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Carol by J. W. Becton
So a while back, Jennifer Becton, my former colleague and now an honest-to-gosh professional novelist, asked me to recommend some reading for a new fantasy series she was fleshing out. (For some reason, she thought I might know something about souls.) I jokingly told her she could “pay” me by writing me into the work when it finally comes out. Well, for good or ill, Carol is now available as part of a fantasy compilation called Naughty or Nice.
I honestly don’t know what might happen to “me.” The writer has my permission to kill “me” off on the first page if it will make for an excellent story! Whatever happens, The Naughty or Nice project sounds fantastic. I’ll let Jennifer explain:
I’m so excited to have been invited to write a short story for Naughty or Nice, a holiday-themed, fantasy collection whose proceeds will go to the charity Kids Need to Read. Here’s their mission: “Kids Need to Read works to create a culture of reading for children by providing inspiring books to underfunded schools, libraries, and literacy programs across the United States, especially those serving disadvantaged children.” Getting books in the hands of children is a goal I can support.
And so can I! So hop over to Amazon.com and get your Kindle edition today!
Too Much? Not Enough?
Ever since this summer, I’ve been a smidge worried about the word count of Children of Pride. Chalk it up to my day job as an editor: I want the text to fit the space allotted, neither (terribly) too much nor (terribly) too little. My first novel looked a tad sparse when compared to the massive tomes my daughter usually reads!
So I was pleased to find this three-year-old post by Jacqui Murray about Word Count by Genre. It provides a basic rule of thumb for the desired word counts for various genres—yay!—and then goes on to list word counts for several famous novels—double yay!
Oh, and apparently I’m a worry wart. Children of Pride weighs in somewhere between The Adventures and Tom Sawyer (69,066) and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (77,325). So we’re good to go. 🙂
Rounding Third
Children of Pride has come home from the final outside reader, road-weary but grateful for the experience. Meanwhile, my illustrator is working on the cover. If real life will cooperate, the book may yet be available by Christmas! Here is the blurb:
Taylor Smart has a pretty good life despite her mean teachers and snooty classmates. Of course, that is before she is kidnapped by the Fair Folk and whisked into a world she never dreamed could be real.
Apparently, the cuddly versions of those old faery tales don’t tell the whole story, and middle school never prepared Taylor for a world filled with bogeymen, trolls, dwarves, and spriggans. But that’s what she finds in the faery realm its inhabitants call the Wonder.
Taylor is thrown into a quest to discover her true identity guided by Danny Underhill, her erstwhile kidnapper. But will the shapeshifting trickster’s dark secrets spell her doom? And how will Taylor decide which world, fae or human, is truly her own?
This Must Be Commonwealth Week
Yesterday’s statistics: About one third of activity on this blog was generated by Canadians! Since I grew up in Michigan (where I could practically see Canada from my house), I’m quite honored. So now maybe I’ll also have to develop a subplot involving wendigos or maybe a pagwadjinini or two. 🙂
G’day, y’all!
Roughly a third of my page views yesterday came from Australia! Admittedly, in absolute terms, this is still quite a low number, this blog being barely two weeks old and all, but still worth noting, I think.
Keep it up, Oz, and I may just have to throw a slightly misplaced yowie, mimi, or grimmacha into the Wonder!
By Way of Formal Introduction…
Some problems are worse than others. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? What a lot of people may not understand is that some problems are actually pretty cool. If I’m going to have a problem, I want it to be a cool one. Like, What am I going to do with all this money I’ve unexpectedly inherited? Or, my website has become so popular it keeps crashing the server! Or, I really feel self-conscious about being the only person in my class/office/whatever who hasn’t come down with the flu! See? Those are great problems to have.
Try this one on for size: I have a daughter who reads WAY above her grade level. Why is that a problem, you ask? Because even though she has the vocabulary and comprehension of a high-schooler, she is just not ready yet for some of the “grown-up” content that I know she’ll handle like a pro when she is a little bit older.
Mind you, this is a girl who doesn’t check out books from the library; she checks out WHOLE SERIES!
Now, for the last several years, my absolutely wonderful problem has been finding books that interest my sweet girl without talking down to her. My wife and I are constantly picking the brains of our friends who are teachers and librarians. (“Has she read X?” “Yeah, she read that when she was in fifth grade.” “Well, how about Y?” “I haven’t heard of that one. Let me write it down.”)
Eventually, I started supplementing whatever treasures we could find at the library with little stories of my own. And since I have several friends who appreciate good teen/young adult fiction and share my (and my daughter’s) love of the fantasy genre(s), I usually asked one or two people to read behind me to help clean up my messes.
Well, to make a long story short (if it isn’t already too late for that!), somebody thought I might be on to something with Children of Pride, my latest effort. It was suggested that I release it into the wild and see what happens. That’s what this web site is all about.
And while everything is being formalized, I’ll also keep providing “bonus material” related to faeries, mythology, and the growing universe of “Into the Wonder.”
Thanks for stopping by!
Darrell J. Pursiful 