Hi! You found your way over to Austin Aslan during the final farewell Fall 2020 YA Scavenger Hunt! Congratulations. You probably arrived here via Darcy Woods. Awesome. (And my Team Purple #YASH host is Heather L. Reid. Check it out!)
If you happen to not know what the heck I’m talking about, Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. And if you’re experiencing any technical glitches, don’t worry, Glitch Happens. Go here for some tasty medicine.
Now, without further ado…let’s YASH!
144 (ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR)
AND NOW NOW, without further ado-doo, here’s the MAIN EVENT! I’M HOSTING Paula Stokes.
Paula Stokes is author of Stellar. Fun, funny, and feminist af, Stellar is a story of best friends, first love, and learning to believe in yourself.
Read the book link: https://www.swoonreads.com/a/paulastokes/CU1OHJ/
Book Description: In the unforgiving world of popular video game Project Survival, seventeen-year-old Stella takes no prisoners. Her ability to annihilate both human and computer-generated enemies with the help of her partner Betsy earns the girls a chance to compete in the national championships in Seattle. But claiming victory isn’t the only reason Stella’s excited to head north. It’s also a chance for her to meet Noah, a Project Survival newbie she took under her wing a few months ago who’s become more to her than just another player—a lot more.
When the two finally meet, Noah is even cuter in person than in the pictures he sent Stella, but for some reason the real-world chemistry doesn’t match the intensity of their late-night chats. Is it possible that the boy of her dreams doesn’t exist IRL?
With a huge cash prize on the line, Stella must navigate the dangerous terrain of Project Survival and her own conflicting emotions, even as she discovers that the lines between real life and online are blurrier than she ever imagined.
Paula: Hi YASH-ers! I’m really psyched to be participating in the final YA Scavenger Hunt. I haven’t managed to sell a book to a publisher since my seaside mystery HIDDEN PIECES, but that hasn’t stopped me from maintaining my goal of releasing one book a year. (Can’t stop won’t stop!) Last year I released STRONGER THAN WORDS on Wattpad and the free SwoonReads platform, as well as re-releasing my NA novel THE KEY TO EVERYTHING on Wattpad.
This year I’m thrilled to share the beginning of my girl gamer internet romance, STELLAR, on Wattpad. STELLAR is probably my second favorite out of all my books (behind GIRL AGAINST THE UNIVERSE) because like GATU it hits that balance of being both hopeful and realistic. It’s funny and empowering, and although I am a former gamer, the tournament is mainly the backdrop to Stella’s journey of discovering who she is and what she wants, both in love and in life. You don’t have to know anything about video games to enjoy this novel.
Enough of my blathering. Here’s the cover:
I worked with independent graphic designer Diana Zhang in creating this cover. I wanted to capture the iconic Seattle setting, as well as the romance element. And I think the Neon One font adds a bit of whimsy. I’m thrilled with how it turned out. What do you think of this cover? Share your thoughts in the comments 🙂
Want a sneak peek inside the book? Here’s a glimpse of how Stella and Betsy became best friends:
Mom moved our family into a new district when I was twelve, which means I didn’t know anyone when I started middle school. I spent the first few days observing the different friend groups, trying to figure out where I might eventually fit in. I watched a few kids try to pick on Betsy and saw the smoking craters she left with her verbal missiles. I was afraid of her…and in awe of her.
I ran into her in the bathroom at lunch one day when she was touching up her makeup. We could not have been more different. I was wearing tan capris my mom handed down to me and a T-shirt I got at Target with a beach scene of someplace in Florida I’ve never visited. Betsy had on a flowy black knee-length dress with emerald-green tights. She’d glued rhinestones all over them so she literally sparkled under the fluorescent lights.
I lathered my hands for about two full minutes while I tried to figure out something to say to her, my skin growing pink from the friction.
She looked over at me eventually. “You okay? You’ve been scrubbing for a while.”
“I’m good,” I said timidly. “I just wanted to tell you that I saw those boys harassing you in the hallway before first period, and the way you destroyed them was amazing. I wish I was that brave. I wish I was that…smart.” I shut off the sink and reached for a paper towel. “You’re so fast with the comebacks.”
“I have a lot of practice dealing with punk-ass bitches unfortunately,” she said. “I’m guessing you don’t?”
I shook my head hurriedly. “Mostly I just try to be invisible around people like that.”
She turned and studied me for a few moments. “Nothing wrong with that if it works for you. When you’re as big as me, being invisible isn’t really an option.”
I didn’t know what to say. My instinct was to tell her she wasn’t that big, but I knew those words were going to feel fake as hell coming from someone as skinny as me. And I knew what she meant. Kids could be merciless when it came to picking on people, whether they were four hundred pounds or just a little bigger than everyone else.
“Plus.” Betsy cleared her throat. “And don’t take this the wrong way, but I feel like that strategy lets the terrorists win, you know? No one should have to be invisible to get through the day. You deserve to be seen.”
My cheeks reddened and I looked down at the ground. To this day it’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.
“I’m Betsy,” she said.
“I know,” I replied. “I mean, my name is Stella. We just moved to this school district. I don’t really know anybody.”
“Well, you can know me,” she said. “If you want.”
I remember thinking again of her bravery. I could have turned away from that offer. After all, I just wanted to coast through school without becoming anyone’s target, and befriending Betsy Castillo did not seem like the way to go.
But instead I said “okay” and we left the bathroom together. Over the next couple months, we became best friends.
Thanks for participating in the YA Scavenger Hunt 😀 Check out the first ten chapters of STELLAR on Wattpad today!)
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Exciting stuff, Paula! All right, fearless hunter, off you go… But before you scurry off to visit the next author on the hunt, Stevie Rae Causey, please feel free to peek around my entire site for a while and follow the links to my two YA survival-disaster sci fi novels, THE ISLANDS AT THE END OF THE WORLD and THE GIRL AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD, and my new TURBO RACER series with HarperCollins, TURBO Racers: Trailblazer, and Book Two: Escape Velocity, which dropped in Feb of 2020.
Please leave a comment below, let me know you stopped by!
And please be sure to follow me on twitter, tumblr, instagram and facebook to follow my adventures in real time!MOVE ALONG FOLKS, YOU’VE ONLY GOT A FEW DAYS TO GET THROUGH THIS! Please continue your delectable YA Scavenger Hunt by visiting the next lovely author: Stevie Rae Causey Go! Do it! DO IT NOW!!!
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The wait is over! With enormous excitement I’m proud to announce THE ENDANGEREDS, the first novel in a new adventure series co-authored by myself and Philippe Cousteau Jr., the celebrated environ-mentalist, television host, and grandson of Captain Jacques Cousteau.
At last! HUGE book news coming! I’m so excited to finally share what I’ve been up to recently over at HarperCollins. This project has been under wraps for quite some time, but the moment of truth is nigh. Please stay tuned. I’ll officially spill the announce-ment beans on MONDAY!
Hi! You found your way over to 
But I am not trying to discourage you, curios reader! On the contrary! BOTNS is gorgeously written, but it’s also a ton of fun! In fact, it’s downright COOL. It’s a swashbuckling adventure. There are swords and laser guns, aliens, cyborgs, robots, giants and ghosts, sea monsters and gods, spaceships and time travel. Romance and love and deception. It literally features an entire, written-out stage play within. At times it reads as deeply as a Hemingway or Stephen Crane war novel (Wolfe was, after all, himself a soldier who served on the ground in battle during the Korean War). (And he was also, incidentally, the inventor of the Pringle potato chip. Don’t believe me? Look it up. But I digress…)
BOTNS bleeds the crimson blood of Christian mysticism throughout–particularly Catholic mysticism–but it does so in the most appropriately-subtle and delicious ways. At times it is utterly haunting, or horrific, and genuinely scary. But BOTNS is undeniably at its best (and least challenging and most rewarding) when it slows down and reflects on itself, and the human condition, and the millions of years of future trajectory our species has in store, possibly over and over again, not only within this universe, but beyond the next Big Crunch and Big Bang, and the next one, and so on.
docking here at 
Laustinspace 