Writing

Kersten Hamilton and the Book of Half a Lifetime

By on September 22, 2017   /   Author Interviews, Book Lists, Fiction, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, New Releases, Publishing & Promotion, Writing  

I’m very pleased today to feature a long time friend of mine.

Kersten and I have critiqued each other’s work, we’ve gone on writing retreats together, attended conferences, and enjoyed group meet-ups with other local authors over the years. Kersten Hamilton is an incredibly talented writer, deep thinker, and a selfless, giving person.

Here at From the Mixed up Files, we’re excited to show off the gorgeous cover for her middle-grade novel, DAYS OF THE DEAD, which will launch into the world this coming summer.

Enjoy a little bit about Kersten’s inspiration and an excerpt from the novel.

~Kimberley Griffiths Little, one of your MUF’s authors and bloggers~

From Kersten Hamilton:

“When I first saw the art created by Merce Lopez  for the cover of Days of the Dead I wanted to shout, “LOOK AT THIS! IT IS THE BEST COVER EVER!!!” because Merce had captured the magic and mystery at the heart of my story. Having a cover means the book is real! It is almost here!

Some books take half a lifetime to write. Days of the Dead is one of those books. I can’t remember when the story started to grow in me. When I was six, and my mother left? When I was a teen sitting in a chill of a lava tube, breathing in darkness so deep it was almost alive?  The day my heart broke so badly I thought I would die. I know the roots of this story reach back through that day. But the story took years of drafts and re-writes to form.

Slowly, it settled into a time: the Days of the Dead, when the border separating the living from the dead grows thin.  And a place, Puerta de la Luna, where strange things happen. Things that science isn’t big enough to explain. And a girl, Glorieta Magdalena Davis y Espinosa, whose choices would destroy her family – and whose courage would make it whole again.

Days of the Dead will be coming from Sky Pony Press this August of 2018, but I can’t wait one minute longer to introduce Glorieta. I hope she will find a lot of friends and help them pick themselves back up when they have made a terrible mistake.”

LOOK AT THIS STUNNING COVER!

And here’s Glorieta in her own words:

“Every bowl of Alpha-Bits starts out with hundreds of words. But the power is in the last spoonful.

“Dios mio, Magdalena!” Mamá’d said as she’d pointed to my spoon, “Your spoon says ‘libros’. Books!’ Now, you choose. If you swallow it down, then you will learn about books!” I swallowed it, and that year I’d been the first kid in class who learned to read. I learned about big books, thick books, their smell, their feel, the letters gathering into words and the words into stories. Mamá and I read together every night, in English and in español, Spanish.

In third grade I’d had to find the word in my Alpha-Bits myself. I used an extra big spoon, one that could fit all of the letters of mother, if Mamá wasn’t enough. Or even Mamá, come home.

The word had been hoggs. I’d known that was too many ‘gees’ for a real word. I’d swallowed it anyway, and cried because I thought my Mamá’s magic had gone away with her.

Then, one month into the school year, a new editor for the Epoch Rattler came to my school to interview me about a poem I’d written for the paper. His name was Hogg. That hadn’t made me feel any better. You can’t knock off one letter and say it’s close enough. That’s not magic. It’s cheating.

But just after Christmas my teacher Miss Dotson, who’d met Mr. Herbert Hogg the day he interviewed me, married him and became Mrs. Hogg. Two Hoggs. Pieces fitting together. The magic worked.

I shook the box, and something rattled inside.

I got a bowl, and turned the box upside down. Letter pieces and cereal powder rained out. I poured in some milk, and three perfect letters bobbed to the surface.

“Are you looking for a word in your Alpha-Bits? Seriously?” Lilith was leaning over my shoulder.

“Go away.”

Lilith laughed. As she walked across the room and picked up the phone again, one more letter struggled to the surface of the sludge. I stared at the bowl. It couldn’t be right.

I’d wanted the magic to help me keep my promise to Mamá. I hadn’t wanted this.

Now you choose, Glorieta…

“We’re on hold, B,” Lilith said into the phone. “I’ve got to work out something with my stupid step-tard first. See you at school.”

Lilith saw me still staring at the bowl and leaned over to see what I was looking at.

“O.D.I.O.?” She laughed. “That isn’t even a word, loser.”

It was a word. Lilith just didn’t know it because she couldn’t speak español.

You choose, Glorieta.

If it had been about anyone else, it would have been wrong. But I knew it wasn’t about anyone else. It was about Lilith. Somehow she had gotten in where she didn’t belong and messed everything up. Even the magic.

I could feel her breathing on the back of my neck as I scooped the word onto my spoon and lifted it to my mouth. I would learn it like I’d learned to read, learn the pieces and the parts and how they fit together and it would keep Lilith away from me.

Lilith took a step back, and I couldn’t feel her breath anymore. It was working already.

Shivers raced up my spine as I chewed.

Odio. Hate.

My magic word for the sixth grade.”

Thank you for letting me share, Mixed-Up Files!

Kersten Hamilton

Website: www.kerstenhamilton.com

Pre-order DAYS OF THE DEAD

Email: Kersten@kerstenhamilton.com

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Writing While White

By on September 11, 2017   /   Diversity, For Writers, Writing  

I am a white author. When I write about social justice online, I use phrases like “fellow white people” or “we white women.” I do this intentionally. And yes, like @helloalegria says in the tweet above, it was weird and uncomfortable at first. But you know what? The more I used language that was precise, the easier it got. Plus I began to have much more productive conversations online about dismantling racism and white supremacy.

What does this have to do with middle grade books?

As a white author who has grown up with white privilege and who has benefited from the racism inherent in most (all?) American institutions, I am accustomed to being the “norm” or the “default.” If I read a book, where a character is described as having brown, curly hair (like for example Hermione Granger), I will mostly likely assume that the character is also white.

Because I am “used to being the default definition of ‘people’” as @helloalegria says, I also need to be aware of how I might perpetuate the white default definition of ‘people’ in my books.

This happens if I make a point of describing the skin tone or ethnicity of characters of color but don’t describe the skin tone or family background of light-skinned characters. Doing this makes anyone who is not white into “the other.” And that, fellow white authors, no matter your intentions, is white supremacy at work.

Martha Brockenbrough is a white author who was very intentional in her approach to writing about race in the novel The Game of Love and Death. I asked her to share with us what she was thinking during the process. Here’s what she said:

In college I learned about “marked” language. This was language that assumed male as the standard, and it’s why we say things like “female lawyer” and “male nurse.” (Nurses are stereotypically female, so “male nurse” even works as a punchline.)

With The Game of Love and Death, I didn’t want to center whiteness, and particularly not in the chapters told from the viewpoint of Flora, who is a Black pilot. Where race is observed, blackness is the default. So race is only seen when it is not Black. 

This is part of the empathy we need to cultivate when we are writers. To authentically inhabit characters and understand how their lives feel given our power structures, which favor white people, men, and white men in particular. 

Language is powerful. We build the world with it in so many ways, and as writers, we have the opportunity to build worlds that change the way readers think. And this is what art is supposed to do. It’s supposed to make us feel, and as we process those feelings, we develop a point of view on what it means to be alive.

I love what Martha is saying here. We owe it to our readers—all of our readers—to consider the world from their point-of-view, and to do that, we white writers must be willing to consider that our own point-of-view should not be the “norm” or “default” way to the see the world.

*The title of this post — “Writing While White” — is a shout-out to a blog that I highly recommend called “Reading While White.” Definitely check it out!

** After writing this post, I found another excellent post of the same title by Marianne Modica. Click here to read it.

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Where do you get your ideas: a case study

By on September 4, 2017   /   For Teachers, For Writers, Writing  

“Where do you get your ideas?”

This is a great question that gets asked during every Q&A session with an author. It’s simple. It’s complex. The answer is different for everyone, but the short version is always some variant of, “Anywhere, everywhere, and nowhere.”

While wrapping up the third book of my Galaxy Games series, I found myself thinking about what comes next for me and my writing. It made me really stop to think about where my ideas come from. Because wherever that was, I desperately needed to go back for something new!

But the harder I hunted for a fresh idea, the more elusive they seemed to become.

Step #1: The Idea File

My computer is full of old projects, one-page treatments, and sample first chapters. A while back, when my daughter was developing her sense of humor, I had the idea to write about muses.

In classical Greek mythology, the muses were nine women who inspired all kinds of creativity in human beings. One is a muse of comedy, another is a muse of tragedy, another is a muse of music, another is a muse of dance… It seemed natural to have these supernatural beings still kicking around in the modern world, and competing for controlling interest over a budding young artist, author, or stand-up comedian.

So I wrote some chapters, and they were awful. They went nowhere, but I kept them in my idea file anyway.

And I made a note for the future: “There are some really fun characters in Greek mythology.”

Step #2: Stay Alert for Ideas

Probably a couple times a day I’ll find myself saying, “That would make a great story.” It may be in response to a news article, a conversation, a picture, or a song. Most of these great stories aren’t the ones I’d want to write, but I can imagine them as a book I’d want to read or a movie I’d want to watch.

I could put them all into my idea file, but mostly I don’t bother. 

Then one day, earlier this year, a tweet popped up in my feed from a local newspaper’s Twitter account. It linked to a story about a high school from a couple towns away from me whose track and field team having a particularly good season. Especially in the javelin event.

“That would make a great story,” I thought, and this time it was one I wanted to write as well!

Step #3: Apply Personal Experience

When I read about the javelin competition, it brought back a flood of memories. I was a member of my high school track team. I learned to throw the shotput and javelin, jump for distance, run for speed, and pass a baton. I had a lot of fun and have many great memories, and the one regret that I wasn’t quite fast enough to earn a letter.

Personal experience is the key to finding the story that only you can tell, which will hold your interest through the writing process, and which will resonate as truthful for your readers. I know how to throw a javelin, what muscles are used, what it feels like to launch it down the field, the smell of the grass, the roar of the crowd. And I know well what it was like to not come in first. Or second. Or third.

It wasn’t a story yet, but a feeling that could become the kernel of a story that would resonate with my personal experience.

Step #4: Take Something Ordinary and Make It Extraordinary.

I know some great writers who can take an ordinary experience, like my not quite lettering in track, and make it into a compelling story. I can’t do that. I don’t even try. For my first Galaxy Games book, I essentially told a story about how I used to shoot baskets at my friend’s driveway hoop when I was ten. Except that I added some space aliens and the President of the United States, and put the fate of the world in the balance.

Start with an ordinary story. Add something new. Take something away. Push something to the extreme.

So for my new project-in-development, I turned my personal story about track into one about a prodigious track star with precognitive abilities. Because what’s more fun than a psychic in running shoes?

Step #5: Create a Contrast Character.

Every main character needs a counterpart, foil, antagonist, partner, or all of the above.

When I took track and didn’t earn a letter, that wasn’t much of a story. If I’d been a prodigious track star with precognitive abilities, things would have been a little different, but still not much of a story.

So for contrast, I added a budding journalist who is suffering from retrograde amnesia after a near-death experience.

It sounded good in my head, but when I threw these characters into my computer, I ended up with a Chapter of Awful.

Step #6: Write a Chapter of Awful

This is important. Let yourself write something awful. I mean, don’t plan for it to be awful—just don’t get upset if it is.

Maybe my “precognitive track star meets amnesiac journalist” chapter wasn’t all bad, but it certainly was angsty. After spending so much time spent on light-hearted middle grade, angsty was a refreshing change, but it wasn’t the world I wanted to inhabit for the full length of a novel.

And if I didn’t want to live there, I certainly couldn’t expect a reader to want to live there.

Step #7: If your story isn’t working, try a riff on it

I kept with my Chapter of Awful but also started on something light and fun as an antidote to all the heaviness, planning to put it as an interlude between the first angsty chapter and the second.

Track and field and precognition in modern times made me think of the Olympic Games and oracular prophesy of Ancient Greece. It even fit a prime item in my idea file: “There are some really fun characters in Greek mythology!”

So my interlude featured Hercules getting his butt kicked in a javelin-throwing contest.

I had fun with it, and started to think more about the character of Hercules. I’d read about his twelve legendary labors back in grade school and hadn’t thought of them much since. But when I was a kid, I’d always seen Hercules as something of a villain. Sure, he does some good deeds—ridding the land of monsters, cleaning out some guy’s stables, picking fruit, and all that—but only because he’s being made to do it. He murders his entire family, successfully pleads an insanity defense, and gets off with community service. Because the “driven mad by Hera” excuse was the Twinkie Defense of the ancient world.

Making Hercules into a villain is like making Superman into a villain, except that Hercules has no kryptonite. How can a mere mortal ever hope to take down a god? This was the story I want to tell!

So I tossed the Chapter of Awful and went to work on the riff instead.

Step #8: Explore the Backstory

My story is about an ordinary character in the world of Greek mythology who must take down the villainous Hercules. I feel really good about this except for one thing; I don’t know who this main character is, where she came from, or what motivates her.

So before I could write the story I originally planned to write, I needed to find the real beginning. That’s where I am now: the formative years of an ordinary character who aspires to do extraordinary things. Someone who can’t throw a javelin all that well and probably wouldn’t letter in track, but is destined to take one of the most powerful beings in all of mythology.

Where did this story come from? The short answer still applies: “Anywhere, everywhere, and nowhere.” But the long answer is still a work in progress.

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