by Carol Riggs
Genre: YA Fantasy
Release Date: July 7th 2016
Clean Reads
Summary from Goodreads:
At seventeen, Adeelah Naji is transformed into a genie and imprisoned in a bottle. For a thousand years, she fulfills the wishes of greedy masters—building their palaces, lining their pockets with gold, and granting them every earthly pleasure. All that sustains her is the hope of finding Karim, the boy she fell in love with as a human. When at last she finds a note from her beloved, she confirms he has access to the elixir of life and that he still searches for her.
But someone else also hunts her. Faruq—the man who plots to use her powers to murder and seize the life forces of others—is just one step behind her. With the help of a kind master named Nathan, Adeelah continues to search for Karim while trying to evade Faruq. To complicate matters, she begins to experience growing fatigue and pain after conjuring, and finds herself struggling against an undeniable attraction to Nathan.
As Faruq closes in, Adeelah must decide just how much she’ll risk to protect Nathan and be with Karim forever. How much power does she really have to change her future, and what is she willing to sacrifice for an eternity of love? If she makes the wrong choice, the deaths of many will be on her hands.
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Excerpt:
A
disturbance scrapes the edge of my awareness.
I
stop twisting the rings on my fingers and concentrate on the intrusion rather
than my new master who sits in front of me. Five humans have reached this
shabby Arabian hotel, clustering like scorpions in the street far below our
room. A niggling sense of them rises up in my mind.
They
make their way closer, feet scraping on pavement, their eager breaths rapid and
shallow. I get the impression it’s me
they want.
While
that’s no surprise, the approach somehow disturbs me more than it should,
plagues me like a dense thundercloud under my skull. Why is that? The harm is
already done. After a century of seclusion in my former master’s crypt, I’m in
servitude again. It doesn’t matter if someone challenges my current master for
possession of my bottle. One self-centered human master is just as unappealing
as the next.
“This
is excellent food, genie girl,” my master Bello says, licking mango chutney
from his fingertips, ignoring the drips
plopping onto the saggy mattress. He’s quite young as masters go. My guess is
about eight years older than the seventeen I appear to be, the age I became
immortalized.
I
frown at his big ears and smacking lips, not caring a half-spittle that I’ve
impressed him.
Interview with
Carol Riggs
1. Why do you think readers will like
your book?
Because
genies are magical! and who wouldn’t want to dream about having a personal
genie, especially one who could grant more than a mere three wishes? The novel
also involves a thousand-year-old romance, some difficult moral dilemmas, and a splash of
adventure.
2. Where did you get the idea for BOTTLED?
From watching “I Dream of Jeannie” when I was young.
I loved the magic in the show, even though the chaos of Jeannie messing
everything up before she fixed it drove me nuts. At the time I wrote BOTTLED,
there also weren’t any genie novels around that I knew of, so it was unique. Now,
there are a number of genie novels, but I still feel BOTTLED is different
enough to bring a fresh slant to the subgenre.
3. What is the most fascinating thing
you learned during your research?
I really had fun researching auras.
There’s not a ton about the subject that ended up in the book, but there are
references to it, with certain characters having specific colors and qualities
to the auras that Adeelah (the main character genie) sees. I added a twist to
the auras too, by adding other senses like the sense of smell.
4.
How long or hard was your road to publication? How many books did you write
before this one?
It was a long and hard road. Before my YA science
fiction debut, THE BODY INSTITUTE, I wrote 13 or 14 novels over the period of
about 11 years. However, some of the novels were short, like 100-150 pages. I signed
an initial contract for TBI with Strange Chemistry, who went out of business 5
months before my release date. Ugh! That was discouraging. Luckily, Entangled
Teen picked up TBI and released it September 2015. Then I contracted with them
for my sci-fi, SAFE ZONE, that will release in October 2016, and a few months
later I sold BOTTLED to Clean Reads for the upcoming July 7, 2016, release.
About the Author
Carol Riggs is an author of fiction for
young adults (and adults!) who lives in the beautiful green state of Oregon,
USA. Her debut novel, The Body
Institute, released Sept 2015 from Entangled Teen, exploring body image
and identity. Her fantasy YA, Bottled, will release from Clean Reads on July
7, 2016, and her sci-fi YA, Safe Zone, will release from Entangled Teen in
October 2016. She enjoys reading, drawing and painting, writing conferences,
walking with her husband, and enjoying music and dance of all kinds. You will
usually find her in her writing cave, surrounded by her dragon collection and
the characters in her head.
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