Official Announcement for THE WITCH OF ZAL

01 - Emerald City Sign

My publisher made the official announcement for my book! It’s getting real!

“The Witch of Zal is an absolutely delightful Steampunk twist on a beloved classic. Inventive, fast-paced and so much fun! Highly recommended.” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of THE NIGHTSIDERS and ROT & RUIN.

Evil Jester Press is gearing up for a great summer/fall with some really cool new releases, and we’re finally ready to announce our first for 2015, hot off the development table and bound for production. Being a HUGE fan of the Wizard of Oz, I just had to get this book from the talented author, Kerry Gans, our first book for young readers, too. Honestly, The Witch of Zal will appeal to all ages.

Back Cover Blurbs:

“An enchanting, witty, whimsical Wizard of Oz meets Steampunk ride! With endearing characters, vivid world-building, humor and fun, The Witch of Zal also has its serious side, digging into the meaning of freedom and individuality. Kerry Gans’s writing has a ton of heart and soul.” Kit Grindstaff, author of The Flame in the Mist (Delacorte Press), SCBWI Crystal Kite award winner 2014

“Brothers Grimm meet The Giver in this richly imagined retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with an apocalyptic twist. Gans gives us an uplifting story of friendship and sacrifice that empower one girl to find the courage to transform her authoritarian world.” Donna Beckley Galanti, author of Joshua and The Lightning Road series (Month9Books)

The Witch of Zal  is a truly exciting adventure…futuristic… sure to thrill. In a place where no one has free will, one girl dares to make her own choices when she decides not to let the government take away her beloved petbot. Where evil zombicorns roam, where the future of a world is at stake, the only true salation rests with one girl who dares to be different. An unforgettable ride!” Marie Lamba, author of What I Meant…, Over My Head, and Drawn

“Kerry Gans reweaves the classic journey in the Land of Oz in a voice that speaks directly to the young reader of today…  The Witch of Zal grabs you from page one and creates a world full of mystery, adventure, and extraordinary characters that explodes in your imagination with dazzling color while exploring how choices impact friends, family and the essence of who we are.” Keith Strunk, actor, author, teacher and co-founder of River Union Stage, bringing Shakespeare to 4th and 5th grades for 14 years.

 

Thanksgiving 2012

 In our culture, it’s easy to not be grateful for what we have. We are constantly bombarded with the newest gadgets, bigger houses, more elaborate lifestyles. And even in our daily life, we wish some things were easier/better, or that we had what someone else has, or that a dream we held dear would come true.

It is so easy to lose sight of what we have.

Thanksgiving is, of course, a good time of year to look at our lives and be thankful for what we have. Coming so close on the heels of Hurricane Sandy, I am immensely thankful for the sturdy roof over our heads, the electricity running through our power lines, and the easy fulfillment of our basic necessities such as food and water and heat. We were so, so much luckier than so many of the people not so far from us.

The other things I am thankful for sound familiar, and that’s because these things should be the most important in our lives. I am thankful for my family. I have a wonderful, loving husband who supports my writing dreams and me in every way. I have a healthy, energetic, intelligent Toddler girl who can drive me up a wall but whom I love with all my heart. I am lucky enough to still have my parents, healthy and active. And my brother, who I fought like crazy with as a child, but who I am so proud to have as an ally in my life now. My extended family—sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, mom-in-law, cousins, aunts and uncles—is warm and generous and I am grateful knowing that if I ever need them they will have my back.

I am thankful for my writing community, who have helped support and forward my dream—including all of my blog readers. My Author Chronicles pals have shared the burden of creating author platform, my Advanced Writing Workshop classmates help keep me laughing and energized, and my beta readers, Nancy Keim Comley, J. Thomas Ross, and Bob Drumm lift my writing to higher levels. Professional mentors (and friends) Jonathan Maberry, Marie Lamba, and Kathryn Craft have help sharpen my writing skills and keep me from giving up on this long journey.

I am thankful for my health and that of those I care about, for the opportunity to pursue my writing dream, and for the 3 mornings a week my Toddler is now in preschool so I can write!

Mostly, I am thankful for the love in my life.

Without love, the rest means nothing.

With love, I already have everything.


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Total Control

Have you ever thought you were totally in control of something, only to find out you weren’t? I had that happen recently. I thought I had absolutely everything I needed for a meeting at my daughter’s school, only to find I didn’t have the proper immunization records, the registration form they had mailed me, AND that her birth certificate had disappeared.

Sometimes the same thing happens in my manuscripts. I am a partial-pantser (writing friend Marie Lamba calls us “thongers” but that’s just not an image I want burned in my brain), so there’s plenty of space in my manuscripts to go off the rails. Reading over the rough draft, I find things like neglected plot clues, inadvertently changed place names, and minor characters left in the bathroom from chapter 2 until the end of the book.

So what to do when things firmly in hand spiral out of control? The only effective way I’ve found to deal with this is to concentrate on fixing one thing at a time. I called my toddler’s pediatrician and got her records, picked up another registration form at the meeting, and still haven’t found the birth certificate, but I can pick up another copy from the vital records office.

As far as mistakes in the manuscript, the same rule applies: tackle one thing at a time. I always go from big picture to nit-picky because changing big picture items will inevitably change the smaller things. Why waste time fixing commas in sentences you might cut out altogether?

Sometimes I can’t have everything as under control as I’d like. (This is a lesson I am learning over and over as the mom of a toddler.) All I can do is control what I can, not beat myself up for what I can’t, and fix what needs fixing.

Total control is impossible.

Getting to the goal by tackling one issue at a time is not.

My Biggest Takeaway: 2012 Philadelphia Writers’ Conference

Every year I talk about my biggest takeaway from the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. (I say “every year” as if I have been there more than twice.)

Last year I experienced an epiphany in pitching. This year the pitching had the desired outcome, but was not my biggest takeaway.

Instead, I learned that what I’d thought was my greatest strength as a writer may in fact be my greatest weakness.

A strange confluence occurred at the PWC. I took three 3-day courses: Novel—Character with Jonathan Maberry; Middle Grade/YA with Marie Lamba; and Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasty and Paranormal with Caridad Pineiro. The topics seemed disparate: Character, genre-specific tips, and world-building.

Instead, they ended up talking about the same issue: character.

Obviously, Novel—Character was about character. But Marie Lamba taught us that voice and strong character are the hallmarks of successful MG/YA books. And Caridad Pineiro told us that she figures out her character arcs first, and then builds the world around them, to test the characters to their utmost.

Character is something I always felt confident in writing. I knew my characters. I could write a believable character. A three dimensional character. I prefer character-driven books to plot-driven books, I’ve devoured scores of them—how could I not be a natural at writing character?

Very easily, apparently.

Now, my problems with character did not strike me like lightning at the conference. For months, if not longer, I have felt that somehow, my characters were not what they should be. They were not as alive as they could be. That while they were real for me, they were not for my readers.

I had critiques from different people all saying the same basic thing: “The story is great, but I just didn’t connect to the characters as much as I’d like.”

The conference simply cemented these niggling doubts for me. The character strength I thought I had is actually the weakest part of my writing. I need to figure out why, and how to fix it, because that is what is holding me back from having that story that is truly ready to go out to the public. This lack of connection is the hazy “something” I have sensed lacking in my stories for a long time.

Why hadn’t I noticed this before? Probably because there were so many other areas of writing that I needed to improve. There was a time when my instinctual characters WERE the strongest part of my writing. But that’s not the case anymore. The rest of my writing craft has risen, and the character development has not kept pace—likely because I hadn’t thought it needed work.

Now I know better. I’m not quite sure what the problem is, so I’m not quite sure how to fix it, but I know where to look to get started.

Vibrant, believable, complex characters—that’s what I’m looking to gain from this year’s takeaway.

Books and Community

Books are magic.

This childhood belief is still with me today. And since books are found in the library, libraries are magic, too. At the main branch of my hometown library, I would trot down those white steps to the Children’s section, where they had all these books JUST FOR ME.

When I was a little older, I would ride my bike to the local library branch. It was only as big as two and a half garages, but I loved going in there. It was intimate and I knew where all my favorite books lived, which only reinforced the feeling that IT WAS MINE. My Camp Fire Girl troop decorated it for Christmas every year, and that bolstered this feeling of possession.

Even in college, when the library was on a much grander scale, I would walk though the doors and a peace would settle on me. The library calmed me, sheltered me, and educated me. I felt, in a word, WELCOME.

Libraries have always evoked a sense of belonging. That they belonged to you and you somehow belonged to them. Before the Internet, I spent hours there, as did my peers. Libraries were a community hub, and even today they reach out to the community in various ways and try to fill the needs of their patrons.

When I lived in Chincoteague, VA, last year, one of the first community events I attended was the dedication of the new wing of the library. My baby girl and I were frequent visitors there, always welcomed warmly into the beautiful children’s room the addition housed. That gorgeous addition, built to echo a lighthouse, was the direct result of years of support and fundraising from the local island community.

So for me, books and community have always gone together. Independent bookstores, too, have always evoked this feeling in me. I think that what makes most indies comfortable to me is their size, which is usually on the smaller end of the retail scale. They are eminently browseable, and permeated with the love of books. And so many of them are active supporters of their local communities, as well as hosting book-related groups and author appearances within their walls.

Even though I am a book-lover from way back, when I first heard about the Collingswood Book Festival from author friends Keith Strunk and Marie Lamba, I had my doubts about going. What could a sprawling 6-block bookfest offer to someone like me – shy, easily overwhelmed in crowds, and toting a toddler? Wouldn’t it just feel like a huge garage sale? But I decided to go to support my friends and their fellow Liars Club members Merry Jones, Gregory Frost, Kelly Simmons, Solomon Jones, and Keith DeCandido.

I loved it.

It was book overload, but in a great way. I could have spent the entire day there, browsing, listening to panels, and just enjoying the community. Did I say community? Yes, I did. The Collingswood Book Festival was a community affair through and through, with kid-oriented LoompaLand as well as music and the usual fest-type foods. Unfortunately, I could only stay a short time because of my toddler, but I will be back next year, hopefully toddler-free, to browse the day away. For another view of the Book Festival (with pictures!), visit my friend J. Thomas Ross’ blog.

Books can transport you to faraway places—and they can bring local communities closer together.

Books are magic.

Descriptive Language and Trusting Your Reader

I’m taking a Write Your YA Novel in Nine Months class with Jonathan Maberry and Marie Lamba, and this week we talked about descriptive language. Marie brought in examples from published books, and the thing that struck all of us is how little description is needed to give the reader a vivid picture.

Choosing the right words is important, of course. One example described subways as “bathroom tiled” spaces, which is incredibly visual and right on the money. Choosing evocative words paints a complete picture with fewer words, because they pull in associations that you as the writer then do not have to explain.

Still, seeing how little you need to write to have a full-blown image in the reader’s head was eye-opening. It goes to show just how much the reader brings to the experience. Marie illustrated this by using the line, “He was in a spaceship.” Even without the author describing the spaceship, every one of us had a vision of the spaceship in our heads. Marie pointed out that they would all be different spaceships, but since the spaceship itself was not crucial to the story, there was no need for the author to specify details about the spaceship.

That is the lesson: Only describe the details that are vital to the story. Leave the rest to the reader’s imagination to fill in. Choose details that show the reader the characters’ POV and what is important in the world of your book.

Descriptive language is a part of the writing craft that I am still working on improving, but now I understand that by describing only the salient points, I can still get my point across while engaging in a partnership with the reader.

I think that is one of the hardest things to learn as a writer – that you are in a partnership with the reader, and you need to trust them to fill in the gaps. Trying to make sure the reader sees and knows everything can lead to ponderous overwriting that no reader will slog through. Books that honor that partnership are the ones that we remember most, the ones that as readers we have entered most fully.

Less can be more, if you do it right. Tell the reader only what they need to know, and let them do the rest. They’ll thank you for it.

Over My Head

If you read last week’s blog entry, you will know that my life of late has been hectic. I’ve been stretched way too thin, pulled in too many different directions. There are not enough hours in the day!

Hurricane Irene left me without power for 13 hours, but thankfully that was all the damage my house sustained. Still, the past several weeks have taken their toll, and I am behind on several projects.

Therefore, I do not have my normal pithy words of wisdom to share with you this week. One thing most social media experts agree on is that (if you are a writer) if the social media side of things is taking away from your writing time, you should reprioritize your writing time to come first. So this week, that is what I am doing.

I have no choice, really. I’m in over my head (which is also the title of a great YA read by Marie Lamba).

I already have an idea for next week’s post, and intend to have it for you at the regularly scheduled time!

Description in YA

Description is hard. At least, writing it well is hard. While I have come a long way from the boring, plot-stopping descriptive bombs I used to write, I am still improving my craft in that area.

I am taking a YA writing workshop with Jonathan Maberry and Marie Lamba, and we discussed description very early on. I found out several things about using description in YA:

1. Less is more. Trust your readers. Give the reader enough to interpret the space and place your character inhabits, but do not inundate with details. As author Patty Jansen reminds us in an excellent blog post, certain genres like historical or science fiction, where world-building is needed will of necessity have more scene-setting descriptions than those set in the present day, but be sparing in choosing your details—tell us what we need to know, and no more.

2. Description should be woven into the character’s experience, rather than an objective observation. Since most YA is written from a specific (often first-person) point of view, the Main Character (MC) will only notice details important to her at that time.

3. Any detail you mention should be important to the story. For instance, if you mention that your MC dropped a pot into the porcelain sink as a child and broke the sink, then that event must have some meaning to the core of the story. If you say that the MC loves the fact that the microwave is hidden in the breadbox, then that detail must be important later in the story. This is similar to the adage “If you hang a gun on the wall in the first act, you must fire it by the end of the play.”

4. Every detail has to multitask. Just as your MC will not notice details that do not directly concern him at that moment, he will also notice (and describe) them in a way that reflects his emotional state and life view at that moment. The way his perception of a place, object, or person changes will help build character and show emotion without “telling.” One of the best examples I found of this was in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Her descriptions of the passing seasons mirrored Melinda’s growth and healing.

5. Description can add foreshadowing and complication to a story. For example, if the reader first sees a kitchen through the MC’s eyes as warm and homey, but later sees that same kitchen as cold and menacing later in the story. The first instance builds the expectation in the reader that something bad will happen to destroy that happy, homey feeling (this is YA fiction, after all—something always happens to disrupt the happy status quo!).

6. Use description to build an image system throughout the story. Again returning to Speak, Halse Anderson’s use of Melinda’s art project (a tree) also showed her growth and return to life as Melinda wrestled with repeated mistakes but improved every time she tried to carve it.

7. Don’t info-dump. Beware of show-stopping blocks of description and layer in the information as the reader needs to know it. Have the reader ask the question and then answer it. This type of back-and-forth between the reader and the words on the page is what keeps the reader engaged and immersed in the world you have built.

I hope you found these tips as helpful as I did. I hope to apply them to my current manuscripts in the next round of edits!

Are there any other description tips you would like to share?

Prologues: Thumbs Up or Down?

I just began another workshop with authors Jonathan Maberry and Marie Lamba. This one is called Write Your YA Novel in Nine Months. Its focus is to get at least a first draft completed in nine months, as well as gathering and polishing marketing material we will need to sell the book once it is complete. We will also discuss craft as it specifically pertains to YA and Middle Grade.

Our group is a lively one, and we got into an online discussion about Prologues. While I had been under the impression that agents and publishers did not look favorably on them, others pointed to a plethora of prologues in current books.

We also discussed whether or not readers actually read prologues. I always do. Another person in the group admitted to never reading them. I have found this split among my friends, too. It seems to be a stark black-and-white policy—no one “sometimes” reads prologue. It’s all or nothing.

So today I open the floor to those of you who have been around the publishing block a few times, as well as the readers among us:

Thumbs up or down on prologues? Why?

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