Some Excellent (Belated) News

A nonfiction project has kept me so busy that I have rather badly neglected my blog. So, without further ado, here is some belated but really fine news.

First of all, my good friend Aud shared something quite exciting: not only did she get a really good review from Kirkus, but that august publication also made her an offer it makes to only a select group of Indie-published authors! Go, check out her blog and find out. My other news can wait.

If you haven’t already gone to Aud’s blog, here’s more: she also revealed the cover for her second “Winnie and the Wizard Book.” And I love it even more than the cover to Frama-12! Is that a Frama-scope I spy? And…perhaps even a time-tear??

I’m so tempted to ask Aud if I can post that cover, but I want you to see it for yourself along with her cool Kirkus news. (This is not a spoiler: I’ve read an earlier draft of Hutra even before Frama-12, and that’s where I became so very fond of Winnie and her companions.)

My second (or is it third?) bit of news: the next Enola book is out: Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade! (Truth be told, it came out just two days after Aud posted her fun blog; this is an embarrassment of riches.) I loved this latest Enola adventure! Lady Cecily appears for the third time, and I think I enjoyed this book even more than her second appearance. There’s such a wealth of great characters, old and young, and Enola (my favorite as always) is in fine form. Elegant, even. It was a treat to read. (Just don’t read it as your first Enola book. Start at the beginning!)

So, here’s a number of things to celebrate and I’m happy to share them. I urge you to check them both out if you haven’t already.

October 26, 2022 3

Frama-12 Release and Review!

Frama-12 by Aud Supplee steps out into the world today!

Frama 12 Cover Art — Available from fine booksellers now!

I was delighted to be given an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review. Full disclosure: anyone who’s read my recent posts will know I can’t claim to be objective in this review – I’ve known this book since it was a kid! But I will do my utmost to be honest.

So, here’s my honest opinion: I just finished Frama-12, and I enjoyed the heck out of it!

Here is a quick summary (from the book cover and the author’s website):

Winnie Harris, following a warrior code in honor of her mother’s fighting spirit, will do whatever it takes to protect her little stepbrother, Mikey. Kip Skyler, charming to everyone but Winnie, impresses her stepbrother with his sleight of hand. Now Mikey wants them to pass through a time tear into Frama-12 and save the inhabitants from an invasion. She’ll be the general and Kip the wizard.

Winnie sees two problems with the mission. Frama-12 is just a fantasy game, right? And Kip is majorly annoying. But she’s only half right. If the incompatible teens can’t work together, an enemy could march through a very real time tear and attack Earth.

To really enjoy a book, I have to like the main characters – mostly, at least. Winnie and Kip are like most teenagers, and most people in general: at times they can be exasperating, and at other times, deeply sympathetic. I came to care about both of them early on. As for Mikey, he’s an adorable little kid who tugged at my heart strings and made me laugh – and sometimes he’s unnervingly mature. But, unlike some other precocious kid characters, Mikey has a very good reason for this. He tells Winnie about it early in the story, but she doesn’t really believe him at first. He’s just her little stepbrother, right…? (Well, yes and no.)

As Winnie soon finds out, Frama-12 is home to a host of new, strange creatures and peoples. Some are alarming, some benign, some funny – and some of them a mix of all of the above. Winnie has to learn which can be trusted and which to beware of. Meanwhile, she’s confronted with a myriad of new sights, sounds, smells and tastes. She gets help in navigating all this from some unexpected sources—if only she can ease up and listen to them.

In trying to live up to her mom’s spiritual courage and determination, sometimes Winnie feels she has to be too independent, too strong. And that can make her downright stubborn at times. But over the course of the book, she learns more about what true courage looks like.

By the end of the book, there are some mysteries and unanswered questions – but I have it on good authority that there will be another book of adventures with Winnie, Kip, and Mikey. Hurrah!

This book is light and a lot of fun, but it also deals with some serious issues, like loss, separation from loved ones, and the challenges of stepfamilies. The story deals with these issues with warmth and heart. I highly recommend it for Young Adults and the Young at Heart looking for a fun contemporary adventure into a rather wacky world. It’s a great summer read.

So if you’re ready for adventure, Frama-12 is available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and independent bookstores.

And if you happen to be in southeastern Pennsylvania, you can meet the author and get your book at a signing with her on Saturday, August 6th!

If you’d like to read my interviews with Aud, you can read them here, where we interview each other about anthologies we’re in and other fun stuff, here, where we talk especially about conferences we went to, and here, where Aud talks about earlier publications and her general writing process.

Congratulations, Aud! I’m so pleased Frama-12 is out in the world where readers can enjoy it!

July 13, 2022 5

Updated! Publication News for Frama-12

My friend Aud just shared this good news: her fantasy novel Frama-12 is now available for pre-order on Amazon! Update as of May 7th: you can now also pre-order the e-book and paperback on Barnes and Noble and the paperback on Bookshop.org! All sites have the same prices for the same formats.

Frama-12 is a fun, light-hearted YA fantasy with depth and heart. If you’ve read my blog recently, you know I’ve read this novel since it was a youngster of a book, and I’ve watched it grow up in our critique group. The characters Winnie, Mikey, and Kip have won my heart, made me laugh, made me worry, made me cheer.

Here’s how Aud describes it:

“Winnie Harris, following a warrior code in honor of her mother’s fighting spirit, will do whatever it takes to protect her little stepbrother, Mikey. Kip Skyler, charming to everyone but Winnie, impresses her stepbrother with his sleight of hand. Now Mikey wants them to pass through a time tear into Frama-12 and save the inhabitants from an invasion. She’ll be the general and Kip the wizard.

I am so excited to read Frama-12 in its grown-up form! It comes out July 13^th, 2022 and I’ve already reserved my copy. Like I’ve said before, I kind of feel like a proud aunt waiting for my niece and nephews to step out on stage for their big debut.

You can read about Aud’s adventures on the journey toward publication with Wild Rose Press on her blog. It’s been an exciting ride to follow!

“Alternate worlds? Alien armies? Summer vacation just took a wild turn.”

April 25, 2022 3

Bits of Writing News

My friend Aud has some exciting news: the cover of her upcoming book, Frama-12, has been revealed! Go check it out on her blog. I’m so excited to see Frama-12’s progress toward coming out into the big wide world. Aud shared the YA novel with our critique group in short sections over many months, and I got to know and love the characters and the predicaments they got into. I guess I kind of feel like a proud aunt or something, and my niece or nephew has just shown me their costume for when they make their debut on stage!

Aud’s blogpost is also about the moment before pushing the “send” button. I think Aud nailed it. That’s a fraught moment that a lot of us can really relate to, especially writers.

I recently hit the “send” button for something less momentous than cover art, but still with a tingle of excitement: the Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest. I’ve entered different pieces over a number of years, and for me the great part is getting honest feedback from writing professionals. I’ve always gotten useful, thoughtful, thought-provoking insights. (The prizes I’ve won twice were quite a thrill, too.)

This year I submitted the first ten pages of my fantasy novel in progress. I followed the advice given by Nancy Springer at a Pennwriters Conference years ago, to start a novel as late as possible, when your character is in the thick of things. Aud gave me similar advice in our critique group, as we chatted about in our joint blog about last year’s Pennwriters Conference. To be honest, when Aud said, “This would be a great place to start your novel,” I listened and took notes for future reference, while inside I thought, “Egads! That sounds hard!”

But this past fall, a great opportunity came up to put Nancy’s and Aud’s advice into practice: a Pennwriters online course on Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction, taught by Babs Mountjoy. Babs’ course was fun, useful, and informative, and the feedback from her and fellow students really helped me. So did the feedback from my two critique groups when I shared the new first chapters this fall.

So when the Annual Writing Contest opened this January, I gave the new start another readthrough and polish. And then I hit “send.”

Now I’m going forward in my novel to write new chapters. I hope to finish the first draft this year. The climax is in sight!

January 29, 2022 6