S. Smith's Blog, page 25

Silverton’s Rooted in Food Fair

This is where I will be on Saturday! If you are in the area, come see me.

 

 

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!

 

Last Sale Day for Heirloom

Just a quick note that Heirloom is featured on Ereader News Today in the bargain books section. Today is the last day that it will be 99cents instead of $3.99. Heirloom can also be borrowed from the Kindle Lending Library.

Jason might go all Edward Snowden on us. He’s ticked that the government put him in foster care and locked up his parents.

Arturo’s inconsistent English and penchant for mysteriously showing up might seem suspicious if he wasn’t so darn charming.

Clare and Dante just want to garden.

Lily, well Lily gets braver by the minute.

It’s late in the twenty-first century and large corporations have merged with U.S. government agencies to control the nation’s food supply. Not only is gardening and seed ownership illegal, but fresh food is unheard of by the masses who are fed the processed food groups of Vitees, Proteins, Carbos, Snacks, and Sweeties.

Thirteen-year-old Clare and her brother Dante have escaped to Canada where the old ways still exist. It is there that they make friends with the roguish Jason and learn the political history of their own country’s decline of freedoms.

Meanwhile, Lily, the friend who was left behind, begins her own journey to find the father she never met—a former leader in the ill-fated Seed Savers rebellion of fifteen years earlier. From Florida to the Smoky Mountains, Lily follows the signs in search of her father and is helped along the way by the quirky characters she meets. Not to mention the attractive Arturo who shows up midway to “protect” her.

Heirloom seamlessly weaves the gentle agrarian story of Clare and Dante together with the swiftly-paced adventure of Lily and Arturo. Themes of family, empowerment, and politics meet in this futuristic tale nostalgic for the past. Heirloom is a hopeful dystopia in today’s current sea of post-apocalyptic literature.

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!

 

New Scenes in Heirloom 2nd Edition

As promised, here are the additional scenes in the 2nd edition of Heirloom:

Prologue

The old woman was having trouble sleeping. Guilt pierced and pricked her as she lay in bed. Three children missing. Three children she had secretly been teaching about seeds and gardening. There was no way around it. It was her fault. She should have known GRIM was still watching. It wasn’t safe.

At least Clare and Dante had made it to Canada. That much she knew. But it didn’t change the fact that every time she saw their mother the lines on Mrs. James’s face were cut deeper, sadness all but dripping off of her. Alone too early, missing her babies.

Or the fact that it might not have ended as well as it did. If you could call it an ending. Clare and Dante were safe in Canada, but what next? Ana felt she should reveal herself to Mrs. James yet at the same time was afraid of making things worse.

And now Lily was out there, too. Alone and who-knows-where, trying to find her father. All the while with GRIM and that wicked Trinia Nelson still nosing around. The note Lily left said only that she intended to find him and thanked Ana for telling her what her mother never had—that her father was still alive. That he had been a famous leader in the dissident Seed Savers Movement.

The aged woman sighed. What good was being old if she had learned nothing about indiscretions?

“Dear God,” she prayed, tired and beginning to wonder if anyone was really there, “save the children.”

 

Scene #1

(Added to the beginning of the former chapter 37)

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was pleasant and a comfortable smile lit her face.

“Nice to see you, too,” Jason joked. For some reason he enjoyed teasing Clare even though he had never had a younger sister. “Just checkin’ the place out. Making sure the Guardians know what they’re doing.”

She nodded her head slowly. “Oh, I get it. That’s why I’ve never seen you out here before. Your family had a greenhouse. You already know all this stuff.” After she had said it, she worried maybe she’d made him feel bad–reminding him of his family and everything. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Yeah, I pretty much know about growing veggies. I’m here to fill in around the edges.”

Clare stood over a flat of tomato seedlings. White plastic markers declared names like Anna Russian and Black Crimson. For the most part the different varieties looked similar at this early stage, but even now some stood out such as Silvery Fir Tree with its thin leaves. A few plants looked sickly and deformed.

“What happened to these,” Clare asked, flipping up the leaves of the struggling plants.

“Probably nothing.” Jason shrugged. “Just bad seeds. Sometimes you get a bad seed. It happens.”

“Hmm. A bad seed.”

“You just toss the bad ones,” he said.

She looked at the runt plant. Toss it? She wasn’t sure she could do that. The seed had sprouted, after all. It’s not like it was a totally failed seed. Maybe with enough tender care she could nurse it to good health.

“So where’s kid brother today?”

“He had a field trip with his class,” she said. “Lucky. It’s such nice weather.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Need any help here?”

“There’s really not that much to do any more. I think we are all just waiting for it to be warm and dry enough to move everything outside.”

“All right then, see ya around.”

“Bye.”

She turned back to the tray of seedlings and spoke quietly to the deformed plant. “It’s okay, little guy. I’ll take care of you.”

 

Scene #2

(Added to the beginning of the former chapter 39)

“Was that Professor Cassidy?” Clare asked.

“Yeah, it was.”

She looked around the empty Monitor room.

“What were you doing?”

Jason stared at her for a moment without speaking. The harsh look that made him look older than his seventeen years.

“He was showing me how to do something.”

“Like what?” she asked. “Something about compost?”

“No, Clare. Not about compost.”

She wasn’t sure if there was a hint of condescension in his voice or not. Perhaps resignation?

“Then, what?”

“Professor Cassidy is more than just a soil guru. He’s also a genius with the Monitor.”

She could tell he wanted to say more, the way he looked so hard at her, enunciating each word. Some secret he kept wrapped up like a fragile keepsake.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Clare? Clare? Where are you? Oh—there you are. Who you talkin’ to?”

Dante ran down the hall toward where she stood in the doorway. He peeked inside. “Oh, hi, Jason.”

“Hi ya, Sprout.”

He smiled at the nickname.

“Guess I’d better go,” Clare said.

“Sure, Clare,” Jason answered quietly. “Whatever.”

####

Besides the prologue and these scenes, I have also added a short glossary of a few terms at the very beginning, and the blueberry pruning scene has been modified slightly. I am including those changes below; other than that and a few deleted paragraphs, merged chapters, and some chapters switching order, it’s the same! I’m basically posting this for those of you with the first edition Heirloom so that you don’t feel like you have missed anything.

######

(Changed blueberry scene)

“What? No. I mean, I sorta drifted off during the instructions.”

“Well, let’s see,” he wrapped the blades around a dead-looking cane, “dead, damaged, or diseased first.” He cut out three canes.

“Hmm. Pencil-sized whips?” Clare suggested.

“Sure.” He snipped off the stragglers. “Now what?”

“Well…” She leaned in, touched a long cane that crossed through the middle of the plant. “How about this one? Didn’t she say something about keeping the middle open?”

Snip. Jason cut it off and ripped it from the bush.

“Oh, I was only asking,” Clare gasped, surprised at his sudden action.

“No, you were right. What else?”

“Um, how about these? They look like older wood,” she said, touching a couple of more canes.

Snip, snip. “Done.” He went at it quickly, without hesitation or second-guessing.

“Have you done this before?” she asked.

“Nope. What next, boss?”

She stared at the mass of branches jutting out from the bush. It was so confusing.

“Come on, Clare. Don’t worry so much about it. Live a little.”

When she hesitated, he whacked off several more branches, then broke off some spindly growth with his gloved hand. He leaned back to admire his handiwork. “I think that’s good,” he said. “You wanna do the next one?”

“Um …”

“You can do it. And I’m here, too. Team-work.”

“Clare placed the blades around a sad-looking cane, fairly certain about the first cut but checking with Jason to be sure. He rolled his eyes. She cut the cane and pulled it gingerly out of the plant. Her hand ran into someone’s thigh.

“Oh! I didn’t know you were there,” she said. “Excuse me.” Genevieve stood behind her, watching. “Was that right?”

“Yes, nice job. Carry on, youngsters.”

###

Happy Valentine’s Day! (And Oregon’s birthday :))

(Don’t forget, for three more days Heirloom is only 99cents!)

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!

 

 

 

 

Heirloom 2nd Edition

Those of you in the authoring world, especially the self-publishing half, know what the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest is. I have never entered it before because my two previous books did not meet the 50,000 word minimum. Heirloom, however, just barely taps a toe over that finish line.

Here is how the contest works. It is open to the first 10,000 entries or until the finish date, whichever comes first. After the contest entry period closes, the author’s 300 word or less “pitch” is read. If the entry makes it past that, the excerpt of the first 3,000 to 5,000 words of the story is read. If the entry makes it past that, the manuscript is read.

Sooo, the first thing I had to do was study the pitches of past winning books. I did that and feel like I have a good pitch. It was the excerpt that worried me. I’m entering a book that is third in a series. How do I have the first 3,000 words be interesting, make sense, and set up backstory all at the same time?

Even though my book was released in November, I decided to revise the beginning. I had never been truly satisfied with it in the first place. I cut out some material in the first few chapters that I felt bogged the beginning down and changed the order of some of the other chapters. Then, of course, I fell under the 50k!!!

I decided to add two more scenes toward the end of the book that would a)add foreshadowing to one of the characters for book 4, and b)keep this character in the book for a longer period of time since I had always been a bit disturbed about how we never saw him again after chapter 30 (in a book with 44 chapters!)

The Heirloom that is currently for sale as a paperback on Amazon is still the first edition. The ebook is the 2nd edition. Tomorrow I will post here on this blog the additional material that has been added to Heirloom 2nd edition so that you don’t feel like you have missed anything if you already read it. The biggest improvement is for people who start with Heirloom without having read Treasure or Lily.

If you would like the e-edition, I have it on sale from now until Feb. 17 for 99 cents. (I have never put book 3 on sale before, and you won’t see it often on sale.)

See you tomorrow!

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!

 

Heirloom (Seed Savers, #3) by S. Smith

Reblogged from EpicBookQuest.Com:

In a grim future where food comes in packets and gardening is illegal . . .

Brother and sister, Clare and Dante, have escaped to Canada and are sent to live with the Woods, a wonderful couple who run an apple orchard. There they attend classes taught by the Garden Guardians, learning how to plant and cultivate real food.

They are also taught the history behind the laws that led to the modern type of "food"- unappetizing packets with names like "carbos" and "protein".

Read more… 365 more words

Thank you to Johanna at EpicBookQuest for this fine review of Heirloom, book three in the Seed Savers Series.

When Would You Break the Law?

What if it were illegal to garden?

Would you break the law by growing your own vegetables or buying from those who do?

Would it make a difference if it had always been illegal in your lifetime versus something that BECAME ILLEGAL?

This is a hypothetical “what-if” that I started thinking about while examining the characters and their motivations in my Seed Savers book series.

The answer I came up with was that I would be much more likely to step into unlawful activities that became illegal over the course of my lifetime rather than something that had always been in place. This isn’t a great illustration I know, but I thought of the time way back in my youth when the country road I drove on every day was widened and a line painted down the middle. It irritated me. I no longer felt like I could drive down the middle of it. Likewise the stop sign they added where the road dead-ended into another road. For years I felt as if I should drive it the way it had been before. Just out of stubbornness I suppose. After all, it was my road and there was nothing wrong with the way it had functioned before.

In the case of my characters, first we have the elderly mentor Ana who secretly gardens and saves seeds. The laws changed around her. Then there are the child characters. They have known no other life. In fact, things have changed so much that they don’t even know food comes from plants.

It definitely seems to me that they are the brave ones when they begin to take up the illegal act of gardening and educate themselves in this endeavor.

The reason they take the risk is key. All of the characters who resist the anti-gardening laws do so not out of stubbornness, but they do it out of a sense of what they believe is morally right.

The belief that sometimes  following the law isn’t the right thing to do.

What would you do?

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!

Kids CAN Change the World—Meet Two Child Activists

Can children really change the future? It’s a tag line on the back of my first book, Treasure (Seed Savers, #1).

One criticism Treasure receives on occasion is that the child protagonists are “too smart” or do things too advanced for their ages. So today I’d like to introduce some real life child food activists. (I wrote Treasure back in 2010, so none of the characters were based on these children, but I am pleased every time I discover another child activist.)

First, there is Birke Baehr. Birke became interested in the quality of food when he was eight years old. When he was eleven he did a TED talk. Since then he has traveled and spoken in the U.S. and recently took a trip to Russia where he discussed the food system with children and attended an agricultural conference with organic farmers. In 2012 he wrote Birke on the Farm, a children’s book describing his journey to being the international youth advocate for sustainable food and agriculture that he is today.

I follow Birke on Facebook and think he is great! Find out more about Birke here: http://www.birkeonthefarm.com/ and on Facebook.

And then there is the awesome Rachel Parent. Rachel is the founder of Kids Right to Know. When Rachel was twelve years old she had to do a speech in front of her school and chose the topic of GMOs. Rachel won a medal for that speech has continued raising awareness about the implications of genetically modified foods and works toward labeling GMOs. She was recently a guest on the Ed Show and in August of last year  took on Kevin O’Leary.

Rachel, by the way, is Canadian. Perhaps it was her influence that led to Canada being a free gardening country in the dystopian future presented in the Seed Savers series. Watch Rachel in action here.

There are scores of child activists all over the world speaking out for important subjects close to their hearts whether it be organic farming, global climate change, or equality. There is a book out called Stand Up!: 75 Young Activists Who Rock the World and How You Can, To! if you want to learn about more child activists around the world. (I haven’t read it and I’m not associated with it in any way, but I thought I’d mention it.)

The answer, of course, is yes. Children can make a difference, children do make a difference, and they are our hope.

Although my Seed Savers books are fiction, there’s a lot of truth in them. Take a look. The first of the series is on sale this month for 99cents ebook at these fine vendors: Amazon, Smashwords, Nook, Kobo, Sony and iBooks.

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!

Charlie Brown’s 9 Tips for the New Year

Snoopy pompiere (Photo credit: Gianfranco Goria)

1. Keep the ball low.
2. Don’t leave your crayons in the sun.
3. Use dental floss every day.
4. Don’t spill the shoe polish.
5. Always knock before entering.
6. Don’t let the ants get in the sugar.
7. Never volunteer to be a program chairman.
8. Always get your first serve in.
9. Feed your dog whenever he’s hungry.
(from Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, 1986 TV short)
Good advice, indeed! Happy 2014 everyone!

 

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!
Book one, Treasure, is currently on sale for 99 cents!

The Writer’s Dilemma

14:365 Pen & Paper (Photo credit: mattbeckwith)

First posted in January of this year… (But always relevant.)

It’s the age old question for writers who wake up in the middle of the night and lie there writing poems, posts, and clever book blurbs in their heads —  get up and write it down, or try and go back to sleep and remember it in the morning.

You know the drill, you write and write in this wonderfully imaginative mind of yours, knowing you should turn on the light and jot down the amazing ideas, but fearing you’ll disturb your husband, not that he isn’t already disturbed (okay, so that didn’t come out sounding the way it should), or that doing so will cause you to be unable to get back to sleep.

Sometimes you do write it down and then later, finding the scraps of paper, you’re amazed at what this half asleep brain comes up with and grateful that you took the chance.

And then other times, like last night, you think about how cold it is, even by the edge of the covers. It’s been 27 degrees F outside all day, and surely in this woodstove-heated-house, it’s too cold to venture even one arm out to the nightstand. And you know, of course, that the pen will be missing, that you’ll never get back to sleep. So you lie there telling yourself you will remember THE GREAT IDEA, how could you, after all, forget something so earth-shatteringly good? And so you recite it over and over to make sure you will remember, which serves only to keep you awake longer, the very thing you were trying to avoid. And you go on to contemplate other great questions, such as why you can’t find stationary in stores anymore, or whether or not learning to tweet is a good idea or is better off left alone (as your seventeen-year-old son advised: “Mom, Twitter is not for you.”)

And then morning comes, and you were just starting to get back to sleep, but oh, you must get out of bed, icicles or not, and on the radio Phillip Phillips is singing “Home,” and about how it will all be clear, and you know you made a mistake. Your mind is as clear as the freezing fog outside. What was the great post? Was the poem really about that you might be the next to die? Who would want to read THAT? You try to remember the earth-shattering book blurb and scrawl it down before it too evaporates like the steam from the teapot. And darn it, you’re tired. You’re spent. And for what?

Your spouse gets out of bed three hours after you and wonders why you are looking at him so maliciously, what did he do now?

And so you go up to your room, make sure there is a pen and pad by your bed, and pray for warmer days.

S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!

Your Child’s Next Favorite Book (Winter rerun)

The Chronicles of Narnia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In keeping with end of the year reruns, I’ve decided to finish off 2013  with repeats of  some of my most popular posts from the past year (slightly edited and/or updated). Maybe you missed it the first time around!

Okay, I’m going to admit something an author should probably never admit: As a child, I didn’t like to read. It’s not that I had problems decoding—I just would rather have been doing something else. Like playing ball outside or watching TV. I was one of those people (cringe) who used to say, “I’ll watch it when the movie comes out.”

I could not understand kids with their noses buried in books … it was so uninteresting to me. And therein lies the key: There were very few people introducing me to good books, books I would enjoy.

I attended a small country school for the first eight years of my education. We had no library, no librarian, no book talks or visiting authors—just the bookshelf under the window. My family didn’t visit the city library. While I remember the excitement of first learning to read and I LOVED all Dr. Seuss books, I had a teacher in second and third grade who didn’t want us to read Seuss; she considered them bad books for some reason. So I read all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books on the shelf–which she also didn’t care for.

As I moved up the grades a few teachers read books aloud, fifteen minutes after lunch each day. I remember Charlotte’s Web and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe–books I got really excited about. I wish more people would have suggested good titles to me. I adored Anne of Green Gables but somehow never read any of the other Anne books.

I didn’t truly learn to love reading until I was an adult (but that’s another story).

When I had my own kids, I set about teaching them a love of  reading at an early age and love reading they do. When they were little we subscribed to Children’s Book of the Month Club, and attended library story time on a weekly basis. Before the traveling Bookmobile went under due to budget cuts, we eagerly walked the four blocks to see what books might be on board that day. The librarians knew us by name and sometimes gave the kids advance copies as gifts.

At home, if I had a book I thought my kids should read or would enjoy, like To Kill A Mockingbird, I’d start reading it out loud to them and then stop on account of a tired voice. More often than not the book would be ripped from my hands and finished within a few days.

When the picture books are set aside and the kids are reading on their own, be ready to help them find books they’ll love. This of course will be different for everyone according to their interests. As mentioned earlier, I loved Charlotte’s Web, Anne of Green Gables, The Chronicles of Narnia. Later on I discovered The Little House on the Prairie series, Heidi, The Giver, The House of the Scorpion, Fahrenheit 451, Little Women, The Little Princess, The Hobbit, etc. My son loved the Warrior Cat series.

What will be your child’s favorite next book?

Despite all the new gadgets kids are accosted with these day there has also never been such a great opportunity for them as readers. Book sites allow readers to “shelve” their favorite books, form groups, and share reviews (Goodreads, Shelfari, LibraryThing), making it easy to find books each individual might enjoy. There is even a site (probably several) for kids called Biblionasium.  There are bookmatching sites such as BookBub, eBookSoda, and The FussyLibrarian who will send you daily emails suggesting books you might like based on what you request. In addition, thousands of blogs, websites, and Facebook pages help parents and kids find good books. And with Kindles and cheap/free ebooks you don’t even have to spend the money like I did with Book of the Month Club.

Then of course, the library has always been there for that; thank goodness for libraries and librarians :).

What are your favorite books?
S. Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!