Things Changed by Patrick Jones | Spotlight, Excerpt, Author Guest Post, $25 Giveaway | #YoungAdultFiction
A book blog tour from Goddess Fish Promotions.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and Marianne & Judy at Goddess Fish for providing me with the information for this tour.
Book Details
Things Changed by Patrick Jones Published by Willow River Press on November 8, 2022
Genres: Fiction, Young Adult
Format: eBook
Pages: 208
Johanna and Paul have a passionate, yet volatile relationship. Shy Johanna knows no amount of happy memories can wipe out the verbal, emotional, and physical abuse. She finds the courage to walk away to have her own future.
Bret is a social outcast, but an intense relationship with Kylee makes him believe that dreams can come true. Bret’s world crashes down when Kylee cheats with one of Bret’s friends leading to a disastrous prom night confrontation.
Bret and Johanna, home from their first year of college, meet and find an instant attraction. Their chemistry is undeniable, but shadows from the past threaten the present when Paul re-enters Johanna’s life and Bret’s home life turns upside down.
Can two broken-hearted people break the grip of the past and find happiness?
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Excerpt from Things Changed
“Johanna, it’s Paul.”
I earned an A in AP Physics as a high school senior, so I know time can’t stand still, but hearing Paul’s voice again makes me question that. It makes me question everything.
“Johanna, it’s Paul,” he repeats.”
This is the phone call I’ve been dreading; this is the call I’ve been craving. In an instant, I am thrust from a successful, first-year Columbia University student back to my insecure Pontiac, Michigan, high school self. All it took was this voice from my past.
“Hello. You remember me, right?” he says, then laughs. It is a sound I have missed.
I know his laugh is quicksand, but I can’t resist.
“Paul, of course, I remember you. I’m just surprised to hear from you, that’s all.”
“It’s been a while, Joha, hasn’t it?” I tingle at the use of his nickname for me.
“Yes, you could say that,” I say, instead of the real answer, which is, ‘No, Paul, it’s not been a while. It’s been over two years since we talked.’ Other than visiting me at my high school graduation open house, mainly to show off his new girlfriend, Sarah, Paul had been out of my life. No calls, no texts, no messages. The past was in the past, but now things had changed.
Excerpt provided by the author/publisher for use in this post.
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Purchase Links for Things Changed
Amazon – OneLink for every country
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About Patrick Jones
From Flint MI but now residing in Minneapolis MN, Patrick Jones is the author of over fifty novels for teens. His work with teens in correctional facilities and alternative schools has informed his works such as the Unbarred and The Alternative series.
While he published his book in 1992 and this first novel in 2004, his initial publication was for a professional wrestling magazine when he was only eight years old.
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Author Guest Post
There is something to be said for persistence. Things Changed is a novel with an origin well before any teen reading it today was born. Maybe before their parents were born too.
I wrote the first version of my first novel Things Change in 1987. Yes, 1987. It rewrote it, let it go for years at a time, published other things, but then finally got serious about it and I published it in 2004. My second novel Nailed was published in 2006. I’ve published over thirty books since, but never quite got the characters from those first two books out of my head, probably because both books were partly autobiographical.
Paul in Things Change is the worst version of who I was in high school, while Bret in Nailed was the best. While I think there are slivers of my teen life in many of the books I’ve published since those first two, those main characters suck with me because they were truly part of me. I remember them better than I remember my own real teen years.
Johanna, the main female character in Things Change, also hung with me long after I published the book. I think it was because during school visits I met so many teenage girls who asked me, more or less, how did I know so much about them to write their story of being a smart girl trapped in an abusive relationship. Sadly, there are lots of Johanna’s still in our high schools as dating violence remains a serious problem for young women.
One time when doing a visit to a high school promoting these books, I was asked by one student how come in Things Change the nice guy Johanna ends up with such controlling creep like Paul for her boyfriend, while in Nailed the nice guy Bret ends up with a girl like Kylee who cheats on him and breaks his heart.
So, she asked, why couldn’t Johanna and Bret be a couple? It was a great question that took me more than a few years to answer. That answer is Things Changed, a dual sequel that brings back characters from the first two books, introduces some new ones, and explores the hardships that come in the wake of shattered first loves.
If the first two books were both about the emotional journey of finding then losing a first love, then Things Changed is about the impact of that first love on another relationship. Johanna and Bret were both bullied in their first relationships: Johanna physically, psychology, and emotionally abused by Paul, while Bret was controlled by Kylee through her sexuality. Both came out of those first relationships damaged, so when they met each other, they brought that baggage with them.
Things Changed is about the chains that bind people to their troubled past, even teenagers. If anything, teens are more suspectable to this because they lack perspective. It goes with the teen territory. While Johanna and Bret try to start a new relationship in the present, they both realize – although are afraid to acknowledge to each other – they both can’t forget their first loves.
How can you move forward if you are stuck in the past? That’s the question that Johanna and Bret are trying to answer; that’s the question posed by Things Changed.
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Easy Amazon Info Link
Amazon – OneLink for every country
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Giveaway!
The author will award a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
Visit more stops on this Goddess Fish tour for extra chances to win!
Official Tour Page for Things Changed
Full Tour Schedule:
November 7: All the Ups and Downs
November 7: Gina Rae Mitchell
November 8: Readers Roost
November 9: Literary Gold
November 9: Fabulous and Brunette
November 10: Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
November 10: Paws.Read.Repeat – review only
November 11: Sandra’s Book Club – review only
November 11: Westveil Publishing
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Gina – thanks for hosting this visit today, running an excerpt. bio, and post. Nice to meet all of your followers and hope some of them with consider buying Things Changed. It is my first full length novel in years and I’m very pleased with how it.
Great excerpt and giveaway. 🙂
Thanks for reading the excerpt. I hope it kicks off the story showing the reader that one of the book’s main conflicts will be Johanna struggling with her feelings about Paul, feelings that will “haunt” (and now, it is not a ghost story) throughout the book
Great guest post
Thanks for the nice comment. This was a fun post to write because I would hope that the origin story of any book should be interesting to both readers and writers. The whole book spins around three questions: what IF (that is, what if these characters meet), what NEXT (that is your plot) and what IS (the “big ideas” behind the story). I would always teach teen writers in workshops I would do at school or libraries that answering those three questions is the essence of any good novel
Thanks for hosting me today. It has been a while since I’ve been on book tour in the real of virtual world. I always thought that meeting readers — and potential readers — was one of the best parts about doing a book. As you saw from the post above, it was actually a student on a school visit that inspired this book. In those early days of writing and school visiting, I made great connections with students, in part by having some of them reading books as in draft stage so they could comment on what they liked, what they didn’t like and what slang/language I messed up. When I started writing books about kids unlike me in series like The Alternative, Unlocked, and Unbarred (see my web site for a complete list of books) this was even more important. This type of interaction lead to a group of teen writers actually helping me edit a book (Cassandra’s Turn) and the logical conclusion was one of these students actually co-writing a book with me (Duty or Desire). I hope that I will get to visit a few classrooms because of Things Changed and learn how much things have changed in the lives of young people since I last toured.
Things Changed by Patrick Jones sounds like a book that many readers will enjoy.
Nancy – I certainly hope readers enjoy the book. I think what makes it accessible is that the book is told with alternating first person POV from both Johanna and Bret. I really like writing YA because you get to use first person more often than in any many other lines of fiction. With third person, it seems like the story is happening TO the characters, while with first person it seems like the story is happening FROM the characters.
Thanks so much for stopping by today, Nancy.
Thanks for hosting!
Thank you for sharing your guest post, bio and book details and for offering a giveaway. I have enjoyed reading about you and your work and I am looking forward to reading Things Changed, this sounds like a story that my teen-aged granddaughters will enjoy reading as well
Bea
I think almost any teenage girl should read Things Changed as it looks at an abusive relationship. I recall one study noting that 1/3 of teenage girls will be in such a relationship. I love the cover of this book because it shows that relationship with Paul hovering in the background staring at Johanna showing almost like a stalker, which in some ways he is, even though as you see in the expert, she lets him — against her better judgment – back into her life