Author Christine Potter is here to tell us all about her YA fantasy Bean series! You can read an excerpt from The After Times, as well! Be sure to let her know what you think in the comments section and then follow the tour for more. Best of luck in the giveaway!
Say you’re Gracie Ingraham, nerdy but happy high school senior. But you’re also a time-traveler from 1962 who got a bit lost and has been living in the 2000’s since 2018. That would be plenty without it now being 2020. Covid has just shut down the world. Your pandemic pod? Your BFF Zoey—and your ex-boyfriend, Dylan.
Dylan still lives to spin weird vinyl LP’s with your sort-of, kind-of Dad, Amp. So your quarantine hobby is going to have to be Being Mature About Stuff.
But then your time traveling kicks into high gear again. And your long-lost brother and mom mix it up with a creepy, pyromaniacal force that is most likely demonic. How can love save the day when you can’t even go downtown without wearing a mask?
Read an excerpt:
Close to a decade ago, I started writing the first book of what would become the Bean series. I wanted to build a world readers could cuddle up with and lose themselves. I’d read somewhere about a very wise mother who had given her children what she called “dream starters.” One dream starter was to imagine being tucked into a warm, soft bed at Hogwarts…
So, yeah, I guess I set my sights pretty high. But I truly wanted to create that level of cozy. When I was young, I’d experienced it reading A Wrinkle in Time. And I loved the Anne of Green Gables books, too.
I knew right away I would have to do something set in the past—but that it would also include time travel. I wanted a big, surprising plot—but the cozy and the time travel were must-haves!
The coziest, most beautiful, most comforting place I know of is my home, New York’s Hudson River Valley, not too far from Sleepy Hollow. So I set my books there, where there are fiery sunsets over the Palisades, four real seasons, houses that date back hundreds of years, and some very creepy cemeteries!
I started the five-book saga in the year 1970. Bean Donohue, a high school junior who dreams of being a folk-rock star, discovers she has the gift of time travel. She might suddenly find herself in 1880 something. Or 1940 something. It makes for problems, and it’s scary, but it’s also really fun.
Meanwhile, Bean is coping with everything else in a sixteen-year-old’s life: snowstorms, rock concerts (Bean’s own shows and others), a boyfriend, a strict, demanding single mother, a BFF with a questionable boyfriend…
The whole series grew out of that first book. The first three installments are totally Bean-centric. In the second two, Bean is a Time Traveling Guide, now grown. There’s a new young heroine, Grace Ingraham, a time-traveling refugee from the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis who took a wrong turn and found herself in 2018. The After Times has all the characters in the series coping with the frightening beginning of Covid, in spring 2020. Masks, home hair-dye, pandemic bubbles…it’s all there. Is time-travel breaking quarantine? You’ll have to read The After Times to find out.
Because I love music and art (and am a folk musician myself), the books are full of music and people who make art. Because I love old buildings, there is some pretty spectacular architecture. The thing we do the most in my house is laugh, so all the books are funny, even when they’re being serious. Or scary.
The Traveling (time-traveling) happens suddenly, unexpectedly—and the world changes. But the Hudson River is always there, whether people are using oil lamps and candles or iPhones.
Ever wonder what would happen if stained glass could speak? Read the Bean Books—especially this new one, The After Times. It might even make a good dream-starter.
Across the way, the windows in the parish hall were all dark. Dylan had to be asleep. For a couple of minutes, I sat on the back porch of the Rectory in the strange, bright moonlight, scrolling on my phone. But no one I knew outside of our pod was up, either.
So I let my curiosity lead me. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and walked back into the graveyard to where the party had been the night before—where Zoey and I had seen Amp as a college kid with his friends. Although the church’s groundskeepers had cleaned it up by now, the beer can I’d kicked that afternoon glinted in the moonlight under a bush.
And then the air changed, and I knew exactly why I was awake.
****
It was Mom, my real mom, the one who tried to save me from a nuclear war that never happened, the one who ended up sending me the better part of a lifetime into the future. She was why I’d walked into the cemetery—why I had just Traveled. See, that’s what I mean about getting called. It’s like someone or something is saying, Hey. Hey, Grace! Take a look at this!
It had been a cool spring night. Now it was the middle of a sultry summer afternoon. The sky was full of thick, grey clouds, and you could smell a thunderstorm on the way. There was a lot of bird song—almost as much as there is if you get up at dawn and hear it. Ever noticed how the birds get talking to each other before storms? I ducked behind a bush, even though I had a feeling that Mom couldn’t see me. And I slipped my mask on just in case.
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The World of the Bean (and Gracie) Books
Close to a decade ago, I started writing the first book of what would become the Bean series. I wanted to build a world readers could cuddle up with and lose themselves. I’d read somewhere about a very wise mother who had given her children what she called “dream starters.” One dream starter was to imagine being tucked into a warm, soft bed at Hogwarts…
So, yeah, I guess I set my sights pretty high. But I truly wanted to create that level of cozy. When I was young, I’d experienced it reading A Wrinkle in Time. And I loved the Anne of Green Gables books, too.
I knew right away I would have to do something set in the past—but that it would also include time travel. I wanted a big, surprising plot—but the cozy and the time travel were must-haves!
The coziest, most beautiful, most comforting place I know of is my home, New York’s Hudson River Valley, not too far from Sleepy Hollow. So I set my books there, where there are fiery sunsets over the Palisades, four real seasons, houses that date back hundreds of years, and some very creepy cemeteries!
I started the five-book saga in the year 1970. Bean Donohue, a high school junior who dreams of being a folk-rock star, discovers she has the gift of time travel. She might suddenly find herself in 1880 something. Or 1940 something. It makes for problems, and it’s scary, but it’s also really fun.
Meanwhile, Bean is coping with everything else in a sixteen-year-old’s life: snowstorms, rock concerts (Bean’s own shows and others), a boyfriend, a strict, demanding single mother, a BFF with a questionable boyfriend…
The whole series grew out of that first book. The first three installments are totally Bean-centric. In the second two, Bean is a Time Traveling Guide, now grown. There’s a new young heroine, Grace Ingraham, a time-traveling refugee from the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis who took a wrong turn and found herself in 2018. The After Times has all the characters in the series coping with the frightening beginning of Covid, in spring 2020. Masks, home hair-dye, pandemic bubbles…it’s all there. Is time-travel breaking quarantine? You’ll have to read The After Times to find out.
Because I love music and art (and am a folk musician myself), the books are full of music and people who make art. Because I love old buildings, there is some pretty spectacular architecture. The thing we do the most in my house is laugh, so all the books are funny, even when they’re being serious. Or scary.
The Traveling (time-traveling) happens suddenly, unexpectedly—and the world changes. But the Hudson River is always there, whether people are using oil lamps and candles or iPhones.
Ever wonder what would happen if stained glass could speak? Read the Bean Books—especially this new one, The After Times. It might even make a good dream-starter.
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christine.potter.543/
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/chrispygal/
Blog: chrispygal.weebly.com
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Christine-Potter/e/B001K7URHS/
Christine Potter will be awarding $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteI like books like this, sounds great.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear it! Book 5, The After Times, stands alone and then you can binge the whole series backwards--or start at the beginning, either way!
DeleteMorning, all! Good to be here on Andi's YA Books this morning--and thanks to Andi and Goddess Fish for helping me out with my blog tour. This is my very first stop. I'm writing to you from an island off the coast of Maine, where I am for a few more days until I get home to my much-loved (and haunted!) place in the Hudson River Valley. My Bean books are all about time and place--so tell me: what are your happy places? I love New England, but I gotta say a hot cup of coffee and a bench by the mighty Hudson on an autumn day...that is truly mine.
ReplyDeleteGreat excerpt and cover.
ReplyDeleteThanks. That's a really cool part of the book. I had fun writing it.
DeleteThanks! That's a really cool part of the book! I had fun writing it!
Deleteintriguing
ReplyDeleteIt's a fun book. Thanks!
DeleteI really like the cover and the excerpt.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear it! Jay Aheer is the ET cover artist. She "gets" the Bean books like no one else. And thanks for liking the excerpt.
DeleteCongratulations on your release of The After Times, Christine, I enjoyed the post and the excerpt and your book sounds like a riveting read for teens! Good luck with your book and the tour!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing it with me and have a spectacular week!
Thank YOU!
DeleteThanks to everyone who had a look, and thanks to Andi's YA! Feel free to chase me down on Facebook, Insta, or my own blog if you want.
ReplyDeleteSounds excellent, thank you for sharing
ReplyDeleteI like books like this, sounds great.
ReplyDeleteHappy Saturday
ReplyDeleteHi Christine. The Bean series sounds really interesting. I don't think I'm a big time travel lover, but there's something about these books that tells me I need to give them a try.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds great! I like the time-travel theme.
ReplyDeleteI like the excerpt & book cover.
ReplyDelete