My Life With The Walter Boys by Ali Novak Blog Tour: Guest Post + GIVEAWAY
Hi there readers! Today I'm really excited to be a part of the My Life With The Walter Boys by Ali Novak Blog Tour. I had such fun reading the about Jackie and the Walter Boys (you can read my review of it here) that I asked Ali to stop by the blog today to talk about her writing experience creating the many characters of the Walter clan. I also have a wonderful giveaway for you: A chance to win a copy of Ali's book My Life With The Walter Boy thanks to Sourcebooks. Enjoy!
Title: My Life With The Walter Boys
Series: (My Life With The Walter Boys #1)
By: Ali Novak
Age Group: Young Adult
Genre Type: Romance, Contemporary
Publication Date: March 1st 2014
Pages: Kindle Edition, 368 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Summary:
Jackie Howard does not like surprises. Chaos is the enemy! The best way to get her successful, busy parents to notice her is to be perfect. The perfect look, the perfect grades—the perfect daughter. And then...
Surprise #1
Jackie's family dies in a freak car accident.Surprise #2
Jackie has to move cross-country to live with the Walters—her new guardians.Surprise #3
The Walters have twelve sons.
(Well, eleven, but Parker acts like a boy anyway)Jackie is now surrounded by the enemy. Loud, dirty, annoying boys—who have no concept of personal space. Okay, several of the oldest guys are flat-out gorgeous. But still annoying. She's not stuck-up or boring—no matter what they say. But proving it is another matter. How can she fit in and move on when she needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect?
Guest Post with Ali Novak
Hi Ali. Can you tell us about your writing experience creating the Walter clan?
Creating the Walter clan was an amazing experience for me. I myself have an obnoxiously large family—seriously, there’s enough of us to start our own country. Bringing to life each Walter boy was a ton of fun because it gave me the opportunity to recreate the craziness and chaos of my own family. Although My Life with the Walter Boys isn’t based on my own life, the Walter’s large family gave me a way to share my own experience of having a huge family with my readers.
Even though there are so many Walter boys, it wasn’t hard for me to keep them straight in my head, and I think that comes with the territory of being the person who created them. What was challenging was creating a unique voice for each of my characters. Since there are so many, I decided to pick one defining trait for each boy and focus on that. For example, Nathan is a musician and Alex loves video games. There’s more to all my characters than just one trait, but it’s hard to fully develop all twelve boys in one book. I plan to expand upon each character in the sequel.
Being able to put some of myself into each member of the Walter family was my favorite part of creating them. None of my characters are directly based on a person in my life, but I gave them one or two qualities that I possess myself, or a quality that a friend or family member has. Here are a few examples:
Jackie: I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. Of course, I was never as obsessive as Jackie is, but homework and grades was very important to me when I was in school.
Alex: I am a total nerd. I love Star Wars and playing video games. Alex gets his inner geek from me.
Nathan: I love music and it is important to my writing process. I can’t play an instrument like Nathan can, but I wanted to represent my passion for music in one of my characters.
Katherine: I was a huge artist in high school. I loved painting, graphic design, and all things art related. If I hadn’t studied English and creative writing in college, I would have wanted a graphic design degree.
Zack and Benny: The youngest set of twins gets their craziness from one of my cousins. When he was Zack and Benny’s age, he was a monster—an adorable monster that you couldn’t help but love.
Isaac: Isaac get’s his pervy nature from one of my guy friends who is very immature and always cracking “that’s what she said” jokes.
Thank you so much for letting me write a guest post for your blog! It was a blast.
Thank you Ali for stopping by today and sharing with us about your book My Life With The Walter Boys!
About Ali:
Ali Novak is twenty-two-year-old debut author and a recent graduate from University of Madison Wisconsin's creative writing program. She wrote her first full length novel My Life with the Walter Boys at the age of fifteen. Since posting the story online, it has received more than 24 million reads and will be published by Sourcebooks Fire in March 2014.
When she isn't writing, Ali enjoys watching Food Network shows even though she can't cook, and reading any type of fantasy novel she can get her hands on. She is a Wisconsin native and hopes to make a career out of writing.
GIVEAWAY
Thanks to Sourcebooks I have 1 one copy of My Life With The Walter Boys by Ali Novak
PLEASE NOTE: This giveaway is for resides only in the US or Canada
all of my standard rules apply unless otherwise stated. Check here.
Fill out the Raflecopter below. Good Luck!
