Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

This has been a busy month. My daughter got married, school started, and it took me forever to find my motivation to compose this post. Does that happen to you sometimes? You just simply don’t feel like it? It isn’t the topic. I love building worlds. It is among my top favorite things about writing! To me, world building is in the details. The small things that are mentioned casually. For example; if my main character is a slob and he’s lost his keys, I would show him flinging empty take-out containers and candy wrappers aside looking for them in order to give the reader the visual of his messy setting—his world. If he was a slob in the future, I might have him bark a command to his smart room asking where he last tossed his keys. Small details sprinkled throughout the text creates the world stealthily so the reader doesn’t even see the image form in their head. Fantasy and Science Fiction often require a bit more of an in-your-face presentation, especially in the beginning,...

On this list , compiled by the ALA, of the top 100 challenged books of the decades 1990-1999 and 2000-2009, I've read: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Adventure of Huckleberry Finn The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Blubber Crank The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time The Dead Zone The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things Fat Kid Rules the World The Giver Harry Potter (series) The Hunger Games (series) The Kite Runner The Lovely Bones Olive's Ocean Speak Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes That Was Then, This Is Now Thirteen Reasons Why Twilight (series) A Wrinkle In Time I would recommend any of them, but especially the titles I've linked. The thing with me and banned books is that I don't get it. The banning thing. Why would you ever feel the right to keep a book out of the hands of other readers? Why would you feel you have the authority to say what some can and cannot read? Do you have the right to voice your o...

I'd like to welcome V.L. Jennings to Strands of Thought. She's here to share an excerpt and an interesting behind the story, story from her young adult sci-fi,  The Alien Mind . Take it away, Virginia. Rivi's eyes swept the launch crater to watch the hundreds of Aunantet and human children bustling around the ships. “We're not all going, are we?” Rivi asked, her voice catching in her throat. “No, dear,” Ankh answered. “Just you children and about fifty pre-selected Aunantet. The rest of us will stay. This is our home planet. We'll be fine.” “Is something wrong?” a senior administrator asked, making his way over to Ankh. “Not really,” Ankh answered, turning back to Rivi. “Rivi, you need to get in your ship now, with the others. The sooner we get you away from here, the safer you will be.” Rivi nodded and then frowned, putting her hand to the side of her head as if she had a headache. “Wait, Administrator!” Rivi exclaimed, worry etched across her fa...