Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

If you'll be participating in Cyber Monday, I wanted to let you know about a couple deals I'm offering on my print books. First, have you visited my MARKETPLACE ? I recently set up a storefront through Square, which allows me to offer signed copies of my books. In order to celebrate the recent release of THE LUMPY DUCKLING, I'm offering 10% off your order when you get a complete set of the Weaver Tale series. These books are written for 9 - 12 year old readers. They are individual stories, all set in the same fictional village of word weavers (storytellers). The softcover are $9.95 each and the hardcover are only $15.95 (already discounted from the Amazon price). But the 10% discount applies to the complete order, so load up on all my books or several copies of a favorite story to share with the kids, teachers, librarians in your life. As long as you have one complete set of the Weaver Tales series on your order, you qualify to use discount code #WTSDISCOUNT upon chec...

It’s Friday! Time for my blog feature, Building Character in which you get to meet characters from a book. Talking to a character outside of their book is fun! Huge. Amounts. Of fun.  This week Strands of Thought plays host to Maggie Mae from Detective Extraordinaire The Case of the Missing Cookies. Hey Maggie!Thanks for joining us. We’d love to hear more about you. Hi everybody! This is my first interview ever. I’m Maggie Mae. I’m 6 years old and have one older brother who is always sneaky. I love, love, love solving mysteries with all my detective stuff, like my notebook, pencils and magnifying glass! Oh, and I even have a detective’s badge that I got at a fall fair at my school. Solving mysteries sounds very exciting. In your new Detective Extraordinaire story – The Case o f the Missing Cookies , what conflict are you up against?  I asked my grandma what conflict meant and she said it meant a problem. Well, we have a big problem. Grandma was baking cookies...

Today on Three Times A Charm we welcome, Ruth Silver. I love introducing my readers to the people who work in children’s publishing. Thanks for joining us, Ruth. Would you please tell us a little about your awesome self? I’m the author of the best-selling YA Dystopian trilogy, Aberrant. I’m passionate about writing and I love story-telling. I’ve been actively writing two series: Royal Reaper and Orenda. My interests also include traveling, reading, and photography. My favorite vacation destination is Australia. I currently reside in Plainfield, Illinois. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and my book blog Write Away Bliss. Please tell our readers about your work. I love YA novels. My favorite genres are paranormal, dystopian, and fantasy. I’ve written three series one falling in each of the above categories. For lovers of paranormal, my Royal Reaper series follows the life of Princess Ophelia as she’s murdered and gets the opportunity to become a grim reaper. It...

It’s Friday! Time for my blog feature, Building Character in which you get to meet characters from a book. Talking to a character outside of their book is fun! Huge. Amounts. Of fun.  This week Strands of Thought plays host to Queen Boudicca from Boudicca; Britain’s Queen of the Iceni. Thank you for joining us, Your Highness. We’d love to hear more about you. I am Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni tribe in what the Romans call Britannia.  Descended of queens and kings among the Aedui in Gaul, I spent my early life as a slave following Roman conquest of my people generations before.  When I was nineteen years old, I escaped my abusive Roman mistress, a sister to Roman Governor Gaius Suetonius Paullinus.  Crossing the channel from Calais to Dover, I made my way north to Camulodunum where I met King Prasutagus of the Iceni.  Two months later, we were married, making me queen of the Iceni.  It was a happy marriage cut short Roman violence against our people...

Today on Three Times A Charm we welcome author, Tracy Clark. I love introducing my readers to the people who work in children’s publishing. Tracy and I connected after she noticed I live in the same town as her best friend. Small world, huh? Glad you could join us, Tracy. Can you tell us a little about yourself, please? I am allergic to bios. Just kidding. I’m actually allergic to some vinegars but that’s probably not what you’re interested in. I live in northern Nevada with my two teenage kids and on teenage cat. I love to read YA and I LOVE to write YA. I’m a private pilot who used to skydive but never at the same time. I also volunteer as RA for the Nevada chapter of the SCBWI. http://www.scbwi.org/ When I was young and my big sister and I had dishwashing duty, we’d wash a spoon first so we could take nips out of the vinegar decanter while we worked. I absolutely love vinegar. I’m very sad for you right now. Even if you’re like, “No really, it’s okay.” You write...

It’s Friday! Time for my blog feature, Building Character in which you get to meet characters from a book. Talking to a character outside of their book is fun! Huge. Amounts. Of fun.  This week Strands of Thought plays host to Leah from An Absence of Light. Leah, I just started reading your story yesterday and I’m already pulled in. So, if you don’t mind, I’d love to speed through this interview so I can get back to it. Why don’t you start by telling our readers a little about yourself. Hi, my name is Leah. Thanks for having me. It freaks me out a little to talk about myself in public—I’m pretty sure most anyone would think I’ve lost it if they knew what I do. I guess I wonder that, too, sometimes. But, someone’s got to fight the Shadows, right? And that sounds a little better than alien invasion preventer, I think. Oh – aliens? Is that the conflict you’re up against? Most everyone I’ve ever told about the Shadows hasn’t believed me, but I’d love to see them gone. ...

Three Times A Charm is on hiatus, because I haven't been recruiting. Feel free to contact me if you're an author, illustrator, editor, blogger, publicist, publisher involved in children's publishing and would like to be interviewed. So instead, I'm talking about the craft of writing. Creating a character arc is difficult, but crucial to the enjoyability factor of your story. Creating an arc over a series is even more challenging. In order for your readers to care, your character has to change and grow during their story. A friend of mine posted a picture of a scene from my book, Polar Opposites , on my Facebook page and the status called the characters in the scene, “Assholes!” Awesome! I squealed and clapped. Why am I okay with this? It’s the emotion behind the post that thrills me. Yes, literary characters can be jerks, too. And, as is the case in the scene my friend highlighted, it is often intentional. So many things have to come together to shape th...

Today, World of Ink Book Tours brings us Adventures of Nutty and Twittles – Oh Nuts I Lost My Sister by Dennis Marcoux. Book blurb:  Nutty and his sister Twittles set out to play a fun game of hide "n" seek with their friends. When Twittles is the only one missing, the game quickly changes.  Nutty has to find his sister because she may be lost in the dark and dangerous Forrest. Kai: Thanks for visiting, Dennis. What age range is Oh Nuts targeted for?  Dennis:  4-7 Kai: Can you share a memory of yours or a story of you from when you were within the age range of your target readers? Dennis:  I was about 6 yrs old and went to the ocean with my family.  My parents warned       me about going into the water without them.  I did not listen to them and went       into the ocean alone. A wave pulled me under the water and when I surfaced I was       unable...

It’s Friday! Time for my blog feature, Building Character in which you get to meet characters from a book. Talking to a character outside of their book is fun! Huge. Amounts. Of fun.  This week Strands of Thought plays host to Claramina Dart from True Haven. Thank you for joining us, Claramina. We’d love to hear more about you. Let me introduce myself. My name is Miss Claramina Dart. I am now 14 and after my parents died, I managed to find a position as a tailor’s apprentice for Mr Thrums in my hometown of Mudwells. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t that bad – at least to start with. It used to be rather grand in the old days, when people came to the spa to take the waters. Now it’s all crumbling rather, and it’s ever such a trial delivering garments to our customers by wheelbarrow. No sedan chairs for the likes of us! Life would have been bearable, if only our new assistant, little Barley Spindle, hadn’t got himself arrested by the evil Flugelcrampers who patro...

Today on Three Times A Charm we welcome author, Laurel A Rockefeller. I love introducing my readers to the people who work in children’s publishing. So nice to have you join us, Laurel. Can you tell us a little about yourself, please? Hello, my name is Laurel A. Rockefeller.  I am a gifted historian and historical reconstructionist originally from Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.  History and science have always been my passion, ever since I was a little girl attending sky shows at the Hyde Observatory.  As a child, stories of Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Luke Skywalker filled my imagination.  The first movie I ever saw was the original “Benji” movie from 1974 which I saw with three generations of my family in a little town in rural Nebraska.  That experience, along with one Christmas where my family read “A Christmas Carol” aloud together around our tree cemented into my mind the need for family-centric literature and movies as certainly as watching Star Wars...

I am thrilled to be a sponsor of this really AWESOME giveaway! Look at this great new Kindle for kids - just released by Amazon. You have all sorts of ways to enter to win your very own, all while discovering some great books to load onto the Kindle as soon as you win it! Have fun and good luck! I'd also like to add a HUGE thank you to Mother Daughter Book Reviews for the hard work compiling this epic giveaway. All I can say is, "Wow!" About the Kindle Fire HD Kids Edition 7" Tablet I was pretty excited to see this pretty cool new product available through Amazon. This is a HOT PRODUCT! The all-new Kindle Fire HD Kids Edition Tablet also comes with 1 year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited (which means kids get unlimited access to 5,000 books, movies, TV shows, educational apps, and games—at no additional cost!). It includes a quad-core processor for great performance, a vivid HD display, front and rear-facing cameras, and Dolby Audio PLUS comes with a Kid-Proo...