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Paula Morris

Blog Tour for DARK SOULS

By Press, YA Fiction

Very happy to announce an upcoming blog tour: this will include interviews, guest posts, top tens, reviews … Thanks very much to the Teen Book Scene for making this happen.

Monday, September 26: IB Book Blogging

Tuesday, September 27: Seeing Night Reviews

Wednesday, September 28: Chica Reader

Thursday, September 29: Reading Vacation

Friday, September 30: Manga Maniac Café

Monday, October 3: Lost for Words

Tuesday, October 4: The Book Monsters

Wednesday, October 5: Flippin’ Fabulous

Thursday, October 6:  Swords for Fighting

Friday, October 7: Girls in the Stacks

Monday, October 10: A Good Addiction

Tuesday, October 11: Manga Maniac Café

Wednesday, October 12: Swords for Fighting

Thursday, October 13: Girls in the Stacks

Friday, October 14: Seeing Night Reviews

Monday, October 17: Reading Vacation

Tuesday, October 18: Flippin’ Fabulous

Wednesday, October 19: The Friendly Reader

Thursday, October 20: IB Book Blogging

Friday, October 21: The Book Monsters

Writing Tips

By Fiction, YA Fiction

Some of my writing tips for YA fiction writers are posted at This Is Teen. Check them out and let me know what you think. Also, there are dozens of contests going on right now to win a copy of DARK SOULS. This is just one of them. This is another. (Search for Win Copy Morris Dark Souls – there are plenty to choose from.)

Also, my first interview about the book is posted here. Thanks, Lalaine!

 

DARK SOULS now available

By Fiction, YA Fiction

My new YA novel, DARK SOULS, was published in the US this week. The novel – the story of Miranda and her brother, Rob, who are both recovering from the scars, physical and psychic, of a car accident – is a mystery set in York, the city in England where I lived for three years.  Of course, I made sure to include a scene or two at Bettys Cafe Tea Rooms, which I visited every single week I lived in York – sometimes more than once.

Below is the teaser I wrote for the novel when I first presented the idea to Scholastic. Read the book and let me know what you think …

York, England. December. Mist lingers in the streets. Snow banks up against the city’s Roman walls and around the towering York Minster, one of the great medieval cathedrals of Europe. The river Ouse is icy, gray, and forbidding.

The city of York is the most haunted place on earth: the ghosts of Viking pillagers, Roman soldiers, Catholic martyrs, hanged highwaymen, rebels and cavaliers, victims of the Black Death, and tragic royals all haunt its narrow lanes and half-timbered old buildings.

Two American teenagers arrive in this moody ancient city. Neither of them really want to be here. But although they don’t know it yet, both will fall in love for the first time in York. They’ll also be forced to confront their greatest fears.

In York, they’ll risk losing everything. The parents they love. The people they fall in love with. Their sanity.

Their lives.

Auckland Writers & Readers Festival 2011

By Events, YA Fiction

I’m en route to New Zealand to appear at this year’s Writers & Readers Festival in Auckland. If you’re in town, please come by one of my events (or one of someone else’s – it’s a great festival).

These are the events I’ve infiltrated in some way:

Wednesday, May 11

9:45 AM – 2 PM: MC for Schools Programme, featuring Meg Rosoff, Garth Nix, Sean Williams, Brian Falkner and Apirana Taylor. ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre.

Thursday, May 11

9:45 AM – 2 PM – MC for Schools Programme, featuring Margo Lanagan, Cassandra Clare, Meg Rosoff and Bernard Beckett. ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre.

Saturday, May 14

10 – 11 AM ‘Wordy Day Out’: In conversation with Cassandra Clare. Fisher & Paykel Auditorium, University of Auckland Business School.

1 – 2 PM ‘Wordy Day Out’: In conversation with Meg Rosoff and Margo Lanagan. Fisher & Paykel Auditorium, University of Auckland Business School.

2:30 – 3:30 PM ‘Wordy Day Out’: Talking about my own YA writing. Lecture Theatre 098, University of Auckland Business School.

6 – 8 PM ‘Inspiring Works’: A discussion (me, director Colin McColl, playwright Victor Rodger) following a public reading of John Guare’s ‘Six Degrees of Separation’. Upper NZI Room, Aotea Centre.

Sunday, May 15

1 – 2 PM ‘Fantasy: Freedom All Round’. In conversation with fantasy writers Garth Nix, Cassandra Clare, Margo Lanagan and Elizabeth Knox. Lower NZI Room, Aotea Centre.

2:30 – 3:30 PM ‘An Hour with Tea Obreht.’ In conversation with Tea. ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre.

Hope to see you at the festival.