by Ben Zackheim | Jan 9, 2013 | Shirley Link & The Hot Comic, Shirley Link & The Safe Case, Writing |
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Welcome to a New Year, my friends! This will be a good one with a number of Shirley Link books slated for release, including the next edition in the series, Shirley Link & The Treasure Chest! I can’t wait until you and your kids read this one. I’m really proud of it!
What better way to start the year than with a contest for kids? The holiday is over. The plastic stuff has been cast aside. What better way to refuel the soul, than with a book? By entering, you’ll be eligible to win both books in the Shirley Link series, in softcover. That’s right. Real paper and ink! I spent so much time on the print edition that my family probably wished I’d stuck with ebooks only! I’m glad I took the time, though. Seeing Robin’s art on the shiny cover for the first time was a moment I’ll always remember.
Shirley Link is a kids book series from the heart. I love writing about her. Thanks so much for supporting the books and spreading the word! Keep an eye open for an announcement about book #3 soon…
by Ben Zackheim | Dec 21, 2012 | Shirley Link & The Hot Comic, Shirley Link & The Safe Case, Writing |
Emily Neuburger over at Parents.com runs the Everyday Fun blog. She wrote about Shirley in a recent post, and it made my year!
“Shirley Link is a new girl detective series that my daughter is crazy about. This is an amazing series, my friends! Your kids will be hooked and you’ll feel realllllly good about it.”
I agree!
Seriously, though, I do craft the Shirley books to be fun reads for middle-grade kids and their parents. A family that reads together has a lot to talk about, after all. When parents and their kids look forward to a new book from a series, well, it just adds to the fun! Emily’s comment about feeling good that her kid likes something means a lot to me. My dream is to see Shirley inspiring kids around the world to love their intellect and to embrace their abilities for the common good.
Head on over to Emily’s blog and check it out. It has some really beautiful ideas and insights into the small things that can make your day. I’ve found it to be engaging this holiday season. It gets me jolly!
Read Emily’s post re: Shirley Link here.
by Ben Zackheim | Dec 14, 2012 | The Camelot Kids, Writing |
Did you know Merlin is 3276 years old? It’s true. In fact, today’s his birthday. He’s celebrating in his cave so he doesn’t have to listen to our nonsense.
Did you know Lancelot lived for hundreds of years and actually became really good friends with Merlin? They even built New Camelot together!
How about Excalibur? Who wields it now? The answer is one of these: A ghost. An elf. A dragon. None of the above. Yes, I cheated there.
All questions will be answered in The Camelot Kids, a four-part ebook series.
And you can get updates on the series through my newsletter (monthly, max). It’s packed with Camelot lore, concept art, sneak previews and contests. You can even win a role in an upcoming Camelot Kids book!
You can read some more about the ebook series below. Enjoy!
The Camelot Kids is a series that tells the story of Simon Sharp, 14. Simon isn’t a normal teenager. He’s a kid on a mission.
Simon is determined to find a family.
His archaeologist parents died two years ago in a plane crash while searching for King Arthur’s grave, leaving a bitter, wandering kid as their legacy. He hops from foster home to foster home, but passes most of his time stealing books for a street vendor and panhandling. One day, Simon sneaks into his old halfway house to visit the kindly Head of School, who’s on her death bed. He’s cornered and caught by the same bullies who’ve made his life hell for years.
To Simon, being back in the halfway house is like being in hell.
But when a letter arrives, informing him that he’s to stay with his estranged uncle in Scotland, Simon finds new hope. That hope is quickly dashed when the uncle turns out to be a creep.
Now Simon is miserable in another country. Not a big improvement.
One evening, while banished to his room for the night, Simon discovers a stairwell under his bed. He hates confined spaces but, out of spite for his controlling uncle, he takes the plunge into darkness. What Simon finds at the bottom is beyond anything he could have imagined. What he finds there is his future, wrapped in a past filled with magic, chivalry, King Arthur and Merlin.
The Camelot Kids is an epic story that allowed me to delve into how families fall apart and why so much of our strength and our goodness comes from our connection with others. By the end of writing the first book I knew I’d have the guts to push it out into the real world. I enjoyed the entire process so my assumption is that some of you may enjoy it too.
I’ll be releasing the first four 100-150 page books as ebooks, available on all platforms, including the old-fashioned dead tree platform in the shape of a softcover. Four ebooks will be released monthly, one after another starting in August, 2014. Then the series will be collected in a softcover in December, 2014!
So sign up for Ben’s Books newsletter. There’ll be excerpts from Books One to Four, book illustrations, concept sketches, contests and chances to be included as a character in a future book (don’t worry, you’ll be awesome, I promise). I’ll also offer up little known facts about King Arthur, Excalibur, Lancelot, Guinevere, Camelot, Mordred, Morgan Le Fay, you name it.
Join me at the start of The Camelot Kids. It’s going to be epic!
by Ben Zackheim | Nov 21, 2012 | Book Promotion, Writing |
How many moments do we miss? A joke told by a buddy with slashing panache that leaves you breathless. A month later you can’t even remember the setup, much less the punch line. Or the moment your six year old son uses the word “coincidentally” in a sentence and then looks up with the same eyes he had when he was a baby. Then later in the year you try to recall that word he spoke. And nothing. Nope. Lost to time, to the priorities that aren’t really important.
So at the moment, as I enjoy watching Shirley Link books climb the ebook charts (in the free category) I need to document it somewhere. Because next week I won’t recall this feeling of accomplishment, if I even recall it at all. Next week I’ll be back in the weeds.
But, for now, I have the #4 and #10 spots in Teen ebooks. #1 and 2 in Teen Mysteries.
by Ben Zackheim | Nov 9, 2012 | Opine, The Camelot Kids, Top Menu, Writing |
NOTE: This is the third post in a series,where I hope to capture the stress, heartache and rewards of writing a book with characters from the Camelot mythology. The title of my upcoming book is The Camelot Kids.
Catch up with part one and part two in this series for a complete picture.
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Writing is hard.
Writing about famous figures is harder.
Writing about Camelot is downright dangerous. The consequences of taking creative license with something that has Ivy League programs dedicated to it invites wrath that’s usually reserved for atheists writing about God. But, really, can you think of a more exciting hill to climb?
When I started researching The Camelot Kids, I’d never read any of the classic Arthurian tomes. I’d never seen the racy Excalibur flick or Disney’s Sword in the Stone. But somewhere along the line I’d become so familiar with the gist of the key characters that I spontaneously grew an appetite to consume their stories, old and new.
As I immersed myself in the myth of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table I’ve been struck by how familiar it is. Where did I ingest the story so deeply that I could tell you about Mordred or Morgan Le Fay? How could I recall the young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone? Why was Lancelot so burned into my mind’s eye?
When I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, I was surprised to find that it was good to see these old stalwarts, these staples of fantasy. It wasn’t quite the same as seeing a new Indiana Jones movie, or picking up a new Harry Potter, but it was still a tug at the heart which is the sole domain for old favorites.
But how could a myth that I’m unfamiliar with mean anything to me?
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by Ben Zackheim | Sep 20, 2012 | Book Promotion, Viral Juice |
Promote wisely (i.e. without Facebook Chat)
There are a lot of ways to use Facebook to promote yourself. Set up a product page for your book, run some polls, post some cool photos, arrange an event, interact with your fans. But Facebook Chat is an awful way to reach out. First of all, it’s unreliable. Secondly, few people use it on their computer to chat in real-time (though mobile is picking up speed). Most people (who know better) set themselves to invisible which means all chats are sent to the Message box. That may be fine for a quick ping. But if you catch someone online and try to chat up your new book with them they probably won’t appreciate it. The ambiance of Facebook is still one of arms-length. Even if you spend a lot of time on it, and feel fulfilled by it, most people use it to interact, but with some distance. Chat is too immediate for Facebook. I expect it will become even less prominent on their website as time goes on.
