Hi there, would you be kind enough to humor
me and share the following information:
1.
the name of your best friend in middle school
2.
the name of your middle school
3.
the name of the sibling closest in age to you
4.
the name of your baseball home team
Based on the
information you have provided, I’m going to ask you another question, and for
this one you need to be wearing your honesty cap. Hold it, you don’t have one?
Back in the old days, elementary schools should have given them out along with
those terribly helpful thinking caps they doled out during arithmetic lessons.
Eh, but if my workbooks attest to the powers of caps, you didn’t miss out on
much.
Okay, so
psychological integrity is a foreign concept to some of us. Let’s try a more
manipulative method. Stare at the edge of your nose, close your eyes and think Truth.
Truth. Truth. You’re going to say the truth.
Now that
you’re in a hypnotic state, what’s the first thing that comes to your head when
I say the answer to number three?
(Please refer to the list above.)
What? I
didn’t hear you. Oh, I see, you’re wary of speaking up. Hmm, then I guess I’ll
have to take the keyboard back, big brave me. I’m not scared of retribution;
I’m also probably the only one here today who’s writing under a pen name that
is unknown to her siblings, but that’s beside the point.
Maybe I’m
not being fair claiming to be more courageous than you; perhaps you’re all
grownup, and believe you’re so over “that”— the petty torments of your
childhood. So what if the answer
to number three flushed your card collection of the answer to number four down the toilet, hung up pictures of you as
a baby in the bath in the answer to
number two’s main entrance, and stole the
answer to number one? You harbor no ill feelings.
But here I am, stuck in my nursery. Hey! That
explains why I wrote Launching Sisters to
WitchCamp while other authors out there are writing the next great American
novel.
On a more
serious note, tapping into those raw childhood emotions was one of the first
steps I took to write my middle grade fantasy. Though I have more than ten
years of experience working with families, and I myself am a mother in a
dynamic family, I wrote from neither of these vantage points. Instead, I traveled
back in time and wrote from my own middle grade mindset.
Critics will
doubt the feasibility of doing that, and I admit I couldn’t remove the effect
of my adult hindsight, but I tried to stay in that time period and emotional
framework as much as possible. I don’t have a remarkable memory when it comes
to facts and figures, but I do have a strong episodic memory. More significant is the fact that I was
“blessed” with an acute emotional awareness, and my memories evoke the same
emotions I experienced at the time of occurrence. I wasn’t kidding about being
stuck. At least I found a way to take
advantage of my baggage when I played out my feelings of sibling rivalry and
familial frustrations with J.J. and his sisters.
I hear you. So what
can those writers who aren’t bogged down by phenomenal episodic memories do? I
basically said it already, but am going to reiterate, in a different order, the
steps to writing in an authentic middle grade voice:
Be brave.
Man up and own up to the demoralizing fact that indeed, you were once a kid.
And that kid lived through many different types of experiences.
Put on your
honesty cap. What emotions stand out from those times? To me the need of
affirmation, the lack of control, and the desire to be number one lay at the
very top of my middle grade emotional storage box.
Get
hypnotized. Or whatever it takes for you to deal with those long-buried
emotions; they are real and raw, but therein exists their power to transport
you back in time.
Just a
cautionary note: before you embark on this emotion-laden historic journey, dash
off a text warning the answer to number
three. It’s only ethical to give your potential victim a chance to run
away from the rage crime of the century.
Launching Sisters to WitchCamp
LRS
Genre: Middle grade fantasy
Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-77127-482-1
Number of pages: 118
Word Count: 31474
Cover Artist: Charlotte Volnek
Book Description:
Sixth-grader J.J. learns there are no easy breaks in life.
When J.J. discovers the opportunity to send his maddening sisters off to WitchCamp, he has fantasies of a delightful summer. However, J.J. and his friend are soon off on a ride they didn't anticipate -- one that lands them in a chilling mess of witch hunts and creature feasts.
With his creative ideas, J.J. utilizes their risky escapades to escape. But making deals with superhuman creatures just lands them in hotter water.
Now it’s up to J.J. to save them all from certain death by being more imaginative and daring than ever before.
Excerpt
The
witches don’t descend immediately, but take their time circling the
clearing in the woods. Is this to give us a sneak preview of
their camp, or is it simply landing regulations?
Crowds
of long-haired figures in dark clothing sit around in circles, and in their
center a huge circle appears to have been drawn in red paint. Smack in the
middle is a roaring bonfire pit.
A
heavy beat rocks the area. The figures each have a
big pot turned upside down, and they’re banging on them with long spoons. The
rhythm is steady, eerily paced. The sound
effects seem to signal something deliciously spooky is about to happen.
A
tree trunk sails through the air, directly below our feet, but above the groups
around the bonfire. It comes to a stop
and descends till its right above the fire pit and hangs there midair.
The
tree trunk starts rotating over the fire. As it turns, I see a dead giant all
tied up!
The
wood, still suspended in the air, keeps on rotating over the fire. The giant’s
body reminds me of the chicken on the rotisserie in our supermarket.
“What’s going on down there?” I ask my
driver in a high-pitched voice, trying to sound like a girl.
“A
barbeque.” She cackles. “A special barbeque.
It’s not every day we get to slay a giant, but this one was really
asking for it.”
A
terrible smell, which makes me think of garbage dumps, public bathrooms, and
the stash of molding food under my bed, saturates the air. Great cheers sound
up from the circles below. The old witch behind me chuckles. “The girls are
eager for their dinner.”
****
About the Author:
LRS has a master’s degree in psychology. For more than ten years she pretended to be working while she was on the floor enjoying playtime with kids.
She has lived on the eastern and western coasts of the U.S.A, as well as abroad, and currently resides in Canada with her family. Wherever she is, she can’t pass by a toy store without going inside.
When she's not writing, she can usually be found in her kitchen, where she’s either baking (and sampling) cookies or stirring a pot. (Unfortunately, she has yet to find a magical spoon.)
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3 comments:
Thank you for hosting me!
Also, there's a contest up on my website:
http://www.launchingsisters.com/contest.html
Or, if you don't mind, visitors can leave a comment here, sharing a memorable anecdote of growing up with their siblings, and I'll enter it into the contest.
Thank you!
Wishing you many fun reads,
LRS
What a fun story. Oh, yes, you take me back to those middle school years, or junior high as it was called then.I actually still talk to my best friend every now and then.
Congratulations and best of luck with your story.
Thanks for stopping by Beverly. How lovely you've kept your friendship going all these years.
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