UK Appreciation Month - L.A Weatherly; Guest Post + Int Giveaway

So, we're on the final days of our UK Appreciation Month and we have one of Donna's favourite authors...L.A Weatherly, author of Angel and Angelfire. 

I was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas – and when I was twenty-seven, I fell in love with an Englishman and moved here. I didn’t have any trepidation about moving to the UK; I’d visited England for six months when I was eighteen and felt like an old hand at this English-stuff. I was sure that I wouldn’t have any culture shock.

Ha.

Forget the obvious things, like different spellings for words and driving on the wrong side of the road – those are easy. The real challenges come when you go grocery shopping and realize that not only do you not know the metric system, so that you have no idea how much ground beef to buy, there also isn’t any ground beef – at least not by that name. And what the blippety-bleep is a ‘courgette’?

I spent my first few years here in a daze. Slowly, though, I became fluent in English (rather than American – they are not the same!) and started to feel at home. And then I wrote my first children’s novel, Child X. Set in England. With an English main character who’s thirteen, in her first year of secondary school.

OK, back to culture shock.

GCSE. “A” levels. Sixth form college instead of high school. Argh, it’s another different language! With no children of my own from whom to vicariously experience it all, I begged a local school to let me observe their classes and stood in the back manically scribbling notes. (“Are you an inspector, miss?”)

That was more than ten years ago. I got the book done and don’t think I made any obvious howlers – but even now, I still feel a little out of my depth writing about contemporary UK children. So when I wrote my first YA novel, Angel, it was a relief to embrace the US setting and plunge back into good ol’ American English.

But by then it was too late. The transformation had become complete. A note came from my US copyeditor: “Do you mind if we change this word? It sounds really English…”

Angel:

Angels are all around us: beautiful, awe-inspiring, irresistible.

Ordinary mortals yearn to catch a glimpse of one of these stunning beings and thousands flock to The Church of Angels to feel their healing touch.

But what if their potent magnetism isn't what it seems?

Willow knows she's different from other girls. And not just because she loves tinkering around with cars.

Willow has a gift. She can look into people's futures, know their dreams, their hopes and their regrets, just by touching them. But she has no idea where she gets this power from.

Until she meets Alex…

Alex is one of the few who know the truth about angels. He knows Willow's secret and is on a mission to stop her.

The dark forces within Willow make her dangerous – and irresistible.

In spite of himself, Alex finds he is falling in love with his sworn enemy.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
How would you like to win a copy of Angel or Angelfire? 

- Just fill in the form below. One free entry plus a ton of extra entries.

- International

- Ends 24th December 2012

GOOD LUCK! 

Author Bio: 

Lee Weatherly has been born in 1967 and grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. She lives with her husband in Hampshire, England, where she writes, goes on walks, collects frogs and has a cat named Bernard. Author location: Hampshire.
L.A. Weatherly is the pseudonym for Lee Weatherly. Another pen name she uses is Titania Woods.