Crazy Kings & Winning Stuff!

Y'all, I'm hitting the writing cave so hard, I'm going cross-eyed. Please forgive me for being the absentee writer-friend. I promise to be back very soon, with a vengance... and a new book!

In the meantime, I couldn't resist letting a fellow Indelible writer-friend Laura Pauling (link). stop by today to tell us about her super-fun middle-grade book about the Mayans, ancient spells, and crazy kings, and down there at the bottom, you can win stuff!

Published by Pugalicious Press

Get me!

When Bianca and Melvin brave the jungle to rescue their grandfather, they stumble upon the ancient Maya city of Etza, where the people haven’t aged in 2,000 years. They must learn to work together as they face loincloth-wearing skeletons from the underworld, a backstabbing princess, and an ancient prophecy that says in three days the city will be destroyed.

No problem. They’ll find Zeb and zip right out of there. The fact that a crazy king wants to serve Bianca up to the gods as an appetizer is just a minor technicality. But this ancient evil dude has finally met his match.

The Story Behind the Story

I remember the day. This was before I started writing. Sure, I’d dabbled in it but it hadn’t taken hold in my life as a daily activity or a possible career. The scent of a story would hover around me, begging me to write. I’d watch a movie or read a good book and the urge would increase, weighing me down, until I had to spit out some words and start plotting.
I’ve always loved time travel and I love learning, so I chose a culture I knew absolutely nothing about! The Maya. Oy. (More to come on research later.)

Eventually I had a first draft. A crappy first draft. I remember reading advice to revise. But I looked over my story and I couldn’t think of one thing to change. Ha! Then I joined a critique group. Oh boy, did I revise, rewrite, re-envision. Over a couple years it was shaping up.

Something still wasn’t quite right. The title was okay. But something in the words and the tone of the story felt flat. I put it aside and wrote a second and third story. And I realized I never should’ve spent three years rewriting the same story. I should’ve moved on a lot earlier.

Eventually, with more experience behind me, I revisited my middle grade time travel. And bingo! I realized that rewriting it in first person might add that special pizzazz I knew was missing. And the title changed to what it is today. Of course, more scenes were added and deleted. It wasn’t just a matter of switching out pronouns.

I queried for a bit. Then I moved on. Last spring, I self published my YA, A Spy Like Me, and then started writing the sequel. But something about How To Survive Ancient Spells and Crazy Kings wouldn’t let go of me.

So after much debate, I submitted to Pugalicious Press. And Voila! I’m extremely excited to send this book baby out into the world. It’s been inexistence in one form another for years!

Thanks, Leigh, for hosting me on the tour!

How To Survive Ancient Spells and Crazy Kings released in November. Pugalicious Press did a fantastic job, and I’m extremely happy with the results. This book would make a fantastic gift for boys or girls who enjoy adventure stories with lots of excitement!

You can purchase it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can read the first chapter here. Check out the teacher's guide.

Thankfully, my journey is just beginning and I’m excited to see where it leads.

Click here for the list of blog tour stops! Enter to win these prize packages!

Prize Package One (signed paperbacks)

Prize Package Two (signed paperbacks)

Prize Package Three

Giveaway has ended.

====
Also, a quick shout out to Juliana Haygert!

Her new book Her Heart's Secret Wish (link) releases today, 12/12/12.

Get me!

What a fun release date!

Be sure to check it out, and have a super rest of the week, reader- and writer-friends!

I'll be back Friday with a Big Surprise! It's so great to see all our writer-friends doing so well.

More soon~ <3

The Truth About... Writing Faith

Merry Christmas, reader- and writer-friends!

I hope you're all getting into the spirit. I'm in the writing cave typing like the wind to finish The Truth About Letting Go, a new book that's a companion to The Truth About Faking (link).

TTALG is different from TTAF in that it's not a romantic comedy. It's a romantic drama. But it's still a coming of age story set in Shadow Creek (the ritzy neighborhood next to Shadow Falls).

The main character is Ashley Lockett, who you briefly meet in the last bathroom scene in TTAF. And like TTAF, one of the main characters is a person of faith, which causes a unique set of "problems" for Ashley.

Back when I started TTALG in 2010, Laurel Garver and I exchanged first chapters, and we were struck by the similar themes in our books. Fast forward almost three years, and I did a post on her blog about religion in romantic comedies (link).

Laurel is here today to discuss how she tackled issues of faith in her new book Never Gone (link). So without further ado, I turn the spot over to Laurel~

Getting Real About Faith... and Doubt
by Laurel Garver (link)

In my novel Never Gone (link), fifteen-year-old Dani believes her dead father has come back as a ghost, in part because the strain of trying to live without him is unbearable for her.

Garver

From the outset, it’s clear that her dad gave her a lot of emotional support and encouraged her artistic talent. But he also shaped her values by raising her in the Anglican church, just like he had been.

The way Dani identifies her dad and her faith so closely makes grief especially complicated. Her devout dad is happily in heaven now, everyone tells her, so she’s really not supposed to be upset. But the very real pain and anger she feels can’t be easily argued away or healed with nice-sounding platitudes. The secure faith of her childhood begins to waver.

In places of great pain, any belief system will take a beating—even if it’s a secular belief in the power of friendship or family love. I think that aspect makes my novel a relatable story no matter where you are on the faith/doubt/indifference spectrum.

Still, it’s hard to ignore how deeply polarizing religion can be. When I initially sat down to write this post for Leigh, we were in the midst of one of the ugliest presidential races I’ve ever witnessed. And I have to admit that during that time, when faced with the task of discussing how I use religious themes in my work, I emotionally imploded.

Christians on both ends of the political spectrum were behaving badly, and any attempt to have a civil discussion was looking pretty fruitless. I don’t know if it was wise or simply cowardly to hold off writing this post; all I could see was how Christianity had become the Tar Baby. So I’ve waited to let the rancor subside and to gather my thoughts a little longer.

Writing religion is risky. Beliefs and values are so core to our identities, our vision of the good life, and these beliefs often come into conflict. And yet teens need to see themselves in fiction. In this Huffington Post interview, “Religion lifts YA books from ‘darkness’,” YA author Rae Carson expresses well the idea that pushing religion out of books marginalizes groups and their real experiences.

Spiritual questions about the nature of life and of a higher power naturally come up when a person is grieving. To remove religious thinking on the topic seems to me inauthentic.

My approach was simply to write a character for whom faith is a natural part of life. It’s Dani’s framework for understanding the world, just like her artistic ability is. The imagery and stories of her faith weave through her thought world as much as the language of painting and drawing. Like any teen raised in a Christian home, she goes through a coming-of-age process in which she has to decide if she truly believes for herself, rather than believing in her parent’s belief.

Most centrally, Never Gone is a dramatic story, not a handbook or a “how to grieve well” manual. Readers walk with Dani through sadness, longing, first love, turmoil, broken relationships, confusion and doubt. The adults in her world sometimes help, sometimes fail her badly. She has to come to grips with what is really real, with who God is, and with how she must grow and change in order to become her best self.

I don’t think you have to be a Christian to read a story like mine and get something positive out of it. I’m not Jewish, but I really love Chaim Potok’s stories, which give me a glimpse into Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities. One of the most lovely things about literature is how it opens a window into other worlds, gives us a chance to understand other perspectives by living inside them for just a little while.

====

Laurel Garver is the author of Never Gone, a novel about grief, faith and finding love when all seems lost. A word nerd, Indie film enthusiast and incurable Anglophile, she lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter. 

Trailer for Never Gone



Add it on Goodreads. Read a sample chapter.

It is available as an ebook and a paperback at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, CreateSpace.

Gotta Have Faith

I'm not here!

I'm over at the lovely and talented Laurel Garver's blog (link) today talking about why I kept a touch of religion (spirituality?) in my debut YA rom-com The Truth About Faking (link).

It was perhaps a risky move, having a preacher-dad in a rom-com, but I think it works. Drop over and see what you think! (link)

Laurel will be here in the near future doing the same, talking about her new book Never Gone (link).

And Come back Friday! I'm breaking my schedule yet again, but I promise it'll be something really, rilly exciting!

Can't wait to see you then! In the meantime, my friends on the East Coast, be safe! Hunker down, as we used to say along the Gulf. You're in my thoughts and prayers. ((hugs))

More soon, reader- and writer-friends~ <3