Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for My Best Friend Runs Venus by Katrina S. Forest. This blog tour was organized by Lola's Blog Tours. On my stop, I have a guest post for you. There's also a tour wide giveaway. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for more guest posts, excerpts, author interviews, reviews, and more. Enjoy!
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Title: My Best Friend Runs VenusAuthor: Katrina S. Forest
Genre: Science Fiction
Age category: Middle Grade
Release Date: June 1, 2019
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At 12.9 years old, number-obsessed Kade Walker has never heard of death. Literally. But neither has anyone else he knows. Kade is one of hundreds of kids "living" across the solar system through robotic avatars while their real bodies sleep in pods on Earth. Unfortunately, robot bodies can be hacked.
One day during an (innocent!) experiment, Kade unwittingly breaks a major security wall and releases an infamous hacker. The madwoman targets all the royal avatars, including Kade’s best friend, Princess Tamika of Venus.
If Kade and Tamika don’t want to become the hacker’s puppets, they’ve got to stop her fast--even if it means waking up on Earth to fight with bodies they never realized could be hurt.
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ARTWORK:
This book includes some artwork. Check out a few of the illustrations that are included in the book below:
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Katrina S. Forest is a teacher by day, author by any-other-time-she-can-get. Her work has sold to a variety of magazines, ranging from Flash Fiction Online to Highlights For Children. She loves nerdy conventions and believes video games can be a force of creative good instead of evil.
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GUEST POST:
Who or what was your main inspiration for My Best Friend Runs Venus?
My Best Friend Runs Venus was one of those random ideas I kept carrying around and coming back to. There was a show I watched in high school involving a bunch of teens with magic powers, each one associated with a different planet in the solar system. It got me brainstorming—how would it look if kids were ruling their own planets in a science fiction setting? What technology would have to exist? How would it function? Why would kids get put in charge of anything? I couldn't fall back on ideas like, "Well, because magic and because they're the chosen ones." So I developed the concept of robotic avatars, able to function in almost any environment. From there, I added on the idea of augmented reality coloring the otherwise desolate landscape. Kids would be in charge because they'd be the only ones who could handle living through a robot 24/7. They're the world's hope for the future, able to develop a new society in a place where adults can't be for very long. I like the idea that kids have an advantage on adults, because they're more flexible and creative—more willing to think outside the box. I wrote the first draft for National Novel Writing Month, put it through a bunch of revisions, and for a long time, it sat on my hard drive. I grew a lot as a writer in that time—I sold some of my short stories and later joined SFWA and SCBWI. I also read a whole lot of chapter books and middle grade with my kids. Ultimately, I wanted to share Venus with them, too. So I took it out, polished it again (okay, polished it several times), partnered with the most amazing illustrator, and I couldn't be more excited to share it.
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GIVEAWAY:
One winner will win a $20 Amazon gift card and a signed copy of My Best Friend Runs Venus by Katrina S. Forest.
Cool book!
ReplyDeleteCover is great
ReplyDelete