Spotlight & Giveaway: Ending Eleven by Jerri Chisholm

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Jerri Chisholm to HJ!

Hi Jerri and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Ending Eleven (Book 3 in the Eleven Trilogy)!

Please summarize the book a la Twitter style for the readers here:

A fast-paced, heart pounding conclusion to the Eleven trilogy, that tests Eve’s will like never before.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

With bruises on knees and blood on my feet
Yo! Ho! Blow the man down
You name the place for us to all meet
Give me some time to blow the man down

Pain pushes against the inside of my temple; it pulls at my smashed-in ear. I try to bring up the image of Justice Andrews, of his fists colliding with me, or Sitwell driving the butt of his gun into my skull—events that happened just a couple hours prior, but the dark and unknown world spins too quickly. Too disorienting, too much swirling ink. I can’t think of anything and through the blankness, that tune, hollered by an unknown chorus, swells again.

Give me some time to blow the man down

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Not everyone survives Ending Eleven…
• The utopian world aboveground has sinister secrets of its own
• The book was inspired, in part, by Blackstone’s ratio: “[B]etter that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”

What first attracts your main characters to each other?

What first attracted the main characters to each other was the way they conducted themselves in the fighting ring, back in Book One. In this book, their long history keeps them tethered together even when things get tough.
 

Using just 5 words, how would you describe your main characters”love affair?

It feels right, like coming home.
 

The First Kiss…

Technically, the first kiss happened in Book One. In this book, however, the first kiss takes a long time to happen! That’s because Eve and Wren’s relationship is tested like never before. Not only do they both have injuries (both physical and emotional) to complicate things, but they have new potential love interests, too.
 

Without revealing too much, what is your favorite scene in the book?

I love any scene that takes place underground, since so much of the trilogy is set there. In this scene, Eve discovers a rebellion is underway in Eleven, led by a shady character named Bauer, which sets the stage for the rest of the book.

A rebellion is underway in Compound Eleven. A legitimate one. And maybe killing guards and setting off bombs aren’t methods I’d choose personally, but at least it’s real, tangible action. Plus, if Katz has imposed all those sanctions, he and the other Premes must be nervous. And that can only mean one thing: Bauer and his friends are doing something right.
I pull myself onto the top net of the storeroom, push through the access hatch, out into sunlight. It’s only then I remember Wren. That the person I’m most excited to share the news with can’t hear me, can’t form thought, can’t even open his eyes.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would be absolutely crucial to include?

This scene is important, because it’s when Eve and her mother are finally reunited. Eve finds the courage to ask her mother why she was made to fight in the Combat League as a child, and she realizes that it was her own choosing…

I remember my thinking so clearly I can practically taste it. That young man could clobber any guard who came his way under Katz’s command. And so, if I could become that man, if I could reach the spot in which he stood, I, too, would be untouchable. They couldn’t drag me aboveground to die like they did to Jack. They couldn’t take my parents, they couldn’t take my own child one day.
It was all about self-protection.
It was all about fear.

Readers should read this book …

Readers should read the book because it has plenty of action and drama in its own right, plus readers will finally find out what happens to Compound Eleven, its occupants, and, of course, Eve and Wren!

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I’m currently working on another YA dystopian trilogy, called Pretty Little Robots. It’s not as gritty and violent as the Eleven Trilogy, and is set for release in the summer.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Paperback copy of Ending Eleven by Jerri Chisholm, to a US winner.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Is forgiveness always the right choice?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from Ending Eleven (Book 3 in the Eleven Trilogy):

Two more days have passed, and I have rested. Healed. Yet, Wren remains the same, same, same. Lizbeth is as tight-lipped as ever about his condition, or maybe she just doesn’t know. Doesn’t know if he will live, or if he will die.
The truth is he might not ever wake, and it’s a reality, she says, I should prepare for.
I haven’t come close. I have refused to accept it for even a second. Instead, when I’m assured someone else is watching over Wren—Long, sometimes, but usually Lizbeth—I have found solace in the woods whenever Lizbeth has allowed it, I have bathed in the creek, I have helped gather and clean berries from nearby, I’ve even helped smash apart nuts. I’ve met other members of the camp, too, and have spent easy time chatting with Michael and Muji, AJ and Anne. Whenever I thought of Wren or my parents or my friends, whenever my breathing became shallow and tenuous—I stubbed my hands into dirt, or I pushed a twig back and forth between forefinger and thumb. Always peacefulness re-emerged, as if the wilderness is my medicine.
But now, the time has come. Like a magnetic force pulling me back. Back to Eleven, always back to Eleven.

Excerpts. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

My name is Eve Hamilton.
Everyone in Compound Eleven thinks I was killed. But they’re dead wrong…

I spent my entire life in Compound Eleven as a fighter. Surviving in an underground city filled with violence, oppression, and tyranny. We were told the world above was scorched, an immediate death sentence. I should have died never knowing the truth. Instead, when I fought Wren—a boy from the top floor, a Preme—I fell for him. And eventually learned that my reality was an insidious lie.

Escaping Compound Eleven nearly killed me and Wren. Now we’re aboveground, where the world is anything but a toxic, burning wasteland. It’s green and lush, filled with sunshine, fresh water…and hope. All of which tastes bitter when I see what it’s cost me. Because something in Wren has changed. He’s broken—along with whatever it was between us.

Now the tides of violence in Compound Eleven are rising, threatening to spill out and shatter this peaceful place with brutality, corruption, and death.

But do I stop them…or join them?
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | Goodreads |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Jerri Chisholm is a YA author, a distance runner, and a chocolate addict. Her childhood was spent largely in solitude with only her imagination and a pet parrot for company. Following that she completed a master’s degree in public policy and then became a lawyer, but ultimately decided to leave the profession to focus exclusively on the more imaginative and avian-friendly pursuit of writing. She lives with her husband and three children, but, alas, no parrot.
Website | Instagram |