Tag: book release countdown

October 7th, 2016

Countdown to release day! 4 days to go (I know I missed yesterday and I apologize): What initially inspired me to write The Moon-Eyed Ones was my love for genealogy and the research I did on my own family. My maternal great-grandmother (my mother’s father’s mother) always spoke of our Cherokee ancestry, and for most of my life, I was proud to be Native. Well, with research and a DNA test, that Cherokee ancestry turned out to be Melungeon, a mixture of multiple heritages (ours includes Scots-Irish, West African, and Romani. We have a connection with the Powhatan tribe way back, but from my research, it only involves a marriage or two). Mixes like these are common in Melungeon families.

From this discovery, I got a story: a Melungeon boy encounters Cherokees on his adventures and tells them he is Cherokee because that was what he’d been told and so on. Well, the Cherokee girl he meets is skeptical, and thus begins an odd friendship between the two. Ironically, despite my protagonist being a fifteen-year-old boy, the history that inspired the story was mostly from the women of my family, so I decided to post some photos that fueled my creativity. (Side note: I also fell in love with the photos of Melungeon people by Doris Ulmann during my research, and if you have the time, look them up.)

The Moon-Eyed Ones will be released on Amazon on October 10th and the first three chapters are available on my website for free reading!
October 4th, 2016

Countdown to release day! 7 days to go: here’s another piece of art I did early on in the writing process when I was still fleshing out Silas’ character. One of the things he was self-conscious about was his hair, and as he mentions in the book itself that he looks like he’s “been struck by lightning repeatedly.” In the first drafts of the book, he had a penchant for hanging out in trees and had a bad habit of falling out of them (hence the bird and branches). Although he retreats to the trees in a few major scenes still, he keeps his feet on the ground more in the final draft.

The Moon-Eyed Ones will be released on Amazon on October 10th and the first three chapters are available on my website for free reading!
October 3rd, 2016

Countdown to release day! 8 days to go: In September of last year I visited Cherokee, North Carolina because I wanted to do some hands-on research for The Moon-Eyed Ones. When it comes to writing, I have a problem with developing my characters so much that they end up living in a vacuum of nothingness when it comes to the setting. In a blog post I did a while back, I said how important museums, particularly living history museums, can be to historical research for novels and otherwise. To me, this visit was crucial to my writing process and I will always recommend museum and on-site research to writers if they are able in order to flesh out their stories more and to help with worldbuilding. All photos are from The Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Oconaluftee Indian Village, and The Oconaluftee Visitor Center’s Mountain Farm Museum.

The Moon-Eyed Ones will be released on Amazon on October 10th and the first three chapters are available on my website for free reading!
October 3rd, 2016

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJM1wkiKVZM)

(This post is a day late…oops.)

Countdown to release day! 9 days to go: During the writing process for The Moon-Eyed Ones, I listened to mostly Appalachian folk and traditional Cherokee music to get a feel for the story. But if I was stuck in a rut and needed a kick in the pants, I went for modern pow-wow drumming and singing to get me hyped about a scene. This is one of my go-to songs, and despite it being Chippewa (Ojibwe) and not Cherokee, it definitely always got me psyched to keep going.

The Moon-Eyed Ones will be released on Amazon on October 10th and the first three chapters are available on my website for free reading!