Title: Youthful Voices: A Guest Post by Justin Bog

 I'm pretty excited about this blog tour, since this book is rather unique looking(this blog tour is making me want to purchase it!) and looks pretty great! Thanks to Justin Bog for the guest post!


Thank you very much, Emily, for inviting me to stop by as part of the Sandcastle and Other Stories virtual book tour. It's really kind of you. I love your blog and the fact that you know what you like and want to share this with other book readers. The Young Adult genre is one of my favorites, and it is in a high glossy period of growth and popularity across pop culture.

Aside: I just heard today that Kristen Stewart made over $34 million dollars last year, due mainly to her role as Bella in the Twilight films: Whoa. 

That shows the power of a YA story coming to life and capturing the interest of more than just teenage girls. I read all of the Twilight books; the author does know how to write a compelling story - the arguments about what the story, the intentions of the characters, means, is a fun one to follow whether people like or dislike Twilight. Now, The Hunger Games film, has surpassed every Twilight and Harry Potter film in terms of Box Office, something unheard of for a first film in a series. Power. I actually liked the movie version of The Hunger Games better than the book, but only by a little bit. The beginning of the story borrows from the chilling classic short story, The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, one of my favorite authors.

A few stories in Sandcastle and Other Stories use a teenager's voice. A youthful point of view in some of these stories, is important to me. Even though I would rate the book PG-13 for darker subject matter, there is nothing graphic in the writing; a lot of the action, violence, or moral and ethical questioning is only suggested, or talked about as a remembrance; I wanted the reader to finish a story and say: Wow, turn back to the beginning of the tale and read it again to try to figure out how the story was put together from the very first word, how the characters' secrets sometimes betray them. If my short fiction can garner an emotional response, all the better, and again: wow. I grew up enjoying stories and watching films that suggested the fright, showed a physical vagueness, but not the gore. The build-up of suspense is the most frightening thing. I think of the shower scene in Psycho, Hitchcock's most famous scene, where he reveals a knife, quick edited movement, but nothing more gruesome: he left it up to the mind of the viewer to fill in the horror.

In one of the tales I tell, On the Back Staircase, a young girl is unable to fall asleep. She finds herself alone in her rambling Victorian farmhouse even though she's surrounded by her huge sleeping family, and her thoughts begin to grow ominous as she witnesses a dark shadow moving up the driveway. She begins to scare herself. She sleeps, dreams, awakes, and then hears a creak on the back staircase, as if someone is there, waiting, and knows she is awake and listening for his next step. Poseidon Eyes tells the fantastical tale of a young girl who becomes the pawn, a plaything, of an ancient god. The narrative centers around how this young girl copes throughout her young adult life with an affliction gifted to coerce her into submissiveness, and how she plays the game with equal verve. One tale, Cats In Trees, follows the psychological interplay between sisters, while, in Under the Third Story Window, a young adult sits outside on her stoop in a bustling, but fallen-down city neighborhood and observes the people around her. She can't help but turn inward, think of her own demons in her past, as the heat builds on the street and people turn on one another.

The voices of the characters speak to me when I write, and I love to hear them come alive. Children see things very differently from adults; they still have that sense that the world is huge, mysterious, dark, incredible, maybe even very close to the land of fairytale -- they dream and hope. I love to capture that on the page.

Thank you again and I hope you and your readers enjoy Sandcastle and Other Stories as much as I did writing it.

Justin

Justin Bog, first and foremost, grew up a voracious reader, movie fanatic, and music audiophile. Justin always carried a stack of library books and collected way too many comic books from his local Ohio small-town drugstore. More than one teacher scolded Justin to put his suspect reading materials away and join the class. Justin began to make up stories of his own, using an old typewriter he found in the attic.
So it comes as no surprise that Justin pursued an English Degree at the University of Michigan, followed by Film and Music Appreciation classes -- finally graduating from Bowling Green State University with an MFA in Fiction Writing. After teaching creative writing, Justin began apprenticing in a number of bookstores and editing fiction for a midwestern journal. Justin ended up on the management team at Chapter One Bookstore in the Sun Valley resort area for a decade, offering book recommendations to its local celebrities, skiing fanatics, and tourists. Currently residing in the San Juan Islands just north of Seattle, Justin has the opportunity to focus on his own novels and short stories, while contributing commentary and reviews of Pop Culture. Justin continues to engage his lifelong passion for writing in combination with his curious mindset as the Senior Contributor and Editor at In Classic Style. Sandcastle and Other Stories is his first book.

Want to buy Justin's book, Sandcastles and Other Stories? Find it here on amazon: Buy Sandcastles and Other Stories at Amazon

Want to contact/find Justin?

Email him at JustinBog@me.com, find his blog, 'A Writer's Life'  at justinbog.com , find him on Twitter at @justinbog, find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JustinBog1!

Did you enjoy Justin's guest post? Does his book seem good? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!