Blog Tour: Cress author guest post + giveaway

January 27, 2014 Heidi Blog Tour, Giveaway, Guest Post 0

As you can imagine I jumped at the chance to be on the blog tour for Cress by Marissa Meyer. I love the Lunar Chronicles something fierce. Each book is so amazing!

You can follow the blog tour here. Read on to find out about Marissa experience riding a camel AND enter to win all three Lunar Chronicles books!

Riding a Camel (a.k.a. “Research”)

By Marissa Meyer

A large portion of CRESS takes place in northern Africa, and I so badly wish that I could have traveled to Egypt or Morocco and taken a guided tour through the Sahara as a part of my research. Unfortunately, such an adventure wasn’t in the cards for me while writing the book.

(Neither was space travel, although there have been lots of news stories coming out recently that you—yes, you!—could go up into space and float around for 90 whole minutes, all for the low, low cost of $250,000. So that’s something to keep in mind for Book 4, I suppose.)

I do believe in doing as much hands-on research as is practical, though, and so I was thrilled when, a little over a year ago, I heard about a special event happening at ZooLights, the annual holiday lights show at Point Defiance Zoo in my hometown of Tacoma, Washington.

Namely, they were letting you ride a camel. A real, live camel. And it would only cost $6.00, plus the $8.75 entry ticket. Bargain!

That was all the motivation I needed to set up a double date with my husband and some friends of ours who have an adorable four-year-old son—because four adults riding camels at the holiday lights festival might have looked just a little suspect.

Upon arriving, I tried to act like a responsible adult and meander calmly through the aquarium and pretty lit-up pathways, when what I really wanted was to run to camel arena immediately. But finally we found the camel rides station, and with not much cajoling, was able to persuade my friend’s son to take a ride with me. We got to go twice around the mini arena, at a soothing, plodding pace.

Here we are:

Despite the neon palm trees, I can’t say that my experience was all that similar to the characters’ experience in the book. Mostly because my protagonists are traveling through the Sahara desert in sweltering September heat, whereas I was in the Pacific Northwest in the middle of December, bundled up in cozy winter wear. And I had a kid with me. And I was surrounded by Christmas lights set up to look like penguins and elephants.

Nevertheless, it was a fun experience, and I did learn one semi-useful tidbit: camels are not the most comfortable of animals unless you have a really high-quality saddle, according to the handler. The saddles they had here were admittedly not of the highest quality, and I was glad to not have to trudge through an entire desert in them.

Research accomplished.

So cool! Although, you wouldn’t catch me on a camel! Random fact about me: I’m allergic to camel fur!

Giveaway:

Use the rafflecopter to enter to win! US/Canada only. 13 or older.