This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Christine Potter will be awarding $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Thing the first: Real characters, not too noble. My two lead gals, Bean and Gracie, are like that. Humans of all ages are works in progress, and we screw up a lot. I get bored with characters who get it right all the time. I like characters who worry about stupid stuff, who obey the rules too much or not enough, and overthink things. I like characters who feel all the feels—not just crazy-in-love and seething-with-anger, but bored, hangry, or just vaguely Done With It. I really love awkward characters. So here is my pronouncement: all YA fantasy characters should be just a little awkward.

Thing the second: YA Fantasy HAS to be funny, especially when it’s being serious. If you are writing fantasy, you are writing great, big plots. Time-travel absolutely qualifies. But there’s a c’mon-really aspect to all fantasy, and the only way around it is laughter. Somebody’s gotta turn up in his underwear. Somebody’s gotta hog all the pizza an hour after a terrifying encounter in the 19th century. Or crack up at a really, really inappropriate time. Because life.

Thing the third: Fantasy characters have to have passions. Life is useless unless you’re living it with energy. So my characters are young musicians and artists—or aspiring actors. My characters are fascinated with the weather and have five apps on their phones. Or know how to upcycle thrift store clothes. They are deeply into making the world’s best French toast. They collect scratchy vinyl records.

Thing the fourth: Readers know that there’s going to be a happy ending. But a good fantasy plot has to have more than just twists. It has to have moments where you stop and read back over the last paragraph because what just happened?? I also like having a seemingly minor character have a huge effect on the outcome of the book. I love having a totally “normal” scene suddenly turn unpredictably bizarre. The little guy who says “Bizarre” on the cover of all the Bean books? He’s got reasons for that word.

Thing the fifth: All this stuff has to happen somewhere cool. The world of fantasy has to be complete—all the colors, all the tastes, what the sun looks like on buildings and water, what the air smells like before snow. The Bean books are set in the Hudson River Valley because it’s a place cool enough to talk about in that kind of detail. There are tall trees, and old houses, and yes, the always-gorgeous Hudson. I’m not saying all fantasy books need The Hudson River, but you know…

And a couple of minor things: I don’t see big violence as necessary to any story telling. There’s not much shooting in my books, which is not to say there is none. Folks mix it up with fists mostly when it comes to that—fists, and a couple of well-placed knees. But a little of that stuff goes a long way. And I also think you can write a story as suspenseful and scary as a dystopia about a world that’s pretty darn great.

Say you’re Gracie Ingraham, nerdy but happy high school senior. But you’re also a time-traveler from 1962 who got a bit lost and has been living in the 2000’s since 2018. That would be plenty without it now being 2020. Covid has just shut down the world. Your pandemic pod? Your BFF Zoey—and your ex-boyfriend, Dylan.

Dylan still lives to spin weird vinyl LP’s with your sort-of, kind-of Dad, Amp. So your quarantine hobby is going to have to be Being Mature About Stuff.

But then your time traveling kicks into high gear again. And your long-lost brother and mom mix it up with a creepy, pyromaniacal force that is most likely demonic. How can love save the day when you can’t even go downtown without wearing a mask?

Enjoy an Excerpt

We’d arrived at the first of the big, fancy gravesites: nineteenth century family plots, with tall, marble obelisks and statues of weeping angels. Some of them have creepy stone and marble mausoleums. Mausoleums are tombs the size of tiny houses with windows and even gates and front porches sometimes. You could go inside one if someone unlocked the door.

Some kids had obviously partied out by the mausoleums the night before. They’d left a White Claw can one at of the sad angels’ feet. A few more cans were tossed on the ground and on the stone stairs to one of the bigger tombs. There were beer cans, too.

Zoey shook her head. “Some people are still getting out at night.”

“They could have at least recycled!”

“Alas!”

See, Zoey, Dylan, and me… We’re the kind teachers and parents don’t worry about. We always recycle. We don’t break quarantine. We wouldn’t have gone to a midnight graveyard party before quarantine … well … not without seriously good reason.

Not that Zoey wouldn’t snag a White Claw. And I did sneak out on one serious midnight date when Dylan and I were first together. But I also had to zap a demon that evening. Which was the last time anything interesting happened to me… Up until the very next minute, that is.

‘Cause then it wasn’t a pretty April day anymore. It was very cold and very dark. Zoey and I were still in the cemetery, but we weren’t by ourselves anymore.

About the Author:Christine Potter is a writer and poet who lives in a (for-real) haunted house in New York’s Hudson River Valley, not that far from Sleepy Hollow. She is the author of Evernight Teen’s Bean Books, a five book series that travels through time—and two generations of characters. Christine is has also been a teacher, a bell ringer in the towers of old churches, a DJ, and a singer of all kinds of music. Her poetry has appeared in literary magazines like Rattle and Kestrel, featured on ABC Radio News, and sold in gum ball machines. She lives with her organist husband Ken and two indulged kitties.

Buy the book at Amazon.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Christine Potter will be awarding a $30 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

There’s something kind of magic about the process of writing. All writers know this. When you’re hard at work writing—in flow, as they say—the world goes away, and a movie starts playing somewhere in your brain. Sometimes you don’t even feel your fingers on the computer keys. The story just…happens.

Of course, it comes from you. You are making it up. Those characters—the villain, the heroine, the funny minor character you’re a little too in love with—they’re all you. It’s hard to remember that sometimes.

So what could an old babe like me learn from a high school sophomore from 1962 suddenly transported in time to 2018 because her time-traveling parents were trying to keep her safe from a possible nuclear holocaust? Quite a bit, it turns out. Let me count out the lessons!

1. Fear is the real enemy. Gracie Ingraham’s parents are Travelers—people who can will themselves back in time to visit bygone eras. Turns out there are two kinds of people in the world: Travelers and folks who are stuck in their own time period. I guess it’s like Muggles and Wizards, sort of. Travelers have some special responsibilities: no time travel for personal gain. No messing with the past. And no going to the future. Because they are afraid that there will be a nuclear war, the Ingrahams try to hide their daughter Grace in the past—the late 1800’s to be exact. Bad idea. Stuff born out of fear almost never works out.

2. Sometimes the big rules are made to be broken. But you have to have a darn good reason to do so. Gracie ends up going the wrong way when she attempts her first trip in time. She goes forward, to the future. There’s a reason for that and it’s not at all selfish and no spoilers. Read the book if you want to know more!

3. When in doubt, listen and observe carefully. People tend to talk too much and it keeps them from learning everything they can about the world around them. Say you’re a high school sophomore who barely even knows how to work a transistor radio trying to pretend she’s had an iPhone since she was nine. Having good observational skills can help you keep your most important secret: that you are a time traveler. If you keep your mouth shut and look interested, people will almost always tell you what you just need to know.

4. There are worse things than being lost. Gracie spends most of this book lost in time. And yet she’s never really alone. The people she needs show up for her. It’s just a question of her trusting them–and trusting herself. My new mantra, taken up after I finished writing this book: It’ll be okay.

I hope Gracie’s Time teaches you a few things you didn’t expect, too! Thanks for dropping by Long and Short Reviews today.

October, 1962
It’s almost Halloween, but something a lot scarier than ghosts is on everyone’s mind: nuclear war. After President Kennedy’s speech to the nation about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Grace Ingraham overhears her parents’ plans to keep her safe. She’ll be sent off to live with a wealthy uncle—in the nineteenth century.

Gracie’s from a family of Travelers, people who can escape into time. Too bad her mom and dad haven’t Traveled since their honeymoon trip to the Lincoln Inauguration. So Grace will have to go alone—even though taking a wrong turn can have serious consequences: like heading for 1890, and ending up …in 2018.

Enjoy an Excerpt

I heard a snoring sound in the sky then, but it was only a plane. For a moment I thought about how terrible it would be if a nuclear war started right that minute, before I could escape to the past. Then I thought about Mom and Dad. I hoped they’d come get me from the 1890s if there weren’t a war. I didn’t want them to die. I didn’t want anyone to die. I really wanted there to be a future.

Mr. Mahoney and I walked past the train station and out onto the empty platform. He looked over his shoulder to be sure no one was around. “Are you ready?” He took my hands, squeezed them, and then he let go. “It’s the right time and place! Go on back, Gracie!”

At first, I thought nothing had happened, except then it wasn’t evening anymore. It was morning—and certainly not the 1890s. Nobody named Augustus introduced himself to me.

Dad always told me that if you get confused when you Travel, you should always look at what kind of lights there are in buildings and what clothing people have on to help place yourself. But what I saw only confused me more.

A freezing wind came off the river and cut right through my corduroy jacket. People in puffy grey and brown overcoats stood in clumps, staring at what I first thought were really tiny transistor radios. I learned that same day those things are called smart phones. I’d missed the 1890s by over a hundred years—and in the wrong direction.

A sleek, silvery train roared into the station from the north and everyone got on it but me. Bingo, the future! I’d just broken one of the biggest Rules there is.

About the Author: Christine Potter lives in a very old, haunted house, not far from Sleepy Hollow. She’s the author of the time-traveling Bean Books series, on Evernight Teen: Time Runs Away With Her, In Her Own Time, What Time Is It There? and Gracie’s Time. She’s also a poet, with several books in print (the most recent is called Unforgetting). Christine loves all kinds of music, DJ’s, and plays dulcimer and guitar.

Buy the book at Amazon, Evernight Teen, or Smashwords.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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