Blog Tour Guest Post: All These Lives by Sarah Wylie

Welcome to Author Sarah Wylie

Sarah Wylie spent her growing-up years reading anything and everything she could get her hands on. One summer, she read one page of the dictionary every day. This did not make her an exceptional speller. Mainly, it took away precious time she might have spent furthering her obsession with boy bands, rereading Enid Blyton novels, and/or developing a sense of direction.
Sarah has always loved writing. One summer (a different one), she wrote a poem a day. Again, this time could have been better spent since, as it turns out, angsty poetry is not her calling.
These are a few of her favorite things:
daydreaming, Twizzlers, cloudless days, going to the movies, and that moment when a good song comes on the radio.
Sarah graduated from college in June 2011 with a degree in Neuroscience. She lives in Canada, where she now spends her summers watching too much reality TV, reading good books, and writing young-adult fiction. ALL THESE LIVES is her first novel. She is hard at work on her second.

Author Website 
Blog 
Twitter 
Goodreads


The theme of this tour is "9 Things to Love About All These Lives".
My stop is "Thing #4: Family RV Camping Trips"

Families have to be one of the most complex things in existence. Take a bunch of people – similar, but not quite – and stick them together. Make them equally passionate about diametrically opposed things. Make them skilled in discovering every last thing worth despising about each other, yet just as apt to forget all those faults when voiced by an outside party. Give them an unparalleled ability to make each other laugh, to telepathically convey thoughts, to fill the void of sadness or loneliness or failure; give them an unparalleled ability to disappoint one another, to make each other sad or lonely, to break each other’s heart.

ALL THESE LIVES is a family story. Mostly about sisters – but a family too. When something crappy happens – a loss or an illness – families (the whole, not just the parts) react. They crumble or hold each other up; they scurry off in different directions. They…rent an RV?

Dani’s family does.

In honor of their family trip, I’ve compiled a list of 9 events most likely to happen on a family vacation*.

1. Two or more people are fighting by the end of Night 1. A possible though less likely alternative: one person has figured out the previously unfathomable art of fighting with one’s self.
2. Somebody has forgotten an exceptionally important article of clothing. Including but not limited to: swimsuit, towel, hat, underwear, flip-flops, and sunglasses**. If you are of remotely comparable size to a family member who has remembered an extra [exceptionally important article of clothing], your mother will insist the vacation stores are far too expensive. End result: http://blissfullydomestic.com/wp-content/uploads/thinkbig.jpg
3. You wind up hopelessly and irreversibly lost. Cue: discussions about whether we have enough gas to be hopelessly and irreversibly lost, whose fault it is anyway, and why the next restroom is further away than the moon. See #1 for end result.
4. One family member has to provide backing vocals to whatever is on the radio from one end of the state to the other. It is vitally important.
5. Whoever is scheduled to keep the driver awake during their shift? Asleep. Oh, they’re just resting their eyes? ASLEEP.
6. In addition to [exceptionally important article of clothing], you will forget some combination of the following: camera, blank film/memory card for camera, sunscreen, bug spray, water bottles, and the address of your destination. Hopefully not a family member.
7. Your hotel room will not look nearly as swanky as it did in those pictures online.
8. Good intentions aside, you will never take as many pictures as you planned to at the start of the trip, or as many as you’ll want when you think about the trip years later.
9. You will be awed at the size of your family and/or their ability to take up space. (And the fact that your inability to understand the words “pack light” is genetic.) There’ll be more limbs and sweaters and backpacks and general space evasion than you bargained for. But in the end? You probably won’t even mind that much.

Bonus: Cleaning out the car/RV might take as long or longer than the entirety of your trip.

* Any and all similarities to real life people or events are totally coincidental, especially #6.
** Sunglasses count as articles of clothing for our purposes.

All These Lives by Sarah Wylie

Sixteen-year-old Dani is convinced she has nine lives. As a child she twice walked away from situations where she should have died. But Dani’s twin, Jena, isn’t so lucky.  She has cancer and might not even be able to keep her one life. Dani’s father is in denial. Her mother is trying to hold it together and prove everything’s normal.  And Jena is wasting away.  To cope, Dani sets out to rid herself of all her extra lives.  Maybe they’ll be released into the universe and someone who wants to live more than she does will get one.  Someone like Jena.  But just when Dani finds herself at the breaking point, she’s faced with a startling realization.  Maybe she doesn’t have nine lives after all.  Maybe she really only ever had one.

Visit Sarah's blog to enter into her All These Lives prize pack giveaway. 

http://sarahwithachance.blogspot.com/2012/05/itsexactly-fifteen-days-until-all-these.html

She is giving away:

• 1 SIGNED copy of ALL THESE LIVES;
• 3 ALL THESE LIVES bookmarks; and
• Your choice of ANY 3 Apocalypsies books!

Visit All the Tour Stops:

5/21 – Books Complete Me
5/22 – A Good Addiction
5/23 – Reading Lark
5/24 – Frenzy of Noise
5/25 – I Am a Reader Not a Writer
5/28 – The Story Siren
5/29 – Once Upon a Twilight
5/30 – Books With Bite
5/31 – Supernatural Snark
6/1 – Portrait of a Book