Book Tour and Giveaway: Ordinary (Ordinary #1) by Starr Z. Davies

Title: Ordinary 

Series: Ordinary #1 

Author: Starr Z. Davies 

Publisher: Pangea Books

Publication Date: March 24th 2020

Print Length: 441 pages

Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Young Adult

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Fans of Powerless, The Testing, Hunger Games, and the Maze Runner will crave this world of iniquitous secrets, intrigue, and desire to find a place in society.

Divinic. Somatic. Psionic. Naturalist. Who will you be?

Having a superpower is ordinary. Your Power determines your job, social class, and future success.

But Ugene doesn’t have a Power. The only thing special about him is that he isn’t special at all. Ugene is Powerless.

So when the most prominent biomedical research company in the city offers Ugene a solution, he jumps at the possibility to be ordinary. All he has to do is agree to allow them to use him in their research. But the longer he stays at the research facility, the more he realizes something isn't right.

Friendships are forged. Trust is broken built and broken. And everything Ugene thought he understood and believed is called into question.

Who can Ugene trust in his search for answers? What is he willing to sacrifice for Powers?

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Three days define who a person will be for the rest of their life. The day they are born. Testing Day, where their abilities are determined. And, of course, Career Day, where social status, wealth, and future prospects are decided for them by an exhibition hall of employers.

I passed my birth with great pains. According to stories Mom told me, my labor gave her particular difficulty. After arriving too soon, too weak to survive on my own, I lived in an incubator for the first six weeks of my life in a struggle to survive. It’s why she sometimes—annoyingly—calls me, “tough guy.”

Up until Testing Day, everyone—from my teachers to my neighbors—called me a late bloomer and constantly reassured my parents that eventually I would fall into one of the Four Branches of Powers. They said it as if doing so was something I would just stumble over on the sidewalk one day and say, “Oh look, there’s my Power!”

Testing Day came early in my ninth year of schooling, alongside everyone else in my class. Those who had already developed their ability were divided into groups based on their Branch of Power: Somatic for Powers relating to the body; Naturalist for those with organic Powers; Psionic for the Power of the mind; and Divinic for those with Powers outside our world. Mostly, this division left me and three other kids—Mo, Dave, and Leo—uncategorized. By the end of the day, only I remained unclassified. Testing Day was a bitter disappointment for everyone in my family— including me.

Ordinary people have Powers and prospects. I have neither.

Now I face Career Day, where I get to parade around a convention center with all the other doeeyed, eleventh-year students and try to convince businesses why my Power is worth employment. Except I still don’t have one, and probably never will.

I’ve dreaded this day for years. Now, there’s no escaping it.

Miraculously, my parents haven’t given up on me. They still hold on to the hope that everything is about to change.

For all our sakes, I hope they are right.

STARR Z. DAVIES is a Midwesterner at heart, and lives in Wisconsin with her husband and kids. From a young age, Starr has been obsessed with superheroes like Batman and Captain America, which inspired her novel, ORDINARY. If Starr had a superpower, she would be an Empath, because she is an emotional sponge and easily relates to how others feel.

While pursuing a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, Starr gained a reputation as the “Character Assassin” because she has a habit of utterly destroying her characters both emotionally and physically.

In her free time, Starr loves watching Doctor Who or anything with superheroes, reading books (duh!), writing about her favorite fantasy stories (Song of Ice and Fire, Mistborn, The Wheel of Time), and staring out the window as she dreams up more stories. Oh, and sometimes she steps out the door.

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- How I Find Time to Write as a Mom

Being a mom is a demanding job, especially with my husband working as a doctor. His hours are long, so the kids depend on me for pretty much everything. That means I often find myself struggling to balance my writing with the responsibilities I have for the household. One thing, I find, that helps me keep up the writing habit is dedicating a certain amount of time each day to just my books. Sometimes this means writing or editing, and sometimes it’s just marketing or social media outreach. I am particularly lucky that my kids are in school and that my husband can keep up with the bills so I have more time to dedicate to just writing.

In a typical day, I wake up early, usually around 5:00 am, and just read until the kids get up for school. After they are out the door, I sit down and write until I’ve either finished at least 2,000 words or I’m satisfied with what I’ve done for the day. This generally means I’m done around noon. I then spend the rest of the day at my job (yes I have a part-time job!) until the kids get home from school. Then it’s homework, dinner, dishes, and relaxation time.

If there are other parents out there who struggle to find time to write, I understand! Until my kids were in school I was up early trying to get some writing done before they woke up. Usually, it only gave me about an hour or two, but that’s better than nothing at all. My advice is just to continue pushing on. Set small, reachable goals for yourself to complete by a certain time. It took me years to find the right balance that worked for me.

- Movies that Influenced My Life

Watching movies is a huge part of who I am. Though I don’t tend to discriminate too much—I love all kinds of genres in film—I do tend to watch more superhero and sci-fi films than anything else, and I often avoid watching horror, documentaries (mostly), westerns, and war films (with a few exceptions).

The first movie I really remember having a strong impact on me as a child was Michael Keaton’s Batman. It broke me out of the fairytale, everything is happy mode and really showed me how strong characters in films can be. I wore out our copy of the movie because I watched it so many times. Batman has had a significant influence on me, and I’m fairly sure that it’s also the reason I’m such a devout Batman fan. It really changed my life.

V for Vendetta was another favorite—are we noticing a trend of graphic novels and comics to film here?—because the message in that story had so much power. I couldn’t even share a favorite quote because the film is just littered with them, but if I had to choose, it would probably be: “Behind this mask is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.” V is the anti-hero who shows an entire nation that they have more power than the leaders who oppress them. I suppose that has an influence on my Ordinary series as well.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a mention to Lord of the Rings, too. The films were brilliant masterpieces, and they inspired me to start writing again when I lost my muse. I definitely owe where I am in my writing career to Lord of the Rings.

Don’t worry, I didn’t neglect the Marvel films—and the certainly deserve recognition! The way Marvel wove all of those stories together and made such an epic display of powers is nothing short of remarkable.

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