Yesterday was the final stop on my virtual blog tour for Kaimira: The Sky Village. Thanks everyone who participated. Tracy from Candlewick who got the ball rolling.
Sheila from Wands and Worlds, who kicked things off. She also gave the book a very nice review and is hosting a contest to win a free copy, and will be hosting an author chat with me in August.
Shelf Elf (read, write, rave), came next with some challenging questions (which I had a lot of fun answering). The best fantasy or sci-fi book of all time? Geeze, that’s a hard one!
Next was Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge, who somehow managed to get some secret info about my childhood. How exactly did the Incredible Hulk become a theme in my life?
An interview with Jan at Brighton Book Bloggers was the next stop. Again, some very challenging questions and fun to answer. The interview reminded my why I love apocalyptic sci-fi.
On Friday there was a bit of a twist, when the stop was Susie’s blog at the Association of Online Community Moderators. I attempted to demonstrate how my shift from the online community field to writing fantasy isn’t as gigantic as it seems.
And wrapping up the tour was an interview with Bri from Bri Meets Books, who also had some fantastic questions. My favorite, I think, was what characteristics from my characters would I like my twin girls to have.
Thanks again, everyone. And for anyone reading this who hasn’t visited the tour stops, there’s no time like the present.
Tags: a wrung sponge, association of online community moderators, blog tour, bri meets books, brighton book bloggers, chris rettstatt, kaimira, shelf elf, the sky village, virtual book tour, wands and worlds
Here’s the schedule for next week’s Blog Tour for Kaimira: The Sky Village.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Wands and Worlds
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Shelf Elf
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
A Wrung Sponge
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Jan Dohner, Library Media Specialist
Friday, July 18, 2008
Association of Online Community Moderators
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Bri Meets Books
Tags: book tour, kaimira, the sky village
Kaimira: The Sky Village comes out today. Which means, for anyone who’s read it, you can post a review on Amazon starting today.
And now I will show the US cover (top, hardback) and the UK cover (bottom, paperback).
Tags: book covers, kaimira, the sky village
My interview with the very talented Cynthea Liu and her rabbit Snoop was posted today.
Here’s an excerpt:
Tell us a little bit about your path to publication.
I started writing when I was eight, the moment I’d finished reading Where the Sidewalk Ends. By bedtime I’d filled a notepad with poems. Fast-forward a few years, and teenage me is reading series fantasy like it’s going out of style. Which it never does. Because two decades later, when I’m given an opportunity to pitch a book series for kids, my thoughts turn immediately to series fantasy with a bottomless well of world building.
Read the rest, and be sure to post a comment there 
Tags: authors on the verge, cynthea liu, interview, kaimira, the sky village
If you don’t follow the online children’s literature monthly called The Edge of the Forest, you need to bookmark it now, and not just because there’s now a review of The Sky Village in there. It’s just an all around excellent resource.
But since I mentioned it, there is a very positive review there for The Sky Village. Allison Fraclose wrote the review, and she reposted it on her personal blog.
Tags: edge of the forest, kaimira, review, the sky village
The Sky Village received another review at the wonderful blog Bri Meets Books. Here’s an excerpt:
Monk and Nigel Ashland’s The Sky Village oscillates between pulse-raising action, and heartfelt takes on grief and loss. Both primary characters are richly written, and the emotional travails Rom and Mei face come across in sharp paragraphs and gripping situations. The depth of familial love is captured perfectly as Rom helps his sister construct puppets modeled after their parents, and Mei relishes her time with one of her mother’s pets.
Tags: kaimira, review, the sky village
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/F5iDjm3jpq0]
Tags: book trailer, kaimira, the sky village
In the next 2 or 3 months Candlewick will be setting up a blog tour for Kaimira: The Sky Village. I offered to provide some names of people who are interested in participating in the tour.
So, consider this an open invitation to participate. I don’t care if your blog gets a million hits a month or ten. If you want to participate, I’d be happy to have you.
What are you getting yourself into? If you participate, you’ll sign up for a day of the tour. On that day, you’ll post something relating to me and my book. It can be an interview, or you can just let me take over and write something, or you can post a review, or it can be something else that I haven’t even thought of. I’ll have plenty of suggestions, including interview questions you can use, but you are free to do your own thing.
If you are interested, just email me: r e t t s t a t t @ g m a i l . c o m
And if you don’t have a copy of the book, I’ll make sure you get one.
And if you don’t know what a blog tour is, check out Elizabeth O. Dulemba’s explanation.
Tags: blog tour, kaimira, the sky village
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on my book series, Kaimira. Book one (The Sky Village) is pretty much done except for the illustrations and the back matter. There will be six full-spread (2 page) illustrations, which is rare for a YA book and which I’m terribly excited about. Don’t tell the illustrator, but I’m using one of the illustrations as my computer desktop. The back matter consists of several fun index-type world building pieces, some with sketches.
As for book two, Nigel and I are about 50,000 words into it. We’ve left behind the two settings from book one (the Sky Village and the Demon Caves) and it’s huge fun building out the new settings and cultures.
I love me some world building.
In related news, I was trying to create a Warcraft III custom map / scenario that showed one of the Kaimira battles. There are several different types of golems, and they make excellent meks, and there are a number of different types of animals. (The world of Kaimira is set in a future in which humans, animals, and robots are at war with one another.)
Once I’m done, I’ll have a fun little Warcraft game in which the robots are occupying the city, the beasts are surrounding the city ready to invade, and the humans are in one little corner trying to survive in this 3-way battle, and then ultimately pushing back the robots and beasts and taking back the city.
Tags: animals, beasts, demon caves, kaimira, meks, mud golem, robots, spirit wolf, the sky village, warcraft, world building
I mentioned before that I had an opportunity to create some interesting appendix-type materials to put at the end of The Sky Village. There are several items included. Most are in English, but one is written in symbols from the Kaimira Code, which is a fantasy language created for the book series.
The other non-English piece is in Chinese. Half of the story is set in China (or more accurately, in the skies over China). The sky villagers are information traders, and they get their news via notes carried by pigeons. It’s called cloudwatching, and the person assigned to gather, interpret, and share the news is the Cloudwatcher.
I thought it would be fun to show a few of these notes, and even more fun to show them in Chinese.
My Chinese writing is very poor, much worse than my spoken Chinese, so I conscripted my wife to do the hand lettering, using special paper and a fancy pen I borrowed from my office.
She started off doing Chinese cursive, which looks pretty messy (as cursives tend to look), then tried the more careful lettering learned during grammar school, which did the trick.
I let it dry then shipped it off to the publisher, where it was sprinkled with magical publisher pixie dust and whatever else Candlewick does to make such pretty books.
Tags: back matter, fantasy books, kaimira, the sky village, young adult literature
