Blog Tour: "The INDIGO AWAKENING World" A GUEST POST by Jordan Dane AND Giveaway!

I am super excited to be a part of INDIGO AWAKENING's blog tour 
with Kismet Book Tours today!

Prepare yourself to catch a glimpse of an author's brain (Jordan Dane) 
and how she created INDIGO AWAKENING and THE HUNTER'S Series world!!!

"The Indigo Awakening World"

Welcome to the inside of my author brain. 

Just shove aside my Prefrontal Cortex and have a seat. Can I get you a beverage? If you want a taste of how the Indigo Awakening world began, you have to think like an author.

This is a normal human brain.

Below is an author brain. You’ll notice there is plenty of space for story conjuring.

The major inspiration behind Indigo Awakening came from my research of Indigo children. Query “Indigo Child” on the Internet and you’ll get over 8 million hits. Real life and headlines often inspire my books and this time is no exception. Conspiracy theorists have linked the CIA, the UN, and the Pentagon to the phenomenon known as Indigo or Crystal children. For the purposes of fiction, I took liberties in my portrayal of this phenomenon, but Indigo kids are generally described as highly intelligent, gifted teen psychics with a bright "indigo" aura and a mission to save the world. They have high IQs, have been known to see angels and commune with the dead. Because they are frequently misunderstood, they are diagnosed by therapists and doctors as having attention deficit or behavioral disorders and are often medicated.

Are Indigo children real or are they manipulated by adults to believe their sensitivities are special? Are they dysfunctional misfits or saviors who must be respected as the next evolution of mankind? You decide, but I find the notion of man’s evolution very intriguing.

So the most important question in a writer’s arsenal is “what if.” What if Indigo kids are the next evolution and their psychic abilities are evolving and escalating? Who would fear this and feel threatened? I had to have a larger than life villain with a universal reach to terrorize these children. (Yeah, that’s how authors think.) The Church of Spiritual Freedom (specifically, a covert operation of overzealous “Believers”) use their faith as justification to persecute those they fear, believing God is on their side. They fear that Indigos and Crystal children threaten humanity’s existence with their “unnatural” superiority. That’s the basic conflict, a David versus Goliath storyline, but I also like to have images of settings in my mind while I’m writing so I can be “in” the scenes and put the reader there too.

Much of the initial action in the book takes place in West Hollywood and the Sunset strip. LA is amazing. What are some of my impressions and real locations that made it into the book? Pink’s Hot Dogs, the vibe of Sunset Strip, tall palm trees lining the freeways, the Viper Room (renamed the Copperhead Club), the LA County Museum of Art that looks like a human spine, Griffith Park, the abandoned LA Zoo, and the Bristol Mountains (east of LA) where the fictional Stewart Estate is located.

This is the image I thought of when I wrote about the Stewart Estate. This particular picture is of the Lichtenstein Castle in Germany. I also like the mansion used on the CW TV show Arrow, but the fanciful oddities of the Lichtenstein castle is AMAZING.

In every author brain, there are dark and scary recesses. While I researched what setting I wanted for Indigo Awakening, I found out that there are eleven miles of below ground passages under downtown LA. That sold me. These tunnels are a maze of abandoned railroad tracks, vehicle overpasses through foothills, or secret passages built during the time of Prohibition to transport illegal alcohol. Hollywood types shoot movies in some of them, like the Matrix. But in this scary dark setting, the Indigo children find safety and a home, thanks to one of their own, Kendra Walker. She creates an oasis beyond the prying eyes of those who wouldn’t understand how they live.

Another key location in LA is the spot where Rayne Darby finds a mysterious runaway, Gabriel Stewart, when she’s searching for her brother, Lucas. Griffith Park and the abandoned LA Zoo were an uber cool place for me to discover and I had to have them in the book. Here are some pics I used of the real location:

The Indigo Awakening world starts with real life and research, but once the author’s mind takes over, the Indigo world will hopefully trigger the imagination of the reader. After all, reading is an adventure and calisthenics for the brain, right?

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Indigo Awakening
The Hunted #1
by Jordan Dane
Release date: December 18th, 2012
Published by: Harlequin Teen
Genre: Young Adult

SUMMARY

Because of what you are, the Believers will hunt you down.

Voices told Lucas Darby to run. Voices no one else can hear. He’s warned his sister not to look for him, but Rayne refuses to let her troubled brother vanish on the streets of LA. In her desperate search, she meets Gabriel Stewart, a runaway with mysterious powers and far too many secrets. Rayne can’t explain her crazy need to trust the strange yet compelling boy—to touch him—to protect him even though he scares her.

A fanatical church secretly hunts psychic kids—gifted “Indigo” teens feared to be the next evolution of mankind—for reasons only “the Believers” know. Now Rayne’s only hope is Gabe, who is haunted by an awakening power—a force darker than either of them imagine—that could doom them all.

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Book Depository

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Jordan Dane

Jordan Dane launched her back-to-back debut suspense novels in 2008 after the three books sold in auction. Ripped from the headlines, Jordan's gritty plots weave a tapestry of vivid settings, intrigue and dark humor. Publishers Weekly compared her intense pacing to Lisa Jackson, Lisa Gardner, and Tami Hoag—and named her debut book No One Heard Her Screamas Best Book of 2008. INDIGO AWAKENING will be the third YA novel written by Jordan Dane.

website | twitter | facebook | goodreads | HarlequinTEEN website

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Follow the Indigo Awakening Blog Tour Schedule for more info, posts and giveaways:

 Friday, January 4th - Harlequin Paranormal Blog

Monday, January 7th - Bumbles and Fairytales 
Wednesday, January 9th - Miss Page Turner's City of Books 
Friday, January 11th - Supernatural Snark 

 Monday, January 14th - The Page Turners 
Wednesday, January 16th - Fiktshun 
Friday, January 18th - Bewitched Bookworms

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GIVEAWAY

There are two giveaways!

1.) The first: enter to win a a copy of Indigo Awakening! Just enter your info into the Rafflecoper!

2.)The second: Harlequin's Grand Prize Package!!! Includes:

TWO copies of INDIGO AWAKENING,

ONE copy of SPEECHLESS, 

ONE copy of PUSHING THE LIMITS, 

ONE copy of HOOKED... aaand TWO Harlequin Notebooks.

Simply enter via the Rafflecoper widget and get extra entries for tweeting (once per TourStop), following Jordan on twitter, leaving your mailing address (for faster shipment of the prize) and for leaving a comment at each Tour Stops (one extra entry for each TourStop).  

(See full contest rules here.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A blog tour for:

http://www.kismetbt.com/

A huge thank you to Kismet Book Touring and Harlequin Teen for making this post happen!

And thank you for stopping by today! Enjoy!!!