Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

I must take care of some InkRipples business before I get to this month's post.    Mary Waibel ,   Katie L. Carroll  and I have decided to continue the meme into 2016, and we'd love for you all to join us! We have a new streamlined name: #InkRipples (formerly Ripples in the Inkwell) and brand new images to go along with it.  We also have a new set of monthly topics for discussion in 2016: January - Travel #InkRipplesFebruary - Chocolate March - Feminism April - Poetry May - Memories June - Movies July - Inspiration August - Guilty Pleasures September - Banned Books October - Masks November - Heritage December - Cookies How can you participate? Glad you asked because there are lots of ways. The idea of #InkRipples is to toss a word, idea, or image into the inkwell and see what kind of ripples it makes. We provide the topics and will be blogging about them on the first Monday of the month. You can spread your own ripples by blogging a...

Zombies spouting scripture – yeah, you heard me. Today I'd like to step up a few years from my usual young adult (and many years from my frequent middle grade) fair to share Stuart West's newest book, Zombie Rapture with you. About the book:   Life is good for Hunter Wright. He's just about to graduate from high school and he's found true love. Just in time to lose her. Because the Rapture's begun and those in his path, living and dead, stand in his way of finding her. And it's not the Rapture the faithful have been expecting either. Someone failed to tell the dead they’re not in Heaven. My review:   The incident that creates the zombies happens early on in the book, but we don’t learn the how behind it for a while. When our main character, Hunter, discovers his parents and his neighbors have been turned into crazy scripture spewing zombies he heads to his girlfriend, Jordan’s, house in the hopes that – like him – she’s been spared from ...

I'm happy to turn my blog over to Stuart R. West. He'd like to talk a little about his new book, ELSPETH THE LIVING DEAD GIRL. Or more accurately, about the voice within the book.  Take it away, Stuart. Thanks so much, Kai, for having me on your blog. Elspeth the Living Dead Girl is my newest novel.  One live girl, one dead, both sharing the same body. It’s complicated. Elspeth is a take no prisoners tough gal, dead, plucked from Limbo to take over Elizabeth’s body to bring down a high school drug dealer. On the other hand, Elizabeth is an ice princess, a future dominator of the world. All she wants to do is marry Prince Charming, make a couple million bucks, and most importantly, become prom queen. Very different agendas. You know, I’m probably not the most logical choice to be the biographer of these two very different teen girls. I’m a 53 year old male. What do I know, right? But as Elizabeth channels Elspeth, the two girls pretty much channeled through me...

Welcome to my blog feature, Building Character in which you get to meet a character from a book. Talking to a character outside of their book is fun! Huge. Amounts. Of fun.  This week Strands of Thought is host to Tex McKenna from Tex, and the Gangs of Suburbia. Welcome to Strands of Thought, Tex. Tell us a little about yourself and what your life is like. Hey, um, I’m Richard “Tex” McKenna. Boy witch. Now, what are we doing here again? I hope no one’s gonna’ read this. I’d like to keep my witchiness a secret. It’s hard enough being in high school with bullies and a heinous vice-principal. Sure don’t want others knowing I’m a witch. That’s all I need. It’s not like I chose to be a witch. Just found out last year. My mom’s legacy was passed onto me. Wish she’d passed on a ton of cash or something. But that’s my luck. Tex McKenna, broke male witch. Besides being a boy witch in high school, tell us what other conflict are you up against. What am I not against? Las...

Welcome to the 2013 version of Three Times A Charm. I love meeting new authors, illustrators, bloggers, agents, editors or promoters from the children’s publishing industry and sharing their careers with you. Author, Stuart R. West, is visiting with us. Stuart, tell us about yourself, please. I’m Stuart R. West, author of the new YA book, Tex, The Witch Boy . I live in Kansas, which is a curse and a blessing. It’s a curse, well, because it’s Kansas . It’s a blessing because Kansas is ripe with story ideas and oddities. I intend on setting most of my forthcoming books in Kansas because you’re supposed to write about what you know. And you don’t want to read about my hum-drum tenure in corporate America! I was a graphic and production artist for twenty-some years with a label manufacturing company. Boring! I’m married to a wonderful professor of pharmacy at a local university and have a beautiful daughter, now in college, who has just now decided to unleash her inner ba...