November | 2017 | lauramartinbooks

Hi Friends,

Is this thing still on? I apologize for the LOOOOOONG radio silence. We welcomed our third Martin baby this fall, and preparing for him, editing my 2018 book FLOAT and trying to write the book that will come out in 2019 proved to be just a tad too much for me! Something had to give, and it ended up being this website. Well, that and sleep.

So what’s been happening since I last popped on here? A lot! More fun school visits and signings for the EDGE series, but I’m not going to talk too much about those right now, because…drum roll please…
The cover for FLOAT is finally ready to show the world!

And I’m patting myself on the back because Amazon did NOT beat me to the reveal punch this time. And if you saw the state of my house right now, you’d understand that getting ANYTHING accomplished is a matter of celebration around here. I vacuumed today and felt like someone should really throw me a party to celebrate that fact. Not even kidding.

Unlike my EDGE series that was illustrated by the ever so talented Eric Deschamps, the FLOAT cover was created by the equally talented Erwin Madrid. His illustrations are beautiful and colorful, and I am so lucky that he was selected to work on one of my books. (He also did the cover for Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate…which is like saying the same guy who works with Michael Jordan also daned to work with you…which is pretty darn cool if you ask me.)

So a little bit about FLOAT.

Send the kids from Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children to Percy Jackson’s Camp Half-Blood, and you’ve got Float—a fast-paced middle grade adventure about a group of kids with uncontrollable abilities who are struggling to accept themselves.

Emerson can float . . . he just can’t do it very well.

Without his weighted vest and shoes, he’s in danger of drifting all the way up to the moon. His uncontrollable floating is classified as Reoccurring Incidents of the Strange Kind, or his RISK factor. It’s alienated him from non-RISK people throughout his life, and now it’s landed him in a government-funded summer camp for RISK kids. This camp is the last place Emerson wants to be, but when he meets the other boys in the Red Maple cabin, he’s surprised to realize that this summer might not be so bad after all. That is, until he discovers that his new time-traveling friend, Murphy, is hiding a secret that threatens all of their lives. Now it’s up to Emerson and the Red Maple boys to save themselves—and everyone like them.

Laura Martin seamlessly weaves the fun of a summer at camp with the high-stakes action of Emerson’s life-or-death mission and the relatable growing pains that come with trying to find your place among your peers. Fans of Dan Gutman, Gordon Korman, and Lisa McMann will love the humor, heart, and heroism in this action-packed novel from the author of the critically acclaimed Edge of Extinction series!

This book is near and dear to my heart for a few reasons, but the big one being that so many of the adventures the characters of FLOAT go on were actual adventures from my Dad’s childhood. I grew up hearing about these crazy things he used to do with his cousins and marveling that he survived into adulthood. So when I started writing this book I essentially stole his childhood and handed it off to a character named Emerson who happened to float. I’m a writer, which means I lie for a living…so stealing someone else’s childhood experiences isn’t at all beneath me. Especially since my dad gave me permission. 🙂

By the way…this is my dad… Handsome. Right? Also- me in a wedding dress because finding a good picture of just the two of us is nearly impossible.

Anyways…FLOAT is set to launch on May 29, 2018 and I couldn’t be more excited! Click HERE if you want to pre-order it!

I can’t wait for you all to read this one, and I will make an effort to pop back in here every now and then before it launches. Although, that’s contingent on a certain someone sleeping a bit more…

I don’t play favorites with my kids, but two of them sleep twelve hours a night. Just saying.

Although he was pretty good about sleeping through the book events we drug him along to recently…so I’ll probably keep him. (God bless Grandmas who come along to book events to watch your brand new baby. Amen.)