Last week I reviewed author Martin Chatterton’s latest The Brain Full of Holes.  I so enjoyed Martin’s last visit I felt honored that he wanted to come back and share more with my readers.  Please join me in once again welcoming Martin to Galleysmith.

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Martin Chatterton ‘Terra Incognita’.

This is the latest stop on my whirlwind global blog tour. I’m still adjusting to the blogosphere, so please bear with me while I decompress. I’m here to spread the word about my glorious new book of total gibberish, ‘The Brain Full of Holes’, which is available from all good outlets, as well as a large number of quite frankly lousy ones.

‘TBFOH’ is the second installment in the adventures of Theo Brain (aged 13), the self-styled ‘World’s Greatest Detective’ and his trusty sidekick, Sheldon McGlone. While the first book (‘The Brain Finds A Leg’) saw the duo battling Australian corporate eco-polluters, killer koalas and deranged hippies, TBFOH sees them entering the murky world of particle physics centered around the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Particle physics, on the face of it, wouldn’t appear to be promising material for writing a YA book. No-one understands the subject, not even – so far as I can tell – those who have made it their life work to study the subject. Its difficult, dense, dark stuff.

Which is why I think it’s perfect. Since no-one really knows what happens when you smash particles into each other at high speed, this gives the writer (me) the excuse to invent a completely new set of loopy situations. I’m particularly fond of the carnivorous cuckoo-clocks.

While the subject matter gives me carte blanche to explore the surreal, I think its important to retain at least a thin thread of plausibility. If I simply wrote nonsense, with no basis in reality, the situations would simply become whimsical. I don’t for a moment believe that any of the odder events I describe in TBFOH would happen, but there is a tiny speck of possibility in there somewhere. Example: almost all of what we think of as ‘solid’ objects consists of empty space. Or, at least, what we think might be empty space. The actual, observable physical matter contained in an atom – which constitutes the component parts of everything in the universe – is tiny. Some scientists believe there must be something else in there that we can’t yet measure, or see. And its that little nugget of information that gives me the opportunity to riff on the possibilities, unlikely though they may be, of exactly what else might be in there.

Or out there.

Science, when talking about the observable universe, freely admits that almost everything ‘out there’ is unknown. Things happen in space, and at the sub-microscopic level that we just don’t understand, or that we are simply not aware of. We are at the stage that ancient mariners were at when they scrawled ‘terra incognita’ across their maps when faced with the unknown. Often these maps were decorated with fanciful images of what the sailors imagined might be out there. This, essentially, is what I do.

Terra Incognita. My favourite place.

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Thank you for stopping by to visit again.  Sheldon and The Brain are definitely two characters I’ve enjoyed reading and hope to see more of in the future.

I’m excited to have been asked to participate in Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s One Question Tour as she works her way across the blogosphere in anticipation of her forthcoming novel The Education of Bet.  Please join me in welcoming Lauren as she answers my question for her stop today:

Q: You’re backlist is quite vast, including a variety of  characters written for a variety of genres.  Is there a genre and/or  voice you’ve not yet tackled that you feel you’d like to explore  more?

A: What an excellent question! In terms of age groups, there’s nothing new for me to try unless I want to do a board book for really young kids or a picturebook – since I have zero artistic talent, that’s out, although I do have the texts for a few kicking around in the old computer here just waiting for some publisher to want them.

In the room off the basement cave I refer to as my office, there’s a whiteboard on which I’ve listed the titles of all the books I’d like to write someday. There are a lot of titles on that board. Nearly all fall into genres I’ve written in the past: adult, YA, or middle grade books; serious, comedic, contemporary, historical, re-visioned fairy tales etc. But there is one that is not like any of the others. The title is PURPLE and the book in my mind that goes with that title is an epic fantasy. I remember being at Disney World with my daughter a few years ago and seeing the Narnia exhibit. I’d already seen the first movie and something struck me that day: the idea that out of all the genres, epic fantasy captures people’s imaginations and love in a way that nothing else can. I’d love to try something like that someday although, I must confess, I am intimidated at the very thought.

Man, I’d sure love to see a picture of that white board!  If you ask me Lauren, you can do anything you put your mind to.  Sign me up to read Purple once it’s published.

If you missed yesterday’s stop on the tour check out Lauren’s thoughts on her best birthday at Katie Alender’s blog and tomorrow check out what she’d take with her to a deserted island on Amanda Ashby’s blog.

A great big thank you for taking the time to share with my readers.  Keep an eye out for my review of The Education of Bet tomorrow.

A while back I was fortunate enough to be contacted by Jennie Nash and asked to take part in a really great Mother’s Day promotion she was putting together for her newly released novel The Threadbare Heart.  I wasn’t able to commit to reviewing the book (and I knew it was going to get some great coverage elsewhere — which it did) but Jennie is such a genuinely nice person that I wanted to be sure to pass some of her thoughts on it to my readers.  Please join me in welcoming Jennie.

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My sixth book is being published today [OR was just published] and I’m already thinking about what I will write next. I’m already moving on. It’s not that I don’t love The Threadbare Heart. I do: I think it’s the best novel I’ve ever written (the love stories! The tragedies! The mother-daughter jealousies!) and it’s a thrill to hear the feedback from readers and reviewers, and to be out in the world talking about a finished book as opposed to being alone in my office, wondering if my story will ever see the light of day. It’s just that once a book hits the shelves, it’s not really mine anymore. It belongs to the readers who read it. They are the ones who get to decide what the story is about, and how it moves them, and whether or not they will still be thinking about it the day after they turn the last page, or a week after, or a year. They are the ones who really bring it to life. It reminds me of the way it must feel to work for a long time on a painting, only to sell it to a patron. The painting lived in the artists’ imagination and in their studio for many months, but it will live forever on somewhere else’s wall.

The process would be unbearably sad if it weren’t for the fact that the artist – or the writer – can always turn to what’s next. It’s the act of creation that is so energizing, and so joyous. It’s the sense of possibility that engages me. What will be the next story I tell? Who will be at the center? What will be its’ shape? Right now, my mind is like flypaper, and strange things are getting caught – the sound of a violinist in a subway station, a girl who doesn’t get into college, a question about keeping secrets. These images, ideas and people will attract other things, and for awhile, it will be a chaotic mess. I will no doubt spent a lot of time alone in my office trying to make sense of it, and trying to impose some kind of order on it, and wondering if my story will ever see the light of day.

I can’t wait to get started.

If you, too, are at the start of a new writing project, and instead of feeling joy, you are feeling overwhelmed or full of doubt, take my word for it, and believe that if you just persevere, order will come from the chaos. Even if you don’t believe it, just pretend that you do and it will amount to the same thing. As one of the characters in The Threadbare Heart says, “Creativity is not a linear process.”

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Thank you for visiting Jennie.  Good luck and best wishes on much success for The Threadbare Heart.

I’m extremely excited to bring to you today a wonderful guest post by Laura Bynum author of Veracity.  I don’t want to give the secrets of the book away but a large part of the plot revolves around the love a mother has for her daughter.  Since today is Mother’s Day, I hope you enjoy the wonderfully personal and touching story Laura has to share with us below.

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Laura Bynum Guest Blog: Truth & The Warrior-Mother

I became my best self the moment my oldest daughter was born. Well, not quite then. About three months before, when, for reasons I won’t elaborate on, I was required by this best part of myself to separate from my ex-husband while being six months pregnant. The divorce was final the day OJ made that infamous white bronco run. Eight days later, my daughter, Alex, made her way into the world through me, and I became, happily, poignantly, something else. Something greater. To sum, I became an action hero.

I might not have been able to leap tall buildings in a single bound or bend steel with my bare hands, but I could go seventy-two hours without sleep and hook thick bites of banana from the tracheas of all three of my children. In the thick of a hot August, I could drive a hundred and twenty miles per hour on a highway, weaving carefully in and out of traffic and through blocked intersections, to make sure my twins were extracted from a babysitter’s locked car. I could walk out of a close relative’s church, toting my twelve-year old behind me, when the minister began preaching hate for homosexuals, and show her the power of protest, and what standing up for what you believe looks like. I could show my girls that dreams aren’t meant for the solitary confinement of our minds, but that they need air and realization. I could take my own medicine, and write.

My first novel, Veracity, was the result.

Alex was my model for the girl named Veracity (the daughter of Harper Adams, protagonist). It was Alex’s face in my head when I wrote the scene where Harper is screaming herself free in the old farmhouse, using her daughter’s forbidden name as the key to an unshackled voice, and therefore, an unshackled mind. In the few times I’ve been asked to read this chapter, I’ve not once been able to do so without misting up, my voice wobbling. For the first three years of Alex’s life, it was just the two of us together in the big world, and this experience is reflected in this love story between this mother and daughter.

In Veracity, Harper Adams is an important cog in the workings of a totalitarian society. Her position provides her and her daughter their basic needs and a much-touted security. For too many years, Harper goes to work for this government, helping them sustain a regime of violence and fear in exchange for the unspoken promise that her child will have a place to live, won’t be killed, won’t be tortured, and so on. It’s an understandably tough decision for Harper, seeing as the price of leaving such a system could be death for one or both of them. Mother and/or daughter. But what Harper comes to understand is that, by not joining the resistance, she is further enslaving Veracity, and binding her to a future as miserable as her own. The question she finally asks of herself, and answers, is this: Is security worth the loss of freedom? And is there really any security to be had in a system whose cost is that which makes you ‘you’?

I have been overwhelmed by the number of other warrior-mothers/action heroines who’ve written to tell me how much Veracity has meant to them. I think part of the reason this book has resonated so strongly with these readers is that we have been on the razor’s edge of this battle for too long. I’m talking about the battle for our children’s cognitive freedom. The battle over their thoughts and opinions, over their critical thinking skills and political, financial, and even religious leanings. We live in the most mediated society in history. Marketing and public dialogue have begun to blend. News and hate speech. News and entertainment. It’s become a game of ‘follow the loudest, angriest person in the room’, or, ‘you’re only valid if you’re wearing, thinking, doing, believing ‘x’…’ It’s been hard to put our proverbial fingers on the problem, which I believe is this – we’ve been taught to stop looking for truth. Which is exactly why I named my novel as I have.

I say it’s time to suit up. Get out those shields of knowledge and those swords of self-awareness, and teach your children how to use them. After all, (and as I recently saw on a bumper sticker), ‘No quiet woman ever made history.’

Freedom was Harper’s choice for her daughter and, wow, what a maelstrom of response did this choice invoke. Thank you, warrior-mothers out there, for your hard work and diligence. I hope that by reading Veracity, it was helpful to know that you are not, and never have been, alone.

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Laura, thank you for visiting it was a pleasure to host you!  Watch for my review of Laura’s novel Veracity tomorrow.

Happy Mother’s Day to all, I hope your day is filled with celebration and appreciation.

I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to welcome Eden Maguire author of Beautiful Dead to Galleysmith today.  Book One of this wonderful series (and y’all know I’m a girl who likes a good series!) is touring the blogosphere right now. Focusing on one of four recently departed teenagers we get to learn all about Jonas and his experience in the before and after life.  If you haven’t already, check out my review of Beautiful Dead.  Please join me in welcoming Eden.

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‘This is an exciting moment – the publication in the U.S. of the first in my four books series, The Beautiful Dead. It comes after an eighteen month gestation period when I presented an outline to my publisher, had the project accepted (a four book deal is a big decision for a publisher!), then began to write. Meanwhile, my agent negotiated details of the contract, designers worked on the cover and marketing people began to promote the books. Finally, after I’ve submitted the manuscript and my editor and I have worked together on small changes, it’s ready for you to read!

If I had to describe Beautiful Dead – Jonas in a few words, I would say ‘highly charged, intense and mysterious’.  I’ve always been fascinated by a love that is strong enough to defy and overcome even death, which is why, when I first read Emily Bronte’s classic novel Wuthering Heights as a teen, the story of Catherine and Heathcliff grabbed me and has held me ever since.

And it’s the intensity of paranormal romance that makes it such a good read for Young Adults. Teens know all about raw, intense passion. You’re not jaded or cynical – you want to believe!

So, back to the early stages of writing Jonas – my first idea was to create a group of paranormal characters who were not vampires or angels, but zombies – the living dead. I wanted Jonas etc to come back from beyond the grave with supernatural powers. They can time travel, they have superhuman strength and the ability to wipe a victim’s mind clear of all memory. The reason they’re back is not for revenge or for any nasty flesh-eating, grave-robbing purpose, but to clear up a mystery surrounding their deaths. But they’ll need human help in the form of Darina.

Darina talks as a first-person narrator and is the character you identify with – and she’s pretty close to myself as a sixteen year old – sensitive, a little angry and rebellious, insecure, but determined and brave. Oh, and she loves, loves, loves Phoenix – who dies in a fight and then comes back to haunt her.

And here’s the thing – Darina has to help Jonas discover the truth about his death in Book 1, then she has to help Arizona and Summer in Books 2 and 3, then her beloved Phoenix in Book 4. So there’s a slow, relentless build to the final, agonised moment when she finds out what really happened to the guy she loves.

You can see that all four books had to be plotted right from the start. But that doesn’t mean I don’t change and develop things as I go along – especially when a character comes alive on the page and begins taking the plot in unexpected directions.

One thing I had in my head early on was the angel-wing tattoo. All the Beautiful Dead carry this death mark on the exact place on their bodies where they received a fatal gunshot or knife wound. It kind of encapsulates what the books are about – a tragic early death, grief and longing, a magical ability to come back and set things right.

So I’ve sat alone at my desk for a year and a half (isolation is probably the down-side of being a writer, but the power to invent a whole fantasy world with its own mythology and to people it with characters from out of your own brain and imagination is the biggest thrill) and now I’m handing The Beautiful Dead over to you.

I hope from the bottom of my heart that you like reading it as much as I loved writing it.

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Eden, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts on these wonderful books.  I’m looking forward to reading all about Arizona next.