Once Upon a Twilight!: Blog Tour: Triple Threat Blog Tour

Welcome to Stop #9 on the Triple Threat Blog Tour featuring Myra McEntire, Kate Ellison and Jennifer Lynn Barnes! Today we welcome Kate Ellison author of Notes from Ghost Town and The Butterfly Clues. Don’t forget to scroll to the bottom of this post for a great giveaway OUaT is hosting and for details on the Triple Threat Blog Tour grand prize giveaway!

The Triple Threat Blog tour is hosted by Media Masters Publicity and you can view the full Triple Threat blog tour schedule by CLICKING HERE.

Follow Kate Ellison via: Web • Blog • Goodreads • Facebook • Art • Etsy • Bio

Kate Ellison's Notes from Ghost Town weaves tale of not just mystery and unspoken love, but mental illness as well. Kate share's her thoughts and personal experience on the topic:

Mental Illness in the Family

Though no one in my immediate family was mentally ill (or not in any diagnosed way, at least), I grew up around it in many respects. It was a sort of veil that seemed to hang over our heads. My mother always described her own mother as being more of a body than a mother, a woman who would lock herself in her bedroom all day and do the bare minimum required of parenthood, and of living itself, I think. She was later diagnosed as having a chemical imbalance, which she attempted to remedy through various means, included electroshock therapy, but none of which worked for very long. My mother's sister was also likely schizophrenic, and though I hadn't seen her since I was six years old (she died recently), would sometimes flare back into the family sphere by calling up in the middle of night for weeks at a time, making all sorts of insane claims about things which were almost certainly hallucinations or extreme paranoias, and for which she was seeking financial assistance. And—wow—not to make this a laundry list of my own familial craziness, but, I've also got a very close cousin who had an undiagnosed, but severe, case of OCD which plagued both of our lives, since I spent so much of mine beside her. All this to say, I suppose I do have a more intimate understanding of mental illness than some, though I also think that it's a common thread through many families, and not unique to mine.

Though I can't speak to living, personally, with mental illness, I can say that I think living with, or growing up very closely with, another person or people who suffer from mental illness, requires a great degree of personal strength, and also the choice to surround yourself with as many healthy, sane people as you can. You don't just have to be some rock-hard pillar of inner wellness, either, but also a person willing to explore your vulnerabilities, and your pain, and to talk about them. I'm not necessarily saying you've got to do this with a licensed professional—though I know many, many people who see them and find them very helpful—but you must at least be willing to get it out in some way, to work through it, to talk to someone.

Of course, there's no single way that every single person “overcomes” this, and even if there was, I wouldn't know it. I know that the people closest to me who've had experience living with mentally ill people, or with their own mental illness, have been quite shaped by them, and by how they chose to deal with it. Many of them moved far away from their toxic homes; many of them are in therapy; most of them are artists. I find art (all kinds) probably the greatest, and healthiest, way to work through what plagues you, and to help revel in what brings you joy. And then, somewhere along the way, or maybe from the very beginning, the work becomes the joy, and even if you are not “cured” or the people you love are still sick, you have these things you've created; you have that muscle. It will keep you strong. It will make you stronger.

***Please visit BookHounds on Monday for the next stop on The Triple Threat Blog Tour***

Notes from Ghost Town purchase links: Amazon • Barnes & Noble • IndieBound

The Butterfly Clues purchase links: Amazon • Barnes & Noble • IndieBound

The Triple Threat Blog Tour is also offering a COVER REVEAL GRAND PRIZE GIVEAWAY. The cover reveal is of Myra McEntire's last book in the Hourglass Trilogy due out this July – Infinityglass. To celebrate the Big Reveal each stop on the blog tour will have a “piece” of the cover. By stopping by each blog on the tour, you can collect all the pieces and submit the final image by 10pm on 2/12 to qualify to win the Triple Threat Cover Reveal Grand Prize – a library of works from Jennifer, Kate and Myra, the authors in the Triple Threat blog tour.

There are a total of 15 pieces to the puzzle - one for each stop on the tour.
Collect all 15 pieces to reveal the cover of Infinityglass by Myra McEntire (publishing in July)
Submit the assembled cover via the following link HERE by no later than 2/12 at 10pm ET. You will be entered to win the 6 book Grand Prize Giveaway of: Jennifer Lynn Barnes' Nobody and Every Other Day, Kate Ellison's Butterfly Clues and Notes from Ghost Town and Myra McEntire's Hourglass and Timepiece.
The puzzle can either be assembled electronically or a picture of the assembled printed pieces is also acceptable
The winner and completed cover will be posted on Myra McEntire's blog HERE on 2/13.

Thanks to the blog tour we are also offering a finished hardcover copy of Notes From Ghost Town & a new paperback edition of The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison, our featured author. Enter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway