Shellie Neumeier - Driven

DRIVEN
by Shellie Neumeier

Robyn can’t help but notice the handsome new guy at her school. She ignores, however, the arrival of another being at Brookfield Central High School—a demon assigned to destroy her.

FREE E-GIFTS FROM THE AUTHOR (offered for this blog tour only)—Purchase Driven TODAY and receive a personalized, signed book plate mailed directly to you plus. . . Free signed bookmarks to share with your friends.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT Driven

Driven is a new take on the age old battle of good versus evil.  Gripping from the first page, this is one book you won't want to put down. --Leanna Kay, co-creator of www.samiesisters.com - a place for Christian girls to grow in faith.

Driven is a breathtaking book of tension, intrigue, and heartwarming emotion. From the moment I began to read until the very last word, I couldn't put it aside. It held me enthralled! --Lindsay Below, author of Head Over Hand-Bought Heels
ABOUT Shellie Neumeier

Contact Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001729933656
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/shellie_c
Website: http://shellieneumeier.com/
Booktrailer: http://youtu.be/D0iUtvrC_PU

Married for almost 20 years, Shellie and her husband have four wonderful children and two goofy greyhounds.   After receiving her undergraduate degree in Secondary Education from the University of Wisconsin—Madison, she went on to acquire an early childhood education certificate.  Shellie also served in youth, children’s, special needs and family ministries for over twenty-two years.

Today she enjoys teaching her teens how to drive and chauffeuring her preteens across the Wisconsin countryside. And once in a while, she enjoys reading a classic tale or new suspense. In addition to writing fiction, Shellie is an avid blogger on her site http://shellieneumeier.com/ and several others including http://samiesisters.com/ , http://www.suite101.com/.com , and http://thebarndoor.net/.

INTERVIEW

(Q) Tell everyone a bit about your books including buy links.

Back cover blurb:

Robyn can’t help but notice the handsome new guy at her school. She ignores, however, the arrival of another being at Brookfield Central High School—a demon assigned to destroy her…

Robyn loves her friends, enjoys her youth group, and looks forward to meeting cute Caleb Montague. But when a caustic news reporter challenges her school’s prayer team, Robyn must choose: defend their right to meet on campus and pray for whomever they wish or back down at the principal’s request.

Now she must learn what God wants her to do. And she had better learn fast, because there’s a supernatural enemy in town whose sole mission is to stop her—no matter the cost.

Buy Links:

Amazon Print: Driven
Kindle: Driven

(Q) Where did the concept for the book (or books) come about?

What inspired me to write this book was the desire to encourage the next generation. They have an amazing access to their world with the ease of travel and the internet. They also have the opportunity to change their world unlike any previous generation has. But they’re also bombarded with harsh realism and even harsher dramatized “realism.” It would be very easy to forget that they have a good and Godly purpose.

(Q) How long did it take you to finish, from concept to final product?

It took me three weeks to write Driven, another three months to edit it, and off it went to the publisher.

Once the story was complete and edited, I submitted it to a clearing house of sorts where it found its way into the hands of my publisher, RisenFiction. Once it was contracted the story made it through edits to ebook in four months and to paper back in another three. It was a whirl-wind experience to say the least.

(Q) Which authors have most influenced your own writing?

Oooh, easy one. Mark Twain and Frank Perretti are my two favorite authors who influenced the writing of Driven.

(Q) What do you do for fun other than writing?

I love to hike and hang with family and friends. I also do a fair amount of reading and occasionally quilt.

(Q) Do you have any favorite place where you feel your Muse is more apt to come and play while you write? On a warm beach by the ocean. What music would you listen to (if at all)? My taste in writer’s music depends on what I’m writing…dark if the scene is dark or energetic if the scene is more upbeat. What treats would you have on hand? I’ll take anything chocolate, please…unless there’s cheesecake available, then I’ll take a large cyber-bite of cheesecake, please.

(Q) Answer any three or more of the following:

- Do you secretly want to write another genre, but don't think you can do it?
I’d love to give steampunk a try, but there’s a ton I’d have to learn about first. I’m not so great at the machine thingy parts.

- In your ideal world, put in order those of most value to you:
True love, family, success at writing, world peace, clean air and water, other.

- Plotter or pantser?
I’m a plotter; worksheet, outline and all.

- What are your writing strengths?
Weaknesses?

- Coffee or tea?
Oooh, tea. Peppermint, please, unless we’re at Starbucks then it’s Chai Tea Latte lite.

(Q) Do you have any new projects that you are working on? If so, what are they?

I have a novella romance releasing on October 1, A Summer in Oakville (co-authored with Lisa Lickel) and a mid-grade chapter book, The Wishing Ring, releasing in February. I’m currently working on a sequel to The Wising Ring and another young adult novel about a seventeen year-old boy who lands himself in a treatment center and must figure out how to get home.

(Q) What do you do to market your work? How did you start and where do you learn to market?

I’ve found blog tours (yay for this one) and social media venues to be the most advantageous in building a platform. But those venues only work if they are targeting folks who the book would appeal to. I look for blogs that teens read and connect with YA readers online through forums and other social sites.

(Q) How about an excerpt to tantalize the readers?

EXCERPT:

From a comfortable height above the trees, Sebastian circled the abandoned paper mill, drinking in the atmosphere of dereliction and decay surrounding the property. This place has more character than most of the humans I know. Half broken windows winked like the evil eyes of wayward souls, while snow drifts gathered in the corners. The wind toyed with the snow, whipping trails that could chill his feet and ankles. If he had feet and ankles, that is.

Slipping through a second-story window, Sebastian watched a rat scurry across the dusty floor in a dash for the shadows. Like an angry cloud—black as asphalt, thick as cigar smoke—Sebastian floated after the rodent, watching with mild interest as it raced for another shadow and nearly collided with an old tom cat whose eyes glowed bright with hunger. The tom sprang, but Sebastian turned away. He didn’t have time for these cat and mouse games today, no matter how much he enjoyed them. He had bigger game to consider, and as he moved over the room, he thought about the girl he’d come to destroy.

Sebastian peered through the panel of small rectangular windows overlooking the town of Brookfield, fifty in all, though most were broken, and he yawned as he watched the town stretch with morning life. Humans filtered in and out of the corner diner, scampered about in their shiny cars, and huddled against the wind in mindless oblivion. Sebastian’s mouth curled into a sneer.