Giveaway: The Strange Maid by Tessa Gratton

We won't be having our usual WINW post today. Instead, thanks to the folks at Random House Children's Books, we've got one copy of THE STRANGE MAID, the second book in Tessa Gratton's United States of Asgard series.  Here's a description of the series from the publicist:

Set in the original, stunning world of the United States of Asgard, where the Norse gods are celebrities in an alternate modern America, the first four books follow different protagonists around the same critical moment—the disappearance of Baldur and the plans of Freya, who controls fate. The fifth and final book brings the protagonists together for a culminating adventure.

 Sounds good, right? Here's the scoop on THE STRANGE MAID:

In the United States of Asgard, cell phones, rock bands, and evangelical preachers coexist with dragon slaying, rune casting, and sword training in schools. The president runs the country alongside a council of Valkyrie, gods walk the red carpet with Hollywood starlets, and the U.S. military has a special battalion dedicated to eradicating Rocky Mountain trolls.

Every day, Signy Valborn gets up and puts on a Valkyrie costume to entertain the tourists who travel north to the icy island of Vinland. She also helps Ned Unferth, a handsome young troll hunter, terrify the tourists by putting his tame mountain troll through its paces. Then Baldur’s Night arrives, when the United States’ most popular god, Baldur the Beautiful, rises from the ashes, escaping Hel to live among them for the spring and summer months. But this year, Baldur doesn’t rise.

Amid the confusion, a band of mountain trolls attacks and destroys Signy’s town. Ned and his troll are not among the dead, but they’re nowhere to be found. As Signy sets out to search for them, she leaves behind everything she’s ever known to discover what fate the gods have in store for her.

Wildly entertaining and filled with intrigue and adventure, THE STRANGE MAID is a fast-paced, compelling story. Fans of Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, and Maggie Stiefvater, as well as new readers, will embrace the richly drawn, Norse-influenced alternate world of the United States of Asgard.

Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository

 

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TESSA GRATTON has wanted to be a paleontologist or a wizard since she was seven. She was too impatient to hunt dinosaurs, but is still searching for someone to teach her magic. After traveling the world with her military family, she acquired a BA (and the important parts of an MA) in gender studies, and then settled down in Kansas with her partner, her cats, and her mutant dog.

Website | Twitter

 

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by Tynga at Tuesday, August 19, 2014

 giveaway, Random House, Tessa Gratton  7 People left their mark

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PSB: Guest Post by Tessa Gratton

 

Tessa is the debut author of Blood Magic, which will hit the shelves on May 24th, 2011. If you’ve trolled around her website or blog, you’ll know that Blood & Magic are very important to Tessa, so I asked her to talk to us about this subject! It’s really not as morbid as you would think *winks*

 

 

The Importance of Being Bloody
 
When blood comes up in conversation, I suspect most people think about slasher flicks and gory ninja movies and trips to the emergency room. Possibly vampires. But I think of magic.
 
Or sometimes just cool. 
Blood has always figured in pretty overtly in my stories – whether they were shorts I wrote when I was 12 and a girl had dragon wings tear painfully and grossly out of her back, novels I wrote in high school with a narrator who cuts out other people’s eyes and sticks them in her own head, stories about angry gods or blood-drinking red caps, or, obviously, The Blood Journals books. In them, blood is the key to magic.
 
I’ve always associated blood with two main things: life and sacrifice. Maybe that’s from being raised Catholic, and listening to a priest talk about Christ’s blood granting everlasting life, or maybe it’s from reading all that Anne Rice when I was in 5th grade. But what it comes down to for me is that blood = magic. It may be the most potent symbol we have.
 
When you’re punched in the nose, you bleed. When you give birth, you bleed. When you’re in a car accident or slash open your wrist, you bleed. It’s life and pain pouring out of you – and sometimes that’s enough of a symbol. Bright red blood splattered on a well tells us about violence, a tiny drop of it is like the tip of an iceburg. It’s constantly renewing, and we can’t survive without it.
 
But in my novels, Blood Magic and The Blood Keeper, blood is just a little be more. It, like I said, is the key to the magic. It quickens power, because it represents sacrifice. You can’t get something for nothing – and what you give in order to get, in this case, is your own blood. Your pain, your energy.
 
There have to be consequences in life – especially when we’re talking about something like magic. Free magic would be boring, and incredibly dangerous. But magic that requires not only study and an understanding of nature, but also a painful sacrifice, is magic more likely to be used responsibly. (Or at least, that’s the theory.)
 
Blood matters because it’s a pretty universal symbol of the connection between our bodies and our hearts. That is where my magic lies, and my imagination, too. 
  
Thanks for having me!

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Thank you so much Tessa for taking the time to write this great post for us! It’s been a pleasure to have you on the blog ^^

For Nick Pardee and Silla Kennicot, the cemetery is the center of everything.

Nick is a city boy angry at being forced to move back to the nowhere town of Yaleylah, Missouri where he grew up. He can’t help remembering his mom and the blood magic she practiced – memories he’s tried for five years to escape. Silla, though, doesn’t want to forget; her parents’ apparent murder-suicide left her numb and needing answers. When a book of magic spells in her dad’s handwriting appears on her doorstep, she sees her chance to unravel the mystery of their deaths.

Together they plunge into the world of dark magic, but when a hundred-year-old blood witch comes hunting for the bones of Silla’s parents and the spell book, Nick and Silla will have to let go of everything they believe about who they are, the nature of life and death, and the deadly secrets that hide in blood.

Purchase: Amazon | Kindle | Book Depository

The companion book, Blood Keeper, will hit the shelves in 2012 and Tessa says: “THE BLOOD KEEPER, a stand-alone companion novel to BLOOD MAGIC, about crows, sacrifice, and yes, kissing.” Sounds great hen?

So, Is blood important to you?

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by Tynga at Sunday, March 20, 2011

 Guest Post, Paranormal Spring Break, Tessa Gratton  1 Person left their mark

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