Blog Tour Playlist with Giveaway: Just Shelby by Brooklyn James

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the JUST SHELBY by Brooklyn James Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

 

About The Book:

Title: JUST SHELBY

Author: Brooklyn James

Pub. Date: October 27, 2020

Publisher: Arena Books

Formats: Paperback, eBook

Pages: 290

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle,  B&N, iBooks, Kobo, Smashwords

A secret note square found in a handmade guitar proves that small town gossip is not only ubiquitous but occasionally true. This gossip comes with strings rivaling those on Ace Cooper’s guitar, the safest strings he will ever have around his heart.

Ace’s father warns him to stay away from the Lynn girl. Daughter of a deceased bootlegger and a barely living addict, Shelby Lynn is no stranger to small town contempt. She keeps her nose in the books and feet to the ground, a college scholarship the only escape from her tumultuous life.

As Ace’s heartstrings unravel, so does his family’s role in Shelby’s broken past. Thrust into a precarious journey of their roots brimming with music and betrayal, the two have never been closer…to the truth of how Shelby’s father died. One truth transforms every facet of their lives forever.

A dual POV friends-to-first-love story, Just Shelby is an unsuspecting mystery that depicts how growing together can sometimes hurt worse than growing apart.

 

Brooklyn James — JUST SHELBY Guest Post — Book Playlist

As an author/singer-songwriter who draws as much inspiration from songs in book writing as I do from books in songwriting, I think book playlists are the greatest thing since self-publishing.

Ten years ago when we released our first novel, The Boots My Mother Gave Me, it actually came with an original music soundtrack. An organic process, the album was never intended to be a book soundtrack until we realized how well they went together, how both were born out of a parallel creative moment in time: a New Year’s resolution that I would process, heal, and come to terms with an abusive childhood. Simultaneously working through those emotions in both a novel and an album, it became apparent that not only were they created together, they were meant to be together, one giving life to the other. In that respect, Boots makes for a unique Audible experience. A later novel we released, Just Not Ready Yet, had a bit of a music angle as well, so we included a single by the same name for streaming in the ebook version.

Just Shelby certainly has a music theme as depicted on the cover. Although it doesn’t have a soundtrack or single at the time of release, we are actively in studio writing and producing a few singles/videos to release over the year 2021 that were inspired by song/lyric snippets written for the book. Shelby is just not that into music. Music is one of her mother’s triggers. In that sense music is basically forbidden in Shelby’s home. Ace follows in his family’s tradition and in his father’s footsteps as a miner, but he secretly lives for music. When Shelby discovers that Ace plays, she finally hears music’s intoxicating melody and encourages him to follow his calling, much to his father’s chagrin. This ultimately leads to the discovery of a secret note square hidden in a handmade guitar for eighteen years that thrusts Shelby and Ace into a precarious journey of their roots brimming with music and betrayal. What role did Ace’s family play in Shelby’s broken past?

The Just Shelby playlist is representative of the friends-to-first-love dual POV narrative in that it shuffles between male and female heavy songs, from folk to rock and from somber to uplifting—the emotions of finding first love while finding oneself. The setting being small town Appalachia, of course there are a few bluegrass-infused tunes and one classical piece in Adagio for Strings, a poignant song within the novel itself when Shelby and Ace experience the “cathartic passion” the arrangement so easily induces. The Fray kick things off with Run for Your Life, fitting for Shelby who runs for her future with hopes of securing a college scholarship, a way out of her tumultuous small town life. Mumford & Sons round things out with I Will Wait, as coming of age—life, the future—threatens to send the young lovers in opposite directions. Depicting that growing together can sometimes hurt worse than growing apart…

Access the playlist on our YouTube Channel. Once you have read Just Shelby, let us know which songs you would add to the playlist. Thank you so much for this opportunity to share our latest release with your community!

About The Author:

Brooklyn James is an author/singer-songwriter who savors any opportunity to blend books with music. Her first novel, The Boots My Mother Gave Me, has an original music soundtrack, making for a unique Audible experience. Out of Boots grew a platform where it was Brooklyn’s honor to serve as a guest speaker with a focus on awareness and prevention of domestic violence and suicide.

Her latest speaking engagements centered around accessibility, rights, and choice in birth, as well as writing workshops on how to put pen to paper composing one’s own birth story with the release of her birth memoir, Born in the Bed You Were Made: One Family’s Journey from Cesarean to Home Birth.

Just Shelby gifted both the challenge and the thrill of this author’s primary exploration into the Young Adult genre. She cherishes reader reviews, if you should be so inclined.

Moonlighting occasionally in voice-over and film, Brooklyn played a Paramedic in a Weezer video, met Harry Connick Jr. as an extra on the set of When Angels Sing, appeared in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood for all of a nanosecond, and was a stand-in and stunt double for Mira Sorvino on Jerry Bruckheimer’s Trooper pilot for TNT. Although reading, dancing, working out, and a good glass of kombucha get her pretty excited, she finds most thrilling the privilege of being a mother to two illuminating little souls and a wife to the one big soul from whom they get their light.

Brooklyn holds an M.A. in Communication, a B.S. in both Nursing and Animal Science, and lives in Texas Hill Country.

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Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a Signed Paperback that comes with a 3-set candle gift pack (one limited edition Just Shelby book scent “Gray Fog,” one fall scent, and one winter scent). The Signed Paperback/Candle Set is valued at $35. US Only.

3 lucky winners will receive an eBook of JUST SHELBY, International.

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