BOOK TOUR [Guest Post] Damselfly (Damselfly #1) by Jennie Bates Bozic

 Check out the full blog tour schedule here.

Damselfly (Damselfly #1)

by Jennie Bates Bozic

Release Date: 11/11/13

Summary from Goodreads:

In 2065, the Lilliput Project created Lina - the first six-inch-tall winged girl - as the solution to a worldwide energy and food crisis. Isolated in a compound amidst the forests of Denmark, Lina has grown up aware of only one purpose: learn how to survive in a world filled with hawks, bumblebees, and loneliness. However, on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, she discovers that she’s not the only teenager her size. Six 'Toms' were created shortly after Lina, and now her creators need to prove to the world that tiny people are the next logical step in human evolution. In other words, they need to prove that reproduction is possible.

Um. No thanks. Lina's already fallen in love with a boy she met online named Jack. Only he has no idea that thumbelina1847 could literally fit inside his heart.

When her creators threaten to hurt Jack unless she chooses a husband from among the ‘Toms’, Lina agrees to star in a reality TV series. Once the episodes begin to air, the secret of her size is out. Cut off from any contact with the outside world, Lina assumes Jack is no longer interested. After all, what guy would want to date a girl he can’t even kiss?

Slowly, very slowly, she befriends the six young men who see her as their only ticket to happiness. Perhaps she can make just one guy’s dream of love and companionship come true. But her creators have a few more twists in store for her that she never thought possible.

She’s not the only one playing to the cameras.

Available from:
  

Prequel
(linked to Goodreads)

Now FREE on Smashwords!

When Nereyda (the organizer of this book tour) first told me I needed to give her ten promo posts, I kind of freaked out for a couple of reasons.

I was in the middle of the craziest freelance job I’ve ever taken. I was working up to fourteen hours a day.

I read through the samples of other promo posts and thought, “I can’t do this.”

I was afraid nobody would want to read something I’d written to promote my own work.

I, along with many other writers, suffer from a severe case of Imposter Syndrome. It’s the fear that everyone is about to figure out (or already has) that I don’t know what I’m doing and that any success I’ve had has been purely because of luck and not skill.

For me, as someone who writes for young adults, my Imposter Syndrome comes largely from the fact that I didn’t have a very normal teenage experience. I grew up in a very conservative Christian family who homeschooled me from kindergarten all the way through high school. I didn’t have many friends outside of our rather insular group and it’s taken me a long time to figure out how to relate to people who didn’t grow up the way that I did. 

Writing Lina’s character in a way that felt the most honest was really hard for me since there are a lot of similarities between the two of us. Since the book is written in first person and from her point of view, I had to make some tough choices about what she would think and talk about. Would she be really curious about how things are going around the world? I thought long and hard about that question and ultimately decided that the most honest answer I could give was… no. I think she is curious, but with limits. When you grow up in a bubble, you don’t know how much you don’t know. You may be inquisitive by nature, but you can’t be curious about things if you don’t know that they exist or you lack the personal experience to really understand why they are important.

For me, leaving home and going to college was the most world-expanding experience of my life. For Lina, hers is meeting people whose lives are vastly different than her own, and beginning to navigate those sorts of relationships. She begins to understand more deeply what it means to really suffer and not see outsiders as “other” than herself. I think you can see that progression in the book. In the beginning, she sees a starving man attacked merely for searching for food and she essentially does nothing. Later, she begins to take personal responsibility for the suffering of others and tries to stop it. 

Some heroines are brave and strong right from the beginning of the story and all the way to the end. I think Lina starts out thinking that she is those things and gradually grows into them. To me, that makes her so much more believable. Sometimes I love her, sometimes I’d like to write about any other character but her, and other times I dislike her because her weaknesses remind me of the things I don’t like about myself. 

But maybe that’s what is great about her. She’s as real as I can make her.

I hope you enjoy her story.

Love,

Jennie 

About the Author

I'm a visual effects artist for film and television by day, and at night I don my author cape and pen stories for the YA crowd. I love a good fairy tale, especially if there's a creepy twist, so that's what I write.

I met my husband in the World of Warcraft and we live in Los Angeles with our cat. We spend our time playing video games, reading, hiking, sweeping up cat hair, and cursing the terrible traffic.

I have a bachelor's degree in Religion and Philosophy from Hillsdale College, and some of my past jobs have included: swimming lessons teacher, lifeguard, furniture salesperson, barista, and loan officer. I was especially terrible at the loan officer bit and that's what prompted me to make a major change and go off to Canada to get a diploma in 3D Animation and Visual Effects. After that, I moved to Los Angeles by myself and roomed with two crazy sisters I found on Craigslist. But that's another tale. 

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