Virtual Tour + #Giveaway: Average Joe and the Extraordinaires by Belart Wright @BelartWright @GoddessFish

Average Joe and the Extraordinaires

by Belart Wright

GENRE: Action Adventure, Young Adult, Urban Fantasy

BLURB:

On a dark and balmy Floridian night, a strange and mysterious dark haired woman stalks the shadows of the local college football stadium, on the prowl for secrets buried deep beneath the Earth. These secrets, she knows, may change everything including this small town.

While knocking back illegal drinks with his friends at the hallowed Orangetown Pickers' college football stadium, average kid Joe Black finds himself desperately trying to save the life of a beautiful dark haired woman after a deadly explosion violently interrupts his fun and games. While trying to fathom why he would even do something so reckless he soon finds himself entangled in a dangerous game of terrorist plots, mistaken identities, hard boiled detectives, the criminal underworld, and of all things magic as he tries to escape with his life and make sense of it all.

Joe faces many challenges from all new enemies, assassins, and even his own friends. Can Joe navigate all this danger, escape with his life, and handle his biggest challenge to date, finding something about himself that is truly extraordinary? Find out within the pages of Average Joe and the Extraordinaires.

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EXCERPT:

The brunette woman barely heard her, only figuring out what she said by reading her lips.  She continued to watch her body language closely. The blonde looked frantic as she surveyed the situation below her. The group of people were being escorted into the elevator. The blonde suddenly stood up as the kid with the silver aura, a dark-skinned little girl with almost no hair, was almost at the elevator doors.  She looked ready to leap down and attempt a rescue, but the fool had no idea how outmatched she was, or perhaps she just didn’t care.

Author Interview:

What inspired you to write Average Joe and the Extraordinaires?

I asked myself a few questions.  Can an average protagonist be interesting even in a book about extraordinary people?  What does average really mean?  What makes a person extraordinary?

When or at what age did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I’ve been writing as a hobby since I was in sixth grade, but I didn’t think to do it seriously until late high school when I was encouraged by my creative writing teacher, Ms. Jean.

What is the earliest age you remember reading your first book?

I’ve read books all my life.  The earliest things I remember reading though are those Highlights books in second and third grade.  You know, the magazines they give you in school with articles, comics strips, puzzles, and coloring pages.  I think they used to have serious topics in those books too unless that’s a different magazine, maybe that one was Time for kids or something like that.

What genre of books do you enjoy reading?

I don’t know really.  My book tastes are very diverse.  It’s really the premise in the blurb that I pay attention to.  If I HAD to pick a genre though, I guess it’d be urban fantasy.

What is your favorite book?

My favorite book is probably a toss up between the first three A Song of Ice and Fire books, Harry Potter’s # 4 #5 and #6.  I would have to read them all all over again to decide which is the definitive #1 book.

You know I think we all have a favorite author. Who is your favorite author and why?

This goes hand in hand with my favorite books.  So I’d have to say J.K. Rowling and G.R.R. Martin.  I’ll throw a curveball in there and add Yoshihiro Togashi in there as well even though he’s a mangaka, but that counts as an author too.  All three authors take care with their characters and worlds, ensuring that every single thing they create has a history or cleverness to it.  Their worlds seem like true living, breathing places that possess the keenest sense of wonder and magic to them.  I think I love all these creators equally and now as a writer, I have a deep respect for the care they put into their books.

If you could travel back in time here on earth to any place or time. Where would you go and why?

I typically shy away from any ideas of time travel, mostly because it just seems like it’d be problematic for someone like me.  But I’ll just go with Italy during the renaissance period.  There seemed to be this huge craving for true knowledge and enlightenment back then.

When writing a book do you find that writing comes easy for you or is it a difficult task?

Writing tends to be both for me.  Sometimes it’s super easy and my imagination, my hands, and my pen meld into one.  Other times there is too much on my mind about the day’s events or I may hit a snag in my plot or I’m not feeling confident about a scene I’m working on, etc.  What helps is to simply keep going and eliminate all possible distractions.

Do you have any little fuzzy friends? Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?

No pets.  I simply don’t have the time or resources to take care of them at this point.  My sister’s family has more than enough pets though, so a visit to them gets me all the fuzzy love that a guy could ask for.

What is your "to die for", favorite food/foods to eat?

I’m a very simple sort of guy and I like tacos a lot.  Just give me a tortilla or corn shell, some meat, some lettuce, cheese, and spicy sauce and I’m good to go.  Tacos may just be mankind’s greatest creation!

Do you have any advice for anyone that would like to be an author?

Be patient, read as much as you can, write as much as you can.  Write several books before you even decide to attempt to get published.  Keep a diary, write blog posts, learn as much as you can about the world every day, read the news, read something that has a different point of view from your own, learn what makes people really tick, and go ahead and be a creep and study people.  Your writing improves the more you learn about the world and the process of writing itself.  Listening to people and what motivates them helps your writing a lot.  And remember that the internet is an amazing resource for any project you’re working on.  You can learn just about anything from Youtube and Wikipedia nowadays, just make sure you back up your findings with other sources too.  Beyond that, have some fun and be a rebel.  Some rules were meant to be broken, remember that.

I just want to thank The Avid Reader and her glorious readers for hosting me today and making me feel like a champion!  I hope you all gained something from this or were at least entertained by it.  Thanks so much everyone for your precious time.  Take care.

AUTHOR BIO:

Belart Wright was born and raised in Detroit Michigan with a short but adventurous stint in St. Ignace during his childhood. Always poor, Belart had to learn to use his imagination to fuel the fun he had. Whether it was drawing cool and dangerous looking heroes to creating fully fledged storylines with his action figures to writing stories about kids similar to himself with fantastic abilities and destinies, Belart was always an expert in delving into other worlds that were not his own.

Always naturally talented at writing, it took the advice of his brother, and a little creative boost from his high school creative writing teacher to get him to realize that writing was something he could do really well and pursue as a career. To this day he revels in building worlds and characters from the ground up such as the worlds of Hell Warriors, Story of K, Cyborgs and Deadmen, and Pannam which are all working titles.


In his spare time Belart tries to update his two blogs whenever he can, but mostly just ends up writing or editing. As a huge gamer he plays a lot of games online and off with his favorites at the time being Borderlands 2, Phantasy Star Online, X-Men Legends, and Dark Souls. He just wishes he had more time to whittle his impossibly long gaming list down which goes all the way back to PS1 and Sega Genesis classics. He and his buddies at FlubberKnuckle Studios are also working on several new game IPs. He is also patiently waiting for the next installment of the superb Legacy of Kain series.

Website ~ Blog ~ Google+ ~ Goodreads ~ Twitter ~ Wattpad

Giveaway:

$10 Amazon/BN GC

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