--red as blood--spilled out from a braided crown around her head, framing her face rather attractively.  She was pretty, although thin and pale in a way that suggested unhealth, like there was a blood-spattered handkerchief tucked away in her dress somewhere.  He watched her ascend the staircase, admiring the elegant lines of her waist as she walked, when she stopped.  He heard it too--cars.  Constables.  

Something had happened.

The constables climbed out of their cars, talking in their clipped, prejudiced tones.  Their automatic suspicion of the Rootless was not what surprised him--it was the way the girl turned, listened, her face pulling tight with doubt--that made him wonder.  He'd meant to let her pass by, to remain unnoticed by this new city for a while longer, but now he was intrigued.  Choosing his words carefully--he was very used to doing this, to playing the part he'd created for himself all those years ago--he said:

"Normally these debuts are terribly boring, so I make a point of arriving late, but I guess this time I missed all the excitement." 

Thanks Bethany! Love David :D

About Bethany:

Librarian by day, Bethany Hagen is the author of the forthcoming LANDRY PARK, set to be released from Dial February 4th, 2014. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and two children.

WEBSITE/BLOG/TWITTER/GOODREADS 

Giveaway Details:

The giveaway is for one finished copy, bookmarks, & stickers. US ONLY.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here’s the Tour Schedule!

Monday, January 13, 2014- Hazel @ Stay Bookish- Review

Tuesday, January 14, 2014- Inky @ Bookhaven Extraordinaire- Review

Wednesday, January 15, 2014- Stacee @ Adventures of a Book Junkie- Interview

Sunday, January 16, 214- Jennifer @ Reading and Writing Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, and Romance- Review

Friday, January 17, 2014- Jaime @ Two Chicks on Books- Guest Post

Monday, January 20, 2014- Johanna @ Challenging Reads- Review

Tuesday, January 21, 2014- Liza @ Reading with ABC- Guest Post

Wednesday, January 22, 2014- Zoe @ The Infinite To-Read Shelf- Interview

Thursday, January 23, 2014- Giselle @ Book Nerd Canada- Review

Friday, January 24, 2014- Scott @ Scott Reads It!- Guest Post

Monday, January 27, 2014- Fahima @ I Read, Ergo I Write- Interview

Tuesday, January 28, 2014- Alyssa @ The Eater of Books!- Review

Wednesday, January 29, 2014- Emily @ Book Jems- Guest Post

Thursday, January 30, 2014- Taherah @ Books As You Know It- Interview

Friday, January 31, 2014- Jessi @ Novel Heartbeat- Review

Dying to Read (42)- Landry Park by Bethany Hagen

Hey y’all thanks for stopping by to see my Dying to Read post and of course as always I have to give credit to the lovely Jill over at Breaking the Spine for the Waiting on Wednesday Meme!

This week the book I’m dying to read is LANDRY PARK by Bethany Hagen!!!!! I love this cover the simplicity of it is beautiful and from the synopsis I’m dying to get my hands on it!!!!!!!

Landry Park

Bethany Hagen

Release Date: February 4, 2014

Paperback: 384 pages

Publisher: Dial (Penguin)

ISBN: 978-0803739482

Goodreads

Amazon/Barnes & Noble /The Book Depository

Madeline Landry is born into a world of influence and luxury, a world of estates and gardens fueled by nuclear power and maintained by a caste of people called the Rootless. When a Gentry girl is attacked, it is the Rootless who are blamed, even though Madeline knows better.

As she searches for the truth, she can't escape the rumors of revolution and retribution circulating through the ballrooms, and neither can she escape the city's new golden boy, Captain David Dana, who has secrets of his own. Soon, she finds herself forced to choose between her duty and her desires, her ancestral destiny and her conscience, and her choice will shake the very foundations of the world she was born to rule.

So what do you think? Will you be adding this to your pile? What are you dying to read this week?