Friendly Free Book Friday

****Comment below to win a copy of TEEN Agents in the Plundered Parent Protocol.****

This week we are excited to introduce you to Joshua Unruh, author of the fabulously fun TEEN Agents series.  Today he shares with us how his childhood interests influenced the writing of The Plundered Parent Protocol.  (This is my daughter's new favorite book!  And she is "totally a huge fan of Mr. Unruh.  He's so cool!"  Well, there you go.  I can't top that as an introduction.  Here's Mr. Totally Cool himself, Joshua Unruh.

Sausage Innards

Heather asked me to talk a little bit about how the things I liked when I was a pre-teen and teenager (I’m old enough that there wasn’t a questionable label like tween when it would have fit me) fed into my fevered brain and came out as TEEN Agents in the Plundered Parent Protocol.

Well, this ought to be easy. A lot of the stuff I liked then is stuff I still like now!

I like it in a different, more grown-up way (or so I’ve convinced myself). But it’s still a lot of the same stuff from back in the day. That age is when I started to discover things other than superheroes that were going to gnaw into my brain like a worm and stay there forever. The second most important of those discoveries was espionage fiction. More specifically, it was Spy-fi.

For ease, I’m going to use the Wikipedia entry’s definition of Spy-Fi:

It often uses a secret agent (solo or in a team) or superspy whose mission is a showcase of science fiction elements such as technology and ideas used for extortion, plots for world domination or world destruction, futuristic weapons, gadgets and fast vehicles that can travel on land, fly, or sail on or under the sea.

My dad was a HUGE Man from U.N.C.L.E. fan when he was a kid. He got me watching it and, for some reason I still can’t understand, whatever channel ran it had Avengers afterward. No, not the superheroes with Iron Man and Captain America. Rather, a British male and female duo calmly and coolly handling all of Britain’s weird scientists and would-be worldbeaters. The godawful movie Wild Wild West, a Western Spy-fi, also came out around this time and, thank goodness, my dad was there for me on that one too. He let me know the seed was a television show that was not godawful.

Spy-fi felt to me like spies, which I loved, married with superheroes, which I loved EVEN MORE. The final nail in the coffin was discovering Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD. This was superspies set in a comic book universe with existing superheroes and supervillains. Peanut butter meet chocolate.

My favorite Young Adult literature will always be superheroes. But when I decided to have female protagonists, I had to deal with the fact that the ladies don’t really dig on superheroes. But heroines have always had a strong place in Spy-fi. Emma Peel was at least as popular as John Steed. Contessa was a supporting character for Nick Fury, but she still managed to get a lot of solo stories. There was even a Girl from U.N.C.L.E. spin-off that I liked as much as the Man.

In the modern era, you have Bond girl Wai Linn (Michelle Yeoh) showing up the titular character. You’ve got Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) leading an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink Spy-fi show called Alias for five seasons. There was a La Femme Nikita remake starring Maggie Q. Batwoman is the best Bat-Family book on the shelves. ABC Family, of all places, gave us Natalie Morales in The Middle Man, which feels like TEEN Agents after it graduated from college.

Clearly if I wanted to write a book with female protagonists that would appeal to young ladies as well as 12-year-old-me, it had to be a Spy-fi book. And that’s a biggest part of how TEEN Agents was born.

****To leave a comment, please choose an "identity" in the drop down box below. You can choose Name/URL and just leave your name.  If you come to us from Facebook, you may have to leave the Facebook site and return to us from your browser in order to post your comment.****

Learning From Mistakes

I made a mistake. When I set up this blog I didn't check the comment settings. It honestly never occurred to me. Well, last week during our free book giveaway I discovered the problem when I realized that a hundred people had looked at the blog, but not one of them had posted a comment for our contest! The two devoted fans who jumped through the hoops and hurdles in order to get their comments posted should be lauded. Still, I don't intend to make it so difficult to participate in our giveaways, or any other discussion for that matter. If you were one of the many trying to comment for your chance to win Into the Flames, by Jessie Sanders, I'm sorry. You can still find it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Learning from mistakes like this one, I've decided to move our contest announcements to Wednesday. Each week I hope to introduce to you a fabulous new book from an indie author. Last week I told you about TEEN Agents in the Plundered Parent Protocol. Well, on Friday we will get to hear from the author, Joshua Unruh, as he shares some of the inspiration he's carried from childhood into his books. He has graciously offered to share a free copy with one of our lucky readers!

So, leave a comment below for your chance to win and then be a good friend and share the link. We make it easy for you. Just click one of the buttons below to share it on your favorite social site. Then, come back Friday and see what the author has to say. We'll announce the winners this weekend, so stay tuned.

You Gotta Read: TEEN Agents

TEEN Agents in The Plundered Parent Protocol by Joshua Unruh is a fabulously fun adventure.  It tells the story of Elly Mourning, Hea Jung Noone and Saturday Knight, best friends who are all about to celebrate their thirteenth birthday.  A mysterious teenage boy decides to crash the party with an army of robots, and boy do they crash it!  The robots capture the girls' dads and carry them away.  The worst part?  No one believes it happened!  Only the girls saw the robots and their handsome leader.  Who is going to believe a few thirteen year old girls crying about evil robots who swoop down from the skies?

With their dads missing, and presumed dead by all the adults in their life, the girls decide it is up to them to play rescue party.  That's when they are approached by the director of a top secret agency, T.E.E.N.  The Teenage Extranormal Emergency Network will help them in their rescue mission, that is if  they can pass the dangerous obstacles that will test their skills.  They will have to work together if they want to survive and become agents.  Can they pass the test?  Will they ever see their fathers again?  Can they find the villain behind the kidnapping and stop him before he completes his evil plan?

My daughter and I both loved this book.  It was a fast read, fun and exciting as the adventure carries you through chapter after chapter of tricks and traps, drama and daring.  The girls are like most thirteen year old girl.  Best friends, they still manage to squabble once or twice and spend a fair amount of time thinking about boys all while wanting to save the world.

The eleven year old girl in this house thought this book was "awesome!  The best book ever!"  She has now read it three times and is planning a birthday party with this book as her theme.  If she could, I know she would send a copy to each one of her friends.  In her words, "every girl will LOVE this book.  So, they should go get one right now.  And I mean RIGHT NOW!"

Well, you heard the girl.  Go get yourself a copy!  You can find it at Amazon, both in paperback and in Kindle edition.  Don't own a kindle?  That's okay, they've got an app for that!  You can download the Kindle app for almost any digital device.  Go check it out and then come back and tell us how much you loved it.

Gotta Read,
Heather