Category: Book Trailer (Page 1 of 7)

Meet Clare C-Saunders, Author of CHARLOTTE & ARTHUR’S ADVENTURES – THE PUMPKIN PORTAL

October 1, 2024 / Katie L. Carroll

Charlotte & Arthur’s Adventures – The Pumpkin Portal
A Middle Grade Adventure for spooky season!

Thank you, Katie, for asking me to be a guest blogger on your lovely website. I’m happy to introduce my new book Charlotte & Arthur’s Adventures – The Pumpkin Portal to you and your readers. This book cover has been beautifully illustrated by my daughter Rose, who is only 17 years old. Rose has worked together with me as a mother & daughter team on all our books since she was only nine years old, her first illustrations can be seen in, Seven Nights of Snuggles. She’s also done an amazing job of putting our book trailer together along with her dad’s music and my voiceover. Working with my daughter makes author events so much fun, as she often comes along with a craft activity for children. We’ve appeared at the Derby Book Festival, our local libraries and independent bookstores, and we even did a school book talk along with our Newfoundland dog in tow for World Book Day.

The Pumpkin Portal book and cover were inspired by our family trips out to our local pumpkin patch in Derbyshire, UK. Obviously, the book features a fictional version of it with a good dose of artistic licence for entertainment value. This is a beautiful farm near where we live, it has many different varieties of pumpkins and gourds in every size, shape and colour. I hadn’t realised you can get a blue pumpkin until I found one in their patch! Every year we visit together as a family to wander around their fields with the colourful wheelbarrows they provide, and we each pick a couple of pumpkins to decorate our woodland cottage with.

As well as their fields full of delightful colours we also visit the food marquee which is named the Witches Kitchen. Inside is always full of yummy food and drink choices and is surrounded by hay bales that you can sit on. There are also hay bales stacked up outside for children to climb on and fairground rides as well as other food vans and fun activities.

The story came to me when I thought about what might happen if a modern-day teenage girl had her Cinderella fantasy come true. Would she really like it? Or would her dream become a nightmare? Readers will find out as they follow Amara after she is whisked away from child minding Charlotte & Arthur at the Pumpkin Patch. Charlotte & Arthur must once again journey back to The Wheel World to save Amara from the Gnome King and his friend, Tricky Jack (the Pumpkin King). In doing so they learn about the magic of witches, go on death defying broomstick rides, have a close encounter with a mermaid and have fun with a baby dragon. During this adventure they will also unveil a hidden family secret to discover who they really are.

About the CHARLOTTE & ARTHUR’S ADVENTURES – THE PUMPKIN PORTAL:

Charlotte & Arthur are enjoying a day out at The Pumpkin Patch when their friend Amara is whisked away by a pumpkin portal. It’s up to Charlotte & Arthur to rescue her.

Grab your broomsticks for a trick or treat ride into a magical world. Zoom past dangerous mermaid filled waters, dodge flying pumpkins, learn about the magic of witches and fly a dragon.

Can Charlotte & Arthur rescue Amara with the help of their magical friends? Join them for a Halloween adventure on a path to self-discovery, as they unveil a hidden family secret and find out who they really are.

You can order this book through your local bookstore or it’s available in paperback and eBook online at Amazon.

About the Author:

Clare C-Saunders is from Derbyshire, England, UK. Clare has released three books to date, along with her young daughter, Rose, as illustrator. All made it into a top 100 Amazon best sellers chart. Currently she is writing her fourth book under the working title The Crystal Dragon’s Egg, which will be the last in the Charlotte & Arthur’s Adventures trilogy. Yule and the Helter Skelter had originally been a short story intended for her first book, but she decided it could make a better middle grade story. With 25 chapters it makes the perfect gift, not only as a book, but as an advent calendar for the whole family to enjoy in the festive run up. Next book in the series is, The Pumpkin Portal, featuring new character, Amara, who is whisked away by a pumpkin while child minding Charlotte & Arthur. The children must find a way to rescue her from the clutches of the Gnome King and his partner in crime Tricky Jack (the Pumpkin King) in this fairy-tale fantasy gone awry.

Seven Nights of Snuggles is a picture book for younger children. This book has seven delightfully illustrated stories designed to be read to children at bedtime. As well as books Clare has also worked in writing, producing and directing for radio. Her work includes an informative children’s internet safety campaign series entitled, The Internet Wizard and an interactive pantomime style radio play of Snow White. Today, when not writing, Clare can be found recording voice overs in her home recording studio, she voiced her own audiobooks for Seven Nights of Snuggles and Charlotte & Arthur’s Adventures – Yule and the Helter Skelter. You can hear samples of her audiobooks at www.clarecunliffe.com

Look out for more information on upcoming events, book festivals, magazine and blog articles, media interviews and special offers over on the following social media pages:
Facebook: Clare & Rose C-Saunders
IG: @theclarecs
X: @MediaClare
TT: @clare.csaunders

The Charlotte and Arthur’s Adventures series of books are published by Fisher King Publishing Ltd, find out more on their website.

The Inspiration Behind the Award-Winning YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUND

August 23, 2024 / Katie L. Carroll

ELIXIR BOUND is the book that made me an author, but it’s so much more than that. This book and its sequel, ELIXIR SAVED, are memorials to my sister Kylene. In ELIXIR BOUND, Katora, who has a sister named Kylene, goes on a quest to become the guardian of a secret healing Elixir. The Elixir Chronicles are like a wish in book form. A wish for more for my sister.

I’ve written about Kylene a bunch of times here on the blog (see “Still Mourning Kylene 20 Years Later”), and her too-short life continues to be a large influence on my writing. One of my works-in-progress is a picture book about a girl who loses her sister.

Mourning is a life-long process. Writing is one of the ways I try and make sense of this wonderfully complex thing we call life. Naturally, my feelings about Kylene come up a lot in my writing.

Yet, the Elixir Chronicles are fantasy quests with magic, whimsy, and adventure. There are deaths — particularly one in ELIXIR SAVED that is a bit devastating — but death and mourning aren’t main themes. The books are more about living. The characters are figuring out what kind of life they want to live and trying to put that into action.

In that way, it’s like giving Kylene — albeit a fictional one — a second chance at life. Second chances are a main theme of ELIXIR SAVED. Yup, these books are big wishes that I know won’t come true. But it still felt good to write them, even when the writing was incredibly hard at times.

The ebook of ELIXIR BOUND is currently on sale for $1.99. It’s part of the Narratess Indie Sale, which officially kicks off tomorrow. There are over 370 fantasy, sci-fi, and horror book by indie authors and publishers on sale or even free.

The “Skin and Bones” inspiration behind GRAMMY’S HALLOWEEN SCARE

July 30, 2024 / Katie L. Carroll

The next book in the Family Holiday Tales series GRAMMY’S HALLOWEEN SCARE is out in the world! Once again, illustrator Phoebe Cho has created an atmospheric setting for characters that pop off the page. We get new characters in Grammy and her black cat Jellybean, but we also get the return of a bunch of spooky kids who you might recognize from the other books in the series. Grammy’s tale is the culmination of many things I love with Halloween, witches, and crows all making an appearance.

GRAMMY’S HALLOWEEN SCARE can be found at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and Kobo. It took a surprising amount of research to make this book come together, so here’s the story of what inspired me to write it.

A witchy page from the book THE BEDTIME KNIGHT, written by Katie L. Carroll and illustrated by Erika Baird.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Anyone who’s ready my middle grade novel WITCH TEST knows I have a soft spot for witches. A “witch” even makes an appearance in my picture book THE BEDTIME KNIGHT.

When it came time to figure out what holiday I wanted to highlight for the third Family Holiday Tales book, I wanted to do something other than Christmas, so Halloween was the obvious next choice for me. I’d already featured a mom and a dad in the other books in the series. A grandparent was a logical next choice, and a witchy grandma felt like a no-brainer!

I also had to figure out what I would use as the rhythmic inspiration for the book. MOMMY’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS is based off the famous poem by Clement C. Moore “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and DADDY’S 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS can be sung to the tune of the classic Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” For my witchy grandma, there wasn’t anything obvious that came to mind. It also had to be something that was in the public domain.

Then I remembered this song I used to sing in music class around Halloween time. It started with kids singing, “There was an old woman all skin and bones, ooo-ooo-oo-ooo.” It end with a deep-voiced “boo!” for a jump scare. A quick search, and I found the musical version from when I was a kid. There was no YouTube back then, so we didn’t have a video to go with the music.

I loved that silly, slightly scary song. A little more research led me to the book SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell. Those books terrified me as a kid…in a way that I loved! The book version (below as performed in the audiobook by George S. Irving ) was even more disturbing than the one I used to sing. It also gave me the important clue that it was from an old folk song.

Even more research led to me to more versions of the song, each one seemingly more disturbing than the last! The different recordings of the song were simply haunting (see “Skin and Bones” sung by Jean Ritchie and scroll down for this unknown singer performing “Skin and Bones”). I wasn’t able to trace the exact origin of the song, but my research showed it was certainly old enough to be safe to use as inspiration for my book.

GRAMMY’S HALLOWEEN SCARE is more fun than scary. It can be sung to the tune of the song I grew up singing, and I included sheet music with my lyrics in the front of the book. I’ve done a couple of read-alouds of the book, and the young audiences have loved singing along on the “ooo-ooo-ooo” part. Here’s a video of me singing the book!

The 10-Year, 230-Rejection Journey of the YA Thriller BLACK BUTTERFLY

April 24, 2024 / Katie L. Carroll

Surprise! My YA thriller BLACK BUTTERFLY, book one in the Spy Agents series, comes out May 21 and is available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org.

Check out this gorgeous cover by BetiBup33 Design Studio. This was my first time using a premade cover for a book, and I’m really pleased with the result. The designer was open to the small customization of adding in the butterfly mask over the face. It’s the same butterfly image that is part of the chapter headers inside the book.

Sometimes, you see an image and know it’s got the right vibe for the book, and that’s what happened here.

It may seem sudden that BLACK BUTTERFLY releases in less than a month because I haven’t really talked about it much, but this book was a long time coming. I started writing it back in 2014 (nope, not a typo…it’s really been 10 years!). Originally, I sought to have it traditionally published. There was quite a bit of interest from agents and a few editors, and it won a couple of contests. In the end though, it earned over 230 rejections (again, not a typo!) and never landed an agent or a publishing contract.

I shelved it for awhile, but I never gave up on it. Even though it’s quite dark with a terrorist attacks, violence, and torture, it was oddly fun to write. The main character, who has many aliases (we’ll stick with calling her Black Butterfly to avoid any spoilers), is an amnesiac and finds out she’s a government spy. She also discovers that she might not the hero of the story but the villain!

The story is told in 1st-person present tense, which is a very close point-of-view to work in. It was a really interesting writing challenge to make her an unreliable narrator, but (hopefully) the reader doesn’t end up feeling cheated by her keeping secrets. Anyway, the story and the character kept sticking around in my head, refusing to be ignored.

@katielcarrollauthor
Black Butterfly is the first book in the Spy Agents series! It’s a YA thriller with an unreliable narrator, hero or villain trope, conspiracy theories, and dystopian vibes. #dystopian #yabooktok #blackbutterfly #booksyoushouldread #thrillerbooks #spythriller #unreliablenarrator #yabooks #fastpacedbooks #dystopianbooks #spyagents
♬ dont look so concerned – bonnie ⛧

Fast forward to last year, and I started getting serious about writing a sequel with the thought that maybe I’d self-publish the series. Despite the many, many rejections of the first book, I have always believed in it. Coming across the cover image that fit the story so perfectly, I knew that I had to make BLACK BUTTERFLY a real book…not just a manuscript wallowing away on my computer.

I got the proof copy of the book the other day, and it’s so exciting that BLACK BUTTERFLY is going to finally be available to readers! Here’s a little about the book:

Is she the hero or the villain?

Black Butterfly wakes to a country devastated by terrorist attacks, supposedly at the hands of the Chinese government. She remembers nothing of her personal life—not even her name. All she knows is that she was in New York City on the day of the attacks. Though, she soon discovers she has an unsettling repertoire of violent talents.

Elijah and his found family of off-gridders from upstate New York take in Black Butterfly and mend her wounds. With nowhere else to go, she joins them as they head to a rally in Washington D.C. The eclectic group begins to feel like the family she can’t remember—or never had.

An encounter with Luca, a spy for a shadowy government agency, confirms Black Butterfly’s worst suspicions about who she was in the life she can’t remember. As more memories surface, Black Butterfly heads to the agency’s headquarters to find out who’s behind the terrorist attacks. It’s unclear whether she intends to reveal the truth or go back to her villainous way. And it’s more than her life she’s putting at risk.

Pre-order the paperback Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org. The ebook is up for pre-order on Amazon and will be available on Kindle Unlimited.

Middle Grade Pirate and Fairy Tale Book Giveaway

October 31, 2023 / Katie L. Carroll

Happy Halloween! These days you’ll mostly find me over on TikTok where I’ve been posting a lot about Witch Test. Though October is a great time of year to read my upper middle grade/lower YA Mean Girls meets The Craft book about overcoming bullying by finding your inner strength (or witch in Liza’s case!), don’t let that stop you from reading it as we move into November.

@katielcarrollauthor
Make Witch Test your next witchy read! #witchyreads #witchtest #thecraft #nancydowns #wearetheweirdosmister #spookybooks #yabooks #halloweenreads #booktokrecs #yabookrecs
♬ We are the wirdos – KILLER QUEEN

In other middle grade news, Pirate Island is part of a 6-book middle grade giveaway. Today is the last day, so make sure to get those entries in by 6:00 p.m. (ET).

How do you feel swashbuckling adventures and fairytale retellings? Do you love them both?

Well, then I’ve got a giveaway for you! I’ve partnered with five other authors to give you a massive middle-grade paperback giveaway. There will be ONE book bundle winner of 6 signed paperbacks (US only)⁠ from these amazing authors:
@amieborst
@masonbellauthor
@hopefullhappenings ⁠
⁠@katielcarrollauthor
@katfarrow.loreweaver
@r.v.bowmanfantasyauthor

Giveaway is now open until October 31, 6 pm EST. Winners will be selected October 31 after 6 pm and the winner will be announced on November 1st. Must be 18 years or older to enter. The paperback bundle is available to US only. (Full rules are on the giveaway link.)

If you want all the latest news from me and bonus perks like two free short stories and a 10% discount on signed books through the end of the year, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter! Preview the latest one here.