April Fool's YA SCAVENGER HUNT!!!

It's time for the APRIL FOOL'S YA SCAVENGER HUNT!

Follow from blog to blog, picking up clues, and win a grand prize of ALL the current books for the YA Authors participating in the Hunt...how awesome is that?  Plus, I'm giving away an extra ARC of ARISE for those of you who find my bonus content and comment on this blog about it!!  (Rules below on what you'll need to include in the comment.)

So, on to the Big Party:

I'm Tara Hudson, for those of you who don't already know me, and I'm your hostess at this stop.

YOU ARE CURRENTLY BLOG HOPPING ON TEAM YELLOW!

For you first timers, the YA Scavenger Hunt is an online blog hop sponsored by authors who write books for both Young Adults and the Young at Heart. Each of us hosts a different fabulous author on the tour. If you came here looking for my bonus material - the second chapter of my upcoming novel, ARISE - you'll have to keep going. It's a reward for your scavenging work. :)


Have you already been here? Are you stuck? Confused? Lost? All will be well. You can click HERE to go to the YA Scavenger Hunt homepage to figure out which authors you missed.

Today, I'm hosting the fabulous Gina Damico, whose dark (and hilarious!) YA debut, CROAK, is out now!

Isn't she kind of a hottie?  :) 
 
Gina grew up under four feet of snow in Syracuse, New York. She received a degree in theater and sociology from Boston College, where she was active with the Committee for Creative Enactments, a murder mystery improv comedy troupe, which may or may not have sparked an interest in wildly improbable bloodshed. She has since worked as a tour guide, transcriptionist, theater house manager, scenic artist, movie extra, office troll, retail monkey, yarn hawker and breadmonger. CROAK is her first novel. She lives in Boston with her husband, two cats, and a closet full of black hoodies.
 

Want to know more? Here's the description of CROAK:
 
Fed up with her wild behavior, sixteen-year-old Lex’s parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping that a few months of dirty farm work will whip her back into shape. But Uncle Mort’s true occupation is much dirtier than shoveling manure. He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach Lex the family business. She quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next. But Lex can’t stop her desire for justice—or is it vengeance?—whenever she encounters a murder victim, craving to stop the attackers before they can strike again. Will she ditch Croak and go rogue with her reaper skills?

Sounds awesome, right?  Well lucky for you, Gina's treating us to a deleted scene from Chapter 3 of CROAK, right now!  In this scene, Lex has just gotten off a Greyhound bus somewhere in the Adirondacks.

She sighed and looked at Her watch. Uncle Mort was supposed to have picked her up five minutes ago. Restless, she began walking down the muddy road, not even sure if she was going in the right direction. A bear would arrive to eat her soon, no doubt. She certainly hoped Mr. Truitt would be happy upon learning that her bloodied corpse had been found in a muck-filled ditch.

It was then that she noticed a small kiosk across the street, primarily because it was yelling at her.


"HEY! C'MERE!"


Lex warily approached the window to find a corpulent, angry-looking woman simmering in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke and wearing, in an ironic twist, a shirt commemorating last summer's Lung Cancer Fun Run.


"Yes?" Lex said.


"Where you headed?" the woman barked, hacking up a wet cough.


"Uh, I'm not sure." Lex vaguely gestured at the road. "I'm waiting for my uncle to pick me up."


"Eh?" The woman leaned closer to the screen.


"My uncle," Lex said, pronouncing each syllable.


The woman snorted. "Who's your uncle?"


Lex rolled her eyes, because even though she was only sixteen, she had already grown quite impatient with the world. "Mort. Why, you know him?"


The woman, who had hitherto been ignoring Lex's little performance, froze. Her nose hair rustled. The cigarette fell out of her mouth but caught at the last second, so that it dangled from the very tip of her lip. "Mort, you say?" she whispered, the cigarette dancing as she spoke.


"That is what I said."


The woman looked around, as if there could possibly be anyone in earshot to hear her, then shrunk away from the window. "Get outta here."


"What?"


"Get out!" She picked up a phone and frantically pounded at the keypad. "Out, now!"


Lex looked at the trees surrounding her, then back at the woman inside the box. "I am out."


"Get out or – hello, police?"


"There is nowhere to go, lady."


"Out!"


And with a final crude gesture, the woman yanked down the blinds and continued yelling into the phone.


For more information on Gina and her books, check out her website HERE.  Interested in buying the book now? Click on the link HERE. 

For another behind-the-scenes look at CROAK (and the secret letter for the hunt), go to www.ginadami.co/hunt and type in the password: jellyfish

Now for the prize portion. As you are hopping from blog to blog there will be a giant sized letter highlighted in YELLOW. After you have collected all 20 yellow letters, one from each blog, unscramble them to form a phrase. Enter the phrase at this LINK,  making sure you put the YELLOW phrase in the YELLOW entry form. When you have finished with the yellow team you may want to consider moving onto the BLUE and RED author teams so you can enter to win even more prizes. How you get there is by clicking HERE and then selecting an author on either the red or the blue team. Collecting your red or yellow clues along the way and enter the secret phrase in the form. Don't forget that most of the authors are doing their own giveaways as well so there are many chances to win something special.

As I mentioned above, while you're here visiting with me you can also enter to win a personal contest I'm hosting!!  I'm giving away one extra ARC of ARISE to the first person who reads the excerpt of Chapter Two (available on the TEAM YELLOW hunt) and correctly identifies where the scene takes place, in the comments section of this blog.

 

Thank you so much for visiting the HEREAFTER Saga Blog!

If you're ready to move on to the next author's blog,

click HERE to head over to Marley Gibson's blog.