Tag: YA

More Than the Usual Parental Brainwashing with SJ Carson

One of the perks of being in an inclusive writers group like Sin City Writers, is the chance to see so much good work while it is still nascent, then celebrate when it comes into the world. Such is the case with SJ Carson’s new novel, Aveline. I’ve read bits and pieces of it for a long time, and now it’s out in the world October 9th.

Okay, lady. Who are you and why do we care?

Originally from Long Island, New York, I have been a writer since the age of five. I began writing illustrated storybooks, making covers out of the cardboard backs of legal pads. In junior high, I started keeping a diary in which I wrote short stories and vignettes based on my life. Then, in high school, I started writing poetry. In English class, I read the work of the Romantic poets and thought, naively, “I can do that!” I spent the next fifteen years or so honing my craft as a poet. I went to Boston University to earn my MFA in poetry and taught English briefly at the College of Southern Nevada.

Around the age of thirty, I decided to focus on fiction and become a novelist. I started probably ten or fifteen different manuscripts, just trying to teach myself the craft of fiction. I am excited that my first novel, Aveline, will be coming out on October 9, 2024!

I read your first book of poetry, which is something I rarely do, and enjoyed it. I’m excited to see the book out in the world. What’s Aveline about?

It’s about a thirteen-year-old girl named Aveline Fleur, the granddaughter of her country’s Leader, and the daughter of its Lightminister (i.e., chief propagandist). Aveline grows up believing that she lives in the most prosperous, most peaceful country in the world. In reality, its dictatorial government suppresses dissidents by brainwashing them using powerful new drugs. When Aveline discovers what’s really going on, and that her best friend’s mom has been disappeared by the government, she has to leave her comfortable, safe world behind and take action. Her journey is a coming-of-age story as much as it is a struggle to protect the people she loves. When we first meet Aveline, she is a timid girl, but by the end she has blossomed into a confident young woman.

It has a very Divergent kind of feel to it. Where did the story come from?

Back in 2012, I began writing a short story about a young woman named Allyn and her troubled relationship with her daughter Aveline. Both were members of their country’s ruling family. Allyn was not a very good role model for Aveline since she was hungry for power at all costs. Allyn even manipulated her boyfriend, a lower-class man, for political gain. However, I didn’t get beyond a few pages when I ran out of steam. I wasn’t sure at the time where the story was going or what my goal was in telling it.

I let the idea stew for about seven years while I worked on other projects. Then, in early 2019, I started working on it again and developing the plot. How would Aveline react if she learned that her mother, a powerful governmental figure, was up to something wicked that affected the entire society? How would their relationship change? Would it even survive? With these questions in mind, I began the manuscript that would eventually become Aveline. I worked on it for five years, on and off, before it was accepted for publication by The Wild Rose Press.

What are the authors who helped form you? I’m going to assume it’s an eclectic list.

The first author I fell in love with was Sylvia Plath. My twelfth-grade English teacher gave me a copy of The Bell Jar, and I devoured it, along with Plath’s Collected Poems. Never had I read prose or poetry that resonated so deeply with my personal experiences as a teenage girl. I still read Plath to this day and find something new in her work every time.

Currently, I also really enjoy Janet Fitch (her best-known work is White Oleander), Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time series), Frank Herbert (Dune), and Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials series). Each author is very different, but each has taught me about the craft of storytelling, character development, and world-building.

How can we find out more about the wonder that is you?

You can connect with me at my author website, www.sjcarson.com, and on social media as follows:

If you hate starting series that aren’t complete, consider the Johnny Lycan: Werewolf PI series. The grand finale, Johnny Lycan & the Last Witchfinder is available now on Amazon and from Black Rose Writing. All three books are now available on Audible.

“I’ve been a fan of this series since the beginning, and while I’m slightly devastated that this is the end of it, I LOVED The Last Witchfinder.” S G Tasz

A YA Novel from a Buddy… RH Bird

I have loved being in a writer’s group here in Las Vegas. Sin City Writers has introduced me to a lot of excellent writers. We support each other, especially when their work gets out in the world. That brings me to my buddy… well the name doesn’t matter because his first book is out under his nom de plum R H Bird. He writes YA fiction, which is usually anathema to me. But his stuff is funny and worth checking out.

We talked about his novel, Promposal. Don’t let the cover fool you, it’s not just about a girl who wants to go to prom, although it is. The main character is a male wrestler who’s trying to navigate high school in the late 80s. It’s hysterical.

So, RH (ahem) tell us about yourself.

After graduating with a degree in Business Administration from Oswego State, I did what every college graduate in the New York area did, I tried getting a job in Manhattan. I had three offers, a construction supplies firm, a transportation company, and one as a stockbroker. The movie Wall Street came out when I was in college, and that career sounded the most fun and exciting.

After a few years, my firm promoted me to Branch Manager of the Honolulu office, luckily, my wife and I were already big scuba divers. Later, they brought me back to New York as a senior executive. I arrived in my Aloha shirt during a blizzard that shut the City down for days. My lifestyle went from 82-degree weather to 28-degrees.

The cover is a bit misleading. What’s Promposal about?

Promposal, combines timeless teenage angst with the eternal drama surrounding senior prom, and adds a ticking clock to the mix to create a fast-paced and relatable story of high school romance, regret, and redemption.  In morning detention, high school wrestling star, Luca Esposito is horrified to discover that his ex-girlfriend, Piper Kraft, is about to voluntarily relinquish her chance of attending John Marshall High School’s senior prom of 1990 solely because he’s an idiot.  A big idiot.  Huge idiot.  But self-berating can wait until later, because he only has six class periods to fix things and give Piper the senior prom of her dreams.  Sounds simple, but to achieve his goal, Luca must navigate through a fight during lunch with the school’s star quarterback, a trip to the principal’s office, an attempted apology (his!) that spectacularly backfires, and find his ex-girlfriend that’s better at avoiding him than Ferris Bueller is at avoiding Principal Rooney; not to mention getting egged by ski mask-wearing jerks on the way to prom, and a ride-or-die brawl between the wrestlers and football players in the parking lot at prom.  Yeah, Luca is having one of those days for sure, but hopefully a day he’ll always remember – if he can just survive it.  The fast pace, fully developed characters, and genuine emotions presented makes Promposal one of the most exciting and satisfying YA novels of the year.

You’re a middle-aged straight dude. Where’d the idea for a YA romance come from?

The idea for the story came about during a writing retreat, called the Ink Drop Space. The prompt the writing coach gave us was – For the next ten minutes write about something you accidentally overheard.

We must have been discussing high school because detention came to mind. I imagined a junior overhearing in first period detention that his ex-girlfriend, who’s a senior, is selling her tickets to that night’s senior prom. They broke up ten months ago and haven’t spoken since. He spends the rest of the period agonizing about what to do. The breakup was his fault, and she can’t stand him for it. He’d love to take her, but is afraid of being rejected. He’s not sure he has the courage to face her in the hallway.

Even if he can convince her to go, tonight’s the prom. How could they possibly find a dress, rent a tux, buy flowers, get her hair and makeup done, and hire a limo in a few short hours?

I read that to the group and moved onto the next prompt, not giving it much more thought. After the session was over, a friend of mine at the retreat named Lauren Tallman, emailed and said she thought I had an idea for a novel, and she’d like to hear how the story progresses.

I said, “Really?”

She answered, “Yeah, I think you have something there.”

When I sat at the computer, she was right, and the words flowed out of me. It was one of those things where the story wrote itself. Later, when I brought scenes to be critiqued at the Sin City Writer’s Group, the feedback I received was so positive, I felt like Lauren might be correct, and that I had a shot at a book.

Who do you read? Who inspires you?

J.K. Rowling is one of my favorites. Every now and then I have to go back to Hogwarts. I even read it in reverse order once. As for my writing style, Ernest Hemingway has the biggest influence. Margaret Mitchell with Gone With the Wind is great. F. Scott Fitzgerald with The Great Gatsby is great. Mark Twain too.

James Patterson, Stephen King, Wayne Turmel, and Vince Flynn to name a few modern authors. ( EDITORS NOTE Quit sucking up, you have the interview already.)

Of course, the greatest superhero of all time is William Shakespeare. I’ve probably read more of his works than any other.

Where can we find you and learn more?

On Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook, I’m @rhbirdauthor

My website is RHBird.com

My Amazon link is https://www.amazon.com/stores/R.H.-Bird/author/B0CV5ZD97S

Did George RR Martin scar you forever and make you afraid to buy a series of books until they’re done? Guess what?

The third (and final) book in the Werewolf PI Series is now available for Pre-Order. Buy it from my publisher and get a 15% discount. Just use the promo code PREORDER2023. You can also order the whole Werewolf PI series on Amazon. Use the form on the left side to get on my newsletter and learn more.

Jon Robinson’s YA Werewolf

Long time readers will know I’m not a big fan of YA as a genre. (You can read my rant about it here.) That said, introducing young’ns to scary stories is a time honored tradition. Hence my interview with eclectic author Jon Robinson. His first foray into Lycan-inspired fiction is Sunshine and the Full Moon. Like 14 year old girls aren’t scary enough…

Jon, welcome aboard. Tell us about yourself.

I used to write about video games, sports, and wrestling for everybody from ESPN to Sports Illustrated to WWE. But now I’m trading in my love of sweat and polygons for werewolves. That’s right … silver bullets, fangs, and fur. I’m all in. Sunshine and the Full Moon is my first novel, and the main character, a sassy 14-year-old girl obsessed with geocaching, baseball, and k-pop is inspired by my daughter. Her encounter with a werewolf is actually something I had a dream about, so I decided to turn that dream into a novel, and here we are.

Johnny Lycan started as a dream too, and look where that got me. Tell me about Sunshine…

A 14-year-old girl named Sunshine goes on a geocaching adventure and uncovers a werewolf den. Turns out, the town her grandmother lives in up in the California Gold Country has had a mysterious string of deaths, and Sunshine stumbles headfirst into the mystery. When a young girl in town goes missing, can Sunshine figure out the clues behind the creature wreaking havoc throughout the small town before it’s too late?

What is it about that form of magic or character that appealed to you? What are the roots of the story?

I’ve always been a big fan of werewolves. Vampires are cool, zombies are fun, but to me, werewolves are king! Anyway, I had this dream where there was a werewolf attack, and the creature bites down on a young girl’s arm, but the girl had a cast from where she broke her arm, and the werewolf’s teeth get caught. So you have this moment where it’s staring eye-to-eye with the girl, saliva dripping down on her as it tries to wrestle its way free. I decided to work backward from that point in the story, develop a plot and main character around my teenage daughter’s personality, and Sunshine and the Full Moon took on a life of its own. 

It’s interesting that you’ve written so much about sports. A lot of my short stories center around boxing, and yet here we are talking werewolves. Who do you read?

I’m a big fan of everyone from James Lee Burke to Shea Serrano. I also really love to read sports books that take you behind the scenes, like Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.

Where can we learn more about your work?

Check out my website: Jon Robinson Books

On Goodreads: Jon Robinson (Author of NXT) | Goodreads

You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram @Jrobandsteal

Amazon Author Page:

Johnny Lycan and the Anubis Disk is available in paperback and Kindle, and available almost anywhere from #BlackRoseWriting. It’s an American Book Festival Finalist for Best Horror of 2020. “If Raymond Chandler wrote about werewolves.”

Chicago, The Ghost of Jamie McVay, and Ray Ziemer

Whoever said writing is a solitary activity is doing it wrong. Yeah, I said it. Typing, actually putting the words on paper or the screen is a lonely business but writing activities like getting feedback, brainstorming ideas, and hanging with other smart people is social. One of my favorite writerly people is Ray Ziemer. He’s a teacher, poet, novelist and all around good egg.

When I still lived in the suburbs of Chicago, we were both members of the Naperville Writers Group and I was lucky enough to see this book, The Ghost of Jamie McVay being workshopped. Now it’s out in the world. Any excuse to talk to a buddy.

Ray- tell folks what they should know about you.

I’m South Side of Chicago born and bred. Funny when I look back and realize I’ve spent most of my life now in the suburbs, but my youth in the city left me with an accent, an attitude, and a certain psychological shape. When I left the south side, I grew in many ways – in liberal views, intellectual range, hunger for landscape — but at my core, there is always the bungalow under the elms in the old neighborhood near Marquette Park.

Ghost of Jamie McVey is a good YA read. What’s the book about?

The Ghost of Jamie McVay is a classic ghost story of redemption and atonement, set in a contemporary suburb of Chicago, a world of young adult tribulations — bullying, first love, family dysfunction. The narrator uncovers family secrets,  weathers father-son conflict, and clue by clue unravels the mysteries of the ghost of Jamie McVay.

You really capture the Western Suburbs of Chicago in it. Where’d the story come from?

The story came out of regular bike rides and walks with my sons on the Illinois Prairie Path, a disused railroad right-of-way turned bike trail. I fantasized about old railroad disasters, which led to stories about ghost trains and hauntings along the path. When I first conceived the story, I was teaching junior high English, and I always felt there could be more and better novels for adolescent boys to read. So I tried to imagine a first-person narrator for that audience to relate to, and a strong female character everyone would like. Some might suspect there’s a dash of autobiography in there somewhere, too.

Totally unfair question. What’s your favorite scene?

Through multiple rewrites and revisions, two things that never changed were the beginning and the ending. The most dramatic scene is the climax at the end, when the main characters — and the ghost of Jamie McVay — confront each other on Halloween night, with explosive action and (I hope) satisfying resolution. 

That’ll work. You’re a poet and short story author as well as a novelist. Where can people learn more about you?

My author web page, with samples of my poetry and other fiction, is https://rgziemer.com

The book is for sale on Amazon.com  and Barnes & Noble.com. I also have a Goodreads and Facebook author pages.

SHAMELESS PLUG FOR MYSELF: So I am hanging tight for more reviews of Johnny Lycan and the Anubis Disk, which I’ll gladly share. But if you want to help spread the word, I’m having a contest. Send me a picture of you with your copy of Johnny Lycan and the Anubis Disk and where you’re at. You’ll enter a drawing for a Johnny Lycan, “Don’t let Shaggy run the show…” coffee mug. (Yeah, I know, it’s missing an apostrophe. Call it a collector’s item…)

Live Event in Las Vegas- Join me and other writers for a YA author event at the Clark County Library May 16

I’ve met some very cool authors since coming to the desert. One of my fellow Sin City Writers has a new book coming out May 16. Cyberspiracy is about a 15 year old girl hacker who tries to save a presidential election. But there’s more.

Because Wolf O’Rourc is an inventive guy, he’s designed a very cool online search experience where teens can find the answers to questions about the various books on display (including Acre’s Bastard and Acre’s Orphans) to win prizes. To see what he’s up to, check out the Cyberspiracy Online Experience.

The live event is May 16th, 2:30-5:30 pm at the Clark County Library,

1401 E Flamingo Rd

Las Vegas, NV 89119

(702) 507 3400