BLOG TOUR & AUTHOR INTERVIEW with Christina Bauer for "Angelbound" Audiobook

 TITLE: Angelbound Audiobook

(Angelbound Origins series, #1)

AUTHOR: Christina Bauer 

GENRE: Young Adult Paranormal Romance

AVAILABILITY: Audible and iTunes

LENGTH: 14 hours and 48 minutes
LIST PRICE: $24.95

About The Book

Eighteen year old Myla Lewis is a girl who loves two things: kicking ass and kicking ass. She’s not your every day quasi-demon, half-demon and half-human, girl. For the past five years, Myla has lived for the days she gets to fight in Purgatory’s arena. When souls want a trial by combat for their right to enter heaven or hell, they go up against her, and she hasn’t lost a battle yet.

But as she starts her senior year at Purgatory High, the arena fights aren’t enough to keep her spirits up anymore. When the demons start to act weird, even for demons, and the King of the Demons, Armageddon, shows up at Myla’s school, she knows that things are changing and it’s not looking good for the quasi-demons. Myla starts to question everything, and doesn’t like the answers she finds. What happened seventeen years ago that turned the quasi-demons into slave labor? Why was her mom always so sad? And why won’t anyone tell her who her father is?

Things heat up when Myla meets Lincoln, the High Prince of the Thrax, a super sexy half-human and half-angel demon hunter. But what’s a quasi-demon girl to do when she falls for a demon hunter? It’s a good thing that Myla’s not afraid of breaking a few rules. With a love worth fighting for, Myla’s going to shake up Purgatory.

~AUTHOR INTERVIEW with Christina Bauer~

What gave you the inspiration for the storyline?  

I was raised a Roman Catholic, and ANGELBOUND all started with a spiritual question: “What if in the after-life, everyone was pretty much as confused as we are here and now?” In other words, what if angels were only more likely to be good, but they could still have their not-so-great moments? The reverse would be true of demons.

At the same time, I became really interested in the ideas of lust and wrath as sins, especially for women. I realized that there are times when both emotions are completely appropriate, but we don’t really talk about that too much, especially for teenage girls… And that got me wanting to have a teenage heroine who didn’t only have wrathful feelings against evil souls and demons, but one who actually liked “getting her wrath on” and fighting the bad guys. In this scenario, she’s not really evil, so long as she has it under control.

With those questions under my belt, the world building got super-interesting. In the end, I decided to highlight the whole idea of “what’s good and evil” by pairing my heroine with a part-angel Prince who thought that anyone with a touch of demonic DNA must be wicked, through and through. And so, ANGELBOUND was born!

Are there any hidden themes in the book that you hope readers will discover?

To answer this question, I need to share a little about my day job in high-tech marketing. When I first got into the workplace, there were no real templates for women who wanted to kick ass — you were seen as either a dragon lady or a den mother. And as hard as that was, I soon discovered that the situation was even worse for men. My guy friends told me they felt pressured to show their killer instinct or be seen as weak. If you weren’t a sadist or a sociopath, it wasn’t a great situation. Long story short, there weren’t any templates out there for how to team, be aggressive, and have fun while you’re doing it.

One day I realized that part of the problem was that we had few (maybe no) stories along those lines. How did we expect anyone to be prepared for anything else than the status quo? So if folks find a hidden meaning from my books, I’d love for them to vicariously experience two people who act as a team, share information openly, fight side by side, and love every minute of it.

Are any of the characters based on real people you know?

Oh, yeah! The character of Cissy (Myla’s best friend) is PARTLY based on my own best friend. To be honest, I've been somewhat dreading ANGELBOUND coming out on audiobook because now my BFF would finally be able to read it. In particular, I'd been sweating 1) if she'd figure out that she's Cissy and 2) if she’d hate me for it forever. Why? People don't generally like to be characters in books, especially if that character is part demon. Long story short, my bestie recently called me about precisely these two topics. Here’s a recap of what happened:

BEST FRIEND CALLS, WE SAY OUR HELLOS AND THEN:

BEST FRIEND: I've been listening to Angelbound.

ME: Oh? (Thinking: please don't ask me if you're Cissy)

BEST FRIEND: I have a question for you.

ME: Shoot.

BEST FRIEND: Am I Cissy?

ME: Um. (Thinking: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck)

BEST FRIEND: Well, am I? Because she really sounds like me sometimes.

ME: Well, partly. I mean you look like her and maybe talk like her, but you don't have envy issues. 

BEST FRIEND: Oh. 

ME: (Thinking: that response could mean a lot of things) Are you mad?

BEST FRIEND: No, why would I be? You got me the hot boyfriend with the huge house.

ME: Oh, good. (Thinking: that's my Cissy 🙂)

Who has influenced you most as a writer?

Without question, the writer that influenced me the most was JRR Tolkien. Reading LORD OF THE RINGS as a teenager was a life-changer for me. I adored the combination of character, plot and world building. I also liked how it wasn’t corporate and there were tons of pages of characters walking through the woods and chatting about elves, dwarves and stuff. It felt real to me.

If you could have any three literary characters over to your place for game night, who would you invite, what would you play, what would you serve, and why?  

Ooooh, this is a good one! Since it’s a hypothetical, let’s start this off by saying that I don’t care if my house is destroyed. In that case, the game would be an epic battle of wits and magic. For that purpose, I’d invite over Smaug (dragon from THE HOBBIT), Grendel’s mother (badass monster from BEOWULF) and Hermione Granger (wizard from HARRY POTTER). So you know, I’d invite Harry Potter, but honestly? Hermione knows all the good spells.

After the battle was over, I’d serve everyone a big meal of their choice so they can recover from the fight (it’s not “to the death” in my hypothetical). And I’d definitely get video.

 About the Author

Christina Bauer knows how to tell stories about kick-ass women. In her best selling Angelbound series, the heroine is a part-demon girl who loves to fight in Purgatory’s Arena and falls in love with a part-angel prince. This young adult best seller has driven more than 500,000 ebook downloads and 9,000 reviews on Goodreads and retailers. It is now available as an audiobook on Audible and iTunes.

Bauer has also told the story of the Women’s March on Washington by leading PR efforts for the Massachusetts Chapter. Her pre-event press release—the only one sent out on a major wire service—resulted in more than 19,000 global impressions and redistribution by over 350 different media entities including the Associated Press.

Christina graduated from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School with BA’s in English along with Television, Radio, and Film Production. She lives in Newton, MA with her husband, son, and semi-insane golden retriever, Ruby.

Be the first to know about new releases from Christina by signing up for her newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/CBupdates.

Stalk Christina on Social Media – She Loves It!

·         Blog: http://monsterhousebooks.com/blog/category/christina

·         Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorBauer/

·         Twitter: @CB_Bauer

·         Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christina_cb_bauer/

·         LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-bauer-481b12139/

·         Web site: http://monsterhousebooks.com/authors/cbauer 

GIVEAWAYS and GOODIES!

Audiobook sample: https://youtu.be/yADVDpUK8I8

Book trailer: https://youtu.be/roznLuuUY1c

Video of author doing the voices: https://youtu.be/6mfmw1VT1IU

Discounts on the entire series: http://wp.me/p7Tzb3-2L5

Rafflecopter Giveaway: http://gvwy.io/filhpau