Cover Reveal: Wicked Restless by Ginger Scott & Guest Post on 'Flawed Characters'

I loved Wild Reckless, the first book in Ginger Scott's mature YA-contemporary series, and now the sequel Wicked Restless has its reveal! Here's the cover reveal hosted by Wordsmith Publicity so that you can all finally see what this looks like, and check out the beautifully written guest post as well.

Andrew Harper grew up in a house marked by tragedy. His older brother Owen did his best to shelter him, but you can only be protected from life’s pain for so long. Eventually, you end up just feeling numb…and isolated. Loneliness was the one constant in Andrew’s life. Until one girl, met by chance in a high school hallway, changed everything. 

Emma Burke was a mystery and all that was beautiful in this world, the only air Andrew ever wanted to breathe. She took the lonely away, and filled it with hope and color, and Andrew would do anything to keep her safe, happy and whole. But sometimes, what feels good and right is what ends up hurting us the most. And when Andrew and Emma are faced with an impossible decision, Andrew is tested to see just how far he’s willing to go for the girl who owns his heart. 

 Cuts are deep. Scars are left behind. And revenge beckons. When Andrew finally gets his chance, in college, five years after his first love broke him completely, he finds out old feelings don’t really disappear just because you say you hate someone. The more he tries to avenge all that he believes he lost, the more he uncovers the real story of what happened years before. Love is wicked. But a restless heart is never satisfied beating on its own. Can Andrew and Emma make it right before it's too late, or will the ties that bind them now destroy their only chance at a future? 

If the last book is anything to go by, this sequel is going to be even more intense and amazing!

Guest Post: Beautiful, Ugly, Perfectly Wonderful and Oh-So-Necessary Flaws by Ginger Scott

Imagine a story where everyone was perfect. Every character said the right thing, did the right thing, was kind and gracious and humble. It would be...the most boring story ever! Or...perhaps the creepiest ever - I'm undecided on that.

I'm fairly confident I would be hard pressed to find a reader or a viewer of such a story who wasn't waiting for the other shoe to drop. We can't read about perfect people without that voice in the back of our heads saying "okay, but what's wrong with him?" And there's a reason for that. Well, two reasons, actually. And they're both what push me to build flaws in every single character I create.

Firstly, people are, by nature, imperfect. Humans make mistakes. We screw up, say things we shouldn't, behave selfishly and act out irrationally. Even those of us who are close to perfect make massive F-ups. It's what makes us interesting. If we didn't have missteps along the way, then the things we did right--the above and beyond we go to for others, or the truly remarkable displays of emotion we make--would never stand out. It would just be one more thing in a long line of all the right moves. How very...meh.

The second reason is we like to see ourselves in the things we watch, listen to and read. Think about it: that song that sticks with you, that you hear once and immediately run home to download--what is it about that song that drives you to act? Is it because everything about it is predictable? Or is it because of the emotion, how the singer conveys feeling broken, how the words tell a story that strikes a nerve inside?  Is  it the flaws woven into the melody?

I'm going to bet on the flaws.

When I sat down to finally finish my first novel, the book I'd carried around half-finished for far longer than I should have, I spent most of my  time building up the nerve to be raw and honest with my characters' flaws. My hero in Waiting on the Sidelines is a teenage boy--Reed Johnson, the popular kind of quarterback with everything, who really knows nothing about life. I had to show his arrogance, his nativity about how to really treat people, and sometimes I had to make him say and do those things that make us girls cringe. I had to--because those are his flaws. He owns them.  And in real life, us girls sometimes fall for the messed up, head-case  of a boy anyway. We love him. And that...that's OUR flaw. And it's okay. It's real, and reading about that, seeing a story we've lived through  ourselves play out in words, is one of the reasons we seek out books. At least, it is for me. It's also a large part of the reason I write the stories I write.

For me, building a character always begins with the flaws. But before I make them speak or craft what they look like, or tell the situation they're in, I take one step into their past. I like to find that moment--the one that made that flaw theirs in the first place. Maybe it's something that makes them not trust others, or maybe it's something that makes them closed off and aggressive. Maybe they're scared, or maybe they lie to everyone they love. Something made them that way though--it's that something that I'm hungry for, that I find irresistible.

 I've never felt the power of flaws more than when I wrote the Harper boys. Owen Harper, my main hero in Wild Reckless, is the epitome of flaws with reasons to back them up. The book begins with a heartbreaking experience in a young Owen Harper's life--he witnesses the very public death of his father and is quickly shadowed by gossip and labels put on his family. That moment, and those shadows, are what make Owen's colors.

 These traits--they trickle down. And in Wicked Restless, I'm able to show how what happened to Owen forged a path for his brother Andrew in many ways. But paths can change, and decisions we make can fix some flaws and create new ones. This is the very core of Wicked's story and Andrew Harper's character. He craves love, and when he's faced with losing it, he turns to resentment as a form of comfort. But the one girl he resents is the key to everything, and she has so many flaws of her own--Emma Burke is afraid. Afraid of loss, afraid of trust, afraid of her past and her future.

 Fear is such a vital flaw. It can protect us, but it can also shelter us--paralyze us. For me, this flaw is the most identifiable. Fear was my great flaw. It kept me from putting my work out for others for so long. I was afraid of what people would think. My words are so very much a part of me can't seem to separate them from the person I am. And there are times where I feel fear scratching away at me, begging for me to let it in  to take over again. But facing my flaw also gave me a new strength—I think it's drive.

 I am driven.

 For every flaw, a new power is born. For my Harper boys, that strength is love.

And I hope we can all identify with that a little too.

Releasing 20th October 2015

What do you think of character flaws and how important they are in the scope of a story?