With Halloween just around the corner, this is a good time to talk to a fantasy author. My guest today is author S. J. Carson, who has a new book out that sounds perfect for the season.
S.J., what do you enjoy about being an author?
My favorite part of being an author is that I get to live a second life through my writing. I love that I can escape my ordinary existence at any time by disappearing into a fantasy world that I created.
What advice do you have for beginning writers?
First, write what excites you, not necessarily what you think will be popular or what other people tell you that you should write. When you’re first starting out, write to please the most important audience you’ll ever have—yourself.
Second, be patient with yourself as you develop your craft; mastery doesn’t come overnight. Learn to be tolerant of failure and uncertainty. Not all your ideas will work out, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on your writing dreams.
Third, don’t compare yourself too much to other writers. While it’s okay to have high literary ambitions, of course, it’s not productive to beat yourself up over someone else’s success. In the wise words of Mary Schmich, “Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.”
Tell us about your road to publication.
From the time I was a child, I knew I wanted to be a published author. But it took a long time for me to get there. My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in creative writing with an emphasis on poetry. After many years as a poet, I decided to teach myself how to write fiction, and I completely fell in love with it. I also pursued a career in law, but I managed to find time between classes and in the evenings to work on my various fiction manuscripts.
In 2019, I began writing the manuscript that would become Aveline, my first published novel. The same year, I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Las Vegas, where I joined Sin City Writers Group (SCWG). When I finally finished the manuscript in early 2023, I began bringing it chapter by chapter to our weekly workshops. My fellow SCWG writers were instrumental in helping me develop the storyline and characters.
One writer, R.H. Bird, told me that his publisher, The Wild Rose Press, was seeking young-adult dystopian novels, and he encouraged me to submit my manuscript. Later in 2023, I was honored to receive a publishing contract for Aveline. The novel was just released on October 9, 2024, and is now available for purchase.
What is your book that you will feature today and how did you come up with the idea to write it?
Aveline is a dystopian adventure novel geared toward a young-adult (12-18) audience, but its themes of loyalty, friendship, and courage in the face of governmental oppression will appeal to readers of all ages.
The book centers on Aveline Fleur, a young heroine who will stop at nothing to save the ones she loves from a corrupt dictatorship—which happens to be run by her own family. When we meet her at the beginning of the story, Aveline has been relentlessly bullied, and she doesn’t think of herself as strong or brave. However, she begins to develop those qualities as she embarks on a journey that takes her far from home and immerses her in a world of danger.
The novel began as a short story that I started writing in 2012. The main characters were Allyn Fleur, the government’s propaganda minister, and her daughter Aveline. Allyn’s greatest ambition is to completely control their country, Alterra, and make the people bend to her will. Aveline, on the other hand, is a normal preteen who just wants to have fun with her friends and find her place in the world. She has no idea that her future teeters on a knife’s edge because of her mother’s evil plans.
The story was fun to write, but it didn’t have a very strong plot. I worked on it periodically over the years while trying to write other manuscripts. Then, in the beginning of 2019 while going through a stressful time at work, I decided that maybe this story could become a full-length novel. I liked its themes, and it had all the right ingredients to become a bigger narrative, so I decided to give it a shot.
What a great writing story! Let's get a blurb:
For thirteen-year-old Aveline Fleur, a child of Alterra’s ruling house, life is pretty much perfect. She attends private school, owns a horse, and lives on an enormous estate where she and her best friend Bruno run wild. But when she discovers that her family is involved in a sinister plot to brainwash people who speak out against the regime—and that Bruno and his mother are in danger—Aveline must summon the courage to save herself and her friends before it’s too late.
“Um, Elton?” Aveline called. “I think we missed our turn.”
She expected the driver to wink at her in the rearview mirror, as he always did, and tell her that his morning cup of coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.
But he was silent.
“Elton, you’ve got to turn around! I’m going to be late for school! If my mother finds out, she’ll have my head on a platter!”
In response, however, he pressed a button that drew a blackout shade across the glass partition between them.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
But that was not all. The safety locks clicked shut. She tugged at the handle of the door closest to her seat but couldn’t open it. She slid to the other door. Exactly the same.
She scurried to the front of the passenger compartment, where she knelt on the seat and knocked on the partition.
“Elton!”
No answer. As she turned to the window to see where they were, and where they were headed, she found that she could not. All the windows, which were tinted to begin with, quickly turned opaque. How was that even possible from the press of a button?
Her stomach plummeted like an elevator in freefall. It was now so dark inside the compartment that she couldn’t even see her own hand in front of her face. She felt around the door for the power window controls, but when she found the correct buttons and pressed them, the windows wouldn’t budge. With both fists, she banged again on the partition.
“Elton, can you hear me? Please . . . stop the car! Let me out!”
When he didn’t reply, she began to panic. Like a trapped animal, she pounded on the windows and doors, groped frantically around the compartment for something she could use to break the glass. From her backpack she dug out a heavy textbook and threw it against one of the windows, but it merely bounced off and tumbled to the floor.
Of course the glass won’t break. These windows are bulletproof.
She even tried pulling down the backseat, hoping she could crawl into the trunk and escape from there. But the heavy leather seat wouldn’t budge. Her breathing quickened, and cold sweat dripped from under her arms and down her sides.
This is the punishment Uncle Simon was going to “think on” last night.
Surely Simon had bribed the driver. Or . . . maybe Elton was working for the Stam. Kindly old Elton, who would have punched the bullies in the nose if she’d asked him to. She never would have suspected him of being in the Stam’s pocket. Then again, she wouldn’t have suspected her uncle or her mother of disappearing people either.
Everyone’s loyal until they’re not.
Wow! Aveline sounds like an exciting read! Its buy links can be found below along with S.J.'s contact information.
S.J., what’s your next project or what are you working on now?
Right now, I’m working on my second book, Third Moon. I like to describe it as Brave New World meets Gattaca, with a dash of Bridgerton.
Third Moon is set on the planet Ceres X, where each citizen is assigned a “genetic fitness score” at birth that cannot be changed, thus creating a rigid class system. What happens when Kat, a young woman from the lowest class, falls for Cynfael, a young man from the highest? Can they overcome the obstacles in their path to love, or will societal expectations tear them apart?
Aveline Buy Links:
Full list of buy links: https://wildrosepress.com/product/aveline/
Social Media Contact Information:
Author Website: https://sjcarson.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216994105-aveline
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorsjcarsonofficial/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sjcarsonauthor
Twitter/X: x.com/SJCarsonAuthor
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