NBtM Tour + #Giveaway: Labors of an Epic Punk by Mark and Sheri Dursin @GoddessFish

Labors of an Epic Punk

by Mark and Sheri Dursin

GENRE:   YA Fantasy, Myth Retelling

BLURB:

Mac is an epic punk. No wonder: after his dad went off to fight in the Trojan War and never came back, Mac spent his childhood evading his mom's scumbag suitors—all one-hundred-and-eight of them. Of course, he turned out this way—a moody, friendless sixteen-year-old who blows off work, alienates everyone at school, and pulls pranks. But when he trains a flock of birds to defecate on the headmaster, Mac (short for Telemachus) goes too far. The administrators give him an ultimatum: prove that he's truly the son of Odysseus by doing something heroic—or get out. A school story that just so happens to take place 3,000 years ago, Labors of an Epic Punk is a tale of friendship and transformation, regret and redemption, and a reminder to us all that even heroes need to survive adolescence.

Excerpt:

At that moment, Mac felt a prickling sensation as the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end. Instinctively, he shouted, “Get down!” as he threw himself and Homer into the sand. He looked up to see a single arrow buzz over their heads.

“Homer!” A voice—gruff, but unmistakably female—boomed through the courtyard. “How many times do I have to tell you? Stop following me!”

Mac looked in disbelief down at Homer, pinned underneath him. “I said I knew her,” Homer shrugged. “I didn’t say we were best friends or anything.” As they both stood up, Homer called out to their secret attacker, in a lame attempt to sound chummy, “Hey, Andie! What’s up?”

“How did you find me? Did you follow me? Did my roommate tell you? She told you, didn’t she? I’m gonna kill her!”

Homer glanced nervously at Mac before calling out, “So, what are you doing way out here?”

“Why should I tell you?” the mystery girl shouted back. Meanwhile, Mac’s eyes flew around, trying to determine the source of this shouting. As he squinted, he could make out someone, silhouetted against the sun, half-hiding at the top of one of the stone towers.

“Now, get out of here,” the voice called out. “This is my beach!”

“Well, OK, but first, how ‘bout you come on down?” Homer continued. “My friend and I want to ask you something.”

“You don’t have any friends, you freak!”

“As a matter of fact, I just made one. Come on down, I’ll introduce you.”

Guest Post:

What is your writing process? For instance do you do an outline first? Do you do the chapters first?

Our writing process is probably not typical because we wrote Labors of an Epic Punk together. Unlike many co-authored novels, our book is not split into two voices or two points of view. It’s written with one voice and we worked hard to make sure it came across that way. The question we like to ask our readers is: Can you tell the book was written by two people? If not, then we’ve done our job!

We began with an initial seed of inspiration and a general idea of where we wanted our story to go. Then we talked, talked, and talked some more! Every character, plot point, and chapter was fleshed out in our conversations long before we sat down to write.

Once we had a shared understanding of where our story was going, each of us would choose a particular section or chapter that we felt inspired to work on. After writing a draft, we would then swap chapters for revising and editing (once again discussing any significant changes we wanted to suggest) and swap again for more editing and revising. So the narrative was constantly evolving as we wrote, and every chapter was passed back and forth enough times until our two voices blended into one. (Keep in mind we wrote this first novel before Google Docs was a thing so we usually emailed each other drafts and notes, even when we were writing in the same room!)

This process of co-writing came naturally to us...maybe because we had been married for so long and were already collaborating on the raising of our twins. People often ask us: “How do you write a novel with another person?” After writing Labors of an Epic Punk, we can’t imagine doing it any other way!

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

For many years Mark, a high school English teacher, and Sheri, a freelance writer and blogger, wrote independently. No matter the writing project—newspaper articles, retreat talks, college recommendation letters, fan-fiction, blog posts on spirituality or 80s pop songs—they tended to work alone. Separate rooms, separate computers. But raising their twin sons helped them discover an important truth: All Good Things Come in Twos.

Giveaway:

$25 Amazon/BN GC

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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