School’s In: Carolyn Crane & Sterling Packard (Contest)

Schools In (200px)It’s that time of year again. Everyone is going back to school and so is Carolyn Crane’s Sterling Packard from Head Rush.

JUSTINE JONES FACES HER ULTIMATE ENEMY: HERSELF

In an attempt to put her unhappy past behind her, Justine Jones throws herself into nursing school and planning her wedding to the man of her dreams. But something is off. Random details aren’t adding up…and is it her imagination, or are her friends and fiancé keeping secrets from her? And what’s with this strange sense of unease, and her odd new headaches?

Justine tries to stay upbeat as Midcity cowers under martial law, sleepwalking cannibals, and a mysterious rash of paranormal copycat violence, but her search for answers leads her into the most dangerous mind game yet.

With the help of unlikely allies, including her paranoid dad and best frenemy Simon, Justine fights her ultimate foe…and unravels the most startling mystery of all.

Make sure you stick around to the end. We’ll be giving away a copy of Head Rush.

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Sterling Packard

CCrane-Head RushJackie! Congrats to your oldest boy on starting kindergarten! How exciting. Well, all I can say is, I hope he has a better experience than Sterling Packard, my tortured hero of the Disillusionists. And I’m sure he will, unless you’re planning on dropping the poor kid off in an abandoned, crumbling ruins of a school down by the river.

Okay, this is such an intense subject, because everything about Sterling Packard, and a lot of the drama of the trilogy, actually, can be traced back to that crumbling, ruined school. That’s where Packard lived as a child leading his little gang of discarded children.

Really, they weren’t bad kids, they just had “talents.” (Highcaps, such kids are called.) Highcaps were typically abandoned as children in my world, because they’re seen as dangerous mutants, and also, just a handful. Highcap kids can be telekinetics, dream invaders, telepaths, memory revisionists. Packard’s highcap skill was seeing into people’s psychology. He can read a person like a book. Predict what they’ll do and why. (Which made him a hard boy to raise, but a gifted leader of abandoned children.)

As an author who loved school (yes, I was the one who always sat in the front and raised my hand) it was always sort of heartbreaking for me to place my abandoned highcap kids in a wrecked shell of a school down by the river.

I think it’s sad because I felt like they all yearned for a normal life, and while normal kids went to normal school, they had this wrecked school they lived in, all broken chicken wire glass and painted cement block walls and roasting rabbits and cans of beans over fires in the lunchroom.

Packard was just 7 when he started leading his gang at that school. It was five or so years until things imploded. I like to imagine life at that little broken down school was sweet during those years, with the kids making a family best they could, and using their different talents to help make a life. And they would read to each other out of decades-old moldy textbooks they found lying around, trying to learn things.

And many secrets stem from there but…lips zipped!

Happy back-to-school, everybody! And thanks so much for inviting me over!

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Meet Carolyn Crane!

I’m a writer living in Minneapolis with my husband and two daring cats. I work a day job as a freelance advertising writer, and have for years. I’ve also waited tables at a surprising number of Minneapolis restaurants and bars (though not as many, incidentally, as my writer husband has). I’ve also been a shop clerk and a plastics factory worker, which I was dismal at (think I Love Lucy).

Also, I can relate almost any life experience to one or another Star Trek episodes, and if you invite me to your party, your cheese plate will be in grave danger. During rare moments when I’m not at my computer, I can be found reading in bed, running, helping animals, or eating Mexican food.

Carolyn CraneContact Info
Website: website
Blog: Blog
Social Media: Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads

Want to purchase Carolyn’s novels?
Disillusionists Trilogy

  1. Mind Games at Amazon | Book Depository
  2. Double Cross at Amazon | Book Depository
  3. Head Rush at Amazon | Book Depository

Wild & Steamy at Amazon (with Meljean Brook and Jill Myles)
Devil’s Luck at Amazon

Please help spread the word: Tweet: Go back to school with 30 authors while #giveaways ensue during #SchoolsIn (Sept 1-30) http://tinyurl.com/LESchoolsIn – #paranormal #contests #UF

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Contest Time!

Thank you Carolyn for taking part in Literary Escapism’s School’s in!

Carolyn is giving away a print copy (US) or a digital copy (International) of Head Rush. To enter, all you have to do is answer this one question: If you were a highcap, what would your skill be? Remember, you must answer the question in order to be entered.

Even though I’m not giving the additional entries any more, you can still help support the author by sharing their article, and this contest, on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere you can. After all, the more people who are aware of this fabulous author ensures we get more fabulous stories.

The winner must post a review of the novel someplace. Whether it is on their own blog, Amazon, GoodReads, LibraryThing or wherever, it doesn’t matter. Just help get the word out.

All School’s In contests will remain open until October 7th at which time I’ll determine the winner with help from the snazzy new plug-in I have. Have you checked out the other Black Friday contests yet? Check out the Master List to see all the Black Friday giveaways

I have not been contacting winners, so you will need to check back to see if you’ve won.

About Jackie 3282 Articles
I am a 30-something SAHM with two adorable boys and a supportive husband who is very tolerant of my reading addiction. I love to read and easily go through about a dozen books a month – well I did before I had kids. Now, not so much. After my first son was born, I began to take my hobby of reviewing a little more serious and started Literary Escapism to help with my sanity. I love to discuss the fabulous novels I’ve read and meeting all the wonderful people in the book blogging community has been amazing.

11 Comments

  1. I wouldn’t want to actually be able to read thoughts, but I’d love to have the ability to influence people to do what I want them to.

  2. Can I invent a kind that wasn’t in the first two (very cool, may I just add) books?

    I’d like to be able to play back audio/video at will, projected into the air for people (yes, by that I mean my own kids, why do you ask?) who tend to say “You never ____ !” or “You always ____!” to illustrate their faulty memory.

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