Katie here. I want to take a moment to introduce my good friend and writing partner, Amy Grossklaus. Amy wowed us with the excerpt of The Defiant last month. Now she is back with our first ever picture book review. Welcome, Amy!


Guest review :
Since the earliest days of storytelling, fairy tales have provided readers with wonderful characters and enchanting settings that capture both young and old hearts. But while they are wonderfully creative, fairy tales have also cast a pall over the concept of what it means to be a “stepmother”. That is why Tami Butcher’s My Bonus Mom: Taking the Step out of Stepmom is so refreshing. It attacks this stereotype head on and debunks the myth that all stepmothers must be cruel.

Let’s be honest, as kids we all shivered when the evil stepmother locked Cinderella in the basement just as Prince Charming arrived with the glass slipper. We gasped when the twisted stepmother of Snow White convinced her to chomp into the poisoned apple. There was even an episode of The Brady Bunch, for those of you older than forty, which played off the idea of the wicked stepmother. So it is refreshing to finally read a children’s book that puts the idea of being a stepmother into a much more realistic and caring light.

In rhythmic verse, My Bonus Mom tells the story of an eleven year-old girl learning of her parents impending divorce. It follows her emotional ups and downs as she begins to navigate this new life, and hits on one of the most troubling aspects of divorce: when a parent finds new love. While frightening at first, she learns this new person isn’t there to compete for her parent’s affection, but can actually become a “bonus” in her life. A wonderfully refreshing approach to a subject that is so topical today.

I highly recommend this engaging children’s story as it instantly grabbed me by the heart. Butcher’s heartfelt prose addresses every child’s fear in this daunting situation. The story does not gloss over the hardships children encounter like days away from Mom or Dad, and worries about being replaced in a parent’s heart. Rather, it honestly deals with the realities of the situation and shows how something positive can come out of a negative situation.


LINKS
My Bonus Mom on Amazon and Barnes and Noble
Official website for My Bonus Mom
My Bonus Mom on Facebook


About our guest reviewer, Amy Grossklaus:  
After working and writing in the advertising/public relations field for over fifteen years, Amy now focuses her time completely on fiction writing. Currently editing her second manuscript, she tries to balance her time between family, freelance consulting and community service work. She currently has a blog which chronicles her experiences as she navigates the publishing industry as a new writer. 


If you enjoyed this review, you can subscribe to the Underground or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

  
   “What was it today?”  Jaden asked.  A broad smile filled his face, his teeth two rows of perfect white squares.
     “North American toad.  Self defense method.”
     “And what did you learn?”
      “First, they sit very still.”
     He examined the card Willow offered.  “I see,” Jaden said.  “All in the name of science.” He gave a wink.
     Willow felt her smile; she couldn’t help it.   Remaining a scientific observer wouldn’t do; Jaden always made her smile.  He used to be a scientist, but he understood.  He always told her that he didn’t just study trees; he loved them.
     “So kiddo, whaddya say we do something to spark up your Momma today?  You see, I found this hollow piece of white birch.  The center’s worn clean through.  I thought you could collect some specimens to arrange in the middle.”
     “I surely could,” Willow said.  Her mind already snapped to some tall grasses going to seed by the far corner of the yard and a dried branch of leaves with acorns still attached.  “This could make a good still life for her.  Maybe she’ll make us a sketch.”
     “Pity we don’t have any flowers,” Jaden said.
     “Pity,” Willow agreed.
     “But we do have trees.” 
     “We do. We do,” Willow sang back to him. 
     The rest of Monday afternoon whipped by.  Willow explored the north side of all the trees, as far as she could range and still hear her parents call her back, to find loose moss.  It took moss so long to grow, upwards of twenty years in some cases, that you never wanted to disturb it unless you have to.  But Willow wanted this arrangement to be special, to be the kind of still life that would make Annalise break out her charcoals or maybe even her pastels and sketch.
     Willow remembered walking on the shores of Lake Michigan in the warm Spring air gathering rocks smoothed by the waves of the lake, bits of driftwood, glass soda bottles, and any shiny things washed up like penny nails and fishing twine.  Together, they scanned the shore carefully.  Willow would hold up a piece of driftwood to the light; Annalise would tilt her head, examining the piece carefully before nodding and holding open the collection bag for Willow.  
     After they agreed on all the gathered treasures, Annalise would arrange these things on a picnic table making a beautiful pile of all the lake junk, as Jaden called it.  Then Annalise would give Willow her own box of crayons—not the kind they used in school—but the waxy French kind, and they would each begin to sketch the still life.  Only taking breaks to split a sleeve of Oreo cookies and a bottle of Coke. They lined the hallway of their apartment with the series of these drawings that spring.
     With only two pieces of really loose moss to be found, Willow moved on to mushrooms, trying to find ones with colored caps to break up all the brown and greens.  The edge of a fallen log rewarded her with a brightly colored Trametes versicolor that looked like a painted seashell and a Pycnonorus cinnabarinus in a rich orange, almost red.
     Jaden met her at the front door, holding a package in his hand.
     “New pastels,” he said.  “Some of her old ones broke in the move.”
       They opened the door and said in unison, “Surprise!”
      Annalist spun round from the little kitchen sink, dish towel in hand, the sour look on her face quickly replaced with a tight smile.  Jaden stepped forward eagerly, kissing her on the check and display the box of pastels in his hand.
      “For you,” he said.
      “And also for you,” Willow said, hurrying to catch up with the still life arrangement.
      “Oh,” Annalise said.  “That’s nice.”
      “I even found a Pycnonorus cinnabarinus!”
      “A Pycnonorus cinnabarinus?”
      “This one.” Willow pointed to the orange semi-circle.  “It will make a great focal piece.  I arranged it all, but if you wanted to switch it around, that would be great too.  I’ll draw it with you.”  Willow stopped, listening to the raspy sound of her mother’s breath through her teeth.  “Or not, you know, I’ll just leave it here, on the table.” She turned and set it down in the middle of the table set for dinner.  “Just call me when dinner is ready, I’ll stay within ear-shot.”  And then Willow slipped out of the front door.
     She didn’t go far though; she already visited her favorite spots for the day gathering the supplies for the still life, and her pen and cards sat on her dresser inside the house.  She started back up on the porch and then heard them talking and stopped.
     “You could have pretended,” Jaden said.
     “I didn’t say anything,” Annalise said.
     “Exactly,” Jaden said.  Willow could hear his heavy footsteps on the creaky floor of the kitchen.  The house was designed for summers only.  Thin walls and no cellar. 
      "Why can’t you just try?”
       “I can’t, Jaden.  I told you that.  I don’t want to draw.  Or sketch or anything except what I have to do, which is make dinner for this family and clean it up.  Okay?  Is that okay with you?”
     “How can it be okay when you won’t tell me why?”
     “There is no why.  It just is.”
     “Annalise, come on.”
     “There’s no where to go. We’re here.  We’re stuck.”
      Then came the slam of one of the bedroom doors.  

You can find Ms. Granett here:
Brandi's blog
Brandi at the Huffington Post
Twitter @brandigranett
Brandi on Facebook  

Andy Gavin studied for his Ph.D. at M.I.T. and founded video game company Naughty Dog, Inc. at the age of fifteen, serving as co-president for two decades. There he created, produced, and directed over a dozen video games, including the award winning and best-selling Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter franchises, selling over 40 million units worldwide. He sleeps little, reads novels and history books, watches media obsessively, travels, and of course, writes.

BRIAN: Andy, welcome to the Underground. It’s a pleasure to have you here. I must admit, you’re one of the most fascinating guests we’ve had here at the Underground. You’re a very successful software developer, but what went through your mind that made you take up writing?

ANDY: From at least high school on I always intended to write a bunch of novels. Work just got in the way.

And the thing about making games is that you can no longer do it mostly by yourself. These days, most games are big teams of over a hundred people, with budgets over 50 million dollars. All that means that it’s not about your creative expression (most of the time), but about getting it done, well, on time, and on budget. And the roll of team lead is largely about firefighting and resource (achem...people) wrangling.

So, I really wanted to focus directly on the creative aspects. Dozens of story ideas have been bouncing around in my head for years, and I felt it was time to let a couple of them out.


BRIAN: These days readers often roll their eyes at the thought of yet another vampire novel. Yet, in Darkening you made vampires fresh again by returning to their mystical roots. What led you to write a vampire novel for your first book?

ANDY: There are two answers to that, the visceral and the cerebral. With The Darkening Dream, the visceral part was this image I had – and some might consider me disturbed – of a dead tree silhouetted against an orange sky, a naked body bound to it, disemboweled, and bleeding out. The sound of a colossal horn or gong blares. The blood glistens black in the sunset light. Bats circle the sky and wolves bay in the distance. But sacrifice isn’t just about killing. It’s a contract. Someone is bargaining with the gods. And on the cerebral side, I've always been a huge vampire fan and I've read and watched a large percentage of the oeuvre. But also as a history buff I wanted to write a supernatural story that was more grounded in real history and legend. I'm always thinking, "that could have been so much better if they didn't make up the historical backstory" so I started with the villains. What kind of ancient evil creatures might still be around? What do they want? And what legitimate human reason would they have to destroy the world (Buffy-style)? I don't exactly answer the question in TDD, because the motives of 5,000 year old baddies should be mysterious. But trust me, they have a plan, and the sheer audacity of it will literally shake the foundations of the heavens.


BRIAN: The occult, magic, mystical and religious references abound in Darkening. While I was reading I kept wondering how much of this was research-based and how much was coming from your imagination.   

ANDY: In constructing The Darkening Dream I wanted the meta-story to play off conventional tropes. Broadly, a cabal of ancient supernatural beings has sent one of their number to recover an artifact needed to destroy the world. And surprise, it turns out a group of teens are all that stands between them and Armageddon.

How much more Buffy can you get?

But that’s just the high level. I also wanted to ground this preposterous scenario in real history and legend. So as a methodology, in designing my array of supernatural beings and occult practitioners I turned to historic sources. Before our modern science and technology rendered magic quaint, it was the domain of religion and superstition. Of belief.

And each spiritual and magical system has its own framework. Proponents wrote out of certainty, out of faith. I merely dig up their writings and take them at their word. So in essence, it’s all researched, but I adapt it from real belief systems into those that work in a story framework.

BRIAN: Darkening has the best characters I’ve seen in a horror/fantasy book in a long time. Sarah and Alex especially were original and very believable. Did you have specific inspirations for these two? Also, why did you place this Salem in the early 1900’s?

ANDY: Sarah and Alex both draw  on different aspects of myself in a lot of ways. Both are pretty analytic, but Sarah has more of spiritual side. In each successive draft (and TDD had 9!) I tried to increase the depth of characterization and the emotional torture. Good storytelling is about character and requires proper arcing.

As to the time period, I chose it for a number of reasons. I wanted a time before mobile phones and the internet and a time when people’s knowledge of the world left a little more room for mystery. Additionally, as I always intended this as a series with long lived (achem… immortal) characters, I wanted some runway to cross through history. I also loved the idea of a “vampire in the trenches” so I stuck it right before World War I.


BRIAN: You’re an information technology professional and an author. From this unique perspective what are your thoughts on technologies like Kindle, IPads, and how do you see this impacting the publishing industry in the next ten years? Do traditional/hardcopy books have a future?

ANDY: Let’s dust off the crystal ball. First of all, there’s the print/digital swing. I expect ebooks to be the dominant part of the market within as little as 2-3 years. Print won’t totally go away anytime soon, but it will become increasingly niche. The bookstore – and, in fact, many types of retail store – are doomed. Once Barnes and Noble goes away, and it will, mass market print sales will be down to the “Wallmart 200” or similar, available at big chains, supermarkets, airports and the like. The idea of having any kind of broad inventory visible at retail will soon be laughable. It’s possible that POD kiosks or something much briefly mitigate this, but I doubt it. Even if you are a paper diehard, you’ll have to buy online (aka Amazon) unless you love a diet of James Patterson.

Then, once distribution and the lock on distribution is meaningless, the hold big publishing has maintained on content will be gone. The walls are already crumbling. Business models are going to have to change because the kind of high overhead, slow moving operation of the past will be disrupted. How this all falls out, who knows. I don’t myself worry about the “mountain of crap” argument. There’s already far, far more books than one could ever look at. The system just doesn’t show them to you unless you’re looking. I recently bought a number of books on life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Do you think those featured on anyone’s bestseller list? Marketing dollars will still matter. Word of mouth will still matter. But like in other industries this will be a chaotic mix of big money blockbusters and random upstarts. Barrier of entry is low and getting lower.


BRIAN: Your website says you finally scored a literary agent for your latest project, Untimed. Can you tell us about your experience trying to secure representation for The Darkening Dream and what lessons you learned from that experience?

ANDY: With TDD it was pretty frustrating. The process itself is highly irritating. You write this single page query, which cannot possibly capture the execution of your novel, and then you fire it out. Most of the time you get no response or a generic rejection based on the query, not the book itself. Not once in perhaps 200 queries did I receive feedback on the query itself. I did two rounds of querying on TDD, one in 2010 and one in 2011. Even though the book was much better (and shorter) in the later round it‘s clear that for agents submissions are growing on one hand and sales declining on the other. In the earlier round I had a lot of requests for the book, and usually heard the same thing back, “the writing is great, your ideas are very original, but it’s too long and too complicated.” So I spent nine months paring it down to half the size. But then on the second round, all I heard was “vampires are dead” (of course). Most agents didn’t want to read it because the “trend had peaked.” I don’t believe in trends and I don’t think buyers buy based on trends. Trend thinking leads to two movies about Snow White or comets. Vampires are a perennial, they never really go out of style.

So, when I came up with the idea for Untimed I made sure it was very high concept and the first chapter ended in a big inciting event. I also chose a much more voice driven first person present voice. Untimed grabs from the start, it doesn’t take any time to build like TDD does.


BRIAN: We hear a lot about how new authors have to self-market and develop a “platform.” I’ve seen a lot of author websites, but I have to say yours is perhaps the best organized and pleasing to the eye that I’ve seen. Do you have any advice to authors who are trying to get their websites up and running? What are your thoughts on self-marketing and publicity?

ANDY: I use Wordpress. It’s a pretty good platform that makes it really easy to build a flexible and sophisticated author website. I self-host, which allowed me to pick a solid theme framework and customize it heavily. I went for one with the general layout I wanted and then tweaked the CSS to make it look good, adding custom elements. Wordpress also has a plugin for nearly everything, but getting it to all work together in a clean fashion can be pretty time consuming. I spend a lot of time on the site.

Also, start as early as you can building your Twitter and FB platforms and collecting followers. It takes time.


BRIAN: Can you tell us a little about your latest book, Untimed?

ANDY: Untimed is a YA time travel novel that chronicles the crazy adventures of a boy no one remembers, who falls through a hole in time and finds himself lost in the past. It’s very different with an extremely immediate first person present voice (in this book the only thing anyone can hold on to is the present). It rocks. Seriously rocks.

Right now (as of early May) it’s out on submission to New York and London publisher’s via my agent, Eddie Schneider of JABberwocky.


BRIAN: As a video game designer and author, if you had to choose between creating video games and writing books, what would it be?

ANDY: As a serial creator (having made over a dozen major video games) it was interesting how similar the process was to any other complex creative project. Video games and novel writing are both very iterative and detail oriented. They use a lot of the same mental muscles.


BRIAN: When can we expect a video game version of The Darkening Dream?

ANDY: TDD might be a bit of a challenge to adapt into a game. My villains are few and full of personality, and they don’t have a lot of minions. Generally in a game, you need tons and tons of minions to mow through. Untimed is actually more “video gamey” as it’s got more varied scenery and more action. Still, games and books are very different mediums. Games are gameplay based and novels are story and character based.


BRIAN: Andy, thanks for stopping by the Underground! A complete review of Andy’s book, The Darkening Dream, is available here on UBR. If you enjoyed this interview, like Underground Book Reviews on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletters.


99 cents of Andy Gavin links:

About Andy's writing
About The Darkening Dream
 The Darkening Dream on Amazon
Free sample chapters
Andy's second novel, Untimed,  available soon
Andy's Facebook
Andy's Twitter

If someone offered me a choice between having my eyeballs gouged out by a feral cat or reading a vampire novel I’d have to think hard about it. When I got into the book review business I promised myself I would stay clear of anything that sucked, especially anything that sucked blood. Therefore, I only grudgingly picked up Andy Gavin’s indie vampire novel The Darkening Dream after someone I trusted talked me into it.

After the first ten pages I couldn’t put it down. I still hate vampire books, but I love The Darkening Dream.

Perhaps the best way to describe The Darkening Dream is a Dusk Till Dawn meets Yentle with just a dash of Buffy and The Mummy thrown in to spice it up. While you’re trying to wrap your mind around that, I’ll just say this book is the most original novel I’ve read in years and has made me an instant Andy Gavin fan.

The Darkening Dream tells the story of two teenagers in pre-World War I Salem, Massachusetts. Sarah is the daughter of a rabbi, who she comes to learn is a powerful wizard. Alex is a young Greek immigrant with a wizened grandfather harboring dark secrets of his own. Over the course of the book Sarah and Alex fall in love and stumble on a plot run by an evil sorcerer in league with an ancient vampire. We also meet a kinky blue demon, a painting with an attitude, and an Egyptian beetle-god.  They’re all looking for a mystical artifact that holds the power of the universe and Sarah is the key to finding it.

Unlike most horror novels, Darkening is character driven. Gavin’s characters draw you in because of the seamless way he changes point of view from character to character. This simultaneously gives Darkening depth and speed.

The villains make this novel especially delicious. Gavin paints Nasir as a classic vampire while giving him a very human, yet twisted, practicality. But the vampire is not the best villain in this book. That honor belongs to the evil sorcerer and his sexually insatiable succubus girlfriend, who’s so bad she’s good. They steal the show and deserve their own sequel.  

Even though the protagonists are young, this book is clearly not YA (Gavin classifies Darkening as “dark historical fantasy.”) It’s chocked full with violence, gore, and wizard-on-blue-demon sex. It is suitable for ages 18 and up.  

My only minor critique of Darkening is Gavin didn’t fully develop the town of Salem itself. The period setting of early 1900’s Massachusetts never came alive and felt like a missed opportunity in what I otherwise found was a flawless story.

I’m astonished The Darkening Dream could have been passed up by any agent or mainstream publisher. Andy Gavin unearths a tired genre I thought was long past its prime, injects it with a spurt of fresh blood and sends it into the night to with a blood-curdling 95 out of 99 cents.

99 cents of Andy Gavin links:

All things Andy Gavin 
The Darkening Dream, free sample chapters, 
Find it on Amazon.
Andy's next novel, Untimed.
Find Andy Gavin on Facebook andTwitter. 



If you enjoyed this review follow Underground Book Reviews on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to our newsletter.

You can also follow Brian Braden on Facebook and Twitter and buy his book, Carson's Love.

If you want to read the first chapter of Brandi's novel, Tarnished, leave a comment in the 'comments' section of this blog post. In order for your vote to count, you must have an email subscription to the Underground. If Brandi has  ten or more votes by next Friday (May l8th) her first chapter will post on Underground Book Reviews. 
 
Welcome, Brandi, to the Underground! 

When I first met Brandi Megan Granett last December in New York City, I felt an immediate connection.  Not only did her novel sound captivating, but she was an intriguing person.  Although time was limited at the Algonkian Conference to really delve in and get to know another emerging author, I want to introduce Brandi to the Underground as I feel our readers will find her life not only interesting, but a breath of fresh air!


Kimberly: When did you start writing?  Can you share with us the first thing you ever wrote?

Ms. Granett:  I remember writing when I was in the third grade.  My first short story was published in the elementary school newspaper.  I knew then I wanted to be a writer.

Kimberly:  Will you give us an overview of what your book is about?

Ms. Granett:  Tarnished, set in the 1960’s, is the story of eleven year old Willow who always dreamed of discovering new things. But she never imagined discovering a magical gift.  When holding treasures or trinkets made of silver, Willow’s mind’s eye explodes with the memories linked to the silver. When her mother’s depression takes them from their home in Allegheny Mountains on a trip to her grandmother’s house in the Everglades, Willow learns that she must balance the knowledge her gift reveals with the delicate constitution of her family. Tarnished is told in the alternating voices of Willow, her mother, Annalise, and her grandmother, Julianna.

Kimberly:  Is there a message in your novel that you wanted to convey to the reader?  How did you come up with the idea? 

Ms. Granett:  I began this novel as part of the National Write a Novel in a Month Contest.  A poet friend of mine, Gregg Glory asked me to do the competition with him.  I was taking a Stats class at the time, and I said no, I was too busy.  Then a musician friend from high school, Eric Squindo emailed that he and his girlfriend were selling everything to go live in the woods and write.  This lit a fire under me, and I started writing Tarnished as part of NaNoWriMo. (National Write A Novel In A Month Contest)  Finishing this novel felt like winning the NYC Marathon.

As this was written in a rush, logging 2000 words a day, I’m not sure where the inspiration came from.  I just knew I wanted to tell a story with a homeschooled girl in it as I was homeschooling my daughter, Megan, at the time.  Each day I would start off at the end of the last sentence and just see where the story took me.

The message I want to convey is about the danger of secrets in your family and the danger of letting our past define out future.  While revising this book, I found myself looking at Willow, Annalisa, and Julianna as extensions of myself; prior to this revision I would have never thought I wrote about “myself” but these characters clearly work through my own unfinished business.


Kimberly:  Tell us about you; writing is a tedious career.  Do you do anything to release the tension after sitting at your computer for hours? 

Ms. Granett: You have to do something that isn’t about words!  Between teaching and writing, I am bombarded with words all day long.  I personally like to shoot archery.  I call it Yoga for Type A people.

Kimberly: Have you experienced the rejects that most of us experience sending out queries letters?  How do you handle a rejection?  

Ms. Granett: The best rejection I ever had was for my first novel, My Intended.  This novel is about a woman struggling with the death of her finance by marrying him, the premise based on a true story.  One of the rejections I received said, “the dead guy wasn’t alive enough.”  Rejections don’t phase me too much; I know from publishing short stories that the more you put out and the more often you put it out the greater your chances of finding your own audience.

Kimberly: Did the Algonkian conference increase your confidence to continue to pursue your writing career?  If so, why? 

Ms. Granett:  YES!  The conference gave me confidence in my marketing skills.  It helped me to meet great people.  It pushed me to dig deeper and revise my novel for a commercial market.  I recommend the experience to anyone.  Another plus—the conference made me want to create my own conference, which I hope to do within the next year or two.

Kimberly: As a busy person, what does your day ‘look like’ as a writer?  Do you carve out a certain period of time each day to write?  Or do you write whe the inspiration moves you?  

Ms. Granett: I like to get my work for pay done first so I begin the day by teaching.  Then I check in with my daughter for her homeschooling or activities.  Then I shoot.  Writing comes when it does.  With this latest round of revision, it was every night before bed and whenever my daughter was at an activity.  I am now looking forward to my next novel and thinking about how to fit that into my summer plans.  But I am also finishing my Ph.D. in Creative Writing, so I have some dissertation work that needs to be a priority in addition to soliciting agents and editors for Tarnished.  Doing the NaNoWriMo challenge reminded me that s butt in the chair everyday for a few hours leads to a finished project rather quickly.

Kimberly: Tell us about your archery career?  When and why did you pick up a bow and arrow?  

Ms. Granett: I love shooting archery; it has taught me so much about myself.  I started when my daughter decided she either wanted to be in the Olympics or a Renaissance Faire.  A local archery coach talked me into taking lessons with her.  After that, I was hooked.  I won the 2010 Challenge Mondial, an international indoor archery tournament, and represented the United States on the USA World Championship Field Archery team in 2010 in Hungary.  Archery has taken me all over the world and introduced me to some of the best friends a person could want.

Kimberly: What is your next step?  Are you writing another book?  Editing?  Searching for an agent?  

Ms. Granett: I am writing another book about a woman and her daughter travelling the country by RV after a divorce situation.  It is slow going because I want to travel to some of their stops before writing about them.  I like to see where I am writing about.  I am also looking for an agent for Tarnished and planning on sending it to the editors that requested it after the NY Pitch Conference.  I have never exercised so much patience in my life—first I waited to have a book doctor  review Tarnished and now I am waiting to hear back from the agents before sending to the editors.  I like to think that as I am approaching 40, I am learning new tricks!

Kimberly: Are you considering self-publishing?  

Ms. Granett: Right now, I am committed to traditional publishing path, but I saw Amanda Hocking speak about the success of her self-publishing venture, and I do see this as the wave of the future.  As I wait for agents, I am working with a coach on social media and marketing; either I am paving the way for a publisher lead book tour/promotion campaign, or I am paving the way to publish and promote myself.

Kimberly: There are lots of writers out there who throw in the towel, tell themselves it’s not worth the anguish of rejection after rejection.  Do you have any words of inspiration? 

Ms. Granett: I write because I was always told that I was weird.  When you create a world in your fiction, the reader enters that world on your terms; you cannot longer be viewed as different or weird or outside of the crowd.  I write to create those worlds.  If one person, a friend, someone I meet at a conference, a student, my daughter or when my husband enters the world I have created with my words and spends time there, it is all worth it.  Heck, if I enter that world and enjoy it, it is worth it. 

When we look to end goal of anything, we stop learning and enjoying the journey. 

You can find Ms. Granett here:
Brandi's blog
Brandi at the Huffington Post
Twitter @brandigranett
Facebook 

Susan Kaye Quinn grew up in California, where she wrote snippets of stories and passed them to her friends during class. She pursued a bunch of engineering degrees and worked a lot of geeky jobs, including turns at GE Aircraft Engines, NASA, and NCAR. Now that she writes novels, her business card says "Author and Rocket Scientist" and she doesn't have to sneak her notes anymore. Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.

Welcome,  Susan!

Katie: Having the ability to jack into people’s minds is a very interesting concept. Where did you come up with the idea for Open Minds?

Susan: I wanted to enter an online 1st paragraph contest, but none of my current novels had a particularly zippy first paragraph. So I decided to make one up for a novel that hadn’t even been written! I had been playing around with the idea of a boy who was a touch-empath (and thus very isolated because he could know your deepest feelings with a touch) – I wasn’t sure if it was enough for a novel, but I thought it might make a great 1st paragraph. As I was mulling this while drifting off to sleep, an image popped into my head of a girl sitting in a classroom full of mindreaders – only she couldn't read minds. She was painfully isolated (like the boy) in a room that was dead silent, because no one used spoken words any more. I immediately got up, wrote the paragraph … and lost the contest! But a month later, I couldn’t get this girl out of my head. I had to write her story, and that became Open Minds.


Katie: Kira has a hard time dealing with her new found powers at first. If you could jack into people’s minds and control them, what’s the first thing you would do?

Susan: Freak out. Seriously, I think I would have a much bigger meltdown than Kira does. There’s a saying: We do not fear that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. This is certainly an idea that’s explored throughout the Mindjack Trilogy.


Katie: I see you write a blog and various other forms of social media. What is your take on the amount of time an author should spend honing craft versus creating a platform?

Susan: An author should spend the vast majority of their time on craft. Platforms are great, and I love social media, but it can easily sap away all of your time. It’s easy. It’s rewarding. It’s fun! But it’s not writing, and the most important thing you can do is create the intellectual property that will sustain your writing career. I’ve posted about this a couple times (ironic, I know!) - Writers Must Write First and Making The Donuts– and I don’t always practice what I preach. But I try. Mindjack#3 is siren-calling me from my plotting cork board right now, and after I finish typing this interview I will immerse myself in that.  

Katie: Among other things on your full plate, you give writing workshops for teens. What’s your best piece of advice for new writers?

Susan: Write. Write a lot. Write some more. Writing is a craft that is only honed by doing it – not reading about it, not going to workshops, not thinking about it. Doing it. Workshops and writing books and all of that are also wonderful and inspirational and you should allow yourself that sometimes as well. But the most important thing you can do to help yourself as a writer is to finish your first novel. Only then will you know if this is something you want to do again and again. After that, seek out like-minded writers and develop relationships with them – your critique partners will be the second most powerful tool in your toolbox, next to that time with your butt in the chair.


Katie: Your bio says you are a former rocket scientist and engineer. How does one in such a career find herself writing?

Susan: I wrote stories before I was an engineer (as a teen), but then grew up, got all serious, and pursued a career in engineering and science. And it was wonderful! I loved working for GE and NASA and NCAR. But when the time came, I decided to stay home with my kids. I always assumed I would go back to work (in engineering) when my boys were off in school, but the writing bug bit me, and I realized I had a chance to fulfill a creative side of myself that had been left behind all those years ago. Bringing my tech-bent into the writing is just yummy icing on top of the creativity cupcake.


Katie: Is writing your full time career? What advice do you have for writers who want to follow in your footsteps and make writing their “day job”?

Susan: My “day job” is taking care of my kids, so it’s not one that I want to give up (although some day they will “fire” me!). But beyond that, writing is my fulltime job (I write when my kids are in school). I think everyone’s path is different, and I’ve had the luxury of working full-time on writing without having to financially have writing support my family. Not everyone will have that choice – which only means that it will take longer to get where you want to go, not that it’s impossible. Fortunately, for writers who are serious and determined and painstaking in their craft, self-publishing has opened up an avenue where you can actually make some money at your writing, as you go. It’s no longer an all-or-nothing win-the-lotto deal, like in traditional publishing, where very few writers will land a book contract with a major publisher. And with time on your side, self-publishing allows you to find your audience. My best advice is to be patient, work on your craft, and you’ll know when you’re ready to take the leap into publishing.


Katie: Tell us about the Indelibles. Who are they? What do they do? How did you get involved with this group?

Susan: I was lucky to be invited to be one of the founding members of the Indelibles by Shelli Johannes, the marketing guru and author who started the group. We are 25 Indie authors (YA and MG) that want to leave a mark on the world with our stories. We chat and support each other every day on email, helping each other as we march along in our indie publishing journeys. We market together by  putting out an anthology and running giveaways. And the Indelibles are amazing in our collective ability to reach out to readers. But the most powerful part of being in the group is the shared knowledge that we bring to each other – I’m very fortunate to be a part of them, and I encourage all indie writers to join a supportive group like the Indelibles (or create your own!).


Katie: Weigh in on the self-published versus traditional publishing debate. What do you see emerging as the future of publishing? How did you make your own decision about which track to follow?

Susan: I pulled Open Minds from an agent search, after many requests for fulls and a lot of interest. Why? Because I was seeing signs that publishers were souring on buying “paranormal” stories while the market was still red-hot for them. I felt that if I waited to get an agent, then waited more to land a contract, that the market could well be less for a book that I had ready to go RIGHT NOW. I was confident in the appeal of the story and willing to put in the time and money into making it look good enough to sit next to any traditionally published novel on the bestseller lists. I couldn’t be more pleased with the success that Open Minds has had, and I hope to keep building on that throughout the trilogy. For me, there is no doubt that self-publishing Open Minds was the right choice.

On the other hand, I have a couple middle grade manuscripts that I would also like to publish, but I’ll continue to pursue traditional publishing for those. I think the MG market in self-publishing hasn’t arrived yet, and the books would have a better chance of reaching kids with a traditional publisher. Which choice you make (trad or self-pub) should depend on the type of book you have and if you’re willing to invest the time/money into creating a professional product. And it depends on your goals – I have some friends who are only pursuing trad-pub at this point, because that has always been their dream. Only you can know what will make you happy. But self-publishing now offers a real option to authors to make money from their works, and I think that’s a wonderful thing.

As for the future, I think we’re just starting to see the transformation that ebooks will bring. Short stories and anthologies and literary fiction – forms that weren’t “viable” in the era of paper books – are seeing a revitalization. Innovative uses of ebooks, from embedded content to short mini-stories to “everyday” publishing by kids and teens, are just starting to emerge as more people explore the technology and find new uses for it.

I think the future is very bright indeed.


Katie: The sequel to Open Minds, Closed Hearts, is due out May 23rd. What can we expect to see Kira up to now?

Susan: Kira has an even more dangerous world to live in, now that everyone knows that mindjackers exist. In Closed Hearts there are new characters, the return of old ones, and a lot of mindjacking adventure. I can’t wait to see what readers of Open Minds think of it! 


You can find Open Minds here. 
You can also find Susan Kaye Quinn on Facebook and Twitter.
Or, sign up for her author newsletter. 


If you enjoyed this review, you can subscribe to the Underground or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  

In a time when self-published can be synonymous with low quality, Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn is a diamond in the rough. This YA Sci Fi manages to shine amongst the myriad of Divergent  wannabes and, frankly, knocked my socks off.

Open Minds is about a future America where the general population has the ability to read minds. Teens know each other’s inner thoughts and emotions, high school lectures are delivered mentally and you can mentally link in to technology. Kira, a zero, is left out of everything. Since she can’t read minds, her peers treat her like Carrie at the prom and society sees her as a lower-class citizen. Kira has little hope until she discovers a strange new mental power when she accidentally knocks out her best friend. Suddenly Kira is no longer worried she’s a zero; she’s worried she’s a mutant freak. When she meets Simon, a fellow jacker as he puts it, she learns that there are others who can control minds. Simon introduces her to an underground society-- one she’s not sure she’s ready to join. Things go awry when the FBI shows up and arrests all the jackers. Now Kira must decide: Is she with the jackers or against them? And what price will she pay?

Open Minds is rock solid from beginning to end. The whole time I was reading it I kept thinking, “This is as good as any book on the shelf at your local book store. Hell, its better than some.” Quinn creates sympathetic characters that live and breathe, her world-building skills are adept and she has mastered the art of keeping tension on every page. Even the ending was nothing I saw coming, yet everything I wanted. She tied up all the ends nicely and left some questions yet to be solved. A sequel will be out at the end of this month. I am sure it will not disappoint.

Normally this is the part of the review were I make some suggestions about what areas dragged or what needed to be shored up. Instead I will say that if you buy a traditionally published title for $12.99 when you could get Open Minds, you’re a fool and I have some Rolex watches in my trench coat I want to sell you.  

You can find Open Minds here. 
You can also find Susan Kaye Quinn on Facebook and Twitter.
Or, sign up for her author newsletter. 


If you enjoyed this review, you can subscribe to the Underground or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. 

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Chris Mendius is a Chicago resident, so it only makes sense that his novel, Spoonful, is set in the windy city. Once on the fringes of the drug world that his novel revolves around, Chris is now a happily married man. I'm excited to have Chris join us today for a few questions.


AB: Despite its sometimes humorous tone, Spoonful has a dark and depressing side to it. It was so real at times that I felt as though I was reading a piece of non-fiction. How much reality was there to the stories within Spoonful?

Chris: Well, the story in a work of fiction, and none of the characters exist in real life. That said, the authenticity you and other readers seem to experience was possible due to my familiarity  with situations and people I did know in real life. The world I created for Spoonful illuminates an often distorted reality of our society, and that glimpse into that particular worldview is part of what people seem appreciate about the book. 


AB: You had an uncanny ability to make me forgive the main character for his actions, no matter how wrong they were. I was rooting for him the whole way through. What did you do to make your characters so likable?

Chris: I knew guys Michael, so it wasn’t a stretch. There are a lot of scumbag junkies out there, but there are also more complicated, interesting dope fiends. They’re not trying to hurt anybody. They’re just trying to get what they need—which requires them to work outside the law and civilized society. I'm glad you found Michael likable. I like him. But I make no moral judgments when it comes to what my characters do. I'm just trying to tell a good story.


AB: Having cleaned up, was it hard to revisit that time in your life, or was Spoonful part of the process?

Chris: It's been more than a few years since I had anything close to the type of lifestyle of Michael and his friends. It's been well over a decade. The story is set in in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood in the late '90s during the Clinton dot-com boom. The general zeitgeist of that period seems a lifetime away from today, and personally, it feels like ancient history to me. But I do think it took the time elapsed and the subsequent changes in my life to allow me to gain the perspective I needed to express the atmosphere of the time and place as well as describe the drug use and brawling and other elements of the story in a way that would draw in mainstream readers. At the time I wrote Spoonful a few years ago, I enjoyed revisiting that world in the safe, vicarious way writing the novel offered me.


AB: When you wrote Spoonful, did you intend to convey a message, or did you simply have a story to tell?

Chris: I just wanted to tell a story. I never considered how, for some readers, it would serve to help them understand the mentality of drug addicts and contribute to a more sympathetic understanding of the culture and the larger issues surroundings drugs in our society. That reaction has been intensely gratifying but completely unexpected. 


AB: I understand that you have a sequel planned. What sort of trouble will Michael get himself into? When will it be available?

Chris: The sequel, like Spoonful, was inspired by an old  blues song. It's called In The Pines, and it already exists in first draft form. It picks up where Spoonful leaves off, with Michael leaving Chicago and heading out to Los Angeles. There are several new characters but a few old ones from Spoonful pop up as well. If you know Michael, you know it won't be all smooth sailing. It's unlikely readers will see the straight-up redemptive arc many hope for him, but anything's possible. It does happen that way for some dope fiends, but, unfortunately, not too many. 

Jayne, my wife/editor/publisher is on me to get back to work on that manuscript so we can have it out by next year. And there is a third book mapped out in my head that will wrap up Michael's story, one way or another. That one will land him in New York City.  After that, I'm moving on to a different set of characters, era and circumstances, but I feel like, for now, these are the books I want to write. 


AB: Tell us a little bit about Anything Goes Publishing.

Chris: My wife has been planning to start up a small literary press for a while. She wanted to publish edgy fiction by Chicago writers who would have difficulty finding a home within traditional publishing but merit the prestige and distribution available to a real publishing house, as opposed to e-book and self-publishing efforts. Spoonful happens to be the first book AGP has put out, but there is more work by authors other than myself that Jayne is working with and hoping to publish in 2013.


AB: Do you have any other projects that you are working on?

Chris: Well, in addition to my full-time job, I've been promoting Spoonful through short book tours and readings here in Chicago. I have the rewrites for In The Pines floating around in my head, but it will probably be in the fall that the words start hitting the paper. Fall and winter are when I get really prolific with my writing. Something about the smell of the leaves, maybe.


AB: And finally, I'd love to hear a little bit about Chris. When you aren't writing or spending time with your family, what sorts of hobbies and activities do you get into?

Chris: I just became the head coach for my son's baseball team. It's my first time coaching, and learning the ropes is taking a major chunk of my time, although it definitely has its rewards. But, sadly for a family man who lives in Chicago, my greatest passion is surfing. I try to get to California or Florida or some coast somewhere for a few days every couple months to satisfy that surfing jones. I love it, and when I go without it for too long, the cravings kick in. But that's a much better type of addiction than you'll find in my books.


LINKS:
Anything Goes Publishing
Spoonful on Amazon.com



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TITLE: Spoonful

AUTHOR: Chris Mendius

PUBLISHER: Anything Goes Publishing

GENRE: Urban Fiction

PAGES: 322


THE RUNDOWN

Laden with sex, drugs and violence, Spoonful is a look into the life of a heroin addict. The main character, Michael, is a low-life with potential, and I started the book with high hopes for redemption. While Chris Mendius’ writing did not captivate me, the dialogue was real and the scenes were almost too believable. At times funny and most of the time shocking, each chapter ended with a cliffhanger that goaded me to keep reading.

However, the cliffhangers were quick fixes: once the scene was resolved, another disconnected plot element sprung up. Halfway through the book, I began to get bored. Sure, the stories were entertaining, but it was the same thing over and over again. Although each chapter ended on a page turner, the plot simply did not develop.

That’s when it hit me: Spoonful is entirely too real. Being addicted to drugs isn’t a fantasy, it isn’t pretty, and it goes nowhere. It makes smart people act stupid and the only thing that matters is the next fix. The plot meandered similarly: all that mattered was the next chapter, not the overall plotline. The book was one long downward spiral. If that’s what Chris Mendius was going for, he succeeded.

Nevertheless, I found myself slightly disappointed when I finished the book. I wished that it had been shortened and condensed to portray a single plotline, and although I rooted for Michael throughout, I never completely connected with him.


THE RECOMMENDATION

If you’re ready for an intense trip that leaves you unsatisfied and asking for more, pick up Spoonful. Or, you could just shoot up and experience it for yourself. Spoonful might be the safer option, though. It goes without saying that this book isn’t suitable for a younger audience.


LINKS
Spoonful on Amazon
Anything Goes Publishing

If you enjoyed this review, you can subscribe to the Underground or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.