U is for Up, Up, and Away and N is for...Nudity?

Hello, Saturnites! I'm so so sorry about missing my post yesterday. Please forgive me?

Yesterday would have marked 18 days and would have been U is for Up Up and Away. So you get two posts in one today! :)

The Up Up and Away Festival in American Girl On Saturn is an actual even that happens every year in a town near ours. It's an event that takes place before the fourth of July (sort of like a prequel) where lots of hot air balloons launch into the sky. Nikki and I have never been before, but we're thinking about going this year. (It lands on Niall Horan's birthday! We have to go, right?) Also, in One Direction's song "Save You Tonight" Louis Tomlinson actually sings the words 'Up up and away I'll take you with me' so <3 for 1D and awesome boy bandness. Plus, I freaking adore Louis Tomlinson.

Now for N is for...nudity? We have a guest post from Nikki herself! :) Enjoy!!

As a young adult author, there's one thing I know I'll always have to write about – relationships. And that doesn't translate to romance. Teen fiction covers friendships, parental issues, self discovery, and obviously, romantic relationships. Maybe I'm reading the wrong books, but I don't see enough sibling interaction, and when I do, I sometimes wonder if the author even has siblings because it's far from realistic to me. I adore sibling relationships and try to squeeze them into every book I write, in some way or another. From time to time, I even like to dig into the time capsule of my brain and pull from my own memories, and this was something I had to do a lot of for American Girl On Saturn.

When I was fourteen, my dad and stepmom lived next door to my grandfather. On the other side of my grandfather's house, there was a family with two sons – one of whom was my age and the other a year or so younger. My stepsister and I spent many, many hours on my grandfather's porch, giggling about the guys and hoping they'd take notice of us. On one very fateful summer day, the guys had a few friends over, and I was in teenage heaven while they ran around shirtlessly playing football. These boys knew they had an audience, so they ventured into their house and emerged moments later with towels wrapped around their waists. Of course, they had their shorts on under the towels, but they enjoyed the shock factor of playing flag football with towels rather than flags.

Weekend visits to Dad's house were my escape from my 24/7 sister, Emily. For two days, we ignored each other's existences and did our own things because we lived with Mom full time and never had a true break from one another. On that very fateful summer day, Emily strolled up to my grandfather's house, stopped halfway across the yard, and screamed, "Ohmygod! Those boys are naked! I'm telling Kim!" In true five-year-old fashion, she bolted back toward Dad's house, screaming the entire way about naked boys and how my stepsister and I were watching them. Moments later, my grandfather's phone rang, and my very confused stepmom said something along the lines of, "I'm sure Emily must've mistaken something, but she said the boys next door are playing football...naked." After an explanation of the towels, my stepmom was totally cool with the mistaken nudity, but some moments never leave your memory...like your sister accusing the boys next door of being naked in their yard (while you watched, nonetheless!).

While writing American Girl On Saturn, I tapped back into those old little sister memories. The family in this book, the Bransons, have three daughters – Chloe (18), Aralie (17), and the infamous Emery (6). Chloe is like a calm butterfly while Aralie is an angry hornet who won't let you get away with swatting at her. Emery is the wildcard beetle with a pretty metallic shell, but you're not quite sure if she's just going to crawl by peacefully or spit poisonous juices at you. That's the beauty and unpredictability of writing about siblings, especially with an age gap and mixed personality types. As my dedication page will explain, Emily is the Aralie that I have now and the Emery that I had then.

 I hope you'll check out American Girl On Saturn on August 29th to get to know the Branson sisters, the boyband Spaceships Around Saturn, and be a witness to Emery's own mistaken nudity incident! Special thank you to Emily for having me today & for her very Saturnized countdown to release date!

Nikki Godwin is a Young Adult author from the southern USA. She is a city girl who can't live without Mountain Dew, black eyeliner, Hawthorne Heights, and candles from Bath & Body Works. When not writing, she's not-so-secretly internet-stalking her favorite bands. She is slightly obsessed with rock stars and surfers. She no longer hides her love for One Direction.

The summer after graduation is supposed to be that first real taste of freedom - but not for eighteen-year-old Chloe Branson. Just as that breeze of freedom is making its way into her galaxy, her secret-service-agent dad drops a meteor-sized bomb of bad news on her and her sisters. An attempt has been made on the lives of Canadian boyband, Spaceships Around Saturn, during their USA tour, and the guys have to go into hiding ASAP. The only problem? In the midst of the crisis and media frenzy, their dad volunteered to hide the guys...in their house.

Six-year-old Emery is as ecstatic as any self-proclaimed Saturnite would be, but Chloe and her seventeen-year-old sister Aralie watch their summer plans crash and burn like a falling star. The SAS guys aren't happy with the situation, either. Bad boy Jules picks fights with Aralie about everything from his Twitter followers to his laundry, and heart-throb Benji can't escape Emery's fangirlisms for more than three minutes.

But after the super-cute Milo kisses Chloe during a game of hide-and-seek, she finally understands what Emery means when she talks about SAS being "out of this world." If this is what Saturn feels like, Chloe doesn't want to come back to Earth.

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