My Friend Wrote a Book and I’m Hear to Tell You About It!

Is my title direct enough? LOL! I like to let you know what you’re getting into. I’m good like that.

But it is true. One of my young single friends co-wrote a fun book.  And by fun I mean it has mystery, intrigue, action…. Everything you’d want in a good fictional book.

It’s called Dismantled Aponlea and it’s book 1 of a trilogy. The second book is set to come out in November. I can hardly wait!

If you click the picture it will take you to the synopsis of the book. They describe it way better than I ever could.

But I will tell you this. I could hardly put it down. You find yourself getting wrapped up in the uniqueness of each character and each chapter brought it’s own mystery. There were surprises and plenty of intrigue, to keep me coming back for more.

I’m very proud of this young woman for perusing her dreams and seeing them come true. 

If you’d like to learn a little more about one of the authors I had a little question and answer time with her.

Here’s my little interview with Maria Mckessey.

1. Me: How did this story come about?

Maria: The character Kelly Johnson formed from my oversized imagination as a child. Her appearance was inspired by both the Pink Power Ranger and Mary Anne from The Baby-sitters Club movie, while her story spawned from my desire to live a life as cool as Nickelodeon’s Alex Mack. The mashup character I’d created could pretty much do anything, fly, turn invisible, walk through walls and practice telekinesis. It was no wonder I preferred watching her world over living in my own reality. Being only six years old I had no concept of what a consistent storyline looked like. I’d say the story started to actually develop around the age of eight or nine when Dane Morris came into the picture. He was this mysterious dark character who produced a forbidden romance. When he entered he bred the primitive details of Dismantled Aponlea. Suddenly, there was conflict, the dark bloodlines, the schernols, the idea of a hidden world that these people descended from.

2. How long did it take you both to write it?

Raeven and I met our freshman year of high school in 2003. We began collaborating on the story around 2006 and distributed a few chapters to our close friends. By then the story was still playing out in my head eleven years later and reached its conclusion on October 25th, 2006. After we graduated in 2008, I gave Raeven the story to do completely what she wanted with it. Her enthusiasm to take it on really reignited my excitement for the story again. She wrote about five or six chapters, I think. But the beginning of Dismantled Aponlea, as you now know it (it was called Achanis: The Kelly Johnson Saga), started in December of 2008. I was lying in bed in a rented room in Orlando, attending a professional makeup school at the time, and had a flood of visions come to me about the story and the direction it needed to go. I called Raeven immediately and shared everything with her and then we decided to write the book officially as co-authors. So, we spent about eight years working on it until we completed a draft we were excited to publish. It seems like such a long time, but now I see that it needed to take this long. We had plenty of time to grow and mature in ourselves and in our writing

3. Who is YOUR favorite author?

Okay, so this will sound strange being an author of a work of fiction myself, but I do not have a favorite fiction author and I’ve never read more than one book from a single fiction writer (Besides children book authors). Instead, my favorite author is Guy Deutscher, a linguist. Years ago, I picked up his book The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention and fell in love. I’ve read other language books, but his are my favorite. His other one Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages is very interesting. He just fascinates me with his understanding of languages. I love languages and history and cultures and that is why the culture of Aponlea is such a focus in the book. Raeven, on the other hand, is a fiction fanatic. She's usually musing about multiples authors, but the latest she's dubbed her favorite is Rainbow Rowell.

4. What can we expect in volume 2?

Now that Kelly knows her calling, she doesn’t hold back in pursuing it. You can see from the first volume that she is a determined individual, but in the second volume she learns to focus that determination towards a result that she feels the people of Aponlea need. There are a few surprises along the way and more information on some of the mysteries brought up the first time around. Some more questions are answered and some deeper ones raised. And even though the story isn’t over yet, I feel like the second volume leaves you more satisfied than the first. There’s more of a resolution and the question “what’s next?”. I think it gets you excited for the final chapter in the series. Oh and any one excited about Kelly and Dane’s relationship.

5. Who inspires you in your writing?

Raeven, my co-author, is definitely one of my inspirations in writing. I admire her style and know that she has influenced my writing since our working together. Usually the people who inspire my writing are the ones I know rather than authors I read or anything. Allison Jara is a friend whose writing I love. Her work is just so frank and I’ve always been someone who has written more metaphorically and like to conceal meanings. I think she’s challenged me to work more towards realism. Aside from those ladies I am a huge poetry fan and love Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.

So there you have it. I’m sure this book is geared for a younger crowd but I at my age actually enjoyed it very much.
I hope you are able to check it out.

HUGS!

Kim