Today’s fun fact: Rahab Carmichael got her last name from the character Melanie Carmichael aka Felony Melanie Smooter on Sweet Home Alabama. That’s how I knew to make Rahab a southerner, although I didn’t go as far south as Alabama.
Into the Flames when it was just a creative writing assignment.
When I was a young warthog, I used to watch those Disney channel inspirational commercials with dismay. They showed all those kids who excelled at awesome things: snowboarding, gymnastics, and so on. And then just thinking about the fact that every kid on the Disney channel was already a famous actor was pretty disheartening too. You see, all those kids had been practicing their craft, sport, etc, since they were like four years old. I was already ten-twelve-fourteen, and I hadn’t done any of those things! If I wanted to be a snowboarder, there was no way I would ever be a really good one. Definitely not as good as those Disney channel kids. I hadn’t even seen a real drift of snow at that time. I still haven’t! Those kids on Disney channel, and all those other people in life who were “really” good at what they did, they were passionate about what they were doing. They wanted to do it all the time. I felt bad that I wasn’t like that. I would never be really good at anything, because there was nothing that I had been doing consistently since I was four.
I had forgotten about my young dismay and self-devaluing until I saw this video for the fourth time, So You Want to Write a Novel. You can watch it here:
Script: © 2010 David Kazzie. All rights reserved.
Animation: Provided by Xtranormal.com
It’s a script someone composed of many of the assumptions people have about writing and publishing a novel. One thing the “sensible” character says goes along the lines of,
“You realize that most good writers have spent years honing their craft, and before that spent at least twenty years reading hundred of other people’s works?”
Now, I’ve seen this video many times, but this time around, that particular sentence really struck me. I realized that yes, I have spent many years honing my craft. I’ve written and rewritten and balled up sheets of paper and started from scratch all over again. I’ve been reading voraciously for twenty years. I’ve read the classics, the pop culture novels, across many different genres and types of novels, and I’ve developed my own style and learned to appreciate others’ styles. And I realized,
I’m just like those kids on the Disney channel.
It may not look as shnazzy as plowing through a gleaming white mountain of snow, but I’ve been working on something I love since I was four years old. I didn’t just wake up one day when I was a teenager and think, “Hey, I’m going to be an author!” I didn’t see some kid on TV being a writer and think it looked glamorous and want to emulate him. It was what I knew I wanted since before I can remember anything else. Me, all by myself, came up with this idea. And it suits me just fine.
My name is Jessie Sanders, and I am an author. Boo-yah!
Today’s book review is about a fellow Consortium artist and another book that I have had the honor of editing. The Plundered Parent Protocol is the first book involving the TEEN agents. That’s Teenage Extra normal Emergency Network, the agency that takes over the cases that the adults aren’t man enough to handle. Josh Unruh’s first novel is a young adult spy-fi focusing on thirteen-year-old best friends Elly Mourning, Hea Jung Noone, and Saturday Knight. After their dads are kidnapped by mysterious robots, the girls are on a resucue operation!
The problem is, nobody believes them. Except for TEEN. Elly, Hea, and Saturday are recruited as agents and sent on a mission to bring down a maniacal ten-year-old genius.
The thing that I love about this book is that it accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. That is bring a fun spy adventure with three strong heroines and more than one intriguing villain. While there’s no doubt that the bad guys are doing bad things, you still like them and enjoy everything that they do. The girls, too, are very fun to watch and see interact. Elly is the natural leader and “plan” girl, Hea is the gymnast, able to maneuver any trap, and Saturday is the technical genius. The way that they work together is entertaining and inspiring. If only we all had two friends that we could absolutely rely on and be super spy agents together with.
Here’s what Josh has to say about his book:
There’s plenty of weird gadgets, exciting espionage, and plots for world domination in TEEN Agents. But at its heart, it’s a story about three girls who want to save their dads but have to grow up quite a bit to do it.Right now, I’m the father of just one kid, a little boy. He and I watch all kinds of adventure cartoons, read comic books, and I continue to take in all that genre fiction I’ve always loved. But now I have an eye as to when I can share it with him.I’d also like to be the father of a little girl someday. I don’t want to climb a soapbox, but it’s pretty hard to find stuff to excite and empower my hypothetical little girl.But it shouldn’t be that way.I should have as much strange and exciting genre fiction with young heroines as I have with heroes. Since I don’t, I decided to do something about that.
All in all, I enjoyed reading TEEN agents, and I recommend it to anyone who is young at heart and enjoys a good time. And here’s the best part:
For all of today, the Kindle edition of this book is completely free.
So go download it. You won’t be sorry you did.
Jessie Sanders, author 
Good morning, gentle readers! The release date for Into the Flames is less than two months away, and we’re falling into the final stages of production.
Tomorrow we are doing a photo shoot for the cover.
Sometime this weekend (I know, I wish I could pin myself down on a more definite time) I will be rewriting the problem scenes that some of my beta readers had issues with.
Through the next few weeks I will be addresses the minor issues that my editors are noticing as they slowly work their way through the manuscript.
And after that, I think, my part will be done. I will hand off the manuscript to my publisher, Aaron Pogue, the back cover copy will be written, and the cover will be dressed for success!
Then it’s publication day! Book signing party! And become a famous author/millionare!!!
Haha. I don’t really expect that last thing to happen. But it’s always nice to have dreams, right?
I’m a planner, always looking toward the future and wanting to know exactly what is in front of me. So don’t be surprised when I say that I am already working on (in my head, at least, if not on paper) the next book that I’ll be writing. It’s an exciting time to be an author.
Today is Friday, so it stands to reason that we would be having a little Flamin’ Friday over here at Stormy Night Publishing. So, you ask, what have I been doing since I wrote “The End” on my soon-to-be-published novel?
Well, mostly I’ve been basking in the joy of an almost-completed project and pestering everybody else to get crackin’ on editing and cover design. I had planned to finish this draft back in October, so the fact that I’m already running three months behind has got me slightly worried regarding everyone else’s duties. Only slightly, though, because Aaron and the rest of Consortium Books has been through this process multiple times now, and so far the books always get out there. Eventually.
I’ve also been daydreaming about what my book will look like on Amazon and planning a re-write of Bracken’s story, The Boy Who Wasn’t Superman. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, Bracken is my favorite character, so I’m rather looking forward to getting a chance to delve back into his history. He is such a complex character that I want everyone to be able to see what makes him what he is. It’s so exciting! But that’s something I probably shouldn’t be focusing on just yet. Probably I should be focusing on the editing process of Into the Flames.
Meanwhile, I’m doing some more editing for the Consortium and hashing out my newest short story for A Consortium of Worlds, Volume 1, Spring edition. The Winter edition is about to be released into your Kindles here in the next couple of weeks, so be on the lookout for that. I, sadly, didn’t have time to contribute this quarter, but as you can see, I’m determined to make it into the next issue. So far I know that my short story is set in the mythical land of Pocatello in the year M. 1564. The rest of the details are pending.
In addition to some half-hearted typing, I’ve started to work on my reading pile for 2012. This year I’ve challenged myself to read 20 books. A far cry from the 52 I pledged last year, but considering that in reality I only read thirty-seven, twenty seems like a realistic goal for this year. My goodreads “To-Read” shelf boasts over fifty titles. Perhaps I can make a dent in it? So far I’ve finished Homer Hickham’s novel, The Dinosaur Hunter, and I’m slowly but surely making my way through Mark Lawrence’s debut fantasy, The Prince of Thorns. As well as keeping “in the know” on my own YA fantasy genre and the world of Kindle self-publishing in general, I’m going to attempt to read one if not more non-fiction books on reading and editing. It’s always good to hone your craft.
As you can see, I don’t have much for you to think about today, but I hope you’ve enjoyed viewing the tidbits of my life. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some editing to do–my job is never done!
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The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) |