BooksChatter: ☀✉ In the Hope of Memories

Thank you for joining us on the Release Day Party for In the Hope of Memories, a Young Adult Contemporary stand-alone novel by Olivia Rivers (21 March 2016, Red Sparrow Press, 328 pages).

Don't miss our Guest Post by author Olivia Rivers.
PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below. Read the first four chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

Author Olivia Rivers will be awarding one e-book copy of In The Hope of Memory to a randomly drawn reader of our blog via Rafflecopter.

Synopsis | Teasers | About the Author | Giveaway

Synopsis

Hope is dying.

Hope Jackson has lived her short life to the fullest, but her four closest friends are dangling on the brink of disaster. Right before dying of a rare heart condition, Hope sets up a scavenger hunt across New York City using her graffiti art. The directions she leaves her friends are simple: Solve the clues hidden in her art, and they’ll solve the problems haunting their lives.

Hope is dead.

Two days after her heart fails, Hope’s friends are thrown together: Aiden, her best friend, whose plans to attend college have been scattered by his OCD. Kali, her foster sister, whose last ties to sanity are as razor-thin as her anorexic waistline.

Erik, her high school crush, whose success as an athlete is based on a lie with no end in sight.

And Sam, her online pen-pal, whose perfect life exploded into chaos in the aftermath of a school bombing.

Together, the four teens take to the streets of New York to complete Hope’s scavenger hunt and fulfill her dying wishes. But in order to unravel the clues hidden in Hope’s graffiti, her friends will need to confront their personal demons head on.

Hope is within reach.

Teasers

Excerpt | Guest Post: Quirky Research for a Quirky Book |

Excerpt

     "Let me get this straight," I say to Aiden. "You want me to go to some random bakery in a random part of town, with you, a random person I don't even know, to search for some random clue that's part of a random scavenger hunt that might not even exist. And all this because of a piece of string and a mention of a fortune cookie."
     "Yes," Aiden says, like this is the most natural thing in the world.
     I'm about to scoff when I remember something else from that first day I met Hope. We'd been talking casually, just getting to know each other, when suddenly she'd mentioned that she had a little sister named Kali. And I'd been like, "Really? That's crazy, because I do, too. Her name’s actually Kalina, but we all call her Kali." "
     And Hope had just given this little smile and held up her left hand, showing off a bracelet made of braided red thread. I can still remember exactly what she said: ""It's not crazy. It's fate." "
     And she'd gone on to tell me all about this old Chinese myth about The Red String of Fate, and honestly, it sounded like a load of crap to me. But she was so enthusiastic that I actually liked hearing about it, and from then on, it became a thing between us. Whenever anything even mildly coincidental would happen, we'd both stop whatever we were doing, point to each other, and say, ""Fate!" " I'd always say it all jokey, and she'd always sound dead-serious, but we'd both be smiling.
     I stare down at the invite, this time letting my gaze hover on her flowing signature, just as bright and bold as her personality. Maybe, just maybe, Aiden is right. Maybe Hope did want us to go to that bakery, and maybe the color of the string and the fortune cookie reference aren't coincidence. And if she did want us to take off on some crazy scavenger hunt... Well, I can't exactly ignore her dying wish, can I?
     "Okay, Hope," I murmur, running my thumb over her signature. "Let's go find ourselves some fate."

back to teasers | back to top

Guest Post: Quirky Research for a Quirky Book

My life is far too normal to make for interesting fiction, but you wouldn’t guess it by looking at my internet search history. When you write about people who have been screwed over by fate, you end up having to research some really sad, really dark topics. And also some flat-out bizarre topics no normal chick should spend her time reading about. 

    

     At this point, I’m pretty sure at least a few government agencies have me flagged on some sort of Potential Psychopath Watch List. Looking up weird things is kind of unavoidable when you’re a writer, and while writing “In the Hope of Memories,” I researched some extremely strange questions. After a while, I started keeping track of my quirkiest research questions. Among my top favorites are the following: 


 Can the content of graffiti art make a jail sentence harsher or lighter? 
 How do graffiti artists paint details without getting totally high? (Hint: they don’t.)
Can you hack a store’s standard security system from an Android smart phone? 
 Is it legal to bring a cat into a restaurant? 
 What are the best techniques for smuggling an illegal cat into a restaurant?
 How fast would a taxi have to be travelling to cause serious injuries to a pedestrian? 
 How do Ivy League universities detect applications that use forged documents?
 What’s the most successful way to shoplift?
 What’s the best part of a car to steal, if you can’t take the whole thing?
 Can you use allergy medication to stop someone from going into cardiac arrest? (Hint: shockingly, yeah, you can.)
 What is the difference between a psychopath, a psychotic, and a sociopath?
 How do you build a bomb?
 Where do you buy materials for building a bomb?
 Is it cheaper for an author to hire someone to erase their name from government watch lists, or to just move to a secluded island nation? 
 Which website has the best deals on one-way tickets to Tahiti?

back to teasers | back to top

In the Hope of Memories
Available NOW!

About the Author

Olivia Rivers is a hybrid author of Young Adult fiction. Her works include the independently published novels “Frost Fire” and “In the Hope of Memories,” along with the traditionally published novel “Tone Deaf” (Skyhorse 2016.)

As a certified geek, she enjoys experimenting with new publishing technologies, and her online serials have received over 1,000,000 hits on Wattpad.com.

When Olivia isn’t working as a writer, she’s a typical teen attending college in Northern California.

Olivia is represented by Laurie McLean of Fuse Literary, and nothing thrills her more than hearing from readers.

Follow Olivia Rivers: