Hey guys! I’m Christina Farley, your hostess for this leg of the hunt. I wrote the GILDED series, contemporary fantasies about a Korean-American girl with a black belt and a deadly proclivity with steel-tipped arrows who discovers an ancient Korean demigod has been kidnapping the first-born daughters of her family for generations. And she’s next. The third book in the series, BRAZEN, releases September 29, 2015!
On this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on the hunt in my team- that’s a ton of books! Plus, at the end of this post, I’m giving away the sequel to GILDED, SILVERN, as well as signed posters of both books!
Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are EIGHT contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the RED TEAM –but there is also a blue team, a gold team, a purple team, an orange team, a red team, and a pink team for a chance to win a whole different set of signed books!
If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.
Leigh is also a founder of QuantumFairyTales.com and is currently serving a life sentence there as senior editor and gnome driver. She loves all things sparkly and strange that go bump in the night.
Lady Marguerite lives a life most 17th century French girls can only dream of: money, designer dresses, suitors and a secure future. Except she suspects she may be falling for her best friend Claude, a common smithie in the family’s steam forge. When Claude leaves for New France in search of a better life, Marguerite decides to follow him and test her suspicions of love. But the trip proves more harrowing than she had anticipated, revealing secrets and testing her strength as well as her heart. Love, adventure and restitution await her in Canada, but only if she can survive the voyage.
“The writing is solid and the world-building – that clever combination of historical detail and Ms. Statham’s imagination – is excellent.” ~The Australia Times Books
This book sounds awesome! Now for….
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!
Top Five Ways to Ruin Your Dress in a Steampunk Novel
5. Dance with a smithie
Known for their extremely large muscles and soul piercing eyes, smithies can be alluring, but also quite hazardous. Especially to the finest cloth from Paris. Their physique is largely due to all the time they spend working at the forge over smoldering fires with heavy tools. This also lends a general air of dirt and grime which can be hard to scrub out. Even when the boy wants to impress you, and will try his hardest, his hands will most likely still be black from gear oil and will leave incriminating evidence on your gown. Best to steer clear altogether.
4. Follow someone into a cellar
There can be many hidden wonders in a cellar. There can also be many creepy traps. Anyone you don’t know very, very well who wants you to follow them into a cellar probably isn’t worried about you ruining your dress. Plus, cobwebs, ew. Be very cautious.
3. Run away from home
It’s generally best to run away from home in the middle of the night by cover of dark. This will prevent supervising adults from catching you and grounding you for all time and eternity or forcing you into a hasty marriage to an undesirable count. However, to avoid said count, you must also not bring a lamp, as strange lamps in the wilderness in the middle of the night tend to draw attention to themselves and give old ladies heart attacks. This will leave you stumbling around in the dark as your only option. If the way is clear, you will most likely run for fear of being caught, and you will also, most likely, fall and ruin your dress. If the way is under cover of bush and tree, you will then most likely catch your gown on said shrubberies and tear it anyway.
2. Get shot at
Guns have a very bad habit of leaving holes in things. Even if the said firearm does not kill you, but grazes your arm, it will make a nasty hole in your garment, thus leaving you bleeding and in a bad mood. This could also leave you with nothing suitable to wear to the next party without a fitting. Quite inconvenient.
1. 86 the sucker
Gowns, although elegant and quite flattering to the female figure, can also get in the way of many necessary opportunities (see above). It is therefore advised that you wad your gowns up and toss them in the rubbish heap. Dump them. Burn them. Chuck them in the channel, feed them to the fowl, generally destroy them in any way that seems fitting to your situation. This will, undoubtedly leave you with a ruined dress, should you decide you need one after all. But we are certain after trying a nice pair of aviation trousers, you will never go back to the frothy, frilly ways of maidenhood again.
And don’t forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a ton of signed books by me, Christina Farley, and more! To enter, you need to know that my favorite number is 7.
Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the red team and you’ll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!
