Hope by Grier Cooper

Hope by Grier Cooper
(Indigo Ballet Series, #2)
Publication date: April 26th 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult

Indigo is living the life she’s always imagined at the famed New York School of Ballet. Or is she? Although she hopes she’ll be chosen for the company, her ballet teachers aren’t talking and their silence is confusing.
When Indigo is singled out for a coveted solo she feels her dreams are finally within reach, until she finds out she’s dancing with Felipe Gonzalez, the school’s smolderingly hot rising star. In the days that follow, Indigo questions everything she thought was true and finds herself making surprising choices.
After a fateful piece of paper reveals the truth, Indigo must ask herself the hardest question of all: can she take control of her own future to create the life she wants?
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Book 1

I asked Grier, 'How has being a ballet dancer helped you be an author? And how does it inspire you?'
I was five years old the first day I set foot in a ballet studio; I never imagined that ballet would transform – and save – my life. For one thing, my studio wasn't really a studio, but a large open room in an irregularly shaped church that looked like a stained glass twisty spiral. You should also know that ballet was not my idea; it was my mother's, and I remember hiding in the closet, hoping she'd forget to bring me to class so I could stay home and play kickball with my brothers.
Over time I grew to love ballet. Just like Indigo (the main character of the Indigo Ballet Series), I appreciated the structure and predictability of ballet classes, but my favorite part was leaping across the floor, those few moments of freedom when I could defy gravity and fly.
Ballet teaches you so many things: posture and placement, precision of movement, listening and memory skills, and how to live comfortably in your body. But my most important takeaways were what I like to call the 3 D's of dance: dedication, discipline, and determination. These are the things that help me the most as a writer because so much of writing is self-governed. Without discipline, it would be impossible to write a book in the first place. Without dedication and determination there's no forward momentum.
I enjoy sharing what it's like to be a ballet dancer with readers. While many people are fascinated by the ballet world or yearn to be dancers themselves, not many get to experience that life firsthand. My dance career brought me many places, from New York to Israel, from San Francisco to Ecuador; it's fun to share the magic and misery that ballet life can be.
Today I still dance and perform from time to time. The dance studio is like an old friend and sometimes feels more like home than anywhere else does. I believe we were born to move – why else would our bodies have so many moving parts? There are moments, when the music speaks to my heart and my body responds, where I forget about everything else except that moment, where the boundaries of who I am cease to exist....that's the beauty of dance.
Those moments that make your heart beat quicker? That's inspiration.

Grier began ballet lessons at age five and left home at fourteen to study at the School of American Ballet in New York. She has performed on three out of seven continents with companies such as San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet, totaling more than thirty years of experience as a dancer, teacher and performer.
Her work has been praised as “poignant and honest” with “emotional hooks that penetrate deeply.” She writes and blogs about dance in the San Francisco Bay Area and has interviewed and photographed a diverse collection dancers and performers including Clive Owen, Nicole Kidman, Glen Allen Sims and Jessica Sutta. She is the author of Build a Ballerina Body and The Daily Book of Photography.
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Tour-wide giveaway (INTL)
e-book copy of "WISH", book #1 of the Indigo Ballet Series and a $10 Amazon giftcard. a Rafflecopter giveaway