Straight to Heaven Blog Tour: Guest Post and GIVEAWAY!

I would like to introduce Michelle Scott, author of Straight to Hell and Straight to Heaven, to A Reading  Daydreamer!  Today is the last day of the Straight to Heaven blog tour and Michelle has written a guest post about her favourite childhood books for me to share here with you!  I hope you enjoy reading it and don't forget to enter the international giveaway at the end to be in with a chance of winning a 2GB iPod shuffle (wow, right?!) and there's also four e-copies of Straight to Heaven up for grabs!

So without further ado, over to Michelle...

Enter the Book Mobile

I owe my childhood love of reading to an old woman driving a really large caravan across the back roads of Michigan.

When I was growing up, I lived in a small community whose public library was shuffled from one odd location to another.  Every few years, they’d have to pack up their collection and haul it to another site: an old house, a deserted elementary school, or an unused office building...  The librarians were dedicated, but without proper funding, they had enough trouble finding a place to house their library let alone fill their shelves.

Enter the book mobile.

The book mobile was an enormous caravan (what we in Michigan called an RV) that housed a portion of the county’s public library.  Once a month, the book mobile would visit our area, and my mother and I would visit it.

Inside the vehicle, on either side of the narrow aisle, were shelves and shelves of books.  It was very claustrophobic, but I didn’t mind.  In fact, I wanted one of my own.

At the time, I liked fantasy novels – especially fantasy novels about enchanted animals – but for some reason, my mother thought I would do better with gritty, real-life dramas about teenagers who drank and did drugs.  Books like The Outsiders and Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack.  Both of those are very good novels, but since I was only eleven, they scared the you-know-what out of me.  I think my mother thought I’d learn something about ‘real life’ by reading them, but honestly, all I wanted was to be left alone with my enchanted animals.

The librarian who drove the book mobile from tiny town to tiny town was a very chatty lady, and over the years, we got to know her pretty well.  She was the one who recommended what has to be my favorite book of all time: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  To Kill a Mockingbird is a wonderful story that transitioned me from enchanted animals to novels about real life.  The book is funny enough to be gentle, but at the same time it doesn’t mince words when it comes to discussing racial issues in the south.

Now that my own kids are teenagers, I try not to press my tastes on them too much.  My daughters prefer books like Harry Potter and The Ranger’s Apprentice over gritty, realistic novels.  But then again, so do I.  As much as I like realistic fiction, I’ve never outgrown my love of fantasy.

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About the author

Michelle Scott received her MFA from Wayne State University.  Her stories have appeared in such places as Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, All Possible Worlds and Realms.  Her fantasy novel, The Dragons of Hazlett was nominated for a 2009 EPPIE Award.  Michelle’s YA novels include the vampire romance, Blood Sisters, and the fantasy Uncommon Magic.  Her latest fantasy novel, An Anthem for the Battle Lands, was recently released from Mundania Press, LLC.  Michelle lives in southeast Michigan with her husband and three children.

Website - Blog - Where to buy

And don't forget to enter the giveaway!

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Thank you to Michelle for taking time to stop by my blog and to Dani at Pen to Paper for hosting this wonderful tour!  I hope you all enjoyed it too and hopefully you'll be able to walk away with one of the prizes!

Happy reading,
Beverley x

P.S. I will be returning to regular blogging very soon!  I have two more exams and then they're all finished, leaving me a whole summer to catch up on reading and blogging!