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It’s almost summer! I live in Michigan, so during the few months when the sky is blue, the grass is green, and clouds are fluffy, I pack away my winter projects and hit the outdoors—preferably with a book in hand. Those days are just around the corner, so I’m stocking up my Kindle now. If […]

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I’m so excited to tell you that the audiobook of WISH YOU WEREN’T is live! I didn’t realize after approving the final version that it would take Audible nearly two weeks to listen to it to make sure the quality was up to par, but I’m glad they did. Because that ensures that anyone who […]

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Lewis: Hi, Linc, it’s great to be here. Thanks for the invite. Time travel … hmmm … it’s one of those things that just happened out of the blue. It was all a complete accident, really. I think Eva can sum it up better than me.

Eva: Accident! That’s the perfect way to describe it. You could say we just fell into it. Our dad found an ancient relic in Machu Picchu and hid it in our basement. While he was showing it to us he rubbed it, and it sort of just swallowed him. We were both dragged into it when we tried to save him. Next thing, we were sitting on the ground being stared at by a bunch of people in a huge place called Time Square. The centre of time.

Lewis: Yeah, it’s a brilliant place that controls time. And if you’re licenced (or swallowed by a crusty old relic) it lets you get from one time to another.

Eva: Think of a Central Station for time travellers … and that’s Time Square.


Linc: My dad is a mechanic, but yours is a scientist. What’s that like? Who gets into trouble more: you two, or your dad? 

Eva: Dad’s great, but he can be a little bumbling. I mean, he’s smart and has discovered some amazing stuff, but, yeah … he’s caused a few problems along the way too.

Lewis: Yeah, like trapping us in Time Square.

Eva: But he didn’t mean to. You’ve done worse.

Lewis: Like what? I’ve never caused the family to cross into another dimension and get stranded with no way to get back to 1930. Dad’s handiwork is way worse than mine.

Eva: Yeah, ok, he’s got a point. Even though Lewis has caused more things to go wrong than dad, this Time Square thing has to be dad’s biggest foul up.


Linc: My spy missions seem like fun, but they get dangerous, too. How about your time travel adventures? What’s the scariest moment so far?

Lewis: I think the scariest moment so far was when it really hit me that we were actually in another time. If things didn’t work out, then we wouldn’t be able to get back to Time Square. I wasn’t too thrilled at the thought of being stuck in 1947.

Eva: Mine was when I realised that out little brother, Thomas, was still back in our house in Washington D.C. in 1930. I was so scared for him.

Lewis: He’ll be fine, Eva. Aunt Gracie will look after him ‘til we can find a way back.


Linc: Tell me about mission ELMR-01, in TIME SQUARE | UFO. That one sounds a lot like my Pandora missions, but even more mysterious…

Eva: Well, getting us stuck in Time Square wasn’t the only trouble dad caused. He sort of caused a Shift, which is a time glitch, and caused lot of travellers to become stranded throughout time.

Lewis: Yeah, good one dad!

Eva: So, we’ve both joined Operation Slingshot, which has been set up to find and rescue all of the missing travellers. ELMR is our rescue team name, and UFO is all about our first mission. There’s plenty of mystery and action.

Lewis: We went to a place called Roswell in 1947. Think space ships and aliens in a small town, then throw in a crazy inventor and a pile of twists. I think we did really well, considering it was our first mission.


Linc: Seems like you get a history lesson too, while you’re time traveling. What is the most interesting thing you learned so far?

Lewis: History! Not so far. For us, everything after 1930 is future. 

Eva: But it’s Linc’s history, Lewis. Yes, Linc, we’ve learned plenty of things about history.

Lewis: History, future, it’s all the same I guess. The most amazing thing we’ve seen has to be when we were being chased by those guards and saw the …

Eva: Lewis! … shhhh … don’t give too much away.

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Just announced today Amazon has a new subscription service for e-books called Kindle Unlimited.  For a flat monthly fee of $9.99 you can enroll and download up to ten e-books at one time.  When you are done, just return them and then you can download more.  We know young children can be voracious readers and we are excited about the opportunity to reach new readers with this program.  Now parents can download books for themselves and load up on some quality children’s books too for one low price.  There are over 600,000 titles currently available and they can be loaded onto any device.  What a bargain!

 

Try the new Kindle Unlimited FREE for 30 days HERE

 

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I'm excited to introduce you today to a YA writer I met several years ago through an online class, Kendell Shaffer. A screenwriter, a teacher and most recently a radio show host (!), Kendell has combined her background in entertainment with her current hometown of Venice Beach, to create a novel that feels different from your typical angsty teen stories, totally raw and real.

Welcome, Kendell!

Let's start with the basics. How long did you work on this novel? How many versions did you go through?
I started writing the novel in the online writing class through mediabistro.com where we met! Once I finished it I did two more drafts then sent it to an editor, Winslow Eliot. The self-publishing part was fairly quick once the manuscript was ready. I had fun with the cover art. I found a girl with blonde dreadlocks, like Kalifornia, and did a photo shoot on Venice Beach. My husband designed the cover.

I love that Frances Bean was an inspiration for writing this story and I also love the relationship that Kal develops with her dad. Who were your rock star idols growing up?
When I was a teenager, hair bands were popular and I really didn't like those. I grew up in Baltimore and the summer before 10th grade a radio station in Washington DC, DC101, played only music from the 1960s the entire summer. So my best friend Virginia and I listened to that nonstop and I gained an education and love of the music from that decade. The funny thing was that the following school year we found the boys who had the done the same thing we had, so our first boyfriends were discovered because of the shared love of sixties music.

That's so cool that the radio station focused on the sixties for the summer. I know I've dated guys based on musical tastes in the past :-)

I like how you placed your characters in a lot of real locations around Venice, almost making the city another character in the story. What made you decide to set the story there?
I live in Venice and it's so vibrant and ever changing. It doesn't know if it wants to be a beach town or Rodeo Drive or Silicone Beach or all of those at once. It's restless and unpredictable, sort of like a teenager, so yes, Venice Beach is very much a character in KALIFORNIA BLU.

Yeah, anyone who has spent time in Venice knows what a crazy, fun place it is. My kids like going just to people watch. Do you plan to set additional novels there?
I'm working on a sequel to KALIFORNIA BLU. It will take Kal at first to Europe with her mom, but then she returns to Venice and all the characters we met in the first book.

As if writing books isn't fun enough, in your other life you're a screenwriter. How does writing a novel differ from writing a screenplay?
In novels you get to take the characters much further then you would in a screenplay. You can explore details in more subtle ways and you aren't limited to the number of characters you have or pages you write.You have much more room to play and don't have to limit yourself thinking about the reality of a budget and locations.

In addition to working on VFX on "Knight and Day," you've also worked as an associate producer on several films and television shows. Do you think that production background has helped you with the business side of self-publishing?
I am finding the ability to walk up to strangers and say, "I wrote a book, will you read it?" has been helped by my living and working in Los Angeles. You can't really be shy when you do that and I have learned to be able to talk to anyone while working as a producer. The organization skills help with self-publishing; the "I can do that" attitude helps too. In production and post production you are constantly given problems that need to be solved quickly and cost efficiently. So yes, all that helps.

It definitely helped with your book trailer. The production value on this is just amazing. It's one of my favorite book trailers EVER.


Just gorgeous! It makes me want to see a movie of KALIFORNIA BLUE. I think you might need to get working on that ;-)

So tell me – what do you think is tougher: the writing, the publishing or the marketing? Why?
The publishing is a piece of cake. CreateSpace has been remarkable and they have unbelievably good customer service. Writing is just a joy. But marketing is a challenge. You have good days when something great happens like an interview with you, Sherrie, but there is no direct route so it's challenging to navigate all the different directions you could take. Also it does take time away from writing. I have a radio show once a month called WriteSpa Teen where I interview YA authors so that helps with the marketing and it's really fun!

And you've gotten to interview some incredible authors like Amy Timberlake and Jane Yolen. I'm so impressed!

So what are you working on right now? What will your next book release be?
I'm working on a sequel to KALIFORNIA BLU which will come out at the end of the summer. And I started a middle grade reader about a boy ballet dancer called THE BUN TEST. Both my kids are in a serious Russian ballet program so I spend a lot of time in the dance studio. My eleven-year-old son is the only boy in a company of 60 girls. I thought that would make a good novel.

Love the title! My son did ballet for a very short time. I told him he should have stuck with it  because there will come a day when he appreciates being the only boy in the company of 60 girls!

Thank you so much for stopping by, Kendell. It's been great catching up with you!

You can find out more about Kendell and her projects (including the upcoming Japanese translation of her novel!) by visiting some of her virtual hangouts:

Website: http://kendellshaffer.com
YouTube: http://youtu.be/xHaiGnXCmvg
Instagram: http://instagram.com/kaliforniablu
Radio Show: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/writespa
Buy the Book: http://www.amazon.com/Kalifornia-Blu-Kendell-Shaffer-ebook/dp/

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Today Kid Lit Reviews is extremely happy to showcase a new author. Heather Ellis released her debut children’s, The Sugary-Sherburts,  in 2013. Her second book, The Sugary-Sherburts and The Stone Witch, released this past January 7, 2014. Both books will be reviewed here this Saturday, March 22, 2014.

There is one amazing catch . . . Heather is a ten-years-old. She will tell us what it was like to work with an illustrator, whom she calls Dad.

What is it Like Working with My Dad as an Illustrator on My Books? 

My name is Heather and I am 10, from Yorkshire in England. I have luckily written and self-published three children’s books aimed at 8 -11 years old.

I work quite a lot with my dad as he illustrates my books. I thought it would be nice to tell you about how that works and what it’s like.

My book writing first started properly in 2013. My dad used to draw for (and with) me when I was much younger, because we both like drawing.  My dad is good at drawing, better than me anyway.

When I published my first book (called The Sugary-Sherburts – in 2013) I didn’t always want to put pictures in my book. CreateSpace.com needs a minimum of 25 pages to create a book – I think I was a couple of pages short and it helped fill up a couple of pages when my dad drew for my book. However everyone who bought the books said it really gives the books character – so I started putting pictures in all my books, my dad draws them all.

It wasn’t an accident that I worked with my dad for illustrations on my books. He could draw well and I didn’t have to pay him any money to illustrate my book. I never thought about using another illustrator because of the cost (I am only 10 after all!). Working with my dad is great (and easy!) because I don’t have to tell him what to draw. He usually reads my books a lot and has his own ideas and tells me what he thinks. Another good thing about working with my dad is that he doesn’t have a deadline either. Normally the opposite, he is usually asking me to be quicker with my writing when he wants to draw a certain part of the book.

 

My favourite book illustrator is Axel Scheffler of The Gruffalo books; his drawings are awesome and so colourful! I do like colour in kidslit books but I told my dad to keep my pictures plain black and white. I like black and white and that was my decision.

If there is something I don’t like about one of his drawings – I do ask him to change it and redraw it. He is ok with that and doesn’t take offence! For example when I wrote Rosie and Camilla’s Candyland Adventure, he drew a pointy moustache on one of the characters called Professor Quirk. The moustache didn’t make him look very friendly – so he drew him again for me without (the moustache).

The Sugary-Sherburts was my dad’s very first book that he ever illustrated and now he has done three. I asked him if he always wanted to be an artist or illustrator. He say he  knew that he was not bad at sketching with a pencil when he was little – but he always moans that he can’t use a paint brush – so he never really wanted to be an artist full time.

I would never draw my own pictures for my books, because I can’t really draw very well.

Here is a link to my latest book called The Sugary-Sherburts and The Stone Witch – paperback — kindle version.
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Thank you for reading my blog post, I hope you liked it.

Heather Ellis

Website – www.heatherellisbooks.co.u k

Blog – http://heatherellisbooks.wordpress.com

 

Filed under: Children's Books, Guest Post, Middle Grade Tagged: Createspace, Heather Ellis, indie author, James Ellis, kid writers

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Hello my fine feline friends, Guess what releases today? If you said Daemons in the Mist, you’re correct! That day is finally here! The second edition of my debut novel is now out there in the world complete with new editing, new design, new cover, but featuring the same fantastic story! So without further ado [...]

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