Nothing New, Don't Feel Blue!

Happy Holidays! Hoping that wherever you are - whatever you are doing - you have joy in your heart and a smile on your lips.

Blame the haphazard decoration on me. My sister made the gingerbread. I just went crazy with the icing.
My favorite cookies are snickerdoodle but I won't say no to a good gingerbread or - as seen in the bottom
right - chocolate chip.

Flying Upon Swift Winds

Continuing with the artsy theme, I give you sketches of a pegasus.
In Island Whispers, Angelica becomes partners with Swift.
To draw this enigmatic creature, I combined instructions of how to draw a horse with the instructions of hummingbird wings. It turned out better than my freehand drawings.

I would like to see your drawings, but I'm not sure if that's possible with this blog. If you can upload a picture in the comments, I'd love to see it!

So after doing most of the sketching and erasing, I arrived at this completed product. 

 Read more to see the finished product!

Oh We Went A Wandering Through the Dusty Stacks

I'm not sure if I mentioned it here, but NC State acquired my book for D.H. Hill. It wasn't a difficult task and now my book is listed among the stacks. However, prior to December 5, it was being processed and was unavailable to checkout.

On December 5, I found out from a writing buddy, Joshua, that it was listed as available - except he couldn't find it when he went searching in the stacks. He went earlier to check it out, so by the time the English Club meeting rolled around, he told me and I decided to search for it after the meeting.

Well, it turned into an expedition with half of the English Club hiking over to the library.

We rode the elevator, cramped quarters when there are six people riding together, and got off at the eighth floor. Since Joshua had explored earlier in the day, we let him guide us to the right section.

And it wasn't there!

We scanned the shelves and checked the numbers, but we couldn't find it. Alas, there were some books in German that a few of the club members perused in earnest, but no Island Whispers.

We decided to take the stairs down, so after winding through the stacks, I decided to scan one last shelf on a whim.

In the library there are these shelves where unsorted books rest and there we found it! One copy of Island Whispers, still new and unopened, sitting next to books about microbiology and the mafia.

We skipped down eight flights of stairs and Joshua became the first person to check it out from the library. What a memorable evening!

An Interview with the Author

A while back, months and months ago, Ingram Elliott wanted me to fill out an interview form. There were several questions about Island Whispers and about my writing. Here are a few of the questions with my responses:

Tell me a little about your book’s title and what it represents?

Island Whispers is sort of a nod to all the mysteries that are going on in the book. However, it first was just the title of a book mentioned in the story. Angelica’s father had recorded mysterious events in a book titled: Island Whispers. My mother was the one who suggested that I change the title to Island Whispers because it worked better. So I did and that’s how it was born.

What is the primary message you hope to share with readers? How do you hope they will feel after reading your book?

I want them to feel understood. I want them to come away and see magic everywhere and fun. However, they are also supposed to understand that the world is not so divided into black and white. There are different stories that need to be told and we interpret what we experience differently.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Don’t let yourself give up and keep challenging yourself to explain things that you previously just wanted to shove under the bed and attribute to magical chance. There were a lot of things that I just kind of gave up and let slide until I realized that they could be explained if I just dug further. It really added more to the story and didn’t make it seem like there were no rules and that things could happen at the “author’s whim”. 

Why should we buy your book? What makes it special in comparison to other books in the same genre?

You should buy it because it is a fun adventure with a world that is not our own. It’s relatively easy to read without complicated jargon that populate other fantasy novels and provides enough of a familiar feel that I think readers will immediately be comfortable with most of the ideas. Still there is enough new information and details that make it another book to store on the shelves next to other fantasy novels. Also the characters are relatable, emotionally they react how we would expect someone to react. Their powers aren’t over the top and I think they reflect each of their personalities as well. I really like how the book builds and the characters begin to grow with the story.