Shiirleyy's Bookshelf has migrated to Dear Shirley ! I will continue to post book reviews but there will also be a lot of personal and travel-related posts :)

Authors are Rockstars Tour: Guestpost with Elizabeth Norris & Giveaway (US only)

12 Aug 2013

Hey Guys! Welcome to my post for the Authors are Rockstars Tour :) I'll be hosting the lovely Elizabeth Norris, author of Unravelling and recently released Unbreakable today!

Why is Elizabeth Norris a rockstar? Is that really a question? OF COURSE SHE'S A ROCKSTAR!!!!! Her 2012 debut Unravelling was one of my favourite books last year. BEN WAS SO KIND AND DROOL-WORTHY! She writes the best characters, heart pounding action and also the most unexpected but perfect ending ever<3 Liz is also incredibly nice and friendly on twitter as well!

I have a guest post from Elizabeth Norris on Theories of the Universe that she looked into to set into the motion her parallel world theory.
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When I first started writing Unraveling, I knew Ben Michaels would have a big secret. As I was brainstorming and outlining, I planned that the big reveal would be that he was an alien(!). Only that had been done before, quite a bit actually, and when I thought too much about it something about having an alien love interest struck me as a little strange and maybe even…creepy.
So I scrapped that idea and started trying to think of where else Ben could be from.
It just so happened that the US Postal Service served as my inspiration. They delivered my issue of Scientific American and the cover looked like this:

It wasn’t the first that I’d ever heard of the multiverse, but the article made me think (and scratch my head a little at some of the things I didn’t understand). One of the ideas I found so interesting was that there could be an infinite number of multiple universes—that they could be separated by only one small and seemingly insignificant difference.

When I finished the article, I started scouring the internet for everything I could find on the multiverse: I read everything from hardcore scientific articles and journal excerpts (those were hard) to random conspiracy theories on angelfire sites (those were strange) and then I even spent a weekend with a rented movie (The One) the complete first season of two of my favorite shows in high school (The X-Files and Sliders) and a documentary (Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives).

Then I sat down at the computer and wrote up the “rules” for the world(s) of Unraveling. It’s a combination of things inspired by research, pop culture that I love, whatever I could come up with in my own mind. 

*squeals* I don't think I would've minded if Ben was an alien! hahaha it's the heart that matters<3 I wish I was as imaginative as as Liz, in fact, I wish I was imagination, period! Looks like I'll have to check out The One, and Sliders soon :)

Elizabeth has also kindly offered TWO copies of either Unravelling or Unbreakable with swag!!! It's for US only.  Simply leave a comment with a way to contact you to enter!<3 

Throne of Glass Ambassador: Exclusive Excerpt of The Assassin and the Princess (Part 4) by Sarah J Maas

6 Aug 2013


Hey Everyone! I've been keeping this low-profile for a while but I can finally proudly announce to you all that I'm a THRONE OF GLASS AMBASSADOR! hehehe How awesome is that title? I'm the biggest fan of Sarah J Maas's Throne of Glass so I'm absolutely ecstatic to be an ambassador for the book! 

Today, I'm delighted to share with you the fourth part of Sarah's novella The Assassin and the Princess.

Read previous parts of this scene here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

“We can go somewhere else,” Celaena said softly.
            Nehemia just stared at the slave-girl, her face blank. The girl was dressed well, and looked well-fed, but the manacles, so horrifyingly beautiful, gleaming in the warm light…
            The women were staring at them now, but the slave-girl kept her eyes down. Didn’t even turn toward them. Celaena rotated her own wrists, a tinge of phantom pain going through the scars that marked where her own shackles—iron and scratched—had once been.
            Celaena put a hand on Nehemia’s elbow. “We can—”
            “No,” Nehemia said, looking away from the girl and giving Kavill and bland smile. “We shall wait. Please—return to your work,” she said to him, and took a seat on the divan. Celaena slowly sat down beside her, and Nehemia flashed her a brighter smile.
            Today, they had agreed when setting out, would just be about enjoying themselves—about letting Celaena dress Nehemia up. Today, they were just two ordinary, perfectly happy girls, out to do some shopping.
            Celaena gave her best smile in return.
So Kavill went back to his customers, the soft-spoken Marta came to take their cloaks and gloves and replaced them with jasmine tea, delicate cookies, and a selection of the day’s papers.
“Such service,” Nehemia said when Marta had slipped away to assist Kavill in taking down his measurements and seeing to the needs of their customers. The princess ran an eye around the gilded walls, the racks of sample gowns, the displays of jewelry, shoes, hats, and parasols. “Such wealth, too.”
Celaena, who had been watching one of the women debate whether a quarter of an inch would make her neckline too daring, glanced at the princess. “If it makes you feel better, he’s turned down positions as the royal tailor several times.”
Nehemia raised a well-groomed brow, the gold jewelry she wore glinting in the light of the lily-shaped glass sconces. “I don’t mean to be…difficult,” Nehemia said in the common tongue, any trace of her fake, thick accent gone.
The accent, Celaena had learned, was just to deceive the royal court—to get them to think she was dimwitted, and make them speak more freely when they thought she couldn’t understand. But Nehemia spoke better than the most refined of them. And she had been using the knowledge she’d gleaned to uncover any tidbits of maneuverings that might help the plight of her enslaved people.
It was why they had gone shopping in the first place: to find gowns that Queen Georgina would approve of—gowns to enable Nehemia to cozy up to the queen and her inner circle, to see if she might help Eyllwe by winning over the King of Adarlan’s wife.

Continue reading this scene at  Dark Readers

Are you enjoying the extracts? Keeping up with the posts? Loving the novella? 
You can expect more fun posts coming up over the next few weeks leading up to the publication of Crown of Midnight!<3