Guest Post and Giveaway: Laura Pauling on her MG fantasy/adventure

My MG book, Deadwood, officially launched yesterday (obligatory plug: buy it for paperback or Kindle). But after talking about Deadwood on Operation Awesome for the past year, I thought the best way to celebrate would be to invite my Pugalicious Press sister, Laura Pauling, to talk about her new MG adventure, How to Survive Ancient Spells and Crazy Kings. And guess what? She's giving away a prize pack that includes both her book, other Pugalicious titles, including Deadwood, and Gangsterland, a great new MG title from Ansha Kotyk! So read on. -- Kell Andrews

Laura Pauling on her journey through the jungles of self-publishing, trade publishing, and her new MG adventure

Thanks to the gals at Operation Awesome for letting me take over their blog! I'm here to talk about my journey.

Everyone will agree that a lot has changed the past couple years. Two years ago, I was knee deep researching agents, sending out queries, and forging ahead the best I could. Like everyone else, I heard the rumors spreading along the Internet grapevine. I read the blog posts. I saw the potential. I did a lot of research. A spark lit inside of me. I could be in charge of my own career. I didn’t have to wait until I wrote the kind of story that agents were looking for at that particular moment. I realized that if I continued on the traditional route, it would take at the minimum three years. A year to find an agent and revise and then at least a couple years before it would hit the shelf. If the book sold. And that’s a big if these days.

Last spring I self published my YA, A Spy Like Me and just this past month I released the sequel, Heart of an Assassin. Is self-publishing hard work? Yes. (Any publishing is hard work.) Is it totally worth it? Yes. Is it for everyone? Probably not. Each writer has to evaluate his or her goals. Even though I’d ventured into self-publishing waters with my young adult, I had this middle grade sitting on my hard drive. A story that I loved. I wasn’t quite ready to self publish it, and I knew the editors of Pugalicous Press, a new small press dedicated to quality young adult and middle grade.

How to Survive Ancient Spells and Crazy Kings released last week. Pugalicious 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. 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

 

Refresh the page if you can't see the Rafflecopter form! a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Dionna L. Mann on POV in Description

This week I asked middle-grade writer Dionna L. Mann to write a guest post. Dionna is the author of FREEDOM PEN (Pugalicious Press, also the publisher of DEADWOOD!), a new gem of a children's novel with a pitch-perfect rural Virginia voice.

FREEDOM PEN by Dionna L. Mann,
Pugalicous Press, 2012, on sale now!

Here's the blurb:

Being mean ain’t in nobody’s blood.
 
Reckon folks will argue that one until there’s no more moonshine on the mountains.  But in Freedom Pen that’s what Sarah the Twerp believes.  And soon she and her brother, Billy, are setting out on a courageous summertime adventure to free two pit bull pups from a violent future.  Will the pup’s heroes succeed in their quest, though they’ve been penned in by a violent past themselves?

So how does she capture that POV in every line? She sent over this guest post and I used it immediately in revising picture book manuscript -- it really helped me think about choice of word and image.

POV: Parasol or Velcro?

By Dionna L. Mann 

The sky is an opened parasol hovering above … or is it Velcro stretching taut across the horizon, better yet, is it mashed potatoes filling a blue expanse…?

Truth be told, if the penned stylist doesn’t know who is looking at the sky, then the whole manuscript-troposphere is a muddled mess!

So…what’s the sky made of? Is it a Parasol Or Velcro? It all depends on whose eyes are gazing upward—the POV—doesn’t it?

Who’s gawking up? 

If the eyes gawking up are of a teenage girl from Harlem, New York, then the stars filling the firmament sure better not look like the shining scales of a freshly caught herring. And if the eyes are of a ten-year-old boy from the hollers of an Appalachian Mountain range, then the bejeweled night canopy sure better not look like an aluminum garbage can stretched from North Street to South Street with headlights bouncing on it.

Talk about whipping up some unsettling wind conditions for anyone attempting to hang glide in the sky of your created world! The poor reader piloting such a confused story will probably feel lightheaded due to POV-oxygen deprivation! (Look out below! She’s coming in hard!) And that’s your manuscript hitting the reject pile.

Be kind to your reader, will you? Let the POV-air blow gently, steadily, consistently.

Eye know what eye am seeing! 

No matter if your narration, the point of view, of your story is in the first person: “I looked at the sky…”, and I’m Jimmy and—Get back writer!—I know how I see the sky! 

Or if it is in the limited third person: “Jimmy looked at the sky….”, and I’m the narrator seeing everything through Jimmy’s eyes, so, don’t question me, I know how Jimmy sees the sky.

Or if it’s in an omniscient voice: “That whippersnapper Jim looked at the sky…”, and I’m a wise, old man from Kentucky, so I know how Jim and everyone else sees the sky. What’s more, I’ll describe it in my own crotchety way!

Author Dionna L. Mann

No matter any of that. The bottom line is that the sky must be seen through the eyes of whom the story speaks. That’s POV, plain and simple.

Right Shade of Blue 

If you really want to get the hue of blue right for the arch above, consider this: How does my character feel when he’s outside staring heavenward? Is he a downhearted charcoal-gray? Then surely he won’t describe the sunset as an ice cream sundae with rainbow sprinkles.

Is he feeling a jubilant baby blue? Then his eyes must not wander aimlessly toward dusky clouds that seem to be oozing black ink. Heavens, no! Do that and your reader will be yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

The mood of each scene and the character’s state of mind at any given time during the narration of the story must influence the POV.

Is Columbus breathing this air, too? 

Think about this, too. When was Jimmy born? If the kid came into the world in the 1800s, he’ll not describe the sky the exact same way as if he was born in the year 2012, or 2504. Research (for historical fiction), imagination (for a futuristic envisioning), and at all times, observing the world as Jimmy would, will bring your POV clearly into focus.

So next time your character gazes into the sky, how will he or she describe it? Like a parasol or Velcro? Spend time getting into the head of your character or narrator, and then you’ll know just what to make of the blue bowl above us!

Suggested reading: Description by Monica Wood, published by Writer’s Digest Books.

Related Links

More about Dionna L. Mann
Buy Freedom Pen
Interview with Dionna L. Mann by Kathy Erskine

Cover Reveal: DEADWOOD by Kell Andrews

I am often excited about cover reveals, but this is the first one I'm nervous about -- my own MG debut, DEADWOOD! Instead of biting my nails, I'll get right to it:

 

 

How gorgeous is that? The amazing cover artist, Shawna Tenney, captured the characters and scene perfectly -- just as I pictured it but a thousand times more vivid. 

DEADWOOD is coming from Pugalicious Press in late 2012. Here's what it's about:

There’s something evil in Deadwood Park.

Twelve-year-old Army brat Martin Cruz hates his rotten new town. Then he gets a message from a tree telling him it’s cursed — and so is he. It’s not just any tree. It’s the Spirit Tree, the ancient beech the high school football team carves to commemorate the home opener. And every year they lose.

But the curse is no game, and it gets worse. Businesses fail. Trees topple like dominos. Sinkholes open up in the streets, swallowing cars and buildings. Even people begin to fade, drained of life.

Martin teams up with know-it-all soccer star Hannah Vaughan. Together they must heal the tree, or be stuck in Deadwood Park at the mercy of the psycho who cursed it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the DEADWOOD cover! And I'd really love it if you added it to your "to-read" list on Goodreads. Thanks so much!