The Game of Love and Death Blog Tour - Guest Post

Today I am delighted to host Martha Brockenbrough with a guest post as part of the blog tour for her book The Game of Love and Death.

First, here is a little about the book in case you haven't heard of it before. Also be sure to enter the giveaway at the bottom because you NEED this book.

Title: THE GAME OF LOVE AND DEATH

Author: Martha Brockenbrough

Pub. Date: April 28, 2015

Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic)

Pages: 352

Formats: Hardcover, eBook

Find it: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads

Antony and Cleopatra. Helen of Troy and Paris. Romeo and Juliet. And now . . . Henry and Flora.

For centuries Love and Death have chosen their players. They have set the rules, rolled the dice, and kept close, ready to influence, angling for supremacy. And Death has always won. Always.

Could there ever be one time, one place, one pair whose love would truly tip the balance?

Meet Flora Saudade, an African-American girl who dreams of becoming the next Amelia Earhart by day and sings in the smoky jazz clubs of Seattle by night. Meet Henry Bishop, born a few blocks and a million worlds away, a white boy with his future assured — a wealthy adoptive family in the midst of the Great Depression, a college scholarship, and all the opportunities in the world seemingly available to him.

The players have been chosen. The dice have been rolled. But when human beings make moves of their own, what happens next is anyone’s guess.
Achingly romantic and brilliantly imagined, The Game of Love and Death is a love story you will never forget.

I asked Martha to discuss the link between love and death in so many stories and why exactly she thought that connection exists. 

It is often said that love and death are linked. It's often found in tragic love stories (think Romeo and Juliet). Why do you think there is this link between them?

This is such an interesting question, and I think there are both emotional and structural links. When you write books, creating high stakes is key. It doesn’t mean every book has to end in a nuclear explosion. And it doesn’t mean that anyone has to die—the stakes come from how much someone wants something and what they’re willing to endure to get it.

Not long ago I watched a video of a ferret trying to leap from a counter to an ironing board, and there was this tense period in which it wound its little body up, relaxed, wound it, rolled around, wound up once more—and then finally took the leap only to experience heartbreak and humiliation.

With love, the stakes are high. Our bodies might not die without it, but our spirits surely do. We are wired to love and to be loved, and the loss of it hurts like nothing else. (It can also literally cause heart damage.)  Inside of a book and in life, death is the ultimate obstacle two characters in love can face. ‘Til death do us part’ is the biggest promise we can make each other in this life. Certain stories are going to demand that particular stake.

Emotionally, though, the link is more subtle. One of the themes I thought about with The Game of Love and Death is the tragedy of death-within-life. In other words, if you’re not living with love and authenticity, you’re dead already. So, love who you must love and live as you must live. Doing otherwise is a fate worse than death.

What’s more, if there wasn’t death, none of this would matter. We could do whatever we wanted, because the highest stakes would be suffering, and even that would mean less. When you have infinite days, what’s a bad one now and then? For all of us, the inalienable prospect of Death is a challenge to live as well as we can while we can.

Her guest post is amazing, and I am so happy to share it......

A huge thank you to Martha for writing this!

Martha Brockenbrough (rhymes with broken toe) is the author of two books for adults and five books
for young readers.

She's the founder of National Grammar Day (every March 4), and she's written game questions for Cranium and Trivial Pursuit. The former editor of MSN.com, Martha has interviewed lots of celebrities, including the Jonas Brothers and Slash (his favorite dinosaur is the diplodocus). Her work has been published in a variety of places, including The New York Times. She also wrote an educational humor column for the online encyclopedia Encarta for nine years.

She lives in Seattle with her family. Her favorite kind of food is Indian, although Thai runs a close second. Besides writing, she likes board games, playing music with the family band, travel to places far and near, drinking lots of coffee, and working out really hard at the gym.

Website  | Blog | Twitter  | Facebook | Pinterest | Tumblr | Goodreads

Now for the giveaway! FIVE winners will each get a finished copy of The Game of Love and Death. Use the Rafflecopter to enter below.

Also be sure to check out the other stops on the tour for more guests posts, reviews, interviews and much more!

Week One:

4/20/2015- Alice Marvels - Interview
4/21/2015- Books, Bones and Buffy - Review
4/22/2015- A Glass Of Wine - Guest Post
4/23/2015- Jump Into Books - Review
4/24/2015- IceyBooks - Interview

Week Two:

4/27/2015- Fiction Freak - Review
4/28/2015- Nerdophiles - Guest Post
4/29/2015- The Starry-Eyed Revue - Review
4/30/2015- Seeing Double In Neverland - Interview
5/1/2015- Winterhaven Books - Review

a Rafflecopter giveaway