Roxanne Rhoads: Guest Blog and Giveaway: Seven Seeds of Summer by Chantal Gadoury

Hello! Thank you for having me on your Blog!

As a writer, I often get the question, “What inspires you to write?” or “How did you know that you wanted to write?” I can’t say that I’ve one experience that created the desire to write, or had one experience that inspires me to write. It’s a collection of things that make up my identity as a writer and as me, Chantal. (I think all writers know a little about what I’m talking about.)

Love.

When I go to the bookstore, I find myself eagerly searching the shelves of the YA section, looking for another love story to get lost in. While there are some great novels that feature adventure, action, loss… I search for the stories about love. The stories that either, I want to relate to, or that I find myself relating to.

I was raised during a fantastic “Disney Era,” with “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Pocahontas,” and “Aladdin” as the guiding road in my childhood. (I suppose I picture these films as a Yellow-Brick-Road: a path that has shaped my ideals of what love is, or could be. Of how a man should be, of how a woman can take her own life into her hands and make choices.) I found myself relating to Belle and Ariel: Belle loving to read books and wanting, “so much more than they’ve got planned.” (I still find myself relating to this piece of lyric.) I related to Ariel, with her eagerness to discover love and life and making choices – while hard to make. (No life choice is easy to make, might I add. Whether you’re a fan that thinks she was defying her father or following her heart.)

I suppose whether or not we look at it this way, the stories that we create with our dolls and friends, is a form of story-telling. I often took my Barbie Dolls and had my Aladdin doll paired with Esmeralda from “Hunchback of Notre Dame” or Snow White from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and made completely new stories and adventures and love stories with them. I still to do this day, remember the most epic story I created with a friend who came over to play.

I might sound like a book-snob when I say, if it doesn’t have some sort of “romance element,” I can’t or won’t read it the book, but it’s a little too true than I’d like to admit. When I write something, it usually needs to have an underlying theme of Love, whether its lost, discovered, rekindled. . Love is how I like to write.

Recently, with a few discoveries about myself, I’ve learned that there’s more to my “Love Obsession” than how it started, with Disney. It’s actually a part of the fabric of me: of what makes me a person. I had a friend say to me, “Chantal, you love deeply, Sometimes a little too deeply.” And whether that is true or not, I know that writing out the emotions or wants that I might feel is a much needed outlet in my life.

When I love someone, I love them completely. I’ve been told that I love people more than they love me, and while that’s a sad fate to potentially have (not that I truly believe that,) it does explain my obsessions with love, and my obsession with writing and reading those themes. It’s an escape from what I feel, and have someone else – my character or another author’s character—feel those things instead.

What an important part of reading for pleasure and writing for pleasure! The escape of every-day life, into another world that seems a little simpler than our own.

“Seven Seeds of Summer” was an escape for me during my college and post-college years; it became a place where I could take my emotions and feelings, found from watching movies, listening to music, or really just living my life, and put them into words and shapes and actions that seemed a little more healthier.

It’s always a fantastic experience when you meet people who love “Love” as much as you do – in any form: writing, reading, movies, music, television shows (Once Upon a Time anyone?) and a little bit of a relief; a “I’m not the only one” kind of moments.

So – it never came to one thing that made me want to be a writer; it was a mixture of the smell of fall through an open window, the melody of a song on a score soundtrack, the many high school football games that I attended – completely infatuated with a boy who wore Jersey #77, it was the night-time walks that I made with my best friend, it was the night that I moved into our first apartment and felt completely loved, a collection of Disney movies, “Moulin Rouge,” – Novels that have littered my shelves for years. Writing never just came to me; I went to writing. And when I first started to write down words and reflections, it became an instinct to continue; an instinct of what I knew I wanted to do with my life.

I’m sure every writer has this experience in some sort of way.

Thank you for hosting me today on your blog, and I appreciate all of the people and fans who have taken the time to read “Seven Seeds of Summer.” I hope everyone enjoys the story and the complicated elements of love I tried to develop and create.

-Chantal Gadoury-

Seven Seeds of Summer

Chantal Gadoury

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Waldorf Press

Date of Publication: March 15, 2014

ISBN: 1630684775

ISBN-13: 978-1630684778

ASIN: B00J1PMYAE

Number of pages: 332

Word Count: 66,420

Cover Artist: Karen Davis and Terri Cooper

Book Description:

Seven Seeds of Summer follows the story of Summer, a college art student who has grown up in a house full of Greek mythology and legends. Summer grew up with a love for the darkest of all Gods: Hades, which caused tension between her and her mother. Summer comes home to Point Judith, Rhode Island, to find a mysterious figure on their family beach. The figure comes to her with questions about a familiar myth of her childhood: of Persephone and Hades. He proceeds to tell her of a new version of the story with a different ending that Summer never knew; an ending that includes herself.

A trip to Greece leads to tragic twists, leaving Summer in the arms of the strange figure whom she had met before. He takes her on a whirlwind through the busy streets of Athens, to the lowest point of Greece where his lair awaits: The Underworld. Determined to find out the secret of herself and her piece in the story, Summer goes with him, and tries to make herself at home in his world.

Summer has to decide to follow her heart or follow the same footsteps of the mysterious woman in her past life.

Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/klFPgDuwwSY

Available at Amazon LuLu BN iTunes

Chapter 12 Excerpt

When he shut the door behind us, locking me away again from the world, he sat me down on the chair and lifted my bare feet to take a look.

“You did something very stupid,” he snapped, letting my feet fall onto the floor with a thud. I sucked in a sharp breath, the pain dashing up from my feet like jagged glass. I slumped over in the chair, focusing on my breathing.

“When are you going to learn?”

“When are you going to let me go? I just want to go home.” I snapped, biting back the tears.

“You’re not going home. You’re coming with me.”

“Can’t you see that I don’t want to?” I lifted my tear-soaked eyes to him, hearing the desperation fill my own voice.

“I don’t care what you want, Summer,” he shouted at me. He disappeared around the corner, into the bathroom. I heard the sound of drawers opening as he rustled around with papers of some kind. He came out with roll of bandage and bent to begin wrapping it around my feet.

“Why is it so important that you keep me? What am I to you?” My voice broke in quiet sobs. I watched his face harden. His jaw tightened as he looked at me with that dark, cold look that sent shivers through my body.

“You are the carrier of Persephone’s soul.” I blinked, silent for a moment, allowing that to sink in.

“Is that all I am to you? A shell? A container who holds the person you really love?”

“Are you meant to be more, Summer?” His biting words stabbed my heart, and I looked away from him. I wanted to pull my knees to my chest and curl into a ball, and just disappear. I lifted my hand to my eyes, wanting to shield the tears that were forming again in my eyes. I was just a device. Once Persephone was back and alive, he would do anything to push me away— to kill me off so she could live again. He didn’t say anything to me. I felt his arms wrap around me and lift me up, before he laid me gently on the bed.

“What if I don’t want to remember her,” I whispered, afraid of what he would say in return. The 166mattress gave against his weight, as he sat down next to me.

“It’s not an option. You will.”Another tear began to roll, and I quickly wiped it away. I wasn’t sure if I was crying from the pain in my feet, or the pain in my heart. He laid back so that we were side by side on the bed. I fought the urge to push him away. I wanted distance. I didn’t want anything to do with him, but he shifted his body so that he was gazing down at me on the bed. My heart jumpstarted in my chest. His lips were so close to mine, and I couldn’t stop watching them. The reminder of what had happened the night before was so fresh, so vivid in my head. His lips had been warm and soft against mine. My heart yearned for more, and I hated myself for it. He was my captor. I shouldn’t want to kiss the man was taking me away from my life and everything that I loved.

“You have to remember, Summer. If you don’t, then you’ll lose me forever.”

“Good, then that’ll solve everything,” I snapped, turning my face away from his. The farther from his lips I was, the better. However, I hated to admit that his words scared me for some reason. I didn’t want to be without him forever, but I hated him. I wanted nothing to do with him, 167and yet, I knew from the beginning, that I couldn’t live without him. He was real. My dark angel, my fantasy, was real.

About the Author:

Chantal Gadoury is young author who currently lives in a small town in Delaware with her two cats, Theo and Harper and her boyfriend, Robert. Chantal likes anything Disney, plays a mean game of Disney trivia, enjoys painting, and has a interest in British History. Chantal first started writing stories at the age of seven and continues that love of writing today. As a recent college graduate from Susquehanna University, with a degree in Creative Writing, this is her first book.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/cgadoury16

Blog: http://chantalgadoury.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chantalgadouryfans

Tumblr for Book: http://sevenseedsofsummer.tumblr.com/

Tumblr: http://changedmynametoariel.tumblr.com/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21470278-seven-seeds-of-summer

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