The Six by K.B. Hoyle - Audio Book Tour+ Giveaway

Author: K.B. Hoyle

Narrator: Dollcie Webb

Length: 10 hours 19 minutes

Series: The Gateway Chronicles, Book 1

Publisher: K.B. Hoyle

Released: Nov. 19, 2018

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Winner of the 2016 Literary Classics Gold Book Award for YA Series and recipient of the Literary Classics Seal of Approval

Darcy Pennington hates her life. She is an insufferably average teenager with no real friends, crushing social anxiety, and an indescribable sense of not fitting in anywhere. A change in her dad's job forces her to attend Cedar Cove Family Camp the summer before her eighth-grade year, and Darcy once again finds herself on the outside of a social circle of teenagers, with her only advocate being an awkward girl named Samantha Palm. The only problem is, Darcy has no desire to be friends with her, but as the hostility from the other teenagers increases, she decides to return the friendship.

When Darcy begins to experience strange magical occurrences, she comes to believe she's either losing her mind or on the brink of a discovery that could give her purpose in life. After unwittingly stumbling through a magical gateway to a new world called Alitheia, she convinces Sam and the other four teenagers to travel there with her, and despite their earlier hostilities toward her, they eventually concede leadership of their small group to Darcy. Once there, they learn the "arrival of the Six" was prophesied hundreds of years before and that they must expel an ancient evil from the land. In the end their lives, and the fate of Alitheia, will hinge upon Darcy. Will she have what it takes to fulfill her mysterious purpose? Or will she fall prey to a deadly foe?

https://soundcloud.com/k-b-hoyle/retail-sample-the-six/s-AClVQ

K.B. Hoyle is an award-winning Young Adult author, a public speaker, a creative writing instructor, and a former classical history teacher. She stays busy at her home in Alabama with her husband and their four young sons.

She is a Readers' Favorite 5-Star reviewed author, a multiple recipient of the Literary Classics Seal of Approval, the winner of the Literary Classics Gold Book Award for Best YA Series (2016) for The Gateway Chronicles, her best-selling six-book Fantasy series, the Literary Classics Silver Book Award winner for YA Science Fiction (2015) for BREEDER, the first book in her Dystopian Trilogy, The Breeder Cycle, and the Readers' Favorite Bronze Award winner in YA Science Fiction (2016), also for BREEDER. She was a featured panel speaker at the 2013 Sydney Writer's Festival in Sydney, Australia, and her books receive high acclaim from readers and reviewers worldwide.

She is represented by Ben Grange of the L. Perkins Agency. You can visit her website and sign up for her newsletter at kbhoyle.com

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"Daydreams and whimsy with with a touch of pixie charm."

A long-time daydreamer, Dollcie Webb has always carried a special fondness for Young Adult Fantasy literature. The poetic imagery and enticing otherworldliness call to her sense of curiosity, satisfying a deep desire to explore the world around her. A graduate of Michigan Technological University with a Bachelor's in Theatre and Electronic Media Performance, she's taken her experience in audio and theatrical performance and has melded the two into a career as an audiobook producer and narrator.

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Top Ten Reasons Why Readers Who Love Harry Potter Will Appreciate This Title

I know, I know, comparing your books to Harry Potter can be kind of a “No, no” for a number of reasons (I mean — it’s setting the bar a little high, right?). But I dare to make the comparison for a few reasons: For those of us who are huge Potterheads, it can be difficult to find another book series to scratch that “itch,” so I appreciate when someone lets me know about a series that has similarities. Also, this is feedback I’ve consistently gotten from my readers. And last, but not least, while writing The Gateway Chronicles, I studied Rowling’s storytelling methods and intentionally told a similarly structured story so that those who love the world of Harry Potter might find similar story beats in my books, as well. So without further ado, here are the top ten reasons why I think readers who love Harry Potter will appreciate The Six (and the remainder of The Gateway Chronicles):

1) It’s a story of friendship

One of the prevailing themes of both Harry Potter and The Six is that of friendship. In both stories, the narrative turns on the relationships between the main character and his (or, in my book, her) friends. When friendships are out of balance, so is the mental health and wellbeing of the main characters. In The Six, Darcy Pennington’s success hinges on whether or not she will allow some new friends into her life.

2) It’s a “fish out of water” story

As with any good “gateway” fantasy, taking the main character and trapping them in a new world/situation makes for all sorts of fun. This is what happens to Harry when he meets Hagrid (and proceeds to Diagon Alley, Platform 9 ¾, and Hogwarts), and for my main character, Darcy, it’s what happens when her parents drag her against her will to Cedar Cove Family Camp, where she slowly discovers some odd occurrences that could be magical… until she stumbles through a gateway to another world and all doubt is erased. Like Harry, Darcy (and her five friends) find out everyone in this alternate world knows a whole lot more about them than they know about themselves, and not only that, but they have magical abilities.

3) There is a slow-burning, friends-to-more, romance

One of the things I always loved about Harry Potter was the fact that I could tell Harry would eventually end up with Ginny, but Rowling took her time about getting there. Not only was this appropriate for the intended audience of the books, but it made the ultimate romance more believable and satisfying, in the end. In The Gateway Chronicles, Darcy also meets her eventual great love right away in The Six, but she’s only 13, and they don’t terribly like each other. Dislike turns into friendship in books 2 and 3, The Oracle and The White Thread, and into… more as the series progresses and the characters age. It’s a more prominent storyline than Harry and Ginny’s romance in Harry Potter, but a similarly slow burn.

4) Each book is a year-long adventure

There are a handful of things I intentionally patterned closely after Harry Potter, and this is one of them. Each book in The Gateway Chronicles (with the exception of the final book, The Bone Whistle), is a year-long adventure in the world of Alitheia. Just as you know exactly what you’re getting when you sit down to read a Harry Potter novel (one year at Hogwarts, with some adventures preceding and immediately after), likewise, that’s what you’re getting with The Gateway Chronicles.

5) The adults in the story are not wicked, foolish, or pointless

It is not uncommon in YA literature that all (or most) of the adults in the story end up being wicked, foolish, or pointless. J. K. Rowling avoided this trap so well in Harry Potter, and I sought to do likewise. So, if you’re a Dumbledore, Remus Lupin, Molly Weasley, or Sirius Black fan, I assure you that I have adult characters that are similarly not only not wicked, foolish, or pointless, but who have crucial roles to the story and who treat the young main characters with respect and dignity.

6) Episodic books; series metanarrative

As with Harry Potter, each book in The Gateway Chronicles tells a contained story — that concludes itself — while also contributing to a metanarrative. In other words, just as Voldemort isn’t defeated until Deathly Hallows, so my “big bad,” Tselloch, isn’t defeated until the very end of The Gateway Chronicles. But each individual book has its own narrative arc and individual conflict that, while resolving, also furthers the greater story. I patterned this after Harry Potter because I don’t like getting to the end of a book and feeling like it just ended without resolution, but I also think a series should have a clear metanarrative from beginning to end.

7) Unique magical elf-creatures

Every good fantasy series should invent some unique magical creature. J. K. Rowling has house elves (among others), and I created narks — which are elves that switch from day to night personas depending on whether it’s day or night (two beings housed in one body). There are lots of magical creatures in The Gateway Chronicles, but narks have proven to be, based on reader feedback, the favorite addition.

8) You get to grow with the characters

I loved growing up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. That was part of the delight of reading a “There and back again,” yearly episodic story — knowing that in each book, the characters would be a year older with all the unique traits that come along with each new year as a teen. Thus, in writing The Gateway Chronicles, I wanted to do likewise — not just for my young readers who would get to empathize with the characters who were walking alongside them, but for my older readers, too, looking back on those ages and remembering.

9) There is a magical system to learn

The magical system in The Gateway Chronicles is very different from the magical system in Harry Potter (it’s alchemy and enchantments and elemental magic, no wands or charms or anything like that), but when Darcy and her friends arrive in Alitheia, they get there with abilities that are new to them and no idea how to use them. Although there’s no magic school for them to attend, they are privately tutored in magic, and this instruction takes up a good amount of the story in The Six and on into books 2 and 3 (and even book 4, if I think about it). So if you love the classroom scenes at Hogwarts, there is plenty of that to go around in my books, as well.

10) The kids act their age

A recent complaint buzzing around the internet is that teens no longer act like teens in YA lit. Something I have always appreciated about Rowling’s young characters is that they actually act their age. Her authenticity inspired me, and I think it’s so important to have characters like hers. I’ve striven to do likewise — to have characters in The Gateway Chronicles who act like teens, not like miniature adults. In The Six, my main characters are 13-14, and they truly behave that way.

By Author K.B. HOYLE

Casting my books for television or cinema is always so hard because a) they start off YOUNG, and I’m not all that familiar with young talent, and b) they age from 13 to 19 (some as old as 21) by the time the series is over, so the look I hold in my head is not necessarily how I, or even my most devoted readers, view the characters. Therefore, I decided not to try and do a traditional dream cast post, but to post links to the character aesthetics boards I have made for each character on my Gateway Chronicles pinterest page. If The Six (and therefore hopefully the rest of the books in The Gateway Chronicles) were to ever be picked up for movie for streaming or traditional TV, I would hope that whoever gets cast looks something like these characters — and fits these aesthetics — I’ve found on Pinterest:

Assorted character looks!