Blog Tour: Internet Famous by Danika Stone – Guest Post and Giveaway!

Internet Famous

Author: Danika Stone

Publication Date: June 6th, 2017

Publisher: Swoon Reads

Synopsis: High school senior and internet sensation Madison Nakama seems to have it all: a happy family, good grades, and a massive online following for her pop-culture blog. But when her mother suddenly abandons the family, Madi finds herself struggling to keep up with all of her commitments.

Fandom to the rescue! As her online fans band together to help, an online/offline flirtation sparks with Laurent, a French exchange student. Their internet romance—played out in the comments section of her MadLibs blog—attracts the attention of an internet troll who threatens the separation of Madi’s real and online personas. With her carefully constructed life unraveling, Madi must uncover the hacker’s identity before he can do any more damage, or risk losing the people she loves the most… Laurent included.

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Today, the internet and social media allow plenty of people to meet, even on the other side of the world! Do you have any friends that you’ve met online, and are you still friends with them, if so?

I’ll admit it. I am a total fangirl. I live, eat, and breathe fandom! And one of the side-effects of that is that I spend a LOT of time online. Nope. More than that. Keep counting the hours. Have you reached the “do you ever get any sunlight?!” point yet? If you have, you’re probably getting close to where I exist. For me, online life bridges that gap that is missing in many other parts of my life.

For one, I live in a small Canadian community. Now, I’m not suggesting that I live in Nunavut. (I don’t.) But I live in a small enough place that finding like-minded people to obsess over Game of Thrones, or The 100, or Star Wars is a little more challenging than it is in Toronto or New York. I initially started lurking online because I wanted a better ending to some of my favorite shows, and that experience expanded to connect me to other fans.

My second connection to social media communities related to becoming a so-called ‘real’ writer. When I started reading and commenting on fic, I met a whole group of women (and a few men) who were building their own online writing communities. These writers taught me so much about the process of writing: plotting, character development, writing and editing, and revision. They provided feedback and support as I figured out HOW to write. (And it did take a long time to get good at it.) The fandom aspects of online communities gave me an outlet for my own interests in science fiction, and the fic I wrote gave me a place to explore writing long before I’d gained any real skills.

Jump forward a few years and I’m still best friends with many of those women I met a decade ago. I’ve been invited to their weddings. We’ve met at conventions around the world. I’ve had many of them come visit my family in the summer and vice-versa. While fandom and online communities were the initial factors that brought us together, it was our connection as people that kept us there. Our fandoms have changed in the time since we met. Our lives have grown more complicated, but they are people who I grew to care for long before I met them face-to-face, and that connection has never lessened.

Though the internet and social media has changed the way we communicate, the communication that happens there is still key. And to those many fangirls who I’ve grown close to over the year, I say: “You are my people!”

Danika Stone is an author, artist, and educator who discovered a passion for writing fiction while in the throes of her Masters thesis. A self-declared bibliophile, Danika now writes novels for both adults (The Intaglio Series and Ctrl Z) and teens (Icarus and All the Feels). When not writing, Danika can be found hiking in the Rockies, planning grand adventures, and spending far too much time online. She lives with her husband, three sons, and a houseful of imaginary characters in a windy corner of Alberta, Canada.

The first book in Danika’s upcoming Tathagata series (Edge of Wild) was selected as a quarter-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel of the Year Award (2013). Edge of Wild (Stonehouse CA) will be released March 2016. Danika’s YA novel, All the Feels (Macmillan US), will be released June 2016.

Ms. Stone is represented by Morty Mint of Mint Literary Agency.