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I have a giveaway running on Goodreads, where you can win all the Delilah Dusticle books in paperback. The giveaway ends in 24 hours. To enter click here! Best of luck! 
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As a teenager I strived to fit in, not to stand out and to be part of the crowd. To be unique in some way would cause embarrassment and could make people either think you are odd, or even bully you for being different. I think this is the case for most people. Now as an adult, I see people striving to be distinctive in some way, to tread their own path, to do something amazing and to not be run of the mill. And why not?
I recently read about a young lad who quit his job in a café in New Zealand to travel the world in order to be the first person to capture all the Pokémon characters. His father was reported in saying that he always knew his son would be famous. I am not a gamer, but I can see that this young man is searching for his unique thing. I can’t help but think that once he has achieved this that he will then start to look for his next unique thing. A friend of mine trained for a year and ran the London Marathon. She had lost her stepfather to heart disease and wanted to raise some money for charity. An amazing thing to do. I followed her blog and read about her love of running, the pain she had to deal with and how she overcame it. Once the marathon was over I saw a post about her doing it again. I think it is very human to set goals and once achieved, we find ourselves missing the process and we start to look at what next to fill the void with. Who are we without goals? I talked about this with my partner. He said you get to a certain age and start to think about your legacy, what you will leave behind when you leave this world. We can’t all be Nobel Prize winners or presidents. So what legacy can we leave behind? I have asked a few people what they think and they mentioned their children. What if you do not have children? Does a legacy also have to be a big tangible thing? Can it not be unmeasurable? I once read this quote - “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou This has stuck with me. I think for a long time I did not want to stick out too much and therefore perhaps held back. When you think like this it can make you come across as guarded. I am now trying to stop thinking about me and think about how I am making the other person feel. If you make someone feel safe or good about themselves, hopefully they will do that for another person and so on. This is a legacy that I would like to leave behind. I would like to say that this is enough and that I do not feel like I need to leave something material behind, but truthfully I would like to put this into my stories too. They are stories for children, but I hope that the reader will remember how they felt long after reading the book. This has become my overall writing aim. It would be a wondrous and extraordinary if it were true. Even if it were just one person. Only time will tell. It occurred to me recently that I write reviews for hotels, but not for books. I have an account with Goodreads and at best, I sometimes leave a star rating. I have been thinking why this is. I write stories and I publish them. Surely I should review books too? Well I have come to the conclusion that books change as I change, but that hotel experience will always stay the same. I remember reading Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City as a teenager and it hitting a chord. It made me realise that there are people out there, people on the edge of society, who are trying to lead their lives and be happy. I so wanted to live in Mrs Madrigal’s apartment building. They were all young, starting out, making mistakes and having fun. The book inspired me in many ways. To go out into the world and meet people who are not the same as me. To move to different places that were not the same as where I grew up. I wanted to open my mind to it all and be independent. I started to reread Tales of the City recently and it bought back nostalgia of time I once I had, but that was all. I could see clearly that today I want different things. I have moved on in my life. I still want independence and an open mind, but I want my own home and a family, next door to Mrs Madrigal. Ha ha! Okay, perhaps I have not moved on that much. I expect Mrs Madrigal would be a great neighbour. The series is still good, but it means something different to me today. How could I put a star rating on that? The Tales of the City also inspired a dream all those years ago. That was to one day visit San Francisco. This is a dream I fulfilled a few weeks ago. Flying over California into San Francisco’s airport was just amazing. There is a great sense of achievement arriving somewhere after 12 hours of rattling away in a tin can over the Atlantic Ocean. My second sense of achievement was cycling through mad San Fran rush hour traffic. Cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge was a breeze in comparison. We spent two weeks travelling down Highway 1, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. My favourite stop was in Pismo Beach. It is described as a nostalgic Californian town and I wished I could have stayed an extra day. Pismo is a place of surf, sun and cool signs   Now I am back in Sweden and I have recovered from the jet lag. The trip seems a bit unreal, a blur even. This is what big trips are like. It takes time to take it all in. I have a few more weeks to relax before going back to school. There is sunshine forecast and I will be making the most of beaches, hanging out in cafes and even a boat trip out to the Gothenburg archipelago. I will be squeezing in a few posts too and some editing on a short story I have written. It is good to be back. I would like to introduce Anela Deen. I know Anela through her book review blog https://amidtheimaginary.wordpress.com/ I contacted Anela about my books asking if she would like to review them, which she did. Luckily she liked them too. I loved her bio explaining that she is a 'Hapa Haole Hawaiian girl living in chilly Minnesota.' I have always seen beautiful pictures of Hawaii and one the best things about publishing is making contact with people from all around the world. Anela contacted me in June to let me know that she had written and published some stories. I know from experience how much work this takes. Writing, redrafting, editing, getting beta readers, finding a good editor, book covers, formatting, publicising the work and the list goes on. So today, I lend a hand of support to someone who taken their first steps into publishing and I wish her well. From conflicts in space to battles of blade and flame, explore Anela Deen’s speculative fiction below.  In a not so distant future, an unprepared humanity barely managed to repel the Locusts when they invaded Earth. But the long war left its mark on mankind and the Establishment was founded to ensure it would never come so close to destruction from an alien force again. Now, decades later, the world is run by this single governing entity. Loyalty is rewarded. Disloyalty is met with corrective action. As an inquisitor for the past twenty years Gemson used torture and interrogation to root out subversives. He’d worked hard to earn his cold, hard reputation. Now he finds himself on the subject’s side of the interrogation table. Loyalty? Some bonds transcend the laws of state.  In a not so distant future, an unprepared humanity barely managed to repel the Locusts when they invaded Earth. But the long war left its mark on mankind and the Establishment was founded to ensure it would never come so close to destruction from an alien force again. Now, decades later, the world is run by this single governing entity. Loyalty is rewarded. Disloyalty is met with corrective action. For Ellie, the job of an analyst was simple: Evaluate her target’s patterns, make a virtual connection, garner trust, and ascertain identity and location. Falling in love with the Albatross — the Establishment’s most notorious subversive and leader of the insurgency — complicates matters. Now she’ll have to decide which to betray: her duty or her heart.  In a not so distant future, an unprepared humanity barely managed to repel the Locusts when they invaded Earth. But the long war left its mark on mankind and the Establishment was founded to ensure it would never come so close to destruction from an alien force again. Now, decades later, the world is run by this single governing entity. Loyalty is rewarded. Disloyalty is met with corrective action.  A mysterious blight devastates the world of Aeden. The Vehlek–dark, immortal guardians of Aeden–have used their power to combat it through a blood sacrifice, one given every season from each of the four peoples. For generations this has diminished the Blight’s destructive force. Now their power wanes and the sickness worsens. Their scripture speaks of Providence, of mortals whose blood, combined with their power, can end it. But as yet, there has been no sign of them. On the secluded islands of Malua, the Blight rots the land and destroys the harvests. The change of the tide marks the new season, and with it, the need for a blood sacrifice. For Maleia, daughter of a murdered king, wife to a usurper’s son, her hopes to reclaim her father’s throne are dashed when her child is stillborn. To her horror, the usurper king intends to use her daughter’s remains as the blood offering, condemning her small spirit to wander lost and alone. As the Vehlek emerge from their fiery underground caverns to claim the sacrifice, she commits a desperate act to take her daughter’s place, an act that unintentionally binds her to one of these strange, immortal men, and later reveals her to be an integral part of Providence as foretold by their scriptures. While seeking out others like her, the Vehlek will guide her on her journey to the mainland to fulfill her destiny.The road is perilous, not least because her father’s murderer travels with her, and the Blight haunts their steps at every turn. With the lives of all hanging in the balance, and time running out, they will either cure their failing world through blood and flame, or see it fall to ruin.  A child of two cultures, this hapa haole Hawaiian girl is currently landlocked in the Midwest. After exploring the world for a chunk of years, she hunkered down in Minnesota and now fills her days with family, fiction, and the occasional snowstorm. With a house full of lovable toddlers, a three legged cat, and one handsome Dutchman, she prowls the keyboard late at night while the minions sleep. Coffee? Nah, she prefers tea with copious amounts of sarcasm. I picked up the paperback versions of Delilah Dusticle and the Cursed Tempest from the post office today. I am really pleased with how they have turned out.  There is a giveaway on Goodreads where you can win all three books from the series in paperback. Click here to enter!  I have now finally finished work for the summer. I did my last day in the school library on Monday and yesterday I taught my last business English lesson. I now have seven weeks until I start back again. Woohoo! I am dreaming of beach days on the Swedish coast, going out for lunch and long summer evenings writing. I also have a two week break over the Atlantic, which I have been (California) dreaming about for years. This means I might not be posting anything over the next three weeks. Expect my next post to be up by mid-July. So, there is much to look forward to, but at the same time I cannot ignore what has been happening around the world. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t read the news. Ignorance is bliss they say, but ignorance is what is causing so much destruction and pain. I wish I had the answers. Until we find one, I can only send my love to all those who are suffering. Dust in our homes is a pain. Every few days it reappears. However, there are times when it can be beautiful. For example, when the sun streams in from a window and all the dust particles drifting in the air twinkle in the light. This is when I see Delilah Dusticle with little fluttering wings, waving her duster like a wand, making the glittering particles of dust glide around.
We are all familiar with the idea of a little pixie fairy that sprinkles sparkly dust. Tinkerbell from Peter Pan comes to my mind first. Delilah Dusticle is somewhat different. She is a dust fairy who can sprinkle or remove actual dust. When I imagine this, I see it as the normal dust that relentlessly covers every surface in my home. At the same time, I also imagine her fairy dust to be like snow. Beautiful, quiet and at times filled with sorrow. When she is sad and unable to come to terms with her emotions she showers dusts everywhere. When we are feeling down, we generally hold everything inside, keeping our facial expressions and body language in check. Trying to transmit the message ‘I am ok’’. Just look at Facebook. I sometimes want the images on the screen to come alive and tell me the truth. “Yes, this is the wonderful gift he gave me for my birthday, but I had to buy it!” Perhaps this is why I find physical expression of sadness so interesting. When we feel pain, delight or even serenity it can have such an impact that it almost deserves some kind of outward reaction, some kind of physical image. Thunder for anger for example, or dark clouds swiftly passing in the iris of the eye. If you were to physically manifest sadness, what would it be? How would it look? How would it sound? The next story I am writing is called Delilah Dusticle’s Mission Impossible. So far in the series, Delilah has mastered her powers and her emotions. I am now looking at what else can challenge her that she must overcome, how this will manifest itself and how it will look. I have realised when I write, I always start the story with a picture in my mind and a sensation of how I want the reader to feel. Today, I am imagining her kryptonite. All kinds of variations of the story are running through my head. This is one of my favourite parts of story-telling because anything is possible. So excuse me now as I drift off into my imagination. Have a great weekend! Win a set of the Delilah Dusticle series of your own! Listed below are three sites where you can win paperback and eBook versions of Delilah Dusticle, Delilah Dusticle's Transylvanian Adventure and Delilah Dusticle and the Cursed Tempest.
Are you a member of Librarything? They host giveaways and on this site you can win eBook copies of Delilah Dusticle, Delilah Dusticle's Transylvanian Adventure and Delilah Dusticle and the Cursed Tempest. To enter click here! Are you a member of Booklikes? They host giveaways and on this site you can win eBook copies of Delilah Dusticle, Delilah Dusticle's Transylvanian Adventure and Delilah Dusticle and the Cursed Tempest. To enter click here! Are you a member of Goodreads? They host giveaways and on this site you can win paperback editions of Delilah Dusticle, Delilah Dusticle's Transylvanian Adventure and Delilah Dusticle and the Cursed Tempest. To enter click here!
I have been working in the school library now for a few weeks. We are doing a summer reading campaign and I have to come up with a book suggestion as well as an activity. I chose Sophie’s World as the story has loads of content that you can turn into a discussion. I tend to reread this book every two years because my memory is like a sieve. I love reading about the different philosophers.  I plan to introduce the story and what philosophy is. After, I will invite the students to look at some envelops with ‘…the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wander…’ written on the front. This text is taken directly from the book. The envelop will also have ‘OPEN ME’ on the front. I guess I am mixing a little of Alice in Wonderland in there too. The students will be asked to open the envelops and inside will be a question that is raised in the book. We will then share our ideas. I have put a summary and the questions below, just in case you would like to take part . Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian writer, who is best known for Sophie’s World, which has been translated into 60 languages. The story is about 14 year old Sophie. One day she comes home from school and finds strange letters addressed to her in the postbox. They contain questions, which jolt her out of her everyday life, making her question the world. Sophie then receives another letter and this time it is a course in philosophy. In the letter, it introduces what philosophy is all about. It uses the metaphor that there are people who watch a magician pull a white rabbit from a hat and never ask how it was done. Then there are those who want to know how this mysterious trick happened. This is philosophy, asking how the mysteries in life have come about. In the letter it also goes on to say that the white rabbit being pulled out of the magician’s hat is the world, and we are snuggled deep in its fur. Only philosophers will climb the strands of the fur to look out and see what is out there. Are you snuggled in the fur? Today we will climb out and ask some philosophical questions. Is there any will or meaning behind what happens? Who are you? Where does the world come from? Are we the only ones? What is the most important thing in life? The one thing I need to be watchful over is that the students respect each other beliefs. This is the sort of discussion activity I would have loved at school. I hope it inspires some of the kids to read Sophie’s World. We start the campaign next week. Fingers crossed it will go well.  I almost choked on my tea when I found out that Eliza Bluebell had been nominated for Best Children's Book award. I am truly grateful to whoever it was who put my book forward. The winner is announced in August during their virtual book fair, and it is the book with the most votes that will win. It is shame they do not have a panel who also judges the books. Nevertheless, I am thrilled to be part of the e Festival of Words.  Gothenburg enjoyed a mini heatwave this week. I also started working in the school library, so it has been a really good week all round. I have learnt to check books in and out, put new books into the library catalogue and I have helped the librarian plan her autumn activities. I am also going to write a blog post for the library blog. I have to say I love it, but it is only temporary and I will just have to enjoy it while it lasts.
You may remember a blog post I did called ‘Every Object has a Story’. If not, you will find it in my archives from last month. I am pleased to say it inspired me to write a short story. I have written a tale based on a twelve year old girl who helps her Grandmother on Sundays at the local charity shop. She discovers that they both have flashbacks of memories when they touch the objects. I will leave it in a draw for a few months and then reread it. Distance makes for a better editor in my view. I am also in the process of getting in touch with my book blog contacts to see if they are interested in reviewing Delilah Dusticle and the Cursed Tempest. I have had four reviews come in already and I am pleased to say two were four stars and the other two were five stars. All the reviews have been posted onto Goodreads and some are on Amazon too. It is such a relief because I never know for sure how the stories will be received. One of the reviewers is called Namrata and she is based in India. Delilah Dusticle and the Cursed Tempest is also set in India and I am pleased that Namrata has given the story her stamp of approval. “The author has managed to capture the essence and beauty of India as well as the heat! The descriptions of the transport systems, the train station etc were spot on. A delightful short story for fans of the series, this is a perfect book for young readers. It is easy to understand and is comparable on some level with the Faraway series and many others by Enid Blyton.” Namrata, Red Pillows You can read the review in full on Namrata’s book blog called Red Pillows by clicking here. This week I plan to set up some giveaways where you can win the all three books in the Delilah Dusticle series. I will post the details here as soon as I have everything up and running. I also plan to write the post for the library blog and share it here. It might even be two post. So those are my plans. I guess I better get started then. |
AuthorA.J. York is a middle grade and children's writer. Author of Delilah Dusticle, Eliza Bluebell and A Fairy Extraordinary Christmas Story. A.J York has a Swedish and British background and currently lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. Archives
December 2017
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