Welcome To Moonstone Bay!

Two years ago....
 
I decided to write a Childrens Novel. 

 

 

The Whispering Ferns is a story about an eleven year old boy named Smith that is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the tiny fishing village of Moonstone Bay, Washington while his mom heads to South America to look for his missing father. Smith is nervous about spending time in this closed off little town, but thanks to his rambunctious cousins, he makes friends quickly. Soon, he's off hunting ghosts and stealing through neighbor's backyards. Then one of his new friends goes missing and with everyone else following the wrong leads, its up to Smith to rescue her.

I started writing my book on April 26th, just for fun. I'd always wanted to write, and had a good idea, and off I went. About a month later, I stumbled across the Delacorte/Yearling contest and decided that it would be the perfect impetus to finish my book. A deadline for me. I made it, cranking out a book that I was quite proud of, with ghosts and misadventure, mystery and friendship. I fired it off to the contest and waited.

And Waited.

And waited...

Then, I got a letter.

Dear Writer, it started... Uh-Oh...

Well, not only did I not win the contest, but no one did. And what's more, they were never holding the contest again! I'd broken it!

So I sat on the book for a while, tinkering with a few things, still in love with the characters and world I'd created. It was a throwback to the classic children's novels of my childhood; John Bellairs and Encyclopedia Brown, with ghosts and fairies, treasure maps and secret passages. Would modern audiences be interested in my new friend Smith?

I decided to try submitting it to an agent. I'd been approached by one when I first started talking about Moonstone Bay, an agent of sterling credentials, one I would be honored to even have her read the first line of my book. She was very polite and great, but not into the book. She loved the idea and the setting, but felt my prose was too old fashioned for today's readers. The same thing I'd been afraid of, but man, it was so cool to have an actual agent tell me that. (and soul crushing, of course. hahaha)

I thought about re-writing it. Heck, I'm still thinking about re-writing the book. I do think modern readers would be more involved if I wrote The Whispering Ferns from Smith's perspective, if I got into his head, but I still really liked the version I'd written too.

So I sat on it for a year.

In the meantime, things changed in the publishing world. Little changes that had been rearing their heads started bucking wildly across the landscape - eBooks, the Kindle, Self-Pubbing, The death of modern publishing as we know it today!

Suddenly, there was a way to get my original story into the hands of readers hungry for a wholesome, old-fashioned ghost story - as an eBook!

I'll probably still write the different version of The Whispering Ferns, depending on the reception this original one gets, or maybe I'll just move on to the second book in the series (It has pirates in it!) But either way, I have a way to share my new friends with everyone in the world, and that's super exciting!

So on April 26th, two years to the day since I decided to write it,  

The Whispering Ferns, A Moonstone Bay Mystery

There's that cover again!

will be released for sale on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Borders.com and all fine eBook sellers! It'll be a steal at $2.99, and I hope you'll check it out, review it and spread the word. And most importantly, I hope you enjoy the book!

The ROUS FAMILY -     

At Last

Now Playing -    
Whispering Grass by The Ink Spots

Life -  

 

 It's been a vaguely eventful week or so here at the ROUS house. Spring has finally arrived in a slightly long-term form. The snow is starting to melt into rivulets of cold water washing out my driveway and out back, we can start to spot signs that there is indeed grass back there somewhere beneath the arctic floes.

Yesterday, we took a really nice walk with the dogs, the first in a good long while. (Since Ludo hurt his paws, actually.) There aren't really many dog-friendly places around here to take them during the winter, so the poor guys have been cooped up for far too long. Ludo about bust a gasket when we put his harness on him, I didn't think he'd ever stop wagging his tail. Unfortunately, unlike back in Idaho, where we were spoiled to have a large park, wide sidewalks and a gorgeous walking path within a brief stroll from our front door, we have to travel out here to find a place, so that's our goal, to find a conveniently located place that we can comfortably walk our kids.

The road outside our house is out of the question, there's no walkway and the fools around here go speeding past so quickly that I feel unsafe checking my mail, let alone walking two large dogs. Walks are supposed to be relaxing. Luckily, Linz remembered a more secluded looking road a couple of miles further down that we had driven along when we visited the cemetery in the area. It's not the best, it still has a few jerky motorists, but the road is wide and relatively untraveled, and there's a few rural farm sites, so Ludo can salivate at the geese and chickens.

And better yet, just a few blocks down the road, we found an old logging trail. Who's to say it wont be used this summer and chase us elsewhere, but for now, it's perfect. It's not too steep, not too rugged and it's blocked from motorized traffic. It was half snow this time around, but that will change soon, and that's why we used some of our tax return on some Bean Boots, so we don't have to worry about icy puddles!

On another "Finally" note, tomorrow morning, I take my PTCB (Pharmacy Technician Certification Board) exam. I've been studying off and on the last three days and I feel vaguely more confident than I did a few months ago. My weak spot  is clearly going to be the drugs and usages. I have the math and history pretty well down, but it's hard to grasp the generic forms and usual dosages of something that I have no real day to day contact with. It's an area that my position is really hurt by taking the test when we are in a management position, not a pharmacy one.  So wish me luck. I don;t have all of my hopes and dreams riding on passing, but it sure would be a huge weight off of my shoulders.

Speaking of huge weights, we decided to get me a desk for my art and sculpting and lego assemblies, in an attempt to keep our sparse counter space in the kitchen free from little yellow men and pieces of paper. So we found a nice one at Goodwill for a great price, only $25. It has deep drawers and is in pretty good shape, and is quite sturdy.

And weighs something like 100,000 pounds! I've never had such a difficult time moving a piece of furniture in my entire life, and that includes the time I moved a half-full washing machine down a flight of too thin basement steps by myself. I thought I was going to die by the time I got the steel behemoth inside, and that was after taking off most of the doors in between and bruising the linoleum in a few places. But man, it's nice having a desk again, if only to have a place to organize all of my Deeply Dapper things.

And Ludo likes it -

Writing - 
 

I actually have something exciting to announce here! I don't have a firm date yet, but I've decided that, although I'm still working on a different version of it, written from Smith's point of view with some more humor and action, that I will release the original version of THE WHISPERING FERNS in eBook form sometime in the next month or so. I'm not making too big of a deal of it, or promoting it too heavily, but I think the version is a lot of fun and there's a market out there for fans of old-school children's mysteries and adventures.

I should have a cover finished in the next couple of weeks and a release date not too soon after. Stay tuned!

The ROUS FAMILY -