Blog Ring of Power Presents: Ripley Patton

Welcome to this week’s Blog Ring of Power guest, Ripley Patton, who lives in Portland, Oregon, with one cat, two teenagers, and a man who wants to live on a boat.
She is an award-winning short story writer and author of The PSS Chronicles, a young adult paranormal thriller series. The first book in the series, GHOST HAND, was a semi-finalist for The Kindle Book Review 2013 Best Indie Book Awards and a Cybil Award Nominee. The second book in the series, GHOST HOLD, was released in September 2013.
The third book in the series, GHOST HEART, will be released Summer 2014 and can currently be PRE-ORDERED through the GHOST HEART KICKSTARTER PROJECT (MAY 2014 only, so don’t delay).
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Part 2: Terri
Part 3: T.W.
Part 4: E.M.
PART 4: About your Currant Work



BRoP: Tell us about your new book and when it is out? Where can people purchase it?

RP: I am currently preparing to publish the third book in The PSS Chronicles Series, GHOST HEART. Right now, for a limited time, you can pre-order it through my GHOST HEART KICKSTARTER Project. And, if you're new to the series, you can get all the books there in both paperback and e-book format. The first book of the series, GHOST HAND, is also FREE right now on Kindle and Kobo and only 99 cents on B&N. The second book, GHOST HOLD, is available in paperback and e-book at most book retailers as well. And if you're local to Portland, Oregon, I sell in several local bookstores too.

BRoP: Is there anything new, unusual, or interesting about your book? How is it different from other books on the same subject?

RP: One unusual thing about my books is that they were all funded through Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website. I use Kickstarter to make my books available for pre-order, and I use that money to create a better product by hiring professional cover designers, editors and formatters.

Another thing that makes the series unique is the paranormal element. I don't use the typical tropes of the paranormal genre. I've never read a YA series featuring a girl with a ghost hand who can pickpocket people's souls. Well, now I have, but I had to write it first.
BRoP: What was the hardest part of writing this book?

RP: This book was actually the easiest to write so far, so that's good. It means I'm getting better at what I do. Probably the hardest part of writing this book, though, was changing from single first-person point-of-view (which I wrote in the first two books) to multiple POVs in this book. In books one and two, I really got used to being inside Olivia Black's head. In this third book, I got to explore the heads of two other character, and it was both fun and challenging.

BRoP: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in this book?

RP: No, once I've written a book and released it to the world, I have no regrets. There is no such thing as a perfect book. It just doesn't exist. I think a writer should look forward to new work, not back at past stories. And I think we should always appreciate the stories that shaped us, especially our own. Our younger selves were just as valid storytellers as our older, wiser selves are now.
BRoP: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

RP: Messages are for sermons. Fiction shows you the truth by telling you lies. I never try to tell anything but a good story, and I let the story do the rest.

GHOST HAND: Seventeen-year-old Olivia Black has a rare birth defect known as Psyche Sans Soma, or PSS. Instead of a right hand made of flesh and blood, she was born with a hand made of ethereal energy.
How does Olivia handle being the girl with the ghost hand? Well, she’s a little bit morbid and a whole lot snarky. 
Her mother thinks her obsession with death, black clothing, and the local cemetery is a bid for attention. But when Marcus, the new guy in Olivia’s calculus class, stares at her like she’s a freak, Olivia doesn’t like it. And when her hand goes rogue, doing things she never imagined possible, Olivia finds herself running for her life with Marcus from a group of men bent on taking the power of her hand for their own nefarious purposes.
GHOST HOLD: Olivia Black is back.
 Only this time she’s not the one in need of rescue.
Samantha James, rich, popular, and an award-winning composer at age seventeen, is the next target on the CAMFers’ list. In order to convince Samantha to come with them, Olivia and Passion must pose as cousins, blend into the most affluent high school in Indianapolis, and infiltrate a mysterious cult known as The Hold.
Olivia doesn’t expect it to be easy, even with the PSS guys backing them up. But what she discovers over the course of the mission will call into question everything she ever believed about herself, her family, and especially about Marcus, the guy she is undoubtedly falling in love with.

GHOST HEART:  In the aftermath of a brutal tragedy, Jason and Passion are on the run. Marcus is lost beyond reach, and The Hold is in shambles. If that weren't enough, Olivia Black has been taken by the CAMFers to be used as Dr. Fineman's personal lab rat in his merciless quest to uncover the mysteries of Psyche Sans Soma once and for all. But only if he can break her.
They are scattered. They are devastated. They are ruined.
Their only hope is Olivia's stubborn determination to thwart her captors and unlock the secrets of her ghost hand before Dr. Fineman can. Will she finally find the strength within herself to embrace the full power of her PSS.
And will it even matter if Marcus has already betrayed her?


BRoP Logo RevisedThe Blog Ring of Power (BRoP) is a consortium of five speculative fiction writers who have banded together to bring you highlights from the current speculative fiction market--news, reviews, and interviews with speculative fiction authors--with an emphasis on small-press and self-published authors. So grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and relax. Have we got a story for you...

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