April 18, 2015 by

I Rock at the Shock: Sex and Storytelling

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Sex—passionate, hot. I know this because it’s burned me before. I’ve been in many a passionate, heated debate about it over the years. Sex and storytelling—do they belong together? Well let’s dive in; I haven’t been burned by the subject in a good two weeks. I’m overdue.

This recent debate was with an indie author who has been teaching me a lot about indie publishing…primarily respect and greater understanding. This writer was talking about a sex scene she intended to put into a book. I made the mistake of saying, “Be sure it belongs in the story.” Oh my, that did it!

Now, I will confess that I got something of a reputation in my writer’s groups over the years past as a prude. I often attacked sex scenes vehemently. What they didn’t know is that I love a good sex scene. Make it dark and problematic, and I love it all the more. But writers’ groups are often a mix of talent of beginning, intermediate, and, if you’re lucky, advanced writers come together to experiment and learn. For me, this translated into most manuscript sex scenes I saw were not good. The reason they weren’t good was because they were put in for the wrong reason. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a writer defend a sex scene by saying, “but sex sells!”

Good writing and storytelling sell better. So good sex in books needs to be good storytelling as well. The reason I like dark and problematic sex scenes is all tied up in the word problematic. Problems generate story. Generally, the manuscript sex scenes I saw didn’t.

Another argument I’ve heard from many writers is  “but it’s my story.” True, it is your story, and I’ve heard this defense in one form or another for years. I may have even said it early on. Today I answer that with this retort: yes, but it’s my money and my time you want from me and all of your potential readers. Stories that you write for yourself and without consideration for a reader are what I call high-risk manuscripts. These manuscripts run the risk of being more therapy than story. Once upon a time, we had a gal  join our writer’s group and waltz in proclaiming proudly that she had a 10,000 page manuscript. Someone in the group piped up, “you mean 10,000 words, right?” Nope. She didn’t. The group actually groaned (and not the good fun kind of groan). She was something of a traumatized individual, and she was quite obviously to me (though not to herself) working her issues out in her stories.

First, let me say, that’s great. If you can save on counseling sessions by writing 10,000 pages, go forth and do—but, don’t torture me with it. Therapy is not the same thing as viable commercial storytelling. You have an obligation as a writer who joins a writers group or gives your manuscript to a friend or sends one in to a publisher to consider the reader.

You remember the reader, yes? The person you want to come up with money to pay for your story? Once you decide to pass on your story, it is no longer yours. If you are a writer, you’ve heard people say that, but think about it for a moment. A story in a reader’s hands is not yours. Your book has not been shrink-wrapped with a free copy of the author included in every sale. What I mean by this is that you do not get to dictate a relationship for your reader to your work. You can only cajole a reader’s cooperation and enjoyment of your book through your skill. Once it passes on, the reader makes the rules for relating to your book. And you have a lot competing with your book when it is open in your reader’s hands in this hectic world.

Back to the sex (because well, we always want to come back to that, right?). The next argument raised in the discussion was realism: “Sex is part of everyone’s life in some fashion or another. Why can’t characters just have sex? You wouldn’t throw out a bar scene just because it was a bar scene.” She almost got me on this one because it is two different points.

First, sex thrown in for real life’s sake: if it furthers your character development, promotes plot, or establishes a point in your story, then do so. Maybe a middle aged housewife is having her regular Friday night sex and just doesn’t feel it anymore. That ennui is now part of where the story is going. Then average ordinary everyday sex is appropriate.

Second, for a moment, I thought maybe she was right about the bar, maybe I’m just hard on sex scenes…then I realized, what am I saying? Am I going soft in the head? Of course I’d be down on a bar scene that didn’t further the goals or address the needs of a story. In fact, I’d just dealt with exactly that question in my own writing. I had a tavern across the street from an inn where my protagonist was hiding, then the antagonist gets close but is drawn off to the tavern at the last minute. As one of the my writer’s group so succinctly put it: “Squirrel!”

So I axed that tavern and used the tavern I’d already mentioned in the inn, and when the antagonist goes into it, he is getting closer to the protagonist, not farther. I had an extra unneeded bar in my story, and I axed it. Although I’m focusing on the sex question here,  this advice is true for any scene or element. They all have to pull their weight in your story.

But she was right about one thing, I probably pay more attention to sex scenes, but I have a reason. Sex is actually a very powerful tool in the writer’s toolbox. It resonates in some way with us all. It annoys me and throws me out of the story to see sex turned into something light and unimportant when in fact, it should be a story driver. Sex. Money. Power—these three things drive the world. Scandals in the real world always revolve around one or more of these three issues. So sex is one of your big guns.

So what do you do? Do you never write a sex scene? Of course not. Here is a bell weather test to try. Ask yourself then a trusted reader this question: How would the story change without the sex scene? If you don’t have a good clear strong story-driven answer, then maybe it doesn’t belong. And if you do have a clear reason, set it up right. Take your time. Remember that tool in your writer’s toolbox called foreshadowing. Don’t bring that big gun out (in either figurative sense) until the time is right, until you’ve covered a good deal of story real estate with groundwork and building sexual tension. Make me want the culmination, the consummation of reader and story, for a long time. Make me want it as much as or maybe even more than the characters do. Foreplay, my dear writers, it’s as important in writing about sex as it is in sex itself.

Title is from a W. H. Auden poem. Picture is available at AliExpress.

 

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April 11, 2015 by

They Preach that I Should Save the World;
They Pray that I Won’t Do a Better Job of it*

By Lindsey S. Johnson

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Rhiannon has the Sight—the ability to glimpse the hearts and minds of others. Branded a witch, her family is executed and she is turned over to a powerful kirche where the bishop wants to use her power toward his own ends—the throne. Thrust into intrigue and danger, Rhiannon must learn to control her growing power, and master … 
A RAGGED MAGIC.

Now that I have a book published, and I am talking to people about it, I’m starting to get some of those author questions that I’ve heard so much about. Since I write YA (young adult) fantasy, one of the questions I’m getting a lot is: Why? Why YA? Why teenagers?

Not to be flippant, but why not? I like YA. I have read it since before there was even a YA category in most bookstores. I love it—the intensity, the pacing, the protagonists. Teenagers make great main characters. They’re full of everything—they’re trying everything. Even when the protag is lost or depressed or feels broken, they have a capacity for so much change because they are in the midst of so much change in themselves. They are in the midst of becoming, like most of us, but they don’t have the history of themselves to guide or to distract them. I love that about teenagers, even while I remember how hard it was to be in that place.

YA authors write for young readers because we like teenagers, we care about them. We want to have conversations with them, with ourselves, with our society. I feel a little like the question “why write YA?” (sometimes paired with an implied sneer, because why aren’t you writing real books for real people) is so short-sighted. Why not write for teenagers? Why not write about them? Teenagers are real people.

Teenagers are pretty cool. It’s a hard attitude to promote, because our society is hell-bent on saying otherwise. I remember as a teen that my age group and class were constantly told how terrible we were, how badly behaved, how much worse we were than the class before. We were The Worst, always. But I also remember that being said about the classes before me, the classes after me, and I see now how every class or generation that comes next is always The Worst: the laziest, the cruelest, the pettiest, the most horrible and entitled. (Throughout all of written history, so many people who have grown up are in love with the shaking of canes and saying “kids these days” as though that same thing wasn’t said about them when they were kids.) Despite the belittling and concern-trolling, I see evidence of such kindness and growth and responsibility in teens. Teenagers are not adults, it’s true, and their brains aren’t finished forming, or their bodies, or their emotional capacity. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of great things, either individually or as a group.

And I think those stories should be told. I think teens need to see themselves in story and also see others—people they aren’t like. Teens, like all humans, need story to teach them empathy, to teach them bravery, to teach them compassion; story to teach them how to think about things and reason through problems. And also just for sheer entertainment—a good story is one which makes you want to read and makes you glad you did. Why shouldn’t teens have such stories? Stories made with them in mind?

I think it’s important to tell teens that we see them, that we’re listening, and then actually listen. It’s important to show boys who have empathy, girls who are the strong, silent type; to see all our differences and acknowledge and embrace them; and to listen to people who are new to us. It’s important for kids—girls, boys, gay kids, lesbian kids, bi kids, trans kids, Black kids, Latin@ kids, Native kids, Asian kids, disabled kids, mentally ill kids, nerdy kids, jock kids, theater kids, migrant kids, complex combinations of any and all those things and more kids—that we see them, and they see themselves mirrored in story. They can be heroes, can be villains, can be both and in between; can be complex and confused and brilliant and stupid and full of life and lying on the ground in the muck, just really, really sick of life, and it’s OK. You get to make mistakes, fall down big time, and have to learn how to get back up again. It’s true for everyone sometimes: children, teenagers, young adults, adults, the elderly—all of us. And we can reach out to each other and help each other and learn from each other. You can see yourself reflected in whatever bits and pieces of culture you choose, and other people don’t get to tell you that you don’t matter. You do matter. You get to be you, and be awful and great all at once, both/and.

I like teenagers. I like writing about them, I like writing for them, and I like reading about them. If you survive to adulthood, you were a teenager—it might be hard to tap back into those moments, that newness, that intensity, that “everything is important because it’s the first time, and everything is off the charts because that’s how my brain processes life,” because let’s face it, it is exhausting being so much of an emotional lightning rod all of the time. When I say “survive to adulthood,” I mean it can be pretty fraught to be a kid sometimes. It’s important to remember how you felt, how you thought, how you functioned then. You might be able to look at it from your adult perspective and say “Wow, I was a jerk, or I was confused, or I was an emotional mess, or I was so very wrong.” But I think it’s important to remember that you didn’t know that, you couldn’t know that yet, and you were doing the best you could, like most everybody, moment by moment. You were just trying to live a life that was baffling and fantastic and horrible and infuriating and wondrous by turns, tossed about on the tide of your changing physical and emotional body, learning, growing, changing, and charging ahead. Just like now, but with a lot more tossing tides and information being flung at you everywhere you turned.

Which is part of what makes it fun to write about. All those changes, all that information, all that intensity—how can I resist exploring it? Why would I want to? Throw in sociopolitical unrest and religious upheaval and magic, and I’m hooked every time. So I write my protagonists as teenagers and young adults, and I explore what happens when people who are still learning how to be people try to figure out what that means. I hope as I explore and open the conversation, others are reading and exploring and conversing with me. It’s a good ride, and I plan to keep on it for awhile longer.

Lindsey S. Johnson has an appreciation for dramatic flair paired with a sense of the ridiculous, which leads to things like getting a black eye via accidentally setting her sweater on fire when reaching for the wonton soup. She started telling stories to her best friend at an early age, mostly to justify creating elaborate forts for dolls.

Lindsey lives in Seattle with her significant other and two cats named after sorceresses. Why have one black cat named after a villainous magic-wielder, when you can have two? A Ragged Magic is her first published novel; she is currently at work on the second book in The Runebound series.

*Title is from the song “Are You Out There” by Dar Williams.

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March 25, 2015 by

The Truth is Stranger…

By Ralph Kern

I had the privilege of meeting Ralph when Tickety Boo Press hired me to edit his already Amazon bestselling book, Endeavour, for a rerelease. He was a pleasure to work with and to read, and if you have the opportunity to do either, I suggest you take it!

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Endeavor has been compared to A.C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End & is currently on three Amazon Top-100 lists.

That the truth is stranger than fiction is an old adage, a cliché even, yet one I have found to hold water. In my ‘day’ job, I’m a police sergeant. I run a team of fifteen officers and have been doing the job for the best part of ten years. Whenever I meet new people, they generally ask some version of “What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever seen?”

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Very early on in my career, having ruined several friends’ and families’ meals in restaurants with an honest answer to that question, I realized that what they’re actually asking is “What’s the most PG13 grossest thing you’ve ever seen?” or even better, I just give them some amusing anecdote involving the dubious, and sometimes downright perplexing, behavior of people on the lower end of the social spectrum. As for the weird stuff—well sometimes I struggle to believe my own memory about what I’ve seen people get up to, let alone having to listen to someone else tell a story about it. Basically, people don’t want the truth…they want a sanitized version of events.

This brings me neatly onto the thrust of this post. Several years ago, I started writing. No particular reason for it other than a New Year’s resolution. I had a story idea and basically thought “why not?” So I started laying down my novel, Endeavour, which is a sci-fi piece bearing no relation to my career.

While that was ticking away though, I decided to try my hand at a number of short stories, partly to get my skills and drills up to scratch and partly because, as many writers undoubtedly find, a change is as good as a rest sometimes; writing shorts can be a constructive break from tapping away on your main work.

One of these short stories involved a pair of cops driving to a job. Now, to add a bit of context, I’m a member of an online SF/F community where critiques can be posted, and I thought I’d put up some sections for feedback. I hadn’t told anyone I was a police officer.

Anyway, back to my two cops. They get their next job over the radio, so one of them pulls out his phone (when the screen lights up, it shows a picture of his family) and puts in the address, bemoaning the fact that he only has a little power left.  With that, they start driving to it. Ahh, perfect opportunity to do a bit of character building! I thought. So while on route, they begin talking about a bit of personal stuff. All in all, that short passage summed up how we really go to jobs.

Controller: “Sierra XYZ, Control, burglary in progress at so and so address.”

Me: “Code five, give me the info on the address.”

Control: “It’s a so and so shop with several previous reports.”

One of us enters the address into the phone to nav it while the other activates the blues and two tones, and we set off.   Then we undoubtedly catch up on gossip.

Me: So, Bob. How’d that hot date go?

Cue a probably sordid tale with a variety of anatomically unlikely scenarios involved.

The critiquers slaughtered me! “Police would have sat-navs fitted into their cars,” they cried. “They would never be so unprofessional as to talk about personal matters on their way to a burglary,” they bemoaned.

Well, unfortunately, Her Majesty hasn’t seen fit to equip our cars with sat-navs, leaving us with trusty google maps. The other day, I held an in-depth conversation about what I had for dinner the previous night on the way to deal with an axe-wielding maniac. Why? Because when it’s your tenth job of the day you tend to get a bit bored with growling at each other in the melodramatic fashion that’s shown on TV.

Another person was asking for “reasons a mother would leave a baby.” An emotive subject, perhaps.  The standard response from many people was “a mother would never leave her child, maternal instincts, etc., etc. I made one brief attempts to relay some of the reasons I’d come across at work—the malicious, the nasty, or the just plain old very bad parenting. Needless to say, it’s not a discussion I’ll get involved in again any time soon.

I learned very quickly that the truth about jobs like the police (a role that by its very nature, tends to make for some entertaining tales) is that people are not really interested in the truth. They want the media version: Cops don’t talk to each other, they growl and bicker. Blue-light runs are exciting car chases, not the calm collected and most of all safe journey that they actually are. When people are shot, bullets leave neat little holes. When they’re in a car crash, the victim’s insides are where they should be—inside. No one soils themselves when they die. Fights are neat kung-fuesque-type affairs, not rolling around on the ground in the dirt and worse. And so on and so forth.

Is that my limitation as a writer—that I can’t write the truth convincingly? Maybe, but then it seems like I share the same failings as ninety-five percent of police fiction writers in that regards. You know what? I think that this holds true across the spectrum of jobs that people seem to like writing about, and more importantly, like reading about.  People often just want to hear that a knight is a paragon of honor and virtue. Not that he’s been in his armor for the last three months and smells like a hobos underpants. Astronauts never swear. (Geek moment, Pete Conrad, one of the men who walked on the moon, was borderline Tourette’s!) Secret agents never suffer from impotence and so on.

The moral of this post is, even with the best will in the world, sometimes you have to make things generally readable and relatable to a wider audience for them to enjoy it. And maybe, just maybe, sometimes the truth is too strange for fiction.

Endeavor, book one of the Sleeping Gods series, has been compared to A.C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End and is currently on three Amazon Top 100 Lists: 

  • Top Time Travel
  • Top Hard Science Fiction
  • Top Space Exploration

An updated version of Endeavor will be released by Tickety Boo Press and available in spring of 1015 on Amazon.   

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March 18, 2015 by

Blue Words

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Until I joined Toastmasters, I’d never heard the term blue word.  But I was painfully aware of their existence and the battle we all have about when and how to use them. Especially as a writer.

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A blue word is a swear word. Don’t worry, I intend on keeping the G rating of my blog.

Blue words are unique in that they are tied to us emotionally. We don’t typically utter them thoughtfully, but reactively. If you see something dreadful (like a car accident unfolding before your eyes), you probably utter a blue word. If you’re angry, you might react using a blue word. And, more interestingly, of all the words that leave your mouth, you may regret or even feel ashamed for uttering a blue word. How many times as children have we been told, “Never say that word”?

If you’ve ever lived in a foreign country, then you know some of the first words you’ll learn are the blue ones. Why? Firstly, they’re heard a lot, and, more importantly, they have no emotional power over you. For example, if I say merde, a Frenchman might be offended, but no American would be. It doesn’t mean anything to us. It lacks the emotional tie and, therefore, is just a word. Similarly, anyone who knows English as their second language has no hesitation using our blue words, though you and I may blush at their language. Again, these words mean nothing to them.

As a writer they pose a problem for me. I put my characters in some terrible situations. If I were in their place I’d react with the words, “Oh my God.” I do it all the time. But as a reader, these are boring words. They just don’t spark the same emotion reading them as they do when said. Yes, I can convey anger using the “f” word or someone’s sassiness with other swear words, but they don’t read well, so I use them sparingly, only when I need to make a specific point.

Which leaves me with a problem. Either I dismiss them (not very realistic!), or — and this is key—I make up new ones. I tend to the latter, which allows me to do more than just show emotion; I can give you some insight into the character or the situation.

For example, let’s say John meets Steve and thinks ill of him. I could write:

John thought, “He’s an a**hole.”

True, we all know how John feels about Steve, but reading this you might think John’s a bit crude, maybe a bit of an a**hole himself. But, I could write:

Screen shot 2015-03-10 at 8.19.50 PMJohn thought, “What a jerk.”

The reader gets the point without swearing, and still may have the same opinion about John. Let’s go beyond that. If we want to change the reader’s opinion of John let’s try:

John thought, “He’s got the charm of a malcontented garden slug.”

We have successfully made the point (John doesn’t like Steve) yet we’ve gained some insight into John, who now appears thoughtful, witty, possibly educated, and, well, I’d like to shake that man’s hand!

This applies to expletives. If pulled off well, your audience will know exactly what’s being felt and feel it themselves. Classic examples of this are

– Frack (from Battlestar Galactica)

– Frell (from Farscape)

– Dren (from Farscape)

– Gorram (from Firefly)

– Hell’s bells (from the Dresden Files)

Turns out it’s not easy. In fact,when you’re writing making up a word that mean “f you” stops you dead in your tracks, making you lose your momentum and your own sense of urgency, or danger, or surprise. Now I’m not in that space of “I’m being attacked by thirteen goblins!” so much as staring into space asking, “What’s a good word for…?”

As writers, we’re supposed to be creative. To connect with people, we’re supposed to be realistic, even in our fictional works.

Try it. Send me a couple of ideas while you’re at it. Cripes, I’m always looking for good swear words!

Jax Daniels is a member of the Leasspell writer’s group and the author of the award-winning novel, The Dead Man’s Deal, a witty, entertaining mystery set in the New Orleans the tourists never get to see…

DMD

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March 10, 2015 by

Secrets of a Guinea Pig Whisperer Turned Author: Find your Niche.

By Lisa Maddock

Teddy and Pip are awesome. These most endearing guinea pigs keep you laughing throughout their whimsical adventures. When the Christmas tale came out, I started up a conversation with Lisa Maddock, begging her for a Halloween story for Teddy and Pip. In this house, we are nuts about two things: guinea pigs and Halloween—So what could be better than that?  A blog, perhaps?  Lisa is a successful indie author, so I invited her to share the secrets of her success.

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You don’t grow out of Teddy and Pip; they are for everyone! Wheek wheek! (Books 1, 3, & 4) Available on Amazon.

Hello! My name is Lisa Maddock. I am the author of A Tale of Two Guinea Pigs, and this is my writing story.

In my late 20s, I wrote a novel, and I thought it was great. I loved my characters and my story, loved the plot twists and the romance. I was confident and ready for fame. So I researched publishing companies and wrote query letters, agonizing over every word. I actually sent that 400-page manuscript off to a few publishers who did not require a query letter. It was so exciting!

Then I sat back and waited.

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And I got rejected and rejected and rejected.

So I hung up my typewriter, metaphorically speaking.

Years went by.

I had a baby.

More years went by.

I still had that urge to write something, to see my name on a book.

I started up the process again: re-researching the publishing industry, looking for tips and ideas. I had a great new story idea now (inspired by Maggie and Peanut, the family guinea pigs). But in more than a few places, I read that talking animal stories were old hat, not the “in” thing. Don’t write about that. The thing to write about now was something that was not my thing. Not my experience. Not me.

Write what you know.

What did I know? I was a mom. I had guinea pigs. I lived a pretty simple middle-class life. Agents and publishers did not want to hear about that stuff. But that’s what I knew. It was beginning to seem like an impossible, circular problem. I was ready to hang up my typewriter again. (By now it was a computer, though, not a real typewriter.)

Meanwhile, my daughter had entered the “chapter books” phase of life. Reading together every night was “our thing.” How wonderful that she always begged for just “one more chapter.” She had a fondness for animals, so animal stories were her favorite. We read everything. It soon became a necessary quest to find more material, especially stories about guinea pigs. There weren’t many.

I could write a story about guinea pigs. I knew I could. Maggie and Peanut gave me plenty of material every day, and I could imagine what was going on in their fuzzy little heads. I could make it funny and cute and….

But publishers didn’t want animal stories. Nobody would even look at my story. Nobody would publish it. It wouldn’t matter how good it was, how funny it was. I was unknown. I couldn’t get an agent as an unknown. I couldn’t get known without an agent.

Circular problems continued.

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Teddy & PIp’s holiday adventures put the Merry in Christmas and the Happy in Halloween. (Books 2 & 5) Available on Amazon.

I decided to write the story anyway. I wrote it, not for the “market,” not for an agent or a publisher, but for Allison. My goal: to have a copy of my book in the elementary school library. And wouldn’t it be cool if some of her friends read it too and thought it was funny?

When the story was done, I began research on self-publishing. And I admit that it felt like a sellout, or like it wasn’t really “getting published.” I was not going to get a call from my editor, arguing with me about words. I was going to be the editor. I was going to design the cover and do the back cover text and everything. Gulp. My husband thought it was a nice hobby and a neat-o thing for me to end up with that book to show off to family and friends. I wished it was going to be more than that, but alas.

The day the book was in my hands, I went right to the school library. Sandy, the librarian, gave me a hug and congratulated me. She also agreed to write the lovely review that you can still see on Amazon. I was invited to talk to the fifth-graders in the coming weeks about the book. I sold some copies off of my Web site to family and friends, then I ordered another box of books for just in case. It was so exciting! In the meantime, I started up book two (Bridezilla) as a Christmas present for Allison. The characters had become real to me and had more to say. They wanted their story to continue.

A local book club found me. They had read A Tale of Two Guinea Pigs and honored me as a guest at their meeting. Wow. With that “celebrity” evening, I had honestly surpassed my goals.

But that was not the end of the story. What I hadn’t counted on was how the book caught on. Not from anything I did—because I didn’t do much—but through the internet and its massive reach. The secret of my success?  The guinea pig people found me (a.k.a. I found a niche).

No, Teddy and Pip have not exactly become an industry. There isn’t a movie in the making, no publisher has come forth and offered to take me on, and I don’t make enough money to quit my day job (though I do make money now, so we’re going in the right direction).

I have found more success than I dared to hope for, and I am grateful. I get letters from kids who are reading my book as a class. I answer questions about how I deal with paparazzi (yes, they ask about that for real! Tee hee!) and if I would consider writing about different animals—like a komodo dragon, for example. I have requests from kids (and grown-ups, too) to join the Best Friends Club on my Web site. Kids love Teddy and Pip! They quote Pip back at me in their notes and letters. When my sales go noticeably up during December, I get to picture kids opening my book on Christmas morning. I love it all! What a blessing. Best of times!

There are now five Teddy and Pip books. My daughter, now 17, continues to be my biggest fan. She has grown into a self-professed grammar freak (lucky me!) and also has become my story consultant, copy editor, and all-things-technology assistant (including webmaster and cover designer).

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Something is going on in the background of Lucy’s Minnesota life—something that is making it all come apart piece by piece no matter how many times she hits Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Grab a tissue, dive in, and buckle up for the roller-coaster ride that awaits you in Silver Linings.

Finally (lest anyone think I am only wall-to-wall guinea pigs), I have also been working for a long time on a YA (young adult) series starring sixteen-year-old Lucy Mackensie, which I have titled Silver Linings. My goal in writing this story was to offer something different from what I perceive as lots of dark and gloomy apocalyptic story options for girls twelve and up. There is a lot going on in the story, and I don’t want to give anything away—which makes it tough to do promotional stuff or to find a niche! I’ll say that it’s a story about people—relationships, friendships, a first love, and beyond. It is my hope that the ending will surprise, the middle will intrigue and provoke thoughts, and the beginning will draw you in, make you love the characters, and want to keep turning pages. It is my hope that the guinea pig people might follow me into that series, once they feel ready for something a bit more. I did sneak a couple guinea pigs into the story in a cameo appearance. I am revising and then re-releasing book one (hopefully) this summer.

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