Posts Tagged :

Kaza Kingsley

Kim Harrison and Kaza Kingsley Are BranFans

 150 150 Kaleb Nation
By:
0

The first blurbs for BRAN HAMBRIC: THE FARFIELD CURSE have finally arrived! Blurbs, for those not familiar with the book business, are those prized and coveted reviews from Very Important People, especially reviewers and famous authors, that a writer receives about his or her book. These usually appear on the back of the book jacket.

Being a writer who has had a seemingly endless supply of good luck and an eternally wonderful agent and publisher, my first blurbs come straight from the bestsellers: KIM HARRISON and KAZA KINGSLEY.

kim-harrisonKim Harrison, bestselling author of The Hollows Series (with Dead Witch Walking), co-contributor to Stephenie Meyer and others on Prom Nights From Hell, and whose upcoming book Once Dead, Twice Shy is currently in my reading pile of ARCs, wrote:

Innocence gives way to danger as Bran pieces together his deadly past before his legacy can rise up to kill him in turn. With characters both silly and serious, Kaleb Nation has crafted a world vastly different from our own where magic sits next to cell phones, and gnomes really do travel. Reminiscent of Harry Potter, Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse is everything a young adult read should be.

Kim Harrison
Author of Once Dead, Twice Shy

kaza-kingsleyKaza Kingsley, bestselling author of the Erec Rex series (with Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye) whose latest book Erec Rex: The Search For Truth comes out in a mere 49 days, wrote:

Whimsy, magic, and suspense collide together in this breathtaking tale. The Farfield Curse is a story you’ll want to pick up, but not put down!

Kaza Kingsley
Author of the Bestselling Erec Rex series

I couldn’t be happier with our first blurbs and reviews of the book! They will soon be up on the pre-orders page and on the Bran Hambric site as well. There will be many more of these to come before the release on 9-9-09 (and perhaps a few… surprise… blurb-ers in the next month or so 😀 ). I’ll be posting them as they come in!

Also, funny how my first two blurbs came in from authors whose names also begin with the letter K. Coincidence? Or FATE.

Copyediting! and Stuff

 150 150 Kaleb Nation
By:
0

Today I returned from school to find that my publishers have finally completed the copyedits for Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse! In publishing, a copyeditor reads a manuscript even deeper than a normal editor does, checking for everything from consistency mistakes to style errors all the way to the gritty commas and exclamation points (of which I had many). A copyeditor also helps me make sure that everything lines up perfectly, and really adds the final bit of polish to the book before it goes off to the printers:

Visualization for what Copyedits do

Visualization for what Copyedits do

So, as today is Friday, and these edits are due on Monday, I am barricading myself in my apartment with the Lemony Snicket soundtrack, as much Anberlin as one soul can take, and all 115,000 words of my book. My goal: to attack it with as much ferocity as I can muster whilst living off microwave Mexican food and macaroni for two days and three nights. My editors left no stone unturned, as evidenced:

Copyedits for The Farfield Curse

Copyedits for The Farfield Curse

Each red marking is from one editor, and each blue marking is from another. I have two days to read and approve each edit — and the photo above is just two pages out of nearly 400! (ADDED: It should be noted, however, that every single quotation mark in this entire novel had to be changed to a different style, so the majority of those marks above are from that!)

It’s actually one of the most important steps in this process. A copyeditor can’t even change anything in the story, but they correct so many tiny mistakes that even after years of my editing, most of the manuscript looks like the two pages above! I have to approve or reject each change to make absolutely sure that everything stays exactly the way I intended when I wrote the book.

In OTHER news, my friend Kaza Kingsley has her first two Erec Rex books being re-released on April 9! Kaza and I met just after I signed with my agent, and I saw her book EREC REX: THE DRAGON’S EYE at a local bookstore and decided on random to write to her. She replied to my email, and we became good friends over the internets (she later got me as the designer for her book’s official website!). By amazing chance, she later signed with my literary agent without even knowing, and he sold her series to Simon & Schuster for re-release. If you like books with epic quests and boy heroes and dragons, you should definitely check her books out next week!

By the way, I had to turn in another project for my photography class today! The assigned concept was to show motion with shutter speed, either by freezing it or by having a little bit of blur. Tell me what you think of these (click to see them bigger):

kalebnation-april-1kalebnation-april-5kalebnation-april-6

Interview with Kaza Kingsley

 150 150 Kaleb Nation
By:
0

 

kaza kingsley tour

Kaza Kingsley is the author of the Erec Rex series. Already there are two books out in the series, titled The Dragon’s Eye and The Monsters of Otherness.

 

 

Thanks Kaza for being here. First, for all the writers here, I have always been curious about that very first book signing, your first time out with your published book. How did that go and where were you? What did you do to prepare?

My first signing at Borders Books in Cincinnati was fantastic. Of course it helped that everyone I knew and their brother showed up to support me. I was floating on air, truly. I didn’t do much to prepare – I didn’t even do a reading at that signing. It was too busy, so I just socialized and signed books. A lot of fun! Then I had a party at my house that night to celebrate.day-14-kingsley.gif

You appeared at the Book Expo America some time ago to promote your books. What was the BEA like your first time there as an author?

That was an amazing experience. The Javitz center was enormous and packed with people. And the signings I did were incredibly busy. It was a little overwhelming – my publicist had given me a list of people to meet, but only a few of them were at their booths.

The best part was winning a bunch of awards at the BEA. ForeWord Magazine Awards took place in the middle of the Javitz center, and Erec Rex won silver for YA Book of the Year! The worst was that I got incredibly sick the second day I was there. It was hard to even walk. I had been throwing up all night.

Have you ever walked into a bookstore and stumbled upon your own book when you weren’t looking for it?

read more