Showing posts with label Teen Authors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teen Authors. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

#ReadCleanYA - Guest Post by Teen Author, Taylor Bennett

I’ve read books before that I love—like, really, really love. Books like The Kite Runner, that introduce me to an entirely new culture. Books like The Book Thief, that make me laugh and cry and—oh, did I mention?—bawl my eyes out. Books like…

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While I love books like those mentioned above, I rarely never endorse them because…there’s some seriously bad stuff in them. Not that I’d know what, exactly (I’ve read copies that have the inappropriate scenes/words blacked out 😉) but I know it’s nothing very good.
The few times I’ve had the audacity to pick a book off the YA shelf at a bookstore, I’ve been gravely disappointed. I once had the immense displeasure of having to throw a brand-new hardback in the garbage after reading the first chapter.

And yes.

I know what you’re thinking.

Did I really have to throw it in the trash?

Yes.

Yes, I did.

Honestly, you couldn’t have paid me to get me to give that book to anyone else. It was that bad—and I’m not just talking about the plot and prose.

Sooo…what’s a girl with a heart for the Lord and strong convictions to do? I certainly can’t give up reading altogether, and, sadly, the contemporary YA genre (my favorite!) is filled with stories that leave a reader feeling scummy. It isn’t unusual for me to leave a bookstore in a sour mood after paging through several of beautiful new YA releases, only to have my innocence affected in the process.

The Narrow Shelf

You know that shelf—the tiny one at the back of the store? The one that’s so easy to overlook? Yes, I’m talking about the Christian fiction shelf.

Somehow, in our age of acceptance and inclusivity, bookstores have decided to nearly obliterate their selections of clean and Christian reads in the name of carrying books that appeal to a more progressive audience.

So, in their effort to reach more people, they’re actually turning away some of their most faithful readers.

And that makes me…

Sad.

As Christians, we are called to be set apart, to not let the sin of the world seep in around the edges of our holy and sanctified lives. And that is why my heart breaks every time I hear about the “newest and coolest” book, song, or TV show. Because, more often than not, it’s not something the Lord would want me to be a part of.

But then…if we are to be in the world but not of it, how do we, as obsessive bookworms, find enough books to satisfy both our unique thirst for story and our desire to stay pure in mind, body, and spirit?

That is why I challenge you…

#ReadCleanYA

Did you know that the #ReadDiverse has more than fifty thousand posts across Instagram? #ReadCleanYA has…four.

But what if this wasn’t the case?

What if we—as word-loving, heart-guarding children of God—began to raise awareness for the books we love. The ones that don’t harm our souls or lead us down a narrow path. The ones that speak to our heart, encourage us when we’re weak, and put a smile on our face. The books that deserve to be recognized as the pure, lovely stories that they are.

It can be done.

I know it can.

So let’s try it—you and me and all of the other amazing, clean-reading bookworms out there today. Let’s #ReadCleanYA, and let’s make sure the whole world knows. Use the hashtag, spread it around like sunshine and sparkles. Showcase your favorite books and talk about how they touch your heart and your soul for the better.

Share books that point to Jesus, and books that are just good, clean fun. Let’s help each other out by showcasing the books that speak to our hearts in this way.

(Because, let’s face it—we always want to add to our TBR, and what better way to do that than to fill our to-be-read stack with beautiful, pure, and wholesome books?)

Who’s with me?

If you’d like to join me in my quest to raise awareness for these kinds of books, chime in with a comment below or post to your social media accounts using the hashtag #ReadCleanYa.

Let’s start a clean-read revolution!!


PS—Here’s a list of some of my favorite clean YA reads, in case you could use some inspiration:





About Taylor:






Homeschooled since kindergarten, Taylor Bennett is the seventeen-year-old author of Porch Swing Girl, which will be released by Mountain Brook Ink on May 1st. When she’s not reading or writing, Taylor can be found playing her violin or taking walks in the beautiful Oregon countryside. She loves to connect with readers via her author website, as well as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (her favorite!), Pinterest, and Goodreads.


Links:

Porch Swing Girl back cover copy:



What if friendship cost you everything?

Stranded in Hawaii after the death of her mother, sixteen-year-old Olive Galloway is desperate to escape. She has to get back to Boston before her dad loses all common sense and sells the family house. But plane tickets cost money—something Olive gravely lacks.

With the help of Brander, the fussy youth group worship leader, and Jazz, a mysterious girl with a passion for all things Hawaiian, Olive lands a summer job at the Shave Ice Shack and launches a scheme to buy a plane ticket home before the end of the summer.

But when Jazz reveals a painful secret, Olive’s plans are challenged. Jazz needs money. A lot of it. Olive and Brander are determined to help their friend but, when their fundraising efforts are thwarted, Olive is caught in the middle. To help Jazz means giving up her ticket home. And time is running out.



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Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Blog Tour - "Porch Swing Girl" by Taylor Bennett (Teen Author!): Inspiration: Chase it, Find it, CAPTURE IT!

Today I have the incredible pleasure of welcoming teen author, Taylor Bennett, to my blog as a part of her blog tour! Taylor's debut YA Christian fiction novel, PORCH SWING GIRL, recently released with Mountain Brook Ink. I'm so enthused about this -- not only because Taylor is a fabulous teen author, but also because of this story. I haven't finished reading this yet, but I can already tell that this will book will be on the shelf of my favorites. (Fans of inspirational contemporary YA fiction, you do not want to miss this!)

See below to learn more about the book, the author, and hear her advice for writers!




About the Book:




What if friendship cost you everything? Stranded in Hawaii after the death of her mother, sixteen-year-old Olive Galloway is desperate to escape. She has to get back to Boston before her dad loses all common sense and sells the family house. But plane tickets cost money—something Olive gravely lacks.

With the help of Brander, the fussy youth group worship leader, and Jazz, a mysterious girl with a passion for all things Hawaiian, Olive lands a summer job at the Shave Ice Shack and launches a scheme to buy a plane ticket home before the end of the summer.
But when Jazz reveals a painful secret, Olive’s plans are challenged. Jazz needs money. A lot of it. Olive and Brander are determined to help their friend but, when their fundraising efforts are thwarted, Olive is caught in the middle. To help Jazz means giving up her ticket home. And time is running out. You want to write. Your fingers itch to grasp a pen, hug a pencil, dance across a laptop keyboard. You have words swirling in your brain, begging to be written—to be shared with the world.





So you sit down, put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), and you…

BLANK.

You stare down at that page and the words disappear. You grasp at empty nothingness and try to catch a few—just a few—and put them down on paper. But…

BLANK.

The empty page stares at you, mocking you. Laughing, even!

“You’re not a real writer,” it hisses. “REAL writers know what to write. REAL writers know how to write. You’re just a…”

Wait!! Don’t let that empty piece of paper call you a fake. You have the passion and drive to be a real author. What you need, dear writer, is INSPIRATION.

But what do you do when your idea well is dry as a bone?

You most certainly do NOT give up—in fact, don’t even think about giving up. Don’t let that empty page get in your head, don’t let that nasty internal editor keep you from writing. Don’t let procrastination rule the day.

No, instead, capture that spark—that tiny bit of inspiration, so small you barely know it’s there. Not sure how to do that? Don’t worry. I’ll help you.

To capture that inspiration, first you have to…

Chase it

First, make a list of what inspires you—don’t know where to start? Here are a few examples:

  • Listening to your favorite music—or something brand new
  • Browsing through a used bookstore and flipping through old books
  • Sipping coffee (or tea!) and watching the rain fall outside
  • Taking a walk on a deserted country road or through a bustling park
  • People-watching at a busy place like the mall, where you can observe many different kinds of people
  • Talking to someone interesting—your grandpa, who traveled the world when he was in the military; your mom, who teaches classes at the college; your little sister, who is convinced that unicorns are real

Find it

Now, go out and do one of those inspiration-sparking activities. For example, let’s say that you’re curled up in your favorite chair, sipping your favorite warm drink. Turn on some music (instrumental works best) and let your mind wander. Sometimes (and maybe I’m a little weird, I don’t know) I imagine myself as a character in a future book. I listen to the music and imagine it as a soundtrack to a movie. If it was a movie soundtrack, what would be happening on the screen?

Or if you choose to go people-watching instead, you might do something similar. Instead of imagining a story to go along with the music, you’ll be privy to thousands of stories, all unfolding in front of you. Maybe a young couple catches your eye, or a group of three friends. Perhaps your gaze is drawn to the pensive, thoughtful young lady behind the counter at the pretzel shop…you get the picture. Pick a person or two and imagine them as a fictional character—what might be going on in their life that would explain their actions?

The most important thing to keep in mind during this stage is that, no matter what you do, you need to ask questions—the WWWWWH method works well (who, what, when, where, why, how?) but don’t be afraid to dig deeper. Brainstorm a character’s backstory, as well as where they’ll be by the end of the story. Just make sure you keep questioning—and answering—until you have the first seed of an idea.


Capture it

Now that you have that story seed—that first spark of an idea—it’s time to get it down on paper. Quick, before you forget! There are several ways to go about this. You could…

  • Write a quick chapter one—use those questions you asked earlier to build a chapter full of unanswered questions and unexplored plot points. YOU might not even know the answer to those questions, but the simple act of writing them out in story form might be just what you need to discover which ones you’d most like to explore.
  • Scrawl out a list of scenes you imagine taking place in your book. Don’t worry about plot holes or going in chronological order—just get your ideas down on paper. Later, you can go back and organize them in a more formulaic three-act structure.
  • Freewrite—don’t necessarily write Chapter One, just pick up your pencil (or crack open your laptop) and start writing. Chat with your potential main character, write an exchange between two side characters—anything goes!
  • Make a Pinterest board. This is something I do for every one of my ideas, and it’s a great way to learn more about your characters and setting. As you search for images that reflect your story idea, keep asking those questions—when you’re done, you’ll have a board with pictures of characters, locations, and important objects, plus a better understanding of your story idea.
  • Talk to someone—sometimes the simple act of explaining your idea out loud will help cement it in your mind. Plus, if you find the right person to listen, they might even have a few ideas to offer. Brainstorming with another person is always a great way to capture that inspiration.

And…there you have it. Maybe there are a few ideas that will help spark your inspiration—and maybe not. Our brains are all different, and they all work in different ways. Just because these tips and tricks have helped me in the past, that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily work for you. One of the most important things to remember while plotting and brainstorming is that what works for others might not necessarily work for you. And that’s fine. As you grow as a writer, you’ll develop your own system for finding, chasing, and capturing inspiration.


Have you already started to develop that system? If so, how do you hunt it down? I’d love to hear about your process in the comments!

About the Author:







Homeschooled since kindergarten, Taylor Bennett is the seventeen-year-old author of Porch Swing Girl, which will be released by Mountain Brook Ink on May 1st. When she’s not reading or writing, Taylor can be found playing her violin or taking walks in the beautiful Oregon countryside. She loves to connect with readers via her author website, as well as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (her favorite!), Pinterest, and Goodreads.
Connect with Taylor:
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Blog Tour - "Porch Swing Girl" by Taylor Bennett (Teen Author!): Inspiration: Chase it, Find it, CAPTURE IT! @TessaEmilyHall #amwriting https://bit.ly/2Kg74US




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Wednesday, July 19, 2017

A Teen Author's Journey To Publication - Guest Post by Kara Swanson

If you've read my blog for any amount of time now, then you probably know that I love to encourage young writers to pursue their publication dreams. Why is this? Because I, too, launched my career as a teenager -- and it's the steps I took at a young age that lead me to my dream career today. I'm passionate about encouraging young writers to use their time wisely by perfecting their craft. This is why I was thrilled to meet young author, Kara Swanson, at a writing conference recently. She is the perfect example of a teen writer who has found success through investing hours into studying, researching, reading, and writing. 

Kara is the author of THE GIRL WHO COULD SEE, an amazing novella published a little over a month ago and has received an incredible response from readers. I am proud to say that I have recently signed Kara on as a client at Hartline and am honored to accompany her on this writing journey. It's because of her hard work and perseverance that she attained publication, and she's stopping by today to share about what all this involved.


ABOUT KARA



As the daughter of missionaries, Kara Swanson spent sixteen years of her young life in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Able to relate with characters dropped suddenly into a unique new world, she quickly fell in love with the speculative genre and was soon penning stories herself. At seventeen, she independently published a fantasy novel, Pearl of Merlydia. Her short story “Distant as the Horizon” is included in Kathy Ide’s 21 Days of Joy: Stories that Celebrate Mom. She has published many articles, including one in the Encounter magazine. Kara received the Mount Hermon Most Promising Teen Writer Award in 2015.

My father would read to us every night before we fell asleep.


His literature selection spanned from Anne of Green Gables and To Kill A Mocking Bird, to Percy Jackson: The Lightening Thief. Then one day, he came into the room my brother and I shared, knelt below our bunkbed, and pulled a smooth volume out from behind his back. “This is going to be one of the best books you’ve ever read.”


He was right.


That book was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. My introduction to Narnia—and the novel that convinced me I wanted to be a storyteller.






This scene will probably ring familiar to a lot of you out there who fell in love with Lewis’ whimsical world and intriguing sense of storytelling. Who found pieces of themselves reflected in the deeper themes. But for me, that night was unusual not only because it began a journey of telling stories that would touch imaginations and hearts—but because that story transported me out of the small tribe in the middle of the jungle where we lived.


My family were missionaries in a third world country called Papua New Guinea. I spent my childhood in a dense tropical rainforest—our house positioned on the edge of an airstrip that was the only way in or out of our tribe. When my father entered my room in that thatch house, ducking beneath the mosquito net that tunneled our bunkbed, the words he read whisked me away. Truly showed me how powerful writing could make such a small tribe seem infinitely bigger. And how a girl growing up in an exotic world that she didn’t completely belong in, could relate with four Pevensie siblings dropped into a whimsical and unusual land full of forces of light and darkness.


Those were the themes that found themselves woven into the stories I was soon penning. I’d always written—it was how I translated the world around me. But my love of the fantasy and science-fiction genres were really honed after Narnia. Years passed, and I continued to write more as a pastime than anything.


Then I met another missionary kid named Charis. She too loved to write, and together we co-authored a fantasy novel about Mermaids and pirates. At seventeen, we finished that novel, and it suddenly struck me:


I could do this.


I could finish a novel, create a complete story—and have it impact people.


That same year our novel was picked up by a small press called Entrust Source Publishers. They were able to distribute the novel on Amazon and other places…


Suddenly, at seventeen, I was a published author. And I loved it. Every bit of it—seeing my words strike people’s hearts, the editing process, marketing, cover design. All of it. The blood, sweat and tears.


I realized writing had become more than an escape or hobby—it had become a passion. A ministry. My God had given me something to say, and had equipped me to say it.


So I started honing my craft any way I could. I attended writers groups, found several critique partners, was mentored by a published author, went to every nearby writers’ conference, did book signings for my first book—and wrote, wrote, wrote. In the span of four years, I’d written six novels—and that’s not including rewrites and articles/short stories. It was hard, painstaking work. But I continued to push myself to get better and better, gaining as much input from other authors as I could.


I attended another writers’ conference, pitched some of those novels, and found interest from both agents and editors. I began the process to possibly being traditionally published—but everything in the industry takes time. A lot of time. About a year ago I wrote a small science-fiction/urban fantasy short story for a magazine. It ended up being too long for the magazine, and I decided instead to turn that short story into a novella. So that’s what I did! When that novella was finished, I decided to independently publish it.


I knew that the novella was too short for most publishers to consider, so it left me with the free reign to do it all myself. I wanted to push myself again, and learn as much as I could about the industry. I wanted this novella to be the best I could offer, so I had it edited and critiqued by over ten professional editors/published authors. I hired a professional cover designer. I had a team of beta-readers. I taught myself to format the novella for print (through CreateSpace) and for eBook (through Kindle Direct Publishing). I put together a launch team, scheduled a blog tour and ran several ads. I set up both print and eBook for pre-order.


I published that novella myself, to the best of my ability…


And it sold over 100 copies in the first week, has a 4.5 star rating on Amazon, and won a cover award.


By God’s grace, He has allowed this little story to make a difference. Because I’m an amazing author? No. Because the idea is something totally unique? No. Because I have a huge following? Also—no.

The novella is doing as well as it is for two reasons: because I gave it my everything. I poured my soul and my sweat into it. And because I serve a gracious God who works in spite of my limitations. A gracious God who saw a little girl in a remote tribe with the passion to tell stories—and allowed her to do so.


Just as He has put your passions in your heart. Just as He has equipped you to chase them. It takes hard work and determination. It takes long nights and hard choices and hearing someone give you the harsh feedback you don’t want to hear—but it is doable. You can use your words—and your gifts—to touch people’s lives.


Because the One who created you gave you those gifts for that exact reason. To change lives, in whatever way you are courageous enough to chase after.





Thanks for stopping by today, Kara!


Readers: Where do you stand along your writing journey? Do you have any questions for Kara?



{Psst ... I'm stopping by Kara's blog today as well! Click here for the post.}




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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

How I Landed a Book Contract at 16-Years-Old


It wasn’t my goal to become a “teenage author”; I simply had the desire to use my teen years wisely. I knew time was valuable, and if I could go ahead and begin to pursue my passion, then wouldn’t that mean I could have a head start by the time I graduated high school?

So, during the summer between my 8th grade and 9th grade year, I decided to take writing more seriously. I wanted to study the craft and devote hours into practicing it. I wanted to learn the ins and outs of the industry—how a book was published. Writing would no longer remain simply a hobby.  

I didn’t realize, however, that my efforts would result in a publishing contract…

{Continue reading at Teen Author's Journal}


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