The very lovely Becca J. Campbell is here on her Gateway to Reality Blog Tour, complete with a full-on scavenger hunt. This is really fun, so make sure you join along.
Welcome to Day Six of the Gateway to Reality Blog Tour! Thanks so much to S.M. Boyce for having me on her blog. Read on to hear more about this New Adult novel that merges Urban Fantasy and Science Fiction, and be sure to enter the giveaway below for the chance at one of three awesome prize packs!
Art and Urban Life
Shortly after I got the idea for Gateway to Reality I decided it would be set in Chicago. I had recently visited the city, and I generally prefer to write about places I’ve been rather than second guessing a location. I picked this city not just because I love Chicago, but for two other reasons: character and plot.
I knew my main character, Wes Teague, would be an art school graduate living in an urban setting, and I knew that art would play big in the story. Wes makes the minimum to cover his bills, relies on public transportation, and lives with few amenities. He’s estranged from his family and doesn’t have that great of a relationship with his girlfriend. He is an artist in a funk, slightly disgruntled and dissatisfied with life. Little does he know that his life is about to get turned upside down—and not in a good way.
Once I knew that Millennium Park’s Cloud Gate sculpture (also known as “the Bean”) would play a big role in the story, the Chicago setting was a definite. Several other local pieces of art make an appearance as well. But the Chicago in Gateway to Reality is quite a bit different from the place we know.
Chicago—with a Twist
Most of the story takes place in alternate universe, a place that we would label a dream. But in Gateway to Reality, dreams are the only real world. Thus, the bits of Chicago surrounding Wes’s adventure aren’t complete, and the laws of nature there are anywhere from skewed to nonexistant. Wes is concerned about what kind of world he’s entered when he sees the skyscrapers behind the Cloud Gate dancing and swaying, but the moving skyline is the least of his worries.e
Here’s a little more about the story:
Talented artists shouldn’t be waiting tables, scraping by, and living mediocre lives. But that’s exactly what art school graduate Wes Teague is doing.
Then he wakes from a bizarre dream, haunted by the sense that his life isn’t real. A harrowing truth presents itself–the real world lies in his dreams, not when he’s wide awake.
The dream world he enters each night is rich and vibrant. Chicago appears the same on the surface, but chaos runs rampant as gravity, physics, and other laws of nature become fluid, changing unexpectedly. There, Wes’s parents, brother, and sister are strangers. His girlfriend Emily doesn’t recognize him. Wes longs to return, to unlearn the truth about his dual reality.
Wes would sacrifice almost anything to get back to blissful ignorance in a false world.
But now he has feelings for the real Emily.
And Now for the Good Stuff—A Giveaway
I’m giving away several prize packs to celebrate the book’s release. (Want to see the prizes? Go here to have a look!)
The Grand Prize is a Chicago-theme prize pack and it includes:
- An autographed paperback of Gateway to Reality
- A journal with an artistic representation of Chicago on the cover
- A Cloud Gate button
- A Gateway to Reality button
- Three postcards: Gateway to Reality, Cloud Gate, and Crown Fountain
The Second Prize is:
- An autographed paperback of Gateway to Reality
- Gateway to Reality postcard
The Third Prize is the full Becca J. Campbell ebook library (your choice of Kindle or ePub version):
- Gateway to Reality ebook
- Foreign Identity ebook
- Not the Norm (Sub-Normal #1) ebook
- Unmasked Alloy (Sub-Normal #2) ebook
The Scavenger Hunt Blog Tour is on!
You can enter the giveaway immediately, but to really amp up your odds at snatching one of these prize packs, check out each site along the blog tour.
April 1st Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Reviews
April 2nd The Peasants Revolt
April 3rd Catharsis of the Bogue
April 4th The Pen and Whisk
April 5th Write for Life
April 6th S.M. Boyce
April 8th Paranormal Lounge
April 9th Lisa Is a Bookworm
April 10th Jade Kerrion
April 11th Paper Book Princess
April 12th Now is Gone
April 13th Worlds Away Book Blog
April 15th FU Only Knew
April 17th Sarcasm and Lemons
April 18th Brandon R. Luffman
Your Sixth Clue
Wes visits many worlds in the Existence. Here’s your challenge in this scavenger hunt:
Collect the names of the fifteen worlds in Gateway to Reality (one will be revealed each day).
Following the schedule above, collect a world name at each stop, and when you have them all, plug that list of 15 worlds into the giveaway below to win a BONUS TEN ENTRIES.
HERE’S YOUR SIXTH WORLD: Aquarius
Make sure to check out Paranormal Lounge on Monday for your next clue. Or, you could grab the ebook now and read it to find the answers for yourself!
Good luck!
Where to find Becca
Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads Author Blog | Pinterest | Amazon Get Gateway to Reality now!
Gateway to Reality
Talented artists shouldn’t be waiting tables, scraping by, and living mediocre lives. But that’s exactly what art school graduate Wes Teague is doing. Then he wakes from a bizarre dream, haunted by the sense that his life isn’t real. A harrowing truth presents itself–the real world lies in his dreams, not when he’s wide awake. The dream world he enters each night is rich and vibrant. Chicago appears the same on the surface, but chaos runs rampant as gravity, physics, and other laws of nature become fluid, changing unexpectedly. There, Wes’s parents, brother, and sister are strangers. His girlfriend Emily doesn’t recognize him. Wes longs to return, to unlearn the truth about his dual reality. Wes would sacrifice almost anything to get back to blissful ignorance in a false world. But now he has feelings for the real Emily.
About Becca J. Campbell
An avid lover of stories that tiptoe the line between fantasy and reality (even when they plunge off one side or the other), Becca J. Campbell looks for new angles on bridging the gap between the two. She holds a special place in her heart for any story that involves superpowers or time travel. Her passion is defying the limits of her own creativity. Becca’s journey into writing began as many of her other creative endeavors do – by daring herself to try something new. The question “what if I wrote a novel?” and some hastily scribbled notes on a church handout were the inspirations that jump-started her first book. Since then, she has written three additional novels and several shorter works. As the wife of a musician and mother of three young boys, Becca’s life is never dull. Whether it is writing, painting or knitting, she enjoys making stuff that wasn’t there before. You can find her blog, Inspiration for Creation, at http://www.beccajcampbell.com. Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads