Blog tour- THE MIND GAME by @MGHarrisBooks With An Interview & A #Giveaway!

Jaime | 11:48 AM |

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the THE MIND GAME by M.G. Harris Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

 

About The Book:

Title: THE MIND GAME

Author: M.G. Harris

Pub. Date: April 4, 2024

Publisher: Darkwater Books

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook

Pages: 298

Find it: Goodreadshttps://books2read.com/THE-MIND-GAME

Read for FREE with a Kindle Unlimited membership. 

Years have passed since her childhood friend disappeared, but Roni remains consumed by the mystery. Can she uncover what happened to Maxim Santiago?

Podcast fame thrusts 17-year-old Roni into a perilous quest to find her missing friend, who disappeared from Dulles Airport, Washington D.C. She teams up with tech-savvy Kenzie to crack cryptic messages and unearth a dark secret about trafficked kids. Dodging shadowy agents of the ruthless Russian dictator waging a global ‘Mind Game’ on his enemies, they end up in a sweltering Mexican town, a nexus for refugees.

They shared childhood memories, but Maxim has changed. He’s older, wiser, perhaps even dangerous. Now he seeks their help to rescue enslaved children guarding a world-shaking secret, but time’s running out. Roni and Kenzie dive into Maxim’s risky mission, testing their friendship amid a struggle for control of a key project that could win the ‘Mind Game.’

It's a journey that brings Roni an astonishing self-discovery. Can she trust in herself to help the rescue succeed?

From “sci-fi author M.G. Harris, creator of the best-selling Joshua Files” (Radio Times Magazine, 5th September 2013) comes an espionage mystery thriller for teens and young adults, set in a world of geopolitical conflicts that sits rather closely to our own post-pandemic world.


Praise for M. G. Harris:

  • "MG Harris proves she has a deft touch and a real skill for writing heart-stopping adventure" Vanessa Curtis, 16 February 2008, The Glasgow Herald
  • “M.G. Harris is a very skilled storyteller” Ed Fortune, Starburst Magazine, 2014
  • “Harris keeps the tension high throughout the action sequences” Paul Simpson, Sci-Fi Bulletin, 2015
  • “Harris’s prose is nice and breezy” Michael Cook, Geek Vibes Nation, 2023

 

Book Trailer:


Interview Questions

For the readers: can you tell us a little bit about your book and the characters?

‘The Mind Game’ is the first in a series of YA spy thrillers, set in a reality geopolitically similar to ours, but with a sci-fi/fantasy tweak.

I have planned a series of trilogies, the first of which sets up the origin story of 17-year-old, soon-to-be D.C. International High school graduate, Roni Padilla. She investigates the mystery of Maxim Santiago, a school friend who went missing five years prior. When she and her bestie/adoptive brother, Kenzie, track down Maxim to Chiapas, Mexico, they’re drawn into helping him complete a mission to liberate other kids like him from a camp in Cuba.

As in our own reality, there’s a worldwide struggle to hold onto freedoms against an axis of autocratic powers that are using all kinds of chicanery to destabilize democratic nations. Whoever gets access to Maxim and other kids like him could win the edge in this global mind game.

For Roni, her unique relationship to Maxim makes her a target for recruitment by intelligence services. That’s the direction the series takes. Actions she takes in book 1, relationships she makes and things she learns about herself, they all contribute to a decision she makes in book 3.

What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished the first draft of book 3, which takes Roni to South Korea. Now I’m moving onto the fourth book, a prequel centering Maxim and two other side characters who show up in ‘False Flag,’ book 2. Their backstory is referred to quite a bit in the first trilogy, so I felt it’d be the right time for a pause in Roni’s story and to find out more about them.

Were any of the characters in the book inspired by people from your real life?

In ‘The Mind Game’ Roni is living with the family of Kenzie, her best friend from school. He has two moms, and I did base these characters on two close friends, a lesbian couple who have two kids. Originally I used their real names until I realized I needed my characters to do things and make decisions that my friends might not, so I changed the names. It’s surprisingly challenging to make fictional characters inspired by real people depart from what you think those real people would actually do! And similarly difficult for those people to read it, so all round it was better to change their names.

Who was your favorite character to write? What about your least favorite?

I usually write from the point of view of a single character only, the exception being my EMANCIPATED series for Harper Teen, authored as M.G. Reyes. The narrator is always my favorite to write because I get the most experience doing it.

In ‘The Mind Game’ it’s Roni Padilla. For the first time in my writing career I’m writing a narrator who is consciously addressing an audience, which is a new challenge, very fun. Precisely who Roni’s audience is, that’s tbd. Of all the characters I’ve ever written, she is the one perhaps most similar to me, which makes her a little easier to write. At least until she starts doing crazy difficult stuff that I would probably run a mile from!

My least favorite character is usually the one who features least, because I know them less well than the others. My books usually have a lot of plot and action going on, and only enough space to focus on the main character and their closest relationships. Side characters don’t get a lot of focus. But that’s the advantage of writing a series, I can feature different characters more in future.

What is your favorite passage/scene in your book?

Without giving too much away, there are a couple scenes where Roni gets the first inklings of abilities she didn’t know she had. In book 1, she doesn’t yet understand the implications of her experience in those scenes. There are scenes where the payoff is in book 2, ‘False Flag’ (out in hardback at the end of October!), which makes them mysterious, maybe a little spooky. I love writing things like that.

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

Mostly geographical research, some travel in Mexico and Cuba, some technical research about helicopters. Thankfully, less than in my previous series ‘The Joshua Files’ and ‘Gemini Force 1’! As ‘The Mind Game’ series develops with plots more along the lines of espionage thrillers, I’m finding I need to research aspects of tradecraft for the intelligence services. Luckily one of the new authors I’ve started reading is a former MI6 operative writing under a pseudonym and ‘he’ kindly agreed to answer my questions.

Lightning Round Questions

What are you reading right now? Or what do you have on your TBR that you’re dying to read?

Right now I’m reading ‘Box 88’ by Charles Cumming. The series was recommended to me by other thriller authors. Being new to spy fiction, I’ve some catching up to do, and I’m really enjoying the new wave of espionage thrillers.

I’m dying to read another book by Gabrielle Zevin, or ‘The Poppy Wars’ by RF Kuang, or ‘Demon Copperhead’ by Barbara Kingsolver.

Favorite social media site?

YouTube. I’m a politics nerd, so 30-90 minute lectures or discussions about geopolitics are my jam. Also comedy bits, can’t get enough of those, especially Sarah Cooper. A close second is Instagram for cooking and baking videos. I engage much less than I used to on social media, which is a conscious decision. It’s hard to find time to write, when you limit your screen time, which I try to do for the sake of my eyes.

Favorite Superhero or Villain?

Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil. He’s been an angsty superhero since before it was cool. I have some classic runs in my DD comic book collection. More recently, I’m really getting into ‘Invincible,’ which is an adult comicbook with teenage heroes. So you get adult themes explored but also, a coming-of-age story, which obviously as a YA author, I’m here for.

Favorite TV show?

For me, ‘Breaking Bad’ is the nadir of TV writing. But my first TV fan involvement was for ‘Blake’s 7’ the British 70s sci-fi drama. Writing ‘Blake’s 7’ fanfic is how I got my start writing, in fact.

Contemporary, I’m gonna say ‘Doctor Who.’ We recently watched all of New Who straight through, an experience that I highly recommend, if you have time. It helped me to see the Chris Chibnall era in a different light. Now Peter Capaldi and Jodie Foster could well be my favorite Doctors of the post 2005 ‘Doctor Who.’

Sweet or Salty?

Sweet, preferably chocolatey.

Any Phobias?

Spiders and enclosed spaces. Combination of the two is my room 101.

Song you can’t get enough of right now?

Tacones Rojos by Colombian reggaetón Singer, Sebastian Yatra. It’s so ridiculously upbeat. Cannot help but dance when I hear it!

2024 Movie you’re most looking forward to?

‘Wicked - Part 1.’ First saw the show in London when my daughter begged me to take her for her 16th birthday mother/daughter treat. Saw the show again a few weeks back, with a friend that I’ve been trying to persuade to learn one of the parts of ‘For Good’ so we can duet. Very excited for the movie. One of the great female friendship stories, in my book. My pal opted to learn the Elphaba part, btw :-)

Do you play video games? If so what are some of your favorites?

Not much, because I am a recovering gameaholic. No joke. I had to go cold turkey a long time ago, when my first child was one year old and I realized I was in danger of neglecting her.

Our kids are adults now, so a couple years ago I began to ease myself back in. I really enjoyed ‘Life Is Strange’ and I’m currently playing the sequel. Love the whole moody YA, Eastern seaboard vibe. It’s giving Twilight-first-movie (the cool indie one).

Have also gone back to classics I missed out on when I was abstaining, like the ‘Broken Sword’ series. You can get them for your mobile phone! Very fun, cheesy dialogue, smart puzzles and globe-trotting archaeology adventures.

 

 

About M.G. Harris:

M.G. Harris was born in Mexico City and raised in Manchester, England. She studied Biochemistry at St Catherine's College Oxford and stuck around for even more at St Cross College.

To this day she lives in Oxford. It's not an easy place to leave.

The first job M.G. Harris was ever aware of wanting to do, aged six, was to write children’s books. Then, aged eight and inspired by Doctor Who, she tried to make Wirrn slime with a friend’s Chemistry Set 4, discovered chemistry, and writing went out of the window.

But in 2004, a skiing accident changed everything...

You can find out more about how MG became an author at her website.

Subscribe to MG’s newsletter!

Website | Twitter (X) | YouTube | Goodreads | Amazon

 

Giveaway Details:

5 winners will receive a finished copy of the second edition paperback of THE MIND GAME, US Only.

Ends October 29th, midnight EST.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

10/14/2024

Daily Waffle

Guest Post

10/14/2024

Sudeshna Loves Reading

Interview

10/15/2024

Fire and Ice Reads

Guest Post/IG Post

10/15/2024

Brandi Danielle Davis

IG Post

10/16/2024

YA Books Central

Interview/IG Post

10/16/2024

TX Girl Reads

Guest Post/IG Post

10/17/2024

The Momma Spot

Guest Post

10/17/2024

Book Review Virginia Lee Blog

Excerpt/IG Post

10/18/2024

@callistoscalling

IG Post

10/18/2024

@alexandriavwilliams_

IG Review/TikTok Post

Week Two:

10/21/2024

Readingonthebrink

IG Review

10/21/2024

The Real World According to Sam

Review/IG Post

10/22/2024

A Blue Box Full of Books

IG Review/LFL Drop Pic/TikTok Post

10/22/2024

Deal sharing aunt

Review/IG Post

10/23/2024

Kim's Book Reviews and Writing Aha's

Review/IG Post

10/23/2024

@thepagelady

IG Review

10/24/2024

@evergirl200

IG Review

10/24/2024

Bookgirlbrown_reviews

Review/IG Post

10/25/2024

@pagesforpaige

IG Review

10/25/2024

Country Mamas With Kids

Review/IG Post


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