Happy Easter, Happy Spring

Image courtesy of jannoon028 / FreeDigitalPhotos.

Wishing you a joyous and blessed Easter and beautiful Spring.
Please check back next week for more trailblazing women, successful careers, and YA/MG books.

February, Love, and Romance, MG Author Kay Lalone's Ghostly Clues

Do you love ghost stories? Then you will love this book for tweens, Kay Lalone's Ghostly Clues. Kay's post was first at the J.Q. Rose blog during the I Love Books event. I'm sharing it here today to introduce you to the book and to discuss the timely topic for this month of February, Love and Romance.  

Take it away, Kay.

            Thank you JQ Rose for hosting me on your blog today. 

            Since February is the month of love, I want to talk about love. When you think about love, what one word comes to mind? Romance. Who doesn’t love romance?

            Romance books are very popular. Personally, I don’t like reading most of them because I feel they don’t really have much of a plot. It is the typical boy meets girl. They fall in love. The end. There are romance books out there that are more than the typical boy meets girl. These books have a plot and the characters have more of a purpose than just falling in love. Love is important, but I want to read about believable characters getting into trouble, having bad things happen to them, and going on an adventure, and then seeing how these characters change because of what has happened to them.

            Paranormal romance is on the rise. Who doesn’t love a good novel about a girl falling in love with a vampire (or some other supernatural being)? One of these days I would love to write a paranormal romance, because I like the paranormal type stuff.

             My first love is mystery/ghost story type books. I love to read about a character solving a mystery or encountering ghosts or some other supernatural creatures. In most of these types of books, there is a love interest where the main character has feelings for someone else.

            Most of the stories I have written aren’t about young love, falling in love, and having crushes. But there is a thread of love flowing through them. Romance is not the only form of love.

In my first published MG novel, Ghostly Clues, Sarah Kay does have a crush on a boy at school, Tom. But he doesn’t play an important part in the story and neither does the crush. He has a big scene in one chapter where Sarah Kay has a surprise boy/girl party for her thirteenth birthday. Of course, her crush is invited. They have a nice scene where they are dancing like they were grown up. Even though Sarah Kay feels grown up, I didn’t give her the chance to have her first kiss. Tom is mentioned a few more time throughout the story, but I never really show their relationship.

            In Ghostly Clues, love doesn’t play a romantic, young love type of role. In the book there is a thread of love woven in like Sarah Kay’s love for a grandma who she has lost because of death. Sarah Kay loves Gramps and she is worried about him. Even though Sarah Kay doesn’t get along with her mother (Mom has lied to her), she still loves her mother. Of course, Sarah Kay loves her best friend, Mary Jane, like a sister. The strongest love is the love she has for a father she doesn’t remember. A father she believes died when she was three. This love drives the story forward and gives Sarah Kay the motivation to try and find her father, to know for sure if he is alive or dead.

            Love is not just romantic, but is about relationships. Relationships aren’t always perfect. But it is love that motivates and drives a character to move forward, to accomplish what they need to accomplish. To grow and change. That’s what makes a book worth reading.

           

Kay's Bio

I’m Kay LaLone author of Ghostly Clues. I live in Michigan with my husband and fourteen year old son (two sons live near by) and two dogs and a cat. I love to get up in the morning and write. My favorite things to write about are ghosts and other supernatural creatures. I’m an avid reader and do book reviews.   

About Ghostly Clues

The sweet scent of lilacs permeates the air around Grandma’s gravesite. Only Sarah Kay can smell Grandma’s favorite flower, and they’re not even in bloom. 

Sarah Kay and her best friend, Mary Jane, believe the lilacs are a sign from Grandma’s ghost. The girls follow one ghostly clue after another, uncovering a secret that Mom never wanted Sarah Kay to know.

Grandma makes sure Sarah Kay gets the message even from the grave. As the evidence piles up, Mom still refuses to accept the possibility Sarah Kay’s father is alive.

Sarah Kay finds Dad’s parents. A set of grandparents she didn’t realize existed. They make it clear her father is alive but days and miles separate the father and daughter reunion because Dad is a truck driver on a long haul. 

Sarah Kay waits. The news reports a fatal car accident involving a semi and Sarah Kay fears the worse. She runs away which leads to Dad and the truth, Mom wanted Dad to remain dead.

Dad had faked his death so why not just stay dead.  The ghostly clues of Grandma wouldn’t allow Dad to remain dead to Sarah Kay.

Mini excerpt  the love scene in Ghostly Clues

            “Surprise,” MJ yelled along with a group of friends, Tom, Max, Sue, Ann and two guys I didn’t know by name.

My mouth opened wide and I closed it quickly, hoping I didn’t look like a fool in front of Tom. “What’s…going on?”

            “Your mother decided to give you a boy/girl party. And I helped plan it,” MJ said, entering the house wearing a fancy pink dress. The other kids followed wearing nice clothes like they were going to some rich, fancy party. The guys wore ties and the girls were in dresses.

I felt out of place wearing my purple sweat pants, a baggy, smiley-face T-shirt, with my hair in braids. I gave Mom a ‘why didn’t you warn me’ look as I dashed up the stairs to put on my purple dress. Not the one I wore at Grandma’s funeral, but one of my party dresses, light purple with sparkles through it. Mom came upstairs and helped me put my hair up and she even let me put a little bit of make-up on.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, giving her a hug. “This is the best birthday ever.”

“Love you, honey. Now go downstairs and enjoy it,” she said.

            My friends and I laughed and talked during pizza. Then when we had our fill, Gramps helped Mom clear a spot in the living room to dance.

            As my favorite song played on the CD, Tom wrapped his arms around my waist and I placed my hands on his shoulders and together we swayed to the music. It was so unbelievably romantic and I felt so grownup.

This night was perfect and I didn’t want it to end; then the sweet aroma of lilacs tickled my nose. I turned away from Tom and sneezed.

“Bless you,” he said.

“Thanks.” I looked around, wondering where the smell of lilacs could be coming from. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something move, a shadow. The air felt chiller.

Grandma? Please, not now. This can’t be happening.

“SK, what is it?” MJ asked.

Before I could answer, Gramps turned off the lights and Mom walked out of the kitchen carrying my birthday cake with thirteen glowing candles lighting the way into the dark room. My friends started singing Happy Birthday.

I plastered a smile on my face and blew out the candles. When the lights came back on the smell of lilacs disappeared and the air in the room grew warmer. I sighed, happy that Grandma’s ghost didn’t decide now to make an appearance.

We ate some cake and danced some more and then I unwrapped gifts from everyone. I especially liked Tom’s gift of a beautiful necklace. It was an angel charm with a purple stone on it.

Book Links

MuseIt Up Publishing 

Kay's Website 

Kay's Blog 

Facebook page 

This book can be found on Amazon, Goodreads, Bookstrand, and Smashwords. 

Career: Author Katie L. Carroll Shares How She Became a Writer and Giveaway

Please welcome children's author Katie L. Carroll today. Katie shares the story behind how she became a writer. Please enter the contest below to win her book and other prizes during her tour. 

Katie and I are swapping blogs, so take another hop over to Katie's website to discover what sparked the penning of my non-fiction e-book for girls, Girls Succeed, and leave a comment to enter the drawing for a copy of Girls Succeed.

Let me tell you a bit about Katie.

Katie L. Carroll began writing at a very sad time in her life after her 16-year-old sister, Kylene, unexpectedly passed away. Since then writing has taken her to many wonderful places, real and imagined. She wrote Elixir Bound and the forthcoming Elixir Saved so Kylene could live on in the pages of a book. Katie is also the author of the picture app The Bedtime Knight and an editor for MuseItUp Publishing. She lives not too far from the beach in a small Connecticut city with her husband and son. For more about Katie, visit Katie's website, friend her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter (@KatieLCarroll).

How I Became a Writer

By Katie L. Carroll

I thought my life as a writer began when I was 19 on a particularly hot day in early spring 2002, a black-letter day, the blackest of black-letter days in fact. I was in college on track to becoming a physical therapist with an early acceptance into the graduate program. But I didn’t become a physical therapist; I became a writer.

I’ve since come to realize, with the help of my mom, that it was much earlier than that when I began my writing life. On my blog post on the release day of the ebook version of Elixir Bound, she wrote, “Although you would have done fine as a physical therapist, I always knew it was not your calling. You were a writer ever since you could pick up a pencil and I think I always knew that, after all the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree (of course I’m talking about your dad).”

Well, my mom was mostly right. Even before I could pick up a pencil, my mom would read stories to us, the Little Golden Books, the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, all kinds of fiction. I think that’s when I became a writer.

When I stop to think about it, I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out I was a writer. The signs were all there. My family and I used to write and illustrate our own picture books about the adventures of Sam the Billy Goat. At the climax of the story it would always read, “Voop Whoosh! Up went the Billy Goat.” And he would fly up to save the day.

I wrote (and sometimes illustrated) stories my whole childhood. In middle school, high school, and college I worked on the school newspapers. Yeah, I think I had been in a state of denial for 19 years…which brings us back to that black-letter day…April 16, 2002. The day my sister Kylene died.

I don’t like to talk about that day. How the forget-me-nots were in bloom. How there was recording-breaking high temps. How it was the worst day of my life. 

So what do you do when you’re 19 and your sister’s just died? Well, once you’re in a place where you can think again, you reevaluate. Everything. 

For me that meant rethinking what I wanted to do with my professional life. Kylene gave me the permission to pursue my passion. So I began writing. Eventually I decided not to continue studying to be a physical therapist. I kept writing, often not even sure who I was writing for. Kylene, an audience, myself?

I pursued publication. And got rejections, along with some encouragement. I revised, learned a lot more about the business of publishing. Wrote some more. Revised some more. Got a lot more rejections…You get the picture.

Ten years and four months after Kylene died, my book was finally born into the world. And what was that book about? A young woman, entrusted with the future of her family’s secret healing Elixir, goes on a quest to find the Elixir’s secret ingredient.

I don’t need a psychoanalyst to tell me I was fulfilling a wish with that book. It was supposed to be about Kylene, and it is in some ways, but it’s really about me. Because for those 10 years, it had been too hard to write Ky’s book. I tried. Elixir Bound started out from her point of view, but I just couldn’t write that book yet.

But I am writing it now. Elixir Saved, a follow-up to Elixir Bound, will be Kylene’s book. 

You see, I believe each of us as an individual doesn’t truly realize the impact we have on people. Each person we touch—whether it be with a story, a hug, a smile as we pass a stranger on the street—leaves a ripple. 

Kylene, in her short life, left lots of ripples. With the people she loved. With the people she cared about. The people she felt compassion for, which was pretty much everyone. The people she shared the Harry Potter books with. Even the nurses in the hospital from the short time she was sick felt her ripples.

I like to think that each ripple I make with Elixir Bound is really Ky’s ripple…because I’m not sure I would have discovered my life’s passion if it weren’t for Kylene. It makes my heart smile to think that Kylene is still making ripples on the world, and that I have my own little role to play in that.

# # # # 

Elixir Bound Back of the Book:

Katora Kase is next in line to take over as guardian to a secret and powerful healing Elixir. Now she must journey into the wilds of Faway Forest to find the ingredient that gives the Elixir its potency. Even though she has her sister and brother, an old family friend, and the handsome son of a mapmaker as companions, she feels alone. 

It is her decision alone whether or not to bind herself to the Elixir to serve and protect it until it chooses a new guardian. The forest hosts many dangers, including wicked beings that will stop at nothing to gain power, but the biggest danger Katora may face is whether or not to open up her heart to love.

Buy Links:

MuseItUp Publishing

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

iBooks 

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