Lies I Live By by Lauren Sabel (VNBtM, guest post, excerpt and GIVEAWAY)

It is my pleasure to share a guest post by author Lauren Sabel, who answers...





ELF: What was the most difficult thing to overcome on your path to becoming a published author and how did you conquer it?


LS: The hardest part of writing is self doubt.

Self doubt corrodes your insides and makes it nearly impossible to move forward towards any dream in your life. When you doubt yourself, you inevitably hide that beautiful thing that you are meant to share, and that harms both you and the world around you.

My self doubt stems from the disbelief that I have something interesting to say, or maybe an unique way of saying it, that makes my writing valuable to the world of my readers. But writing takes a lot of time and perseverance, and in order to keep pushing, I needed to learn to put my self-doubt aside and trust myself long enough to finish the next section, or chapter, or book.

Although writing a first draft of a book can be an exhilarating and exhausting process, it is also just the first step in a whole series of steps towards publishing that book. When you decide that you will be a writer, come hell or high water, you have to agree to a few specific terms:


1. You will finish the book.

2. You will allow yourself the internal freedom to write.

3. You will trust your own mind to come up with creative ways to solve the characters’ problems.

4. You will not let self-doubt stop you. (The critics will try to. They will beat at you with your worst fears until you want to cave, but you can’t. Because then they win.) And the fifth term you have to agree to is:

5. You can’t let the naysayers win. You get to choose how to feel about yourself, about your writing, about your next project, about whom you listen to. YOU get to win.


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Lies I Live By
by Lauren Sabel

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GENRE: YA Thriller

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BLURB:

These are the facts: My name is Callie Sinclair. I am seventeen years old. I live in San Francisco. I love my boyfriend, Charlie. I work for a secret governmental agency. I am a psychic spy. This romantic, action-packed twist on the classic spy novel is perfect for fans of Ally Carter’s Embassy Row series or for any reader who enjoys cinematic writing and stories of romance and intrigue.

At seventeen, Callie is the government’s youngest psychic spy, trained to track dangerous people and weapons in her visions. When another young—and handsome and witty—psychic joins the agency, Callie’s personal and professional lives get messy all at once. If she can’t find a way to change the events she’s seen in her visions, she could lose the people she loves most . . . and her mind. Literally.



Richly painted against the backdrop of San Francisco and Berkeley, Lauren Sabel’s enthralling novel captures the thrill of exploring a unique power in a dangerous world.



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EXCERPT

When I focused on a metal light switch across the room, I felt this intense confidence, this feeling that my life was mine alone, and that I could go anywhere and do anything with it. As this feeling surged through me, I felt heat sliding down my arm into my fingertips.

“Test your power,” Indigo said.

It was like the word “power” flipped some switch inside me. I lost focus, and my gaze slid a few inches over, to a small metal box.

The fire alarm went off.

Everyone screamed and ran for the exits, grabbing their kids along the way. Across the room, I saw Charlie and mom headed towards me, and when I looked over, Indigo was no longer by my side. As the sprinklers turned on, and ice-cold drops of water pelted my skin, I closed my fist, and where the spoon had been, there was now a card with a phone number on it. Right then, I knew that everything had changed.

I would never be normal again.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Lauren Sabel lives in the quirky dark spaces of her mind, and she tries to shed light on these spaces in her books. After publishing VIVIAN DIVINE IS DEAD in Summer 2014 with Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of Harper Collins, she confronted her lifelong fear of being psychic by writing LIES I LIVE BY (pub May 2016). Since in this YA thriller, teenage psychic spy Callie Sinclair works undercover for the government, forced to hide her real identity from everyone she loves, Lauren is now certain she’s on the CIA watch list.



Social Networks:

Website
Blog
Twitter: laurensabel

Facebook (author)
Facebook (Lies I Live By)
Instagram: laurensabel AND liesiliveby



Book Purchase Links:

LIES I LIVE BY

Kindle
Nook
Indiebound




VIVIAN DIVINE IS DEAD

Amazon
Nook


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GIVEAWAY


a Rafflecopter giveaway


The tour dates can be found here