Teaser Tuesday - October 18 2011

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
4. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"Once he knew he wasn't going to survive, he did his best to take me out with him. Before he died, I asked him why he did it. Why he fought for people who clearly hadn't given him anything. His response was "They give me hope." Those were his last words."

This teaser is from Children of Paranoia by Trevor Shane. It is an amazingly wonderful book I was lucky enough to score in a book blog tour (courtesy of Crazy Book Tours).

~ALL WARS HAVE RULES

Rule Number One: No killing innocent bystanders.

Rule Number Two: No killing anyone under the age of eighteen.

BREAK THE RULES, BECOME THE TARGET

Since the age of eighteen, Joseph has been assassinating people on behalf of a cause that he believes in but doesn't fully understand. The War is ageless, hidden in the shadows, governed by a rigid set of rules, and fought by two distinct sides-one good, one evil. The only unknown is which side is which. Soldiers in the War hide in plain sight, their deeds disguised as accidents or random acts of violence amidst an unsuspecting population ignorant of the brutality that is always inches away.

Killing people is the only life Joseph has ever known, and he's one of the best at it. But when a job goes wrong and he's sent away to complete a punishingly dangerous assignment, Joseph meets a girl named Maria, and for the first time in his life his singleminded, bloody purpose fades away.Before Maria, Joseph's only responsibility was dealing death to the anonymous targets fingered by his superiors. Now he must run from the people who have fought by his side to save what he loves most in this world. As Children of Paranoia reaches its heart-in-throat climax, Joseph will learn that only one rule remains immutable: the only thing more dangerous than fighting the War...is leaving it.~

If this teaser and the Goodreads summary intrigues you at all, check out both my general tour post and author guest post for more information, or just rush out and get it now! You won't regret it.

Full review to come soon.

Share your teaser with me!

Blog Tour - Trevor Shane Guest Post on Children of Paranoia

Genre Stew

by Trevor Shane

Hello Rants-N-Scribblers, I’ve highjacked Gwenyth Love’s blog to talk to you about something that’s been on my mind recently. It all started when Miss Lauren of Ravishing Reads posted a message on Goodreads (which, by the way, is far and away the best book for book lovers on the internet; Children of Paranoia had over eighty ratings and over thirty reviews on Goodreads by the time it got to ten on Amazon) while she was only about 100 pages into Children of Paranoia. The message read simply, “Is this dystopian or mystery or what?” I responded to her message (because Children of Paranoia is my first book and I really can’t help myself). I replied, even more simply, “Genre stew.”

When I was asked to do a Rants-N-Scribbles guest blog post, I asked what Gwenyth wanted me to write about. She said that she would be interested to know how I would compare Children of Paranoia to the Lord of the Flies, The Hunger Games, Battle Royale or other dystopian fiction. However, she also said that I could write about whatever I wanted to. So instead of simply comparing Children of Paranoia to other (admittedly awesome) dystopic books, I decided to write about genre stew.

I want to start by saying that there’s an enormous difference between genre stew and a book that sits outside of the genre universe. I hate the term “literary fiction” because I think it’s demeaning to genre books but it’s the term that people in the publishing world use to describe books that are the antithesis genre stew. That’s all well and good. There’s plenty of great “literary fiction.” But even the term “literary fiction” misses the entire point of genre books. To me, a genre, its tropes and idioms, are simply an extension of language the same way that a figure of speech is an extension of language (“shooting fish in a barrel” doesn’t really make any sense except that, because of our shared linguistic history, it does). Similarly, certain things means something in a genre piece that mean something entirely different outside of the genre universe. When you write within a genre, you have built in expectations. What makes for great genre fair is how you play with those expectations, meeting them at times and subverting them at others. To dismiss writing genre specific (or at least genre-influenced) work is, to me, akin to dismiss writing in the language in which a huge mass of readers prefers to read. It’s as if “literary fiction” writers all decided to write in Latin even though millions of people want to read in English.

I fear I may be getting a bit esoteric so I’m going to bring this back around to talking about genre stew. Children of Paranoia is genre stew. Instead of dismissing genre tropes, I’ve tried to embrace them. The problem is, I have had a hard time sticking to a single genre. So, my publisher, myself, readers and critics end up calling Children of Paranoia, at various times and in various settings, dystopian, a thriller, a conspiracy book, a romance, a chase story and even, at times, science fiction without the science. The truth is that it’s all of these things, but none of these things in their purest form. I think a lot of people get excited by genre stew but it also risks alienating hardcore fans of any one genre. I guess I just have to be okay with taking that risk. To me, mixing genres is simply taking full advantage of the various languages that readers know and love to hopefully entertain them and, sometimes, surprise them. As a fan of genre fiction, I don’t think I would know any other way to write.

Finally, as far as comparing Children of Paranoia to The Lord of the Flies, The Hunger Games, and Battle Royale: I’ve never read Battle Royale, even though I’ve heard great things, but The Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games are awesome. I have to be honest with all of you though, I think that Children of Paranoia is pretty awesome too.

Blog Tour - Children of Paranoia by Trevor Shane

First of all, I want to thank Crazy Book Tours for giving me this opportunity to take part in such a wonderful book tour. This is my first book tour, so forgive me for any mistakes I might make.

Children of Paranoia by Trevor Shane

all wars have rules

rule #1: no killing innocent bystanders

rule #2: no killing anyone under the age of eighteen

break the rules, become the target 

Since the age of eighteen, Joseph has been assassinating people on behalf of a cause that he believes in but doesn’t fully understand. The War is ageless, hidden in the shadows, governed by a rigid set of rules, and fought by two distinct sides — one good, one evil. The only unknown is which side is which. Soldiers in the War hide in plain sight, their deeds disguised as accidents or random acts of violence amidst an unsuspecting population ignorant of the brutality that is always inches away.

Killing people is the only life Joseph has ever known, and he’s one of the best at it. But when a job goes wrong and he’s sent away to complete a punishingly dangerous assignment, Joseph meets a girl named Maria, and for the first time in his life his singleminded, bloody purpose fades away.

Before Maria, Joseph’s only responsibility was dealing death to the anonymous targets fingered by his superiors. Now he must run from the people who have fought by his side to save what he loves most in this world. As Children of Paranoia reaches its heart-in-throat climax, Joseph will learn that only one rule remains immutable: the only thing more dangerous than fighting the war. . .is leaving it.

About the Author

Trevor Shane lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son. This is his first novel, and the first in the trilogy.

Website: http://www.childrenofparanoia.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/childofparanoia
Trevor Shane on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Trevor-Shane/150972244938983
Children of Paranoia on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=151640338211999
Read an Excerpt: http://www.childrenofparanoia.com/excerpt.html

Thoughts on Children of Paranoia

I'm going to be honest here, I haven't actually finished reading the novel yet...but I know I am going to. I am more than 100 pages into it and it's so hard to put down, and if it wasn't for work, school, and a teenage son, I would surely have finished this days ago. It has an amazingly intense flow to the writing that grips your heart and squeezes it slowly over multiple pages, dragging you through the emotions of the main character, Joe, as he hunts his prey as targeted by the higher ups of "The War". At the end of one specific chapter I was literally gasping for breath as I found myself holding my breath as I waited to see what would happen. I'm not even done reading yet and I know this is going to be good, and I know everyone must rush out and buy this book now.

I will have a full review up in the near future.

Also look for a special post from the author himself on the blog here later this week about why he wrote this book.

Full Tour List

10/11/2011 - Kristin Kritters Ramblings - http://www.krittersramblings.com
10/12/2011 - Lauren Ravishing Reads -http://ravishingreads.blogspot.com
10/13/2011 - Maggie My Utopia - http://myutopia36.blogspot.com/
10/14/2011 - Laurie Reader Girls - http://readergirls.blogspot.com
10/16/2011 - Christa Mental Foodie - http://mentalfoodie.blogspot.com
10/17/2011 - Gwenyth Love Rants~N~Scribbles - http://rantsnscribbles.blogspot.com
10/18/2011 - Sinn Sinnful Books -http://sinnfulbooks.blogspot.com
10/19/2011 - Meg A Bookish Affair - http://abookishaffair.blogspot.com/
10/20/2011 - Louise Between the Covers - http://www.betweenthecoversblog.net/
10/21/2011 - Christie The Fiction Enthusiast - http://thefictionenthusiast.blogspot.com/
10/22/2011 - Heather Proud Book Nerd - http://proudbooknerd.com/
10/23/2011 - Julie Book Hooked - http://www.bookhookedblog.com
10/24/2011 - Stacy Girls in the Stacks - http://www.girlsinthestacks.com
10/25/2011 - Nicole All I Ever Read -http://books.nicoleabouttown.com