John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 9

Double Dasher FREE Event!

I’m running a special this week. Through Thursday, you can get the first two Wolf Dasher novels, State of Grace and Red Dragon Five for free. If you’re not familiar with my fantasy-thriller adventure series, it features super-spy action like the James Bond films, with a traditional swords-and-sorcery setting featuring elves, magic, dragons, and intrigue.

Here’s more information:

State of Grace

When his friend and colleague is murdered in Alfar, magical land of elves, Wolf Dasher faces the toughest mission of his career. He must find out who did it and bring the killer to justice. The clues all point to Alfar’s ambassador – but he was out of the country when the crime occurred.

Undercover and out of his depth, Wolf soon finds himself caught in a deadly web of assassination, betrayal, and zealotry. Religious extremists, a mad general, and a megalomaniac with a messiah complex all wrestle for control of the elf nation’s destiny.

Pursued by a sadistic killer and blocked by politicians only interested in their own agendas, Wolf races against time to uncover a conspiracy that threatens to kill thousands of elves in a devastating act of terrorism, plunge Alfar into war, and alter the balance of power forever.

Click here to get it FREE!

Red Dragon Five

The Red Dragon Project is the ultimate weapon — five women who can transform themselves into mighty dragons. Not only can they soar over armies and use their fiery breath to devastate opposing forces, they can sneak behind enemy lines before metamorphosing and catch enemies unaware. Now Urland has a scale-tipping advantage over rival Phrygia and even the means to fully stabilize allied-nation Alfar’s shaky coalition government.

But on its first test mission, the Red Dragon Project is sabotaged. Three Dragons are killed, one is severely injured, and, worst, one goes missing. Only Wolf Dasher of Her Majesty’s Shadow Service knows who is really behind the attack: The Sons of Frey, a sinister terrorist organization dedicated to overthrowing Alfar’s government in the name of religious purity.

Wolf’s out of favor, though. A blown mission and his love affair with Alfar’s Captain of the Elite Guard, May Honeyflower, have irked the conservative faction of the coalition government and made him a liability to his own people. Currently serving a month-long suspension, he’s in no position to pursue his suspicions.

There’s only one solution: a dangerous, unofficial mission that carries Wolf across the border into neighboring Jifan, a nation of elves that hates humans like Wolf and seeks to conquer Alfar, uniting both countries under a strict fundamentalist theocracy. He’ll have to go alone, and, if anything goes wrong, no one will come to help.

May isn’t about to abandon her love, though. When Wolf disappears and is presumed dead, she resolves to go after him, leaving her post and recruiting imprisoned radicals to help her.

Now, Wolf and May find themselves in a race against time. Wolf must track down the missing Red Dragon before the Jifani-sponsored Sons of Frey unleash an apocalypse on Alfar. May must locate Wolf before the Sons of Frey discover him. If either of them fails, Alfar is doomed.

Click here to get it FREE!

Learn more about the Wolf Dasher series here.

Filed under: Red Dragon Five, State of Grace Tagged: John Phythyon, Red Dragon Five, State of Grace, Wolf Dasher

LITTLE RED RIDING HOODIE Available for Pre-Order

Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale is going forward. While the book’s Kindle Scout campaign was unsuccessful, it will be published on February 2, 2015.

It’s currently available for pre-order through Amazon.com, and the price is only 99 cents for a limited time. If you place an order now, it will be wirelessly delivered to your Kindle on the 2nd.

Click here to pre-order Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale.

In case you missed the Kindle Scout campaign, here’s the book’s description:

Bullies. Friends. Boys. Shakespeare. Demonic Dogs. Evil Spirits. You know, Sixth Grade.

Sixth grade is hard enough. When the school bully is on your case because you got the lead in the play instead of her, when the cutest boy in the whole class might actually like you but never makes a move, and when your dad is an alcoholic and you have to cook, clean, and take care of your little brother, the last thing you need is more trouble.

But Sally Prescott has more trouble than she ever imagined when she starts having strange dreams of demonic dogs, magical keys, and a wolf-headed spirit bent on her destruction. Her best friend knows a secret that may help, but she refuses to tell, claiming Sally made her promise not to.

As Sally’s dreams start bleeding into reality, she realizes she is the only who can save her family. With a little bit of magic and a lot of determination, she’ll get one chance to change her destiny and theirs. If she succeeds, she’ll solve her problems at home and at school. If she fails, she’ll lose everyone she ever loved.

Turns out sixth grade is tougher than she thought.

Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale is a contemporary take on the classic story. Blending surrealism and magic with a modern middle school setting, it is a story of bravery in the face of hopelessness, taking responsibility when others won’t, and finding your inner strength. Funny and sweet, scary and strange, Little Red Riding Hoodie celebrates friendship, love, and courage at that most awkward time of life – middle school.

Click here to pre-order Little Red Riding HoodieL A Modern Fairy Tale.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Third Mini-Memoir, “Domestic Disturbance”, on Sale

This blog has been pretty focused on the Kindle Scout campaign for Little Red Riding Hoodie in the past few weeks. But in the midst of all that marketing I actually published another book.

“Domestic Disturbance: My True-Life Adventure in Sibling Rivalry” is available now. It’s my third comical mini-memoir about childhood in the 1970’s, and this time I explore the fierce battles my brother, David, and I fought to establish once and for all which of us was superior.

I tell the story of how he ran by my hall-monitor station just to provoke me, how we teamed up to dominate the whole neighborhood in baseball, and how we organized and ran an all-out war between our respective classes on the playground at school.

You can get it now for only 99 cents for Kindle. The companion books, “Secret Identity: My True-Life Adventure as a Superhero” and “Naughty & Nice: My True-Life Adventure with Santa Claus,” are also only a buck. You can get them all at the links below.

Remember: “Brotherly love” is a complicated phrase!

Click here to get “Domestic Disturbance” for 99 cents from Amazon.com.

Click here to get “Secret Identity.”

Click here to get “Naughty & Nice.”

Filed under: e-Publishing, Memoir Tagged: humor, John Phythyon, memoirs

Schedule Shuffle

This past weekend was a little bigger than anticipated. I thought my birthday would be enough excitement. But on Friday night, less than an hour before midnight (they seem to keep strange hours), Amazon let me know they declined to publish Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale.

Naturally, I was pretty disappointed. We ran a really good campaign, staying hot 29 of the 30 days we were up and being one of only six hot books on the entire site for the last 36 hours.

But for reasons they have not elected to share with me, Amazon decided it wasn’t for them.

The good news is I haven’t really lost anything. I can still publish the book on my own, and I will. However, fitting LRRH into my publishing schedule requires shifting around my original plan for 2015. I spent Saturday playing with it until I had it in a shape I think works and that I can manage.

So in the wake of Amazon’s decision not to publish LRRH, here’s my new schedule for 2015:

February: Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale

I’ve tentatively set the release date for this book for Monday, February 2. Pre-release and ARC information will be available later this week.

March: “Swing and a Miss: My True-Life Adventure in Baseball”

The fourth of my comical mini-memoirs will land about a week ahead of MLB opening day and detail my love-hate relationship with the game in my youth.

April: Short Story Collection

I’ve published several short stories both singly and in other anthologies since 2012. I’ll collect them here along with some new material.

May: “Rocketed to Earth: My True-Life Adventure as a Space Alien”

The fifth mini-memoir tells the story of my childhood obsession with Star Wars and the trouble it got me into.

June: Sequel to The Sword and the Sorcerer

This book was originally planned for August, so I hadn’t even come up with a title yet. To make a June publication date, I have to kick it into high gear this week! Fortunately, I’ve got the story sorted out in my head. Now I just have to plot it and get writing.

July: “Road Trip: My True-Life Adventure on Vacation”

Two boys in the back of a station wagon traveling the highways of America for hours and hours and hours. What could possibly go wrong? The sixth mini-memoir answers that question.

August: The Secret Thief: A Modern Fairy Tale

I feel bad for this book. It keeps getting pushed back. I had originally planned to publish it back in November but pushed it to February to take advantage of Kindle Unlimited and write the mini-memoirs. Now, with LRRH having to go in February, TST is moving again. I swear the story of a boy fighting a monster who steals his secrets and passes them on to whomever can do the most harm will get published this year!

September: “Teacher’s Pet: My True-Life Adventure in School”

This mini-memoir covers the giant pain in the butt I was at school . . . and how that made life harder for my brother.

October: “Inglorious Gridiron: My True-Life Adventure in Football”

The last of the mini-memoirs describes the way I was able to organize an entire football league in my backyard.

November: Twice in a Lifetime

Just in time for the release of the new James Bond film, Spectre, I’ll publish the fifth Wolf Dasher thriller.

December: True-Life Adventures Collection

Finally, I’ll collect all the mini-memoirs into a single volume along with one new adventure and some bonus material.

So there it is. A reconstituted publishing schedule. That’ll have me releasing a book a month and allow me to capitalize on all the hard work I’ve already done on Little Red Riding Hoodie. I hope you’ll join me!

Filed under: e-Publishing, Little Red Riding Hoodie, Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, Little Red Riding Hoodie, publishing

Dedicating a Book Is Sometimes Hard

Dedications are tricky things.

Works of art are meant to last forever, so dedicating a piece to an individual says a lot about the relationship with that person, how you feel about him or her, and possibly, the surtext of the novel.

I dedicated my first novel, State of Grace, to my father, because, as it reads in the inscription, he’d always believed I could become an author. Dedicating my first novel to him was the most natural thing imaginable to me, even though there isn’t a character or a theme that has any real connection to him.

The task was a lot harder for Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale, my novel currently in the Kindle Scout program (nominate it for publication here).

I’ve been working on this book on and off since 2003. After I adopted my daughter in 2005, I began to think I might like to dedicate it to her if I ever got it published. Like many kids in the foster system, she had a difficult start to life, and the trials my protagonist goes through in the book make me think of my kid often.

But as this final draft developed, Sally’s life looked less and less like one my daughter knew. It didn’t seem to be about my kid at all. This was a very different girl, with a very different set of problems.

Plus, LRRH is set in sixth grade. My daughter left the world of early middle school behind years ago. She’s a high-schooler now and very much a young woman — a far cry from the late-bloomer struggling to figure out how to fit in that Sally is in the novel. Somehow, it just didn’t feel right.

So I looked at other options.

My stepdaughter seemed an obvious choice. She is in sixth grade. She’s into theater, which echoes nicely with the Romeo and Juliet subplot in the book.

And she gave me the title of the book.�� Her suggestion of “Little Red Riding Hoodie” showed me what was wrong with the original manuscript and how to fix it. All that seemed like a pretty good reason to dedicate a book to her.

But it didn’t feel right.

I didn’t want my stepdaughter to get the idea the novel was about her, because it absolutely isn’t. Not even a little bit. And the danger is a sixth-grader reads a book about a sixth-grader that is dedicated to her and thinks this is what I think of her. That would have been all wrong.

My stepson’s inspirational fingerprints are all over the book too. A lot of his personality is imbued in various characters throughout the novel. One or two of the themes should speak to him. So he seemed like a natural choice too.

But again, the fit wasn’t quite comfortable. there are pieces of the novel that don’t fit his life well at all, and I didn’t want him to get the impression I thought they did.

So I toyed with dedicating it to all three children. They all have their hands in it in a way. And no one can get jealous of anyone if none of them is singled out.

But that’s a cop-out. Dedicate it to them all, and I’m essentially dedicating it to no one.

So in the end, I made a choice. And I came back to my original inspiration.

Little Red Riding Hoodie is not about my daughter’s life at all, but her experiences (and mine parenting her) informed my writing when I was describing the sad situations in Sally’s life. That seemed like the most powerful source.

The dedication to Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale reads as follows:

“For Onna. There���s a great, big world out there you still haven���t found. I���m sorry you���ve already seen some of the scary parts, but there is a lot of beauty too, and I hope that���s what you���ll eventually choose to observe.”

For a novel about a girl who is terrorized by bullies, an alcoholic father, and demons in her dreams, but who eventually finds the strength and courage not only to fight but to save the people she loves, that seemed fitting.

And I hope it speaks to a kid who makes me proud with the way she battles adversity to overcome a difficult start in life. The quiet heroism of everyday people who grapple with demons and somehow keep going should inspire us all.

Filed under: Little Red Riding Hoodie, Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, Kindle Scout, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Red Riding Hoodie

LITTLE RED RIDING HOODIE Chapter Three Excerpt

With Little Red Riding Hoodie‘s Kindle Scout campaign about to end (click here to nominate it for publication and read the first chapter-and-a-half), I thought people like one more taste of the book’s contents. So here’s about the first two-thirds of Chapter Three. After reading the preview Amazon put up on the book’s Kindle Scout page, and finishing Chapter Two here, you can read on to get a further look at Sally’s adventures in sixth grade. Enjoy!

. . .

Three

Sally was relieved to discover the next morning that Tommy had not wet the bed. Her father lumbered around trying to get himself ready. He looked hungover, and he only grunted when Sally said good morning to him.

She got Tommy up and then went to have a shower herself. The water was warm and soothing, especially after having to skip bathing the day before. She took ten sinful, extra minutes.

After a breakfast of cornflakes, she made sure Tommy was ready to go. She escorted him to the bus stop and then put up her hood and took off on her bike down Jordan Avenue towards Parker Drive.

It was chilly again this morning, but being clean and not rushed made her feel invigorated. She strained as usual to get to the top of the hill, but it didn���t seem quite as difficult today.

By the time she made it to her locker, Alison was already there.

���Have you heard anything yet?��� she said, practically quivering in front of Sally.

���No,��� Sally replied. ���I just got here. Besides, he said the cast list won���t be up ���til after last period.���

���Suckage!��� Alison said. ���I don���t want to have to wait all day to find out!���

���Imagine if you had auditioned,��� Sally said, rolling her eyes.

���C���est la vie,��� Alison said.

���No speaka da French,��� Sally replied.

***

��Sally had barely gotten herself seated in first-period social studies, when Mr. Frank turned smugly to the class, put his hands behind his back, and said, ���All right, ladies and gentlemen, please put your things away, except for a blank sheet of paper and a pen.���

Sally���s heart stopped. A pop quiz? Mr. Frank chose today for a pop quiz? She had fallen asleep trying to read the material last night!

���Put your name in the upper, right-hand corner,��� he continued.

Sally loathed him. He was enormous ��� one of those men whose gut seemed to extend outward from the rest of his body, like he was only fat in front. She didn���t care if people were overweight, but Mr. Frank thrust his stomach at the class like it gave him authority, and he smiled sadistically at them every time he gave a quiz.

���Please describe the basic process for a bill to be originated and get through Congress all the way to the president���s desk for signature or veto,��� he said, gazing on the class imperiously. ���You have ten minutes. Begin.���

Sally didn���t know what to do. She only vaguely remembered what she had read before passing out last night. She was pretty sure any member of Congress could start a bill, and there was something about a committee, but she couldn���t recall what it was. And then? And then . . .

Sally heard a clinking. She couldn���t say for certain what it was. She scanned the hall of the school, examining the smoke-swirl pattern in the grey tile floors, looking for the source of the sound between the gun-metal grey lockers. After a moment, she saw it. A gold coin rolled down the hall and then, as though possessed of a mind of its own, turned a corner and continued out of sight down the adjoining hallway.

She gasped and sat up straight in her desk. Last night���s dream came rushing back to her all at once. She had forgotten it when she woke up this morning. The terror of those dogs, the fear that they would catch her, seized her mind and would not let go.

���Something you���d like to share with the rest of us, Miss Prescott?��� Mr. Frank said.

���What?��� she said.

Everyone laughed. Sally looked around. Everyone was staring at her. What had she been doing?

���If you���re finished reacting to my ���alarming��� quiz, you might think about the fact you only have seven minutes left to finish it,��� Mr. Frank said.

He looked down on her sternly, and she could see malicious delight dancing in his eyes. She thought he must hate children and couldn���t understand why he became a teacher.

���You now have six minutes and forty-five seconds,��� he said.

Sally put her head down and tried to think of something to write. The only thing that would come to mind, though, was the memory of those terrifying dogs. She had written only two sentences, when Mr. Frank called time and instructed everyone to pass their papers to the front.

She was getting an ���F.��� She knew it. Mr. Frank had no mercy. He wouldn���t give her any kind of partial credit for starting the quiz or putting her name on the paper. He would just fail her.

She wanted to cry. It wasn���t her fault she fell asleep during the reading. The author shouldn���t have made it so boring. What did they expect would happen to a sixth-grader trying to read it late at night?

Mr. Frank spent the class period discussing the reading and taking them through the convoluted process of U.S. legislation, but Sally barely heard him. She was too distraught to pay attention. The fresh wound of her failure on the quiz and the memory of the nightmare crashed her focus.

Second-period math didn���t do much for her either. They went over last night���s problems. Mrs. Lamay assigned another thirty for tonight.

Mr. Pipich���s class cheered her a little third hour, but seeing him reminded her that the cast list for Romeo and Juliet would be posted at the end of the day. After her dispiriting failure on Mr. Frank���s pop quiz, it was impossible to believe she would get a part. Maybe she would get the Nurse because she was ugly, but even that seemed unlikely.

The day droned on from one miserable experience to another. Even Alison, who was usually so fun and supportive, irritated her throughout the entirety of lunch with constant assertions that Sally would be cast as Juliet and end up falling in love with Brian and marrying him some day.

By the end of the day, Sally could barely muster the desire to go to Mr. Pipich���s room to see the results. She didn���t want to have her dreams crushed. Molly would get the part. It didn���t matter how bad she was. She was gorgeous. She looked like a woman. Sally? She was a kid.

She decided, though, that it was better to get it over with. She may as well go take her medicine now, so she wouldn���t be disappointed later.

When she got to Mr. Pipich���s room, a crowd milled near the door. He had posted the cast list on the small corkboard outside his class. Twenty or thirty students had gathered around and were talking animatedly about what they read and pointing at the board. The crowd looked like a single, amorphous creature.

Summoning her courage, she began pushing her way through to the front, so she could read the list herself. The crowd parted slowly. This odd beast made up of many different living things seemed to wish to deny her passage, as though there were some secret on its other side it did not want to divulge.

As she got closer, her anxiety rose. She���d known she���d wanted it, but she hadn���t realized how deeply and profoundly she had desired to be cast in the play. She loved Romeo and Juliet. Mr. Pipich just had to include her. He had to! She had no idea how she would face her disappointment if he hadn���t.

Deliberately, she tried to convince herself that there was no way a girl like her could be in a play as special as Romeo and Juliet. She was ugly. She was nothing. She was the dumb girl, who couldn���t pass a social studies quiz. Mr. Pipich wouldn���t want someone like her in the most amazing play ever.

She willed her mind back to the defeatist attitude she had had prior to reading yesterday. If she believed she didn���t deserve this, couldn���t hope to ever get it, she would not be disappointed when she did not. It would hurt less than if she got her hopes up. Hoping to get Juliet was like hoping for Mom to come home.

At last, the crowd parted enough for her to reach the front. Sally closed her eyes. She drew in a deep breath and steeled herself for disappointment. Then she opened her eyes and read the cast list.

And there it was in black ink:

JULIET CAPULET ��� SALLY PRESCOTT

Her heart stopped. She couldn���t possibly have read that. She read it again. It hadn���t changed. She, Sally Prescott, had gotten what she wanted; she���d been cast as Juliet.

A lump came up in the back of her throat. Then a freight train of emotion crashed through her. She began weeping. Tears streamed down her face as the sheer joy of her accomplishment overwhelmed her. For the first time in her life, she understood what it was to cry from happiness.

A scream broke through the crowd causing everyone to turn. Alison stood a few feet away. Her mouth was open wide enough to accommodate an entire apple.

���Sally!��� she screamed. ���You did it!��� She rushed Sally, grabbed her hands, and began jumping up and down. ���You did it, you did it, you did it, you did it, you did it!���

Sally began jumping too, and people nearby had to back off. They all looked irritated.

���I told you, you could do it!��� Alison shrieked. ���Didn���t I tell you?���

���Yes,��� was all Sally could manage. She had no words to describe what she was feeling.

A moment later, though, Alison grew suddenly silent. Her face fell. Sally turned around. There stood Molly Richards, surrounded by The Set, looking as though someone had called her a very dirty name. Sally suddenly realized she hadn���t seen Molly���s name anywhere on the cast list.

Molly fixed Sally with a glare capable of wilting flowers. No one said anything for a moment.

���I think Mr. Pipich made a mistake,��� Molly declared. ���He probably meant to cast you as Romeo. After all, you look like a boy.���

Wendy and Brinna cackled at the joke, and Kylie sneered. Everyone else was silent.

Sally was angry. How dare Molly say something like that? Sally had rocked the audition. Molly sucked. Sally decided she���d had enough.

���You���re just jealous, Molly,��� Sally said.

���Of Little Red Riding Hoodie?��� Molly retorted. ���Please.���

With a casual flip of her hair, Molly turned her back on Sally and started to walk away defiantly. The rest of The Set fell in behind her.

Sally cursed herself. Her quip had been weak. Molly had easily dismissed it. Sally could have let her walk away, content with having gotten the part. But she couldn���t do it. She hated that nickname, hated Molly, and could not stand to let her get away with being a bitch this time.

���Yeah, you���re jealous,��� Sally said. ���You���re pissed because you were so bad you got beaten out by a girl with no tits.���

There was stunned silence. No one said a word for at least ten seconds. Molly stopped cold in her tracks. Alison���s mouth hung open at the sheer audacity of the statement. Molly turned around savagely to snarl something back. Sally met her hateful gaze with a defiant smile. Molly���s mouth opened, snapped shut, opened again, and shut a second time. She clearly couldn���t think of a comeback to Sally���s devastating riposte. She turned on her heel and stormed away.

The Set followed quickly, looking confused. Brinna turned back several times, throwing Sally a death glare, but Sally returned it with a triumphant grin.

The crowd began breaking up. A lot of people smiled at Sally. One or two congratulated her. It was as though she had grown six inches taller right then.

���Oh. My. God!��� Alison said. ���I can���t believe you said that!���

���I had to say something,��� Sally replied with a shrug. ���Besides, it���s the truth. She���s got great boobs, and she thinks they should get her whatever she wants. It makes her angry when someone she thinks is inferior beats her.���

���Sally,��� Alison said, beaming, ���you don���t need boobs. You���ve got brains.���

Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale is part of Amazon’s Kindle Scout program. You can nominate the book for publication by following this link, logging in with your Amazon account, and clicking the blue “Nominate Me” button. Thanks!

Filed under: Little Red Riding Hoodie Tagged: fairy tales, John Phythyon, Kindle Scout, Little Red Riding Hoodie, Red Riding Hood

2014 in Review

2014 was a huge year for me. Both career-wise and personally, a lot happened.

I published four books this past year, which is one more than I planned at this time in 2013, so that’s already an improvement. Two of them were very difficult.

In April, I released Roses Are White, the third Wolf Dasher novel. I’ve always embedded Wolf’s adventures with strong themes about the human condition; they’re not just mindless, action yarns.

But RAW explored racism in an allegedly egalitarian society. I took a close look at how people who profess deep devotion to God are capable of hating others based on the color of their skin or the denomination of their religion.

It was difficult, uncomfortable material to explore. I dedicated the book to Trayvon Martin and Matthew Shepard. I wrote in the acknowledgements that I hoped one day this kind of destructive racism would be a thing only of fiction and not the evening news.

And then Ferguson happened. Michael Brown was shot to death and protestors were gassed. Eric Garner was choked to death in New York City, and police shot a man in Ohio, who was talking on the phone in a Wal-Mart and holding an Airsoft rifle still in the package.

And I kept thinking, I wrote about this in an adventure novel. It isn’t supposed to be real, and it certainly isn’t supposed to be happening this often.

But it seems I was naive about that.

My second novel, Ghost of a Chance, was difficult for different reasons. It too is a Wolf Dasher novel, and after four books, I finally explained what’s been going on in the larger story arc. I reveal the source of the corruption that’s causing everything to die, and I did it in a book where the main character and much of the supporting cast are grieving over the death of someone they loved in the previous book.

The writing of this novel coincided with my family moving from Kansas to Ohio. So in addition to trying to write a book — which turned out to be the longest in my catalog by a good distance — I was packing, cleaning, reassuring people, driving cross-country, unpacking, etc. Six months later, most of the boxes are empty and people have largely adjusted to their new lives, but it’s still a work-in-progress. The fact that I published Ghost of a Chance in the midst of all that is extraordinary.

And then, I turned my attention to happier matters. In November, I released the first installment of my serialized memoir of childhood. I’m writing these as humorous essays, and each installment is a self-contained story about some fool thing I did as a kid that miraculously turned out all right. The second one came out in December, and I’m releasing a third in January. They’re short, so I can write and publish them faster.

But before the year was out, Amazon announced its Kindle Scout program, wherein they use crowd-sourcing to determine books they might like to publish.

So despite it not being on my schedule, I went into overdrive mode, and wrote Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale so that I could take advantage of the early wave. LRRH is currently part of the Kindle Scout program. You can nominate it for publication here.

So I wrote three novels and two shorts this year, and published the shorts and two of the novels. Somewhere in there I also contributed two short stories to anthologies. And I moved cross-country.

That’s a pretty big year!

I’m in high gear for 2015. I have a lot of big plans (including publishing 12 books). If 2014 taught me anything, it’s that I can do more than I had been doing. I’m kind of excited. I’m planning to rip into 2015 at a higher speed than I thought was possible.

Here’s hoping for a prosperous 2015, without quite so many tragedies.

 

 

Filed under: Ghost of a Chance, Little Red Riding Hoodie, Memoir, Roses Are White

5 Steps to Writing a Modern Fairy Tale

As I’ve written elsewhere on this site, I love fairy tales. I have from an early age, and they are probably the genesis of my interest in magic and in fantasy literature.

Since 2012, I’ve written three modern fairy tales — taking the classic stories and retelling them in contemporary settings. The latest — Little Red Riding Hoodie — is currently part of Amazon’s Kindle Scout program (nominate it for publication here). I’m starting a fourth this week for publication early next year.

But as much as I enjoy writing them, they present certain challenges, and I thought that would be something interesting to discuss today, as LRRH winds towards the end of its Kindle Scout campaign. So here is my five-step approach to taking a classic and making it new.

#1: Throw Out the Original

The first key to writing a good fairy tale, in my opinion, is to not force myself to be constrained to the original story. I love the fables as they’ve been handed down, but I’m writing a story set in modern times. A lot of the elements of old fairy tales may not work, and even if they did, they may not be suitable for the book I’m writing.

For instance, the principal plot of “Little Red Riding Hood” is a girl who goes through the woods taking food to her elderly grandmother. She is warned to stay on the path on the way there, but she wanders off it to take a shortcut, where she meets a wolf, who is ultimately her undoing. Setting my novel in a contemporary middle school made it difficult to feature a girl walking through the woods and meeting a wolf who could talk, and the idea of him eating the grandmother and disguising himself as her is outlandish in a modern setting.

So for Little Red Riding Hoodie, I had to do something different. There is a wolf in the novel, but it’s not a talking one who can disguise itself as her grandmother and gobble her up.

#2: Find the Important Elements and Use Them

While I give myself the freedom to tell whatever story I’m inspired to, I also realize that the book has to be recognizable as a retelling of a classic fable. When I wrote “Sleeping Beauty: A Modern Fairy Tale,” the titular character was in a magical sleep that could only be interrupted by True Love’s first kiss. Beauty & the Beast: A Modern Fairy Tale features a young man transformed into a monster. Without the pieces of the story everyone recognizes, it’s not a retelling of the original in contemporary times.

So, for example, when I sat down to write Little Red Riding Hoodie, I looked for the things I needed to include to make it recognizable. The most obvious is the red hood and cape she wears, and that was easily changed to a modern, hooded sweatshirt. She’s also trying to get to Grandma’s house, so my protagonist, Sally, thinks of her grandmother’s house as a place of safety, and she dreams of it.

And then, of course, there’s The Big Bad Wolf. In my version, this character takes two forms — a wolf-headed evil spirit, who haunts Sally’s dreams, and giant, lupine dogs that serve the spirit. Both of these fiends appear first in Sally’s dreams, but they make their way into the real world, threatening to physically destroy her.

Anyone who reads the book will be able to easily perceive the Red Riding Hood imagery and recognize the novel as a retelling of that story, despite the fact that its plot is very different.

#3: Keep Magic to a Minimum

Magic is a big part of fairy tales, and I do use it in my own. “Sleeping Beauty” has a magical elixir to put the girl in a coma. Beauty & the Beast has a ring of three wishes and an otherworldly adversary.

But for the most part, magic plays a very small role in my modern fairy tales. They are, after all, set in contemporary America — a place where people don’t believe in magic. So the supernatural forces are only a small piece of my fairy tales.

In Little Red Riding Hoodie, Sally searches for a magical key that can change her destiny. She is tormented by an evil spirit. But most of this sorcery happens not in the real world but in her dreams. She doesn’t know what is real and what it all means. She’s a 12-year-old girl, who spends most of her time trying to navigate the difficulties of sixth grade.

#4: Stories about Young People

When I think of fairy tales, I remember the wonder of my youth. I recall being a child who believed magic was possible.

For that reason, I feel it important to write fairy tales about young people. “Sleeping Beauty” and Beauty & the Beast are about teenagers. Little Red Riding Hoodie is set in sixth grade.

I think this is an important element of my fairy tales. The young have a sense of wonder and possibility adults have often lost. I find that, if I’m going to write a modern fairy tale, it will be more believable if it features a protagonist who hasn’t yet made it out of high school.

#5: Cautionary Tales

Finally, the original versions of classic fairy tales didn’t end well. They were lessons to scare people — particularly children — into good behavior.

I’m a fan of dark fantasy and horror literature, so I don’t feel obligated to write happy endings to my fairy tales. They are meant to be cautionary stories that elucidate important societal truths.

I won’t give away the ending of Little Red Riding Hoodie, but Sally does not lead an idyllic life. Her father is an alcoholic. Her mother left them and rarely visits. She is bullied harshly at school. And she is terrified by the dreams she’s having.

The real story of LRRH is Sally learning to find courage and strength within herself despite terrible circumstances. She has friends and good things do happen to her at school, but she has to make sacrifices to save her family, and she has to find courage to go on in the face of crushing adversity.

So that’s what goes into a modern fairy tale — at least the way I write them. I try to take one of our cultural artifacts and re-imagine it for a new age. It’s challenging and fun, and I hope readers enjoy them.

(You can help me get Little Red Riding Hoodie published through Amazon. Click this link to nominate LRRH for publication. If it’s chosen, you’ll get a free copy of the book!)

Filed under: Beauty & the Beast, Little Red Riding Hoodie, Sleeping Beauty, Writing Tagged: fairy tales, Kindle Scout, Little Red Riding Goo, modern fairy tales, writing

Sounds of the Season: My Favorite Christmas Songs

Last week, I wrote a fun and perhaps snarky blog about the dumbest Christmas carols of all time. Of course, those “worst” songs were some people’s favorites. And when one of those people is your wife, the trouble grows.

So rather than being clever or Scrooge-y this time, I’ll instead list a few of my favorite sounds of the season. Then people can tell me how dumb they are in the comments!

Here, in no particular order, are Christmas carols that make me turn the volume up.

“Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”

This has been my favorite Christmas song since I was very little. My mother taped my brother and I singing it for our nana, and I didn’t know the word, “pout,” at the time. I sang “shout out” instead.

It is also one of the first Rock ‘n’ Roll covers of a Christmas carol I ever heard. Bruce Springsteen’s arrangement is electric and fun, and Clarence Clemons’s sax solo makes me want to dance. I always crank this one up when it plays and do my best Springsteen imitation as I wail along.

“Here Comes Santa Claus”

We had the Gene Autry version of this classic on a record when I was little, and since I was a kid obsessed with that jolly old elf, I loved any song celebrating his arrival. I could hear those sleigh bells jingle-jangle with little imagination.

As an adult, the third verse is my favorite: “He doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor. He loves you just the same. / Santa Claus knows we’re all God’s children; that makes everything right.” This is the essence of the Christmas spirit, and I wish some of the more strident faithful would remember that idea more often.

“Carol of the Bells”

I don’t care if this is sung with the words or performed instrumentally, it’s an amazing piece of music. The minor key, the fugue structure, the sheer energy of it all contribute to making virtually every arrangement of this piece fun to listen to. It’s a demanding number to perform, which makes it fun from a musician’s point of view as well.

“Do You Hear What I Hear?”

This one is mostly here for nostalgia. It was the traditional finale to the Christmas concert at my high school, and I can still sing the high tenor part of the TTBB arrangement we did from memory without even having to think about it. My choir director was the first great mentor of my life, and Christmas was a special season under his direction.

And my memories of the song are fonder due to one of my classmates locking his knees, passing out, and falling off the back riser freshman year. He landed with a loud thud right on the downbeat before the final note. Classic.

“The Chipmunk Song”

This song is ridiculous. Yet there is something so very charming about it, I look forward to hearing it every year. The tight harmonies, the high pitched voices, and the utter sincerity of three boys begging Christmas to get here before they blow it perfectly capture the wonder of a child’s Christmas. “Alvin!!!”

“Home for the Holidays”

This one makes me want to dance and sing too. Perry Como’s versions are the best, but what’s not to like about the sentiment, there’s no place like home for the holidays? This song reminds me every year to make my home a place people want to be.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

This is one of the most complicated Christmas carols of them all. I love it, because it is an attempt to enjoy the holidays even when things are sad. “Make the Yuletide gay. / Next year, all our troubles will be miles away.” It’s faith for the future, even if the present sucks.

I’ve had some rotten Christmases. I’ve suffered through unemployment twice at Christmastime, had Christmas in a hospital because a family member was sick, and tried to figure out how to buy presents for the kids when the budget was tight.  But Christmas is and should be a time of joy. It’s the one time of the year people are genuinely nice to each other for no particular reason, and I’ve learned to have faith that next year things really will be better. Or maybe the year after that.

But I don’t want to miss the happy moments of this holiday season. So pass me some egg nog and put on some Christmas records. There is something to celebrate.

That’s a list of my favorites. I like most Christmas carols anyway, and listening to them puts me in a great mood and reminds to have good will to my fellow man.

So hang a shining star upon the highest bough and have yourself a merry, little Christmas now.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Christmas, Christmas songs

From LITTLE GIRL LOST to LITTLE RED RIDING HOODIE

One of peculiar things about my writing process is that I never seem to have the idea right the first time. I get inspiration for a story, and I work on it, but often something is missing.

Usually, that key component is time. When I set a project aside for awhile, the solution to whatever the problem is comes up with no warning, and I’m finally able to get the book I wanted.

It was like that with Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale, the novel I’ve currently got in the Kindle Scout program. (Click here to learn more and nominate LRRH for publication.)

The book began as an urban fantasy novel titled Little Girl Lost. It told the story of Sally Prescott, a sixth-grader struggling at school with bullies and developing at a slower rate than the other girls, while trying to survive the horrors of an abusive father at home. A magic ring from her dreams granted her the power to make whatever she wished for come true, but it was protected by a sinister spirit, who commanded giant, demonic dogs.

I wrote several drafts of this novel and tried very hard to interest agents in it back in 2003.

Despite getting favorable reviews from beta readers, I could never get an agent to bite. By 2004, I knew something was wrong with it, and I put it aside to tinker with later.

This year, the Kindle Scout program, inspiration from my stepdaughter, and having published two previous modern fairy tales gave me the impetus to recast the book as a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. I already had the wolf imagery, and, with my stepdaughter’s suggestion, I realized changing the red hood and cape of the original story to a hoodie would make it easy to adapt a novel I already had.

But there were a lot of changes I needed to make for this to be a novel that worked.

The biggest was the role of Sally’s father. In the original, he is married and both physically and mentally abusive. I originally wrote the novel for adults, so I didn’t sugarcoat the beating scenes.

But one of the ways in which the book was not working was that it was an adult novel but most of the characters were children. The whole book was third-person, exclusive narrator. You only got Sally’s perspective. It read like a YA novel to me, but I didn’t want young people to read the novel’s more disturbing scenes.

So something had to change. I elected to take the abuse out. As much as I think that’s a subject I should write about at some point, this wasn’t the right book for it.

Like he was in the original version, Sally’s father is an alcoholic. But instead of being a mean drunk who hits his wife and children, he’s now divorced and spiraling downward. He’s a pathetic drunk, who can barely care for his children.

I also changed a lot of the things the bullies do. Much of the original material was as horrific as the beatings Sally’s father inflicted. Once again, since I was aiming at a younger audience, I focused on Mean Girls behavior that was cruel but not disturbing.

Partly that was driven by having middle-schoolers of my own. I’ve got a firmer understanding of what the modern kid deals with in the halls of public schools now than I did 11 years ago.

I also changed the magic. In the original, Sally’s magic ring essentially grants wishes. But I used a ring of three wishes as a plot device in Beauty & the Beast: A Modern Fairy Tale last year, so I couldn’t do that again.

Sally is now seeking a key that will open a door to a new destiny. I kind of like that idea better on a thematic level, and it gave me license to incorporate some the Grandma’s House imagery from the original fairy tale.

I also changed the race of Sally’s love interest. One of the things I’ve noticed watching my kids grow up is how much interracial dating and friendship there is at their schools. It seemed to me that if I was writing a book set in a contemporary middle school, I should have it be reflective of that new reality, especially since I view kids being colorblind as a good thing.

So my blonde protagonist becomes involved with a black boy, who is universally thought to be the cutest boy in the entire sixth grade.

Finally, the biggest change I made was the writing. It’s painful to admit, but one of the things I believe prevented LGL from being accepted by agents is that the writing was mediocre. I’ve been polishing my craft for 11 years since I last worked on that book, and I am thankfully much, much better.

I had to write a bunch of new chapters anyway, since the story changed, but I did a lot of rewriting on the scenes I was able to salvage from the original version. I’m kind of embarrassed I ever let anyone read them.

But with a lot of work (and a certain amount of faith — I didn’t have a clear idea how the new version was going to end as I madly banged out chapters), I managed to transform the mediocre Little Girl Lost into the much better Little Red Riding Hoodie. I’m pretty pleased with the results and think I have a stronger novel.

We’ll see what I think 11 years from now.

Want to help me get Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale published by Amazon? Click here to nominate it through the Kindle Scout program.

Filed under: Little Red Riding Hoodie, Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, Kindle Scout, Little Red Riding Hoodie, writing