We are so excited to be a part of the blog tour for Rebel of The Sands by Alwyn Hamilton! I got my hands on this book early and I absolutely loved it and I can’t wait for more!!
Here are the details!
Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
(Website, Twitter, Goodreads)Also by this author: Traitor to the Throne, Hero at the Fall
Published by Penguin on March 8th 2016
Genres: Action & Adventure, Fantasy & Magic, General, Love & Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 320
Format: ARC 
She’s more gunpowder than girl—and the fate of the desert lies in her hands.
Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mystical beasts still roam the wild and barren wastes, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinni still practice their magic. But there's nothing mystical or magical about Dustwalk, the dead-end town that Amani can't wait to escape from.
Destined to wind up "wed or dead," Amani’s counting on her sharpshooting skills to get her out of Dustwalk. When she meets Jin, a mysterious and devastatingly handsome foreigner, in a shooting contest, she figures he’s the perfect escape route. But in all her years spent dreaming of leaving home, she never imagined she'd gallop away on a mythical horse, fleeing the murderous Sultan's army, with a fugitive who's wanted for treason. And she'd never have predicted she'd fall in love with him...or that he'd help her unlock the powerful truth of who she really is.
We had the chance to find out a bit more from Alwyn about what the road to publication looked like for her! Here’s her story!
Anyone who has seen a TV show ever knows the “Two Prom Dates” plotline. You know, where a character has two conflicting commitments and decides to do both at once, somehow. Chaos and confusion ensue, with your hapless protagonist wearing themselves out running around.
From late 2009 to late 2014, working full time and writing was kind of a very long version of this kind of sitcom episode that culminated with Rebel of the Sands going on submission. Complete with hasty costume changes, running between two locations and a misunderstanding that lead a good chunk of my office to believe I was pregnant.
I wrote 7 full books between late 2009 and late 2014, and part of 3 more. I did this in secret on the side, while I was also working full time. I’d spend my 9-5 sprinting across a salesroom in heels, and then my evenings sticking post-its to my wall so I could make a plotline work. I’d spend my morning commuting in, jammed between other people in suits, daydreaming whole worlds in my head where the cities were all named after tube stops. My lives did not cross over.
And then in 2014, they started to.
Rebel of the Sands was the 7th book I finished. It was the first one that I had ever prioritized even a tiny bit over my job while writing it. When I went to meet with my agent, after querying her, I left work at 5 p.m sharp for the first time in 3 years. I drew some strange looks and had to say “I have an appointment” more than once on the way out of the building to explain where I was going.
A few months later, I went on submission and that’s when the actual “Prom Night where everything goes crazy and Hilarity ensues” came in.
The day my book landed on desks in New York I stayed at work until 9 p.m doing a Budget Submission. While the budget program loaded, I was also secretly changing a character’s name and agreeing to a title change in a different window. By the end of that Friday we had ¼ of a budget and I had a book on submission.
The day I had my first call with an editor, less than a week later, I was on my 10th day of working in a row out of what would be 12.
The next few weeks as the calls continued I was also getting a new project off the ground from scratch and having regular meetings with our chairman. I spent them presenting figures while I refreshed my phone obsessively under the boardroom table.
I talked vaguely about appointments that were the reason I had to disappear for half days. I’m pretty sure this is where the rumour I was pregnant started. In fact I was going to visit publishers in London, dressed in my least severe work wear I could manage, shedding or donning jackets as I went.
The day of the auction for the book, we also had an auction at work. I was holding a phone with a client on it in one hand and my email with my agent at the other end in the other. I accidentally printed one publisher’s submission out in our silver vaults and got quizzed on why I needed a piece of paper with a publisher’s logo, a picture of a desert, and a picture of me, dressed as pop art (my twitter profile at the time) on it? At 5 p.m I had to stop pretending I was working and go upstairs to find a literal fainting couch to collapse on until my friend came and got me.
Luckily my “two prom dates” didn’t end with either of them dumping me. Instead, by about 10 that night I had a book deal and somehow my job, while suspecting I was pregnant and about to hand in my notice, hadn’t caught on. A few weeks later I’d have to confess about my second prom date anyway. But that night, I didn’t wind up getting punch dumped over my head in the high gym. Instead I sat on my floor with my best friend, shakily drinking Champagne and marveled that I’d pulled it off.
What a great story Alwyn and I can’t imagine how crazy and stressful all of that was!! Thank you so much for sharing your story with us!
Make sure you all follow the full tour for all the amazing content and giveaways!
About Alwyn Hamilton
Alwyn Hamilton was born in Toronto and spent her childhood bouncing between Europe and Canada until her parents settled in France. She grew up in a small town there, which might have compelled her to burst randomly into the opening song from Beauty and the Beast were it not for her total tone-deafness. She instead attempted to read and write her way to new places and developed a weakness for fantasy and cross-dressing heroines. She left France for Cambridge University to study History of Art at King’s College, and then to London where she became indentured to an auction house. She has a bad habit of acquiring more hardcovers than is smart for someone who moves house quite so often.
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