Top Ten Surfing Tips... 15 Days With You by Ara Grigorian (Guest Post & #Giveaway) @araTHEwriter



Welcome to my tour stop! Check out a fun guest post from the author and the giveaway below...

15 Days With You
By Ara Grigorian 
YA Contemporary
Paperback & ebook, 348 Pages
September 24th 2019 by Love, Laugh, Learn Media

Summary

“Filled with tumultuous emotions of grief, romance, guilt, secrecy and anger, 15 Days With You is an accomplished work of drama sure to be enjoyed by audiences of all ages.” 5-Star Review, K.C. Finn for Readers’ Favorite

A mother’s dying wish. A son in search of answers. A fifteen-day surf odyssey with the California girl who will dare him to rethink everything.

Alone after his mother’s unexpected death, seventeen-year-old Shep leaves Texas to crash with his uncle’s family in Malibu. Before he can hang his cowboy hat, Shep learns something that blows his mind—in her youth, his hard-working single mom was a gifted surfer on her way to international fame. And her dying wish was for him to recreate the surf tour she completed when she was eighteen—the summer she got pregnant with him.

Along with his cousin Carmen (the red-blooded competitive surfer) and her best friend Samantha (the opinionated and mildly annoying beach goddess), Shep hits the road for a surf trip up and down Pacific Coast Highway. Armed with his mother’s ashes and fifteen sealed envelopes—each containing a page from her high school diary—Shep will discover a new side of the complex woman he’d only thought of as Mom, and might finally learn the identity of a man he’s never met—his father.

But each time he paddles out into the waves, a nagging question haunts him—the one he may not be ready to answer: Is he learning to surf because he wants to honor his mother’s dying wish, or running from the real reason he can’t go back to Texas—his own terrible mistake?

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Guest Post:
Shep's Top Ten Surfing Tips

I asked Shep what tips he wanted to share with the readers. At first, he told me he’s no expert. But it didn’t take long before he rattled off a bunch of truths. I asked him for tips, he gave me truths. What can I tell you, my characters have a mind and will of their own. Here they are:

1. Please, don’t ever assume Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High is an accurate representation of surfers!

2. Surfing is a relationship—a connection with the water, the wave, and the wind

3. Surfing is about being one of the few in the water, while the many on the coast stare, clueless.

4. Surfers listen for and feel the adrenaline, the rolling energy of the waves and how the formation of the sea floor causes the water to behave differently

5. Surfers understand that an innocent swell can transform into a tower

6. The wave will challenge surfers to feel her, to adjust with her. And if we respect her, then maybe she’ll let us stay for a while longer

7. The wave is in charge. This is a glorious, miraculous sport with a dark side. The wave can take you down and hold you there and split your board and your back

8. The wave won’t shed a tear over you or your injury. She’ll move on and forget you were ever there

9. Surfing is reserved for the extraordinary

10. To surf is divine. When surfers walk on water, they are that much closer to God

About the Author

Ara Grigorian is the international award-winning author of GAME OF LOVE, his debut novel. He is a technology executive in the entertainment industry. He earned his Masters in Business Administration from University of Southern California where he specialized in marketing and entrepreneurship. True to the Hollywood life, Ara wrote for a children's television pilot that could have made him rich (but didn't) and nearly sold a video game to a major publisher (who closed shop days later). Fascinated by the human species, Ara writes about choices, relationships, and second chances. Always a sucker for a hopeful ending, he writes contemporary romance stories targeted to adult and new adult readers.

Ara is committed to helping writers tell better stories. He is the co-founder of the popular Novel Intensive seminar. Also, he is a workshop leader for the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and the Southern California Writers' Conference (both Irvine, CA and San Diego, CA). Ara is an active member of the Romance Writers of America and its Los Angeles chapter.

He is represented by Stacey Donaghy of the Donaghy Literary Group.


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Do you surf and have any thoughts on the author's guest post? Will you be reading this one?

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