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 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!
Honesty time…I don’t enjoy book release days. Part of that is because by the time a book comes out, it’s old news to the author. My brain is like, “Been there, done that, let’s move on.” I’ve already been working on a bunch of other projects since I finished BLACK BUTTERFLY, and now I’m supposed to keep talking about that old project?!
It’s not that I don’t love the book that’s just come out. I’ve probably spent years working on it, which is most certainly true for BLACK BUTTERFLY (see “The 10-Year, 230-Rejection Journey of the YA Thriller BLACK BUTTERFLY”). I love all my books and want them to find readers, but I’m also ready to move on to my newer projects, which are much more exciting to me than my finished books.
There’s also the inevitable disappointment of release day. My release days aren’t exactly leading to big sales numbers, and I’m not sure what number might make it feel less disappointing, but I certainly haven’t reached that on release day. Maybe I never will, even if I started hitting big numbers. The sales numbers (or lack thereof) aren’t what keeps me going as a writer.
The excitement of a new idea popping into my head at the most unexpected moment. An idea sticking around in my mind long enough to quietly develop in the background until it demands I open up a blank page and start writing. The satisfaction of finishing a draft, typing The End, even though I know there’s more work to be done. Noticing an interesting theme in a draft and teasing it out with imagery and metaphor in revisions.
Those are the things that keep me going as a writer!
Once the book is released, there’s nothing left for me to do except try and get people to read it. And I’m not particularly good at that. I’m much better at writing and putting out a good story than selling one. I’m a writer, not a marketer. Though I do my best to do both things, it’s painfully obvious to me which is the one I meant to do.
With that being said, yesterday my YA dystopian thriller BLACK BUTTERFLY released. The day was “mid” as my 12-year-old so often says about his better days at school. Yet, I want to take this moment to recognize the huge accomplishment it has been to now have ten (!!!) published books to my name. That is no small feat. And no matter how “mid” the day felt, it’s a notable one for sure.
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.
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.
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.
Do I agree with the article called “YA Isn’t Just for Young Adults”? Absolutely not. Young adult literature (or what is commonly shortened to YA) is 100% for teens. (We’ll get into whether a teen is a young adult in minute.) Does that mean adults can’t read YA? Also, no. Does that mean teens can’t read things other than YA? Again, no.
I’m not presuming to tell anyone what they can or can’t read. What I’m saying is that young adult literature should bewritten for teens. Period. We don’t need to age YA up because some adults read it and wish that it had more mature content. Adults have their own huge category of books already. Romance novels alone are a billion-dollar industry.
I recently expressed this sentiment in a TikTok video. The text of the video reads, “YA books are made for teens. No one’s stopping adults from reading them. They should still be for teens. Let’s stop trying to make YA for adults, and let’s stop labeling books YA if they’re not for teens.” It sparked quite the debate, which I’m happy about.
Let’s talk about what YA books are, who they should be for, and what’s appropriate content for a YA book!
One of the most frequent comments on the video pointed out how it’s weird to call books for teens “young adult” because young adult people are ages 18 to mid-20s and teens are ages 13 to 18. I get that, so I created a follow-up video to explain the industry term of “young adult,” which was coined in the 1960s.
While I think debating about whether it’s an appropriate term is a related issue, it’s not the main one. The fact is “young adult” is a widely used term that has been around for a very long time and has always meant books for teens. And everyone–the publishers, authors, editors, and booksellers–in the children’s publishing industry (because YA falls into the bigger category of children’s books) knows this.
But what’s happening in recent years is that people in the YA publishing industry– like YA author who penned the article positing that YA isn’t just for young adults–have been pushing the YA category into older and older content. This means that many new YA books have characters that are 16 and older and content that is more appropriate for older teens and adults.
Why is this happening? Starting in the early 2000s, YA saw huge growth with the rise of worldwide bestsellers like Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The first books in both those series released in 2008 and spawned popular movie franchises. In short, YA books became big money.
Then in 2012, a study by Bowker Market Research revealed that 55% of YA books were purchased by adults 18 and over with the largest chunk of those adults being between the ages of 30 and 44. The YA publishing industry realized that there was a huge market of adults buying YA…thus began the trend of moving the YA market into older and older territory.
Another issue with the label of “young adult” is that it’s being used on books that are actually adult books. This seems to happen most often in fantasy books written by women (patriarchy at play here). Two examples being a A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas and Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. Full disclosure, I haven’t read either of these books, but it’s clear that both of them contain spicy sex scenes, meaning scenes that are meant to be titillating. Spicy sex scenes do not belong in YA.
I’m not saying sex and sex-related topics don’t have a place in some YA books. I wrote a whole post called “Why I Included Abortion in My Young Adult Fantasy Novel” back in 2020, which is about my book Elixir Saved. But labeling books YA when they have sexually explicit content is a disservice to all readers, and it continues to muddy the waters on what YA is.
Young adult books can have all manner of edgier content like gore, violence, and sex. After all, YA is an age category, not a genre, so it contains most book genres, like mystery, thriller, fantasy & sci-fi, and romance. The key is to always keep the core audience of teens in mind when considering what content is appropriate. Also, it’s key to understand that YA is range. What is appropriate for a 13-year-old reader varies greatly from what’s appropriate for an 18-year-old one.
Why is it a problem that YA is skewing older? There is clearly a market for YA books that have more mature content and there’s profit to be gained. But at what cost?
We’re leaving a lot of teen readers behind. Where are the books for the 13-15 year-old readers? Where are the books for older teens that don’t want mature content? What will happen to the book industry in the future if we fail teen readers now? Who’s going to buy YA then?
Teens of all ages deserve books that are written for them. And not just a handful of books. They deserve a wide variety of books and a wide number of books in all kinds of genres. Teens need books that are specifically written for them at all stages of maturity.
Adults have plenty of books to read that are written specifically for them. Adults are guests in the YA space. And those of us who make YA books need to remember that.
