Month: September 2020

Where Angels Can’t Follow: Blog Tour Day 3

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to Day 3 of the Where Angels Can’t Follow blog tour with YA Bound Book Tours. (For my poetry people, that means 2 more days until we’re back to verses and agony in ink. I’ve written about 7 this week so far, so I’m ready.)

The first stop of the day is with The Cover Contessa. I have a guest blog post about the origin of Where Angels Can’t Follow there today.
http://www.thecovercontessa.com/2020/09/blog-tour-where-angels-cant-follow-by.html

Stop 2 is at I Love Books and Stuff Blog. My favorite Kiah-seeking-revenge quote is featured there.
https://ilovebooksandstuffblog.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/where-angels-cant-follow-blog-tour/

Stop 3 is at Baroness’ Book Trove. And OMG. Y’all. There’s a full book review there and no spoilers. This rave review is what authors live for. To get the lowdown without the plot secrets visit the link below.
https://baronessbooktrove.com/where-angels-cant-follow-by-jessi-kallison/

And our final stop of the day is at Have Coffee Need Books. (I love this blog title, and Ali is a great blogger to work with.) Where Angels Can’t Follow is featured here along with my guest post on the origin of the story. https://havecoffeeneedbooks.com/index.php/2020/09/22/guest-post-jessi-kallison-author-of-where-angels-cant-fly/

Thank you for hanging in here with us, and as usual on the blog tour stops, you can enter the giveaway for a copy of my books–Iron Shards, Hell and High Water, and Where Angels Can’t Follow.

Where Angels Can’t Follow: Blog Tour Day 2

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

Did I mention I published a new book today? 😉 We have a couple of new stops today and chances to enter the giveaway for Iron Shards, Hell and High Water, and Where Angels Can’t Follow.

You can read an excerpt regarding Kiah’s penchant for petty revenge at Ryann Hill’s blog.
https://ryannhill.blogspot.com/2020/09/where-angels-cant-follow-excerpt-and.html

Where Angels Can’t Follow is also featured today at Books Charming. I hope you look around if you’re a fellow book addict and find some new reads. https://www.bookscharming.com/2020/09/where-angels-cant-follow-by-jessi-kallison.html

Where Angels Can’t Follow: Book Birthday

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

Good morning, y’all. My mom likes to start these book birthdays off with issues that will give me mini-heart attacks at 6AM. (She means well and will be spamming all of her friends with my books all day.) “Your pre-orders aren’t being delivered correctly.” Or “people can’t pre-order on iPhones”. With a bit of Amazon consulting, it was sorted by 7AM, but I was almost relieved when Windows told me it had to configure a feature update. (Incidentally, if you have this problem with a pre-order, don’t delete your app and restart your phone over and over. Just delete the book and download it fresh. It will still be in your Kindle library if you delete it from the device.) Since I was helpless due to the Windows gods, I went for a four mile run listening to the catchy, fast songs from Hamilton. It was just the thing for a book birthday.

I get caught up, probably like most artists, in how well a thing is being received. Do I have reviews? Are they good? Did people love my characters? Did I sell enough to keep doing this? In the end, it doesn’t matter. I give my best words and best characters to my readers. I want to give you the same places to crawl into that I have–beautiful worlds with the kinds of people we want to know.

One of my favorite quotes about creating art is advice from Andy Warhol, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” I’ve been taking Mr. Warhol’s advice, and I have over a hundred pages of Iron Spirits done now. Here’s to knocking out the next two hundred.

I hope you find characters and lines in each of my books that sneak their way into the channels of your brain and that my books are a refuge when you need it. Happy reading!

Where Angels Can’t Follow: The Blog Tour

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

Y’all. Where Angels Can’t Follow will be released tomorrow! This has been a long journey for me. And every time I look over the lines, I am excited to share them with you. I can’t wait for you to meet these hilarious characters who walked into my mind and wouldn’t quit telling their stories.

We’re on our second week of the blog tour, and the lineup was arranged with YA Bound Book Tours. I’m really excited about the new content released in some of today’s posts. Here are today’s stops:

  • Daily Waffle is also featuring Where Angels Can’t Follow today. You can find a teaser scene between Nate and Kiah here, showing her unique ideas on revenge.
    https://www.dailywaffle.co.uk/2020/09/book-tour-where-angels-cant-follow-by-jessi-kallison/

    And at all of these stops you can register for a giveaway of my complete works–Iron Shards, Hell and High Water, and Where Angels Can’t Follow. (The copies of Where Angels Can’t Follow are ARCs as it hasn’t been released yet.)

Poetry: Worse

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

The anniversary of my attack is looming, a great maw snapping at the smiles and sunshine in my life. I’ve had an uptick in panic attacks, super hearing, and insomnia. I’m operating on caffeine and stubbornness today. It’s enough. This poem was inspired by me asking my significant other if he thinks I’ve gotten worse. Because for some demented reason, I have to know the truth; I have to pry it out like a rotten tooth.

Worse

“You’re getting worse.”
I wrap my arms around myself as far as they’ll go,
protecting my core like your words are hits.
But they don’t keep coming.

I wait for the conditional get-better-now, stop-panicking
receding footsteps.
But there was no or else.
No if-then.

You pulled me closer
as I apologized for more things I can’t help.
I might as well apologize for the rain, too.
And you stop my torrent
like a shut-off valve in the sky.

Where Angels Can’t Follow: Blog Tour Day 5

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

Good morning! We’re wrapping up the first week of the Where Angels Can’t Follow blog tour. (There’s one more week of blog stops to go, for those of you wondering when I would get back to poetry, writing blogs, and finishing Iron Spirits.) I can’t believe we’re only four days away from the release! I am excited to share the world, the characters, and their hilarity. One of my writing idols, Joss Whedon, once offered this advice for writing, “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.” And that was my goal.

Today’s stop on the blog tour is Jazzy Book Reviews. You can find an excerpt of Where Angels Can’t Follow here, if you haven’t gotten to it yet. (At least your wait for the rest won’t be long now!) It’s also one of your last opportunities to enter the Iron Shards giveaway.

https://www.jazzybookreviews.com/2020/09/where-angels-cant-follow-by-jessi.html

Where Angels Can’t Follow: Blog Tour Day 4

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

I have been featured in a guest post on Jaime’s World today. I wrote a piece on my Top 5 Favorite Movies. I don’t really watch movies much since my attack, and the exceptions usually involve my children. However, 2020 has not been the year for movie releases, so these should still be relevant. Also, my friends swear I am completely uncultured despite their best efforts. *shrugs* You’ve been warned. There’s not much overlap between what I want to watch and the Oscars winners list. Netflix also thinks I want to watch strong females in leading roles. (Make of those two facts what you will.) I hope you find something new and interesting to occupy your social distancing hours.

https://www.tumblr.com/arnoldjaime13/629476168582774784/blog-tour-where-angels-cant-follow-by-jessi

Poetry: Un-Days

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

I know that some of my readers are here because of our mutual love of poetry. And the Where Angels Can’t Follow blog tour is not going to speak to that. So, here’s a new poem I wrote yesterday, which was a hard day for me. I didn’t fall into the hole in my calendar, but I did keep busy with random chores, freezing meals to a ridiculous degree (who needs that much spinach lasagna?!), and finishing the day out with a drink. Odin, the German Shepherd who seems to know when my days are difficult, did not leave my side.

Un-Days

The days we used to celebrate

become holes in the calendar.

Stay-away-from-the-edge,

you-might-fall-in days.


Anniversaries that got crossed out–

absent champagne, flowers, and cards.

Birthdays that aren’t

for people that aren’t.

Days when the world stopped

and our lives fell

into a pit disguised as an ordinary day.


It’s a dubious privilege of aging–

learning how to span the shaky debris over those holes.

I’ll tell you my secret:

don’t look down.

Where Angels Can’t Follow: Blog Tour Day 3

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

Thank you for sticking with me on this blog tour. I hope you find some new YA reader blogs that recommend new favorites. There are two new stops today. The first is at Oh Hey! Books. I did a guest post for them on the Where Angels Can’t Follow playlist. I included songs I simply couldn’t have written the book without, songs that reminded me of New Orleans, and tunes that belonged with certain characters. I hope you find your new song obsession in the mix.

http://ohheybooks.blogspot.com/2020/09/where-angels-cant-follow-by-jessi.html

The second stop is at The Book Rookery. They’ve featured Where Angels Can’t Follow and posted the first chapter if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet. You can do so at the link below. (My linking is clumsier than usual. I’m sorry guys. WordPress switched over to a block format that isn’t giving me as many options as I had before.)

https://thebookrookery.com/book-tours/blog-tour-where-angels-cant-follow-by-jessi-kallison/

And throughout the blog tour, you will be able to enter the giveaway for a copy of Iron Shards, my debut novel.

Where Angels Can’t Follow: Blog Tour Day 2

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

I did a guest post for TMBA Corbett on my Top 5 Favorite Books. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to narrow that discussion down to only five books, but it was agonizing for me. You can take a look here.

Where Angels Can’t Follow was also featured at Books A-Brewin’. You can check out that page for new YA reading and to see Chapter 1 of Where Angels Can’t Follow if you haven’t gotten to it yet. You can find it here.

And there’s an opportunity to register for the giveaway of Iron Shards at every stop on the tour.

Happy Reading!