YA Weekend: Review of Lumière and New Author Spotlight: Jacqueline Garlick

Lumière by Jacqueline Garlick

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Series: Book 1 of Illumination Paradox

Publisher: Amazemo Books (December 3, 2013)

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Mogsy's Rating: 4 of 5 stars


I thought Lumière was fantastic, so much so that I read the whole book in a day. Some parts even made me want to give this one a 4.5 or 5 stars, simply because for an independently published Young Adult novel I thought this was really impressive.

As you know, I'm a pretty picky reader when it comes to the YA category, plus I don't always jump on board with self-pubs or indies. Still, this book's description drew me in when it was brought to my attention; something about the story just struck the right tune with me. Right away, I knew I had something good when the prologue opened with an introduction to the heroine Eyelet (what a charming name!) at age eight at the time, looking upon a brass mechanical steam-powered elephant at a carnival. What else will I find in this world?

Fast forward to the first chapter and we see Eyelet as a seventeen-year-old, nine years after that fateful day at the carnival where a mysterious flash lit the skies and changed the world. Troubled by occasional seizures and desperate to hide her illness from the authorities, Eyelet is determined to hunt down the Illuminator, a fantastical machine that was invented years ago by her brilliant scientist father. The machine may be her only chance to cure herself, but first she has to find it before her father's old nemesis gets to it first.

Jacqueline Garlick made it easy for me to root for her characters by giving them such endearing and energetic personalities. Not far into the story we get to meet Urlick Babbit, the young man who unwittingly rescues our heroine as she escapes capture from her enemies. The poor guy had no idea what he was in for! Even with Eyelet and her total disregard for other people's privacy or some of the churlish questions that spills out of her mouth, I couldn't help but find myself amused by the dynamics between these two, as something deeper begins to develop between them. I also like that they're not a conventional couple. Eyelet has her nettlesome qualities and Urlick isn't your usual drop-dead gorgeous Prince Charming, having experienced injuries during his birth that marred his appearance. I found their relationship very unique and refreshing.

Again, I just can't get over how rich the setting is. It's an original world packed with amazing qualities, flavored with a healthy dose of magic and steampunk. Here and there you will find all sorts of quirky mechanical creations and bizarre creatures -- some that are helpful like Eyelet's ravens, others that aren't so friendly like the zombie/ghoul-like Turned. There's also a good chunk of the book where Eyelet is holed up at Urlick's place, trapped there because of the dangerous Vapours storms, where she discovers all sorts of gadgets and other wonky inventions designed and constructed by the strange boy. Even though this section was a slower break from the action, I was kept interested, never knowing what Eyelet would find next in Urlick's hideout.

I very much appreciated the nice blend of fantasy with the action-adventure elements of this one. And I was honestly surprised with the quality of the writing and storytelling; whatever polish it requires is very minimal, and as a whole the story was presented exceptionally well and flowed naturally. I wouldn't have devoured this book so quickly if it hadn't, and certainly the fun factor of the plot didn't hurt. I knew I was hooked when as soon as I finished the book, I went online and checked if there was an estimated release date for the next book. Alas, it won't be for a while yet, but definitely something to look forward to.

A review copy of this book was provided to me by the author in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Jacqueline Garlick!

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New Author Spotlight: Jacqueline Garlick

Jacqueline was nicknamed “Little Erin” (as in Erin Brockovich) after she took on her school board over being placed in black toxic mould and, well...lost. BUT if she hadn't lost, she's still be teaching with no time for writing, which would be the real tragedy because more than anything else in the world Jacqueline loves to write.

What are your favorite books and how have they influenced your writing? 

 My favourite books are many, but I'll talk about a few that have really stuck with me here. First, I'd have to say, CRANK by Ellen Hopkins really changed the way I looked at storytelling. The fact that she could tell a such a poignant and moving story in so few words, and in such free flowing verse, opened up a whole new world for me as a writer. It was like she gave me permission to experiment with methods of expressing my characters voices, including breaks from prose into enjambment, which I absolutely love. Another book that is not only a favourite but has enriched my craft is WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. I fell instantly in love with the main character, an old man in a nursing home, flashing back to his life when he was young, and found myself cheering for him to the final page. I read it once, then read it again, dissecting the author's technique in order to better understand what went into the character that I loved so much, and why. Lastly, I really enjoyed DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE, by Laini Taylor. I just loved that book and everything about it. From the absolutely beautiful writing, the author's wonderful sense of balance between descriptive prose and informative verse, to the battery of unique and compelling characters, and the fantastical, twisty, dreamy plot. Not to mention the romance. A double romance, actually. To me, reading this book was like working me way through a box of fine candy, savouring every piece along the way.

What authors have inspired you?

As mentioned above, Ellen Hopkins has been incredibly instrumental in inspiring me. Ellen is an incredibly talented and generous writer and human being. Ellen is very supportive of new, up-coming writers, offering one of the finest writing mentor programs in America. I had the great fortune or participating in her program, which not only taught me how to write, but helped to educate me about the industry. Other writers who have inspired me are Rumer Godden, Lori Lansens, Anne Sewell. Lori Lansens, is from my hometown, and a former high school friend. Walking through the bookstore one day I came across her book, Rush Holme Road, on the shelf. That was the moment that I believed it was possible or me to succeed as a writer, after all, my friend had. :)

Describe your writing process. How do you handle writer’s block and other challenges?

My writing process consists of the creation of a first draft, as quickly as I can, whereby I just allow myself to write and my creativity to flow without stopping to worry about errors, followed by at least three solid passes whereby I focus on certain aspects of the draft. For example, I usually do a pass for the 'big ticket items' I call them. During this pass, I look for holes in the plot, concerns of believability, inconsistency in character, that type of thing. The second pass I concern myself with grammar and spelling. And in my final pass, I 'build character', meaning, I go through the manuscript and search for places where I can 'warm' up the character's personalities, making dialogue richer and emotion deeper, in an effort to better bring the characters to life on the page.

What are your future writing plans?

Well...I'll be working on the second book in THE ILLUMINATION PARADOX SERIES, NOIR, of course, but I also plan to release a new three part serial, entitled IF ONLY..., to tide readers over until I'm able to do Book Two justice. The first installment of IF ONLY... should be available by the end of March 2014. IF ONLY... is a contemporary, coming of age mystery/romance, featuring Kyla and Denver and their heart-wrenching story of love and devotion after a tragic accident leaves Denver incommunicable. Or so doctor's think. In addition to that I have plans to write a New Adult contemporary romance, entitled THE HEARTMENDERS SOCIETY, where we meet twenty-three year old, chronically disorganized, Maizy Mosley on her quest to straighten out her life--one man at a time. To hear about any of these new releases (and participate in fantastic launch contests) readers can keep up with me at: www.jacquelinegarlick.com. And to be the first to hear about up-coming releases, and gain access advanced chapters and other special perks, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter!

New Author Spotlight: Daniel Hope

Co-founder and now Managing Editor of the online Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine, Fiction Vortex, Daniel recently self-published his first novel, a science fiction gem called The Inevitable (see my review here).

1. What are your favourite books and how have they influenced your writing?
This probably comes as no surprise, but I'm a real sucker for science fiction. I love old Asimov stories, even when they don't held up too well over the years. A constant influence is Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because I find myself gravitating back to it every year or two. Great concepts really draw me in, too. So stuff by Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson, James S. A. Corey, and plenty of others get my attention regularly.

2. What authors have inspired you?
As I mentioned above, Douglas Adams has made a huge impression on me, just because of how effortless his writing feels. Terry Pratchett was another early influence. (I have a thing for British humor apparently). William Gibson also had a huge influence on me because he can make a strange world feel so real.

3. Describe your writing process. How do you handle writer’s block and other challenges?
If I had to choose a single word to describe my writing process, it would probably be "disjointed." I'm easily stumped by a story, and I feel like the only way to work through it is to break my routine. So I have a half dozen notebooks, half a billion different word processor files, and sheets and sheets of scribbles scattered about. I write on the train, in a cafe, on my bed, just about anywhere but at my desk to get the juices flowing. This makes for a huge problem when it's time to pull everything together, but it seems to work.

4. What are your future writing plans?
I've got another science fiction novel in the works, although it's a completely different setting and tone than my first novel. I don't know what will happen after that, but I can guarantee it will involve words.

New Author Spotlight: Ramsey Isler

Ramsey Isler has figured out how to keep himself busy, balancing his professional techiness and column writing with his many novel writing projects. Somewhere in there he also finds time to blog about the geekier things in life, publishing and more.

1. What are your favourite books and how have they influenced your writing?
When I was 12 years old, I committed to reading Stephen King's The Stand during my summer break from school. My much older brother had read it and I decided, as little brothers often do, to take interest in the same things he liked. The Stand is a massive book at around 1200 pages (I read the uncut edition), and to my twelve-year-old self it was the equivalent of trying to scale a mountain. But I did it. I'm sure many would question whether King's graphic tales are "appropriate" for a kid that age, but I was mature enough to understand and enjoy the way King created a realistic fantasy (and the nightmares only lasted a couple days; no problem). That book really started my interest in writing and reading contemporary fantasy.

As a bona fide geek and engineer by training, I've also always been a fan of sci-fi. Shortly after college I really got into the Star Wars expanded universe novels, and discovered a book called Traitor by Matt Stover. Most people probably wouldn't expect something as seemingly trivial as a Star Wars story to have a huge impact on a writer's life, but this one really changed the way I write. It was more than a sci-fi story — it was filled with complex, mature philosophy and raw emotion. The plot focuses on Han and Leia’s son Jacen, a young Jedi trying to find his place in the universe as he struggles with reconciling his Uncle Luke’s teachings with a violent and cruel alien enemy. Jacen eventually becomes an unwilling student of Vergere, an avian alien who was a member of the Old Jedi Order back before Palpatine took over. She takes Jacen on a far different spiritual path than his Jedi teachings ever did — a journey that deals in many moral gray areas — and she does so through remarkably cruel tutelage. Throughout the book, you’re never quite sure what her motives are, but there’s a definite method to her madness. In the end, Vergere is on the side of the protagonists, but it's not clear if you can call the protagonists the "good" guys, or if the antagonists are really the "bad" guys. It's all a matter of perspective, and each character has elements of both light and dark. That book has become my guide for writing stories that go beyond simple black and white morality tales. I strive for something more thought-provoking instead.

2. What authors have inspired you?
As mentioned above, King and Stover definitely had an impact on me. Although King is often classified as a horror writer, he really is a master of many types of speculative fiction and he's done some remarkable work in my favorite genres. The Dark Tower series is another of my inspirations.

Neil Gaiman has also been a big influence through what he does beyond his novels. He is a remarkable speaker and a wise tutor with plenty of practical advice that has guided my writing career.

Maya Angelou has been an inspiration since I was in grade school, but I came to appreciate her work more as I grew older. Her work taught me that you can say something extremely profound with only a few words. There's an art to telling a big story in small passages. Her poetry provides many lessons on efficient storytelling.

3. Describe your writing process. How do you handle writer’s block and other challenges?My writing process is very cinematic (in my mind, at least). All my stories start out as cool ideas that I envision as "scenes" in my head. Then I develop these major scenes in the manner of a theatrical director choosing a setting, moving set pieces around, and guiding the actors to deliver the best performance. Then, once I have a series of juicy scenes that encompass the main plot points, the rest of the story develops organically from them. I very rarely know what a story will be from beginning to end when I start writing. It all develops during the process of coming up with these scenes and connecting them to each other.

I don't really get writer's block in the sense of not knowing what to write next. My writing challenges come when I know exactly what I want to say, but I have to ensure that it all make sense and fit in with other parts of the story. I despise plot holes, and I really dislike speculative fiction where elements aren't explained adequately or the rules of the world aren't consistent. But I also understand why so many writers are guilty of these things, because it is HARD. It's hard to create fantastical worlds and fill them with believable characters, events, and inventions that just intuitively make sense to the reader without having them think too much about it. Much of writing is actually about thinking, and the most difficult parts of my writing come when I just have to sit down and hash out all the logical and factual issues with a part of my story. It can take a lot of time, but the story always comes out better because of it.

4. What are your future writing plans?I'm currently finishing up my new novel, Clockworkers. Here's the plot in a nutshell: an entrepreneurial young woman inherits a special gift from her father - an elf. She puts him to work building products for her luxury watch company, but she soon discovers that there are certain dangers involved with employing elves. The book puts a brand new perspective on elf tales. The European-based work of Tolkien and the Grimms dominate what we think of as "elves", even though almost every culture in the world has some sort of native folklore about mystical little people. Part of my motivation for writing Clockworkers was to show a more diverse elf cast, but I also just love creating modern folklore, and elves are a topic I've always wanted to explore and reinvent. Plus, I always wanted to write "scary" elves; there's always a tiny bit of Stephen King in my writing.

I'm also working on a sci-fi novella. This one is about video games, artificial intelligence, death, and what happens when all three collide. Look for it on digital book stores in Summer 2013.

There's also an impending sequel to my second novel, The Ninth Order. Sequels can be tough to write, and I want to spend a lot of time getting this one right, so it probably won't be out until next year. But so far it's proving to be very fun to write, and that usually means it will be very fun to read too.

New Author Spotlight: B.J. Keeton

B.J. Keeton is a writer, blogger, gamer, teacher, and a lover of all things sci-fi. He is the author of Birthright, the first book of the Technomage Archive which I recently read and enjoyed (you can see the review here!), as well as co-author of Nimbus, described as a serial steampunk novel for people who don't know they like steampunk, as well as being steampunk for those who already love steampunk! Today, we are happy and excited to feature B.J. for our New Author Spotlight!

What made you want to become a writer?

I wanted to become a writer because I've always loved stories. I loved it when I was a kid and my parents told me stories before bed. I'd make them read and re-read my favorite ones over and over again, and I'd just laugh at the same jokes over and over again because I just loved them so much. As soon as I could hold a pencil, I was marking up old, blank journals lying around the house with squiggly lines and saying I was writing Spider-man short stories, and then I'd read those to my parents (they were different each time, of course). That love of hearing people's stories and telling my own never really left, so I guess that's why I wanted to become a writer. I really do just love stories.

What are your favorite books and how have they influenced your writing?

I love fluff. I think I'm breaking some kind of English teacher rule by saying that, but I love fluff way more than I love the classics. I've always loved fun, silly, and pulpy books--media tie-ins were the best. Dragonlance novels, Star Wars books, even graphic novel adaptations and movie novelizations. I just couldn't get enough. So with my writing, I look at it very much the same way. I don't purposefully add in tons of subtext or literary themes. If they're there, great. If readers find something to latch onto, awesome. But I'm a fun story and fluff guy, and I think it came from reading so much of that when I was younger.

Which authors have inspired you?

Oh, man. All of them? Maybe? I guess if I had to boil it down to a few authors, Stephen King would be at the top of the list because reading him really helped me understand the economy of language. Same goes for Hemingway. Teaching Hemingway to my students has honestly helped me as a writer because he says only what is necessary and nothing more. Like everyone else in my genres, I'm probably somehow contractually obligated to say I was inspired by Tolkien's worldbuilding. Reading Tobias Buckell's Nascence gave me the kick I needed to get my first pro-rate short story sale (and to actually go ahead with the Kickstarter for Birthright after seeing his leap of faith regarding The Apocalypse Ocean). And probably most recently, Brandon Sanderson. The man's a machine, and if I can one day be half the writer and worldbuilder he is, then I'll be doing okay.

Describe your writing process. Where do you get your ideas?

I give myself a daily/weekly quota, and I meet it. No questions asked. I try for 2,000 words a day, or 10,000 words a week when I'm in the middle of a project. If I'm planning or editing, I make goals for that--I get X chapters planned out or edited by the end of the week. By having concrete goals and deadlines, I have something to hold myself accountable to.

As far as getting ideas, where don't I? I don't know the answer to that, really. I see something that reminds me of something else, and I think "That'd make a fun story." Most people say they have to wait for inspiration to strike, while my problem is exactly the opposite. I have a hard time focusing enough on a single project or idea to actually finish it. I tend to have so many ooh, shiny moments that I'm always in the process of coming up with an idea that would probably be workable if I ever have the time to sit down with it.

Do you ever get writer’s block? What other challenges have you come across?

No, never. I don't actually believe in writer's block (plus, like I said above, I think I have Idea ADD). I'm a big proponent of the butt-in-chair writing style, where you put your butt in a chair until you write something. If you're having trouble, you just write through the hard parts and go back and fix what needs fixing later. Honestly, I also think it helps me that I see writing as craft more than art. The more you do it, the better you get at it, and the less mysterious it becomes. To me, the idea of writer's block mystifies everything too much, like there's something out of your control that's staunching your productivity. Some days are harder than others, but as far as major blocks, nah. Pound out the words, I say.

What are your future writing plans?

Well, I'd love to make this my day job. So as far as long-term plans go, that's what I'm working toward. But given that's just a tiny bit uncontrollable, I figure I ought to keep myself busy. First off, I intend to finish out The Technomage Archive with two more books (Lineage and Legacy). Austin and I have toyed around with Nimbus sequel ideas, but we don't have anything concrete planned out. I've got a couple of ideas for novellas I want to work on (maybe even between the last two Technomage books), and a hard SF literary novel called Where Angels Fear To Tread that I've started doing research for. I'd also love to do a superhero/detective series about a character with a name I can make puns on. I've always wanted to be that guy, you know?

So future writing plans? I guess it boils down to just "I plan to write." A lot. As much as I can stand and as much as people will read, honestly!

New Author Spotlight: Robert Evert

By day, Robert Evert wields the mighty forces of education as a university professor. Outside of the classroom, he's busy spending time with his wife, two sons, his pets and his imaginary friends. Oh and neurotically writing, of course! His first novel is Riddle in Stone, a book I recently enjoyed, and Robert is in the spotlight for our new blog feature!

What are your favourite books and how have they influenced your writing?
Well, Tolkien gave me a love of reading and fantasy! He really changed my life. Not just in terms of writing, but emotionally as well. I was a very lonely and shy kid growing up. In high school, I found a group of friends who also loved his work. We still interact with today.

In terms of books that influenced my writing, I have to say that Stephen King’s On Writing really helped the most. I honestly couldn’t have gotten published without reading it over and over again.

If there’s anybody out there who wants to become published, I recommend that they get King’s book!!

What authors have inspired you? 
Tolkien far more than anybody else. Tolkien’s Middle Earth is so rich, it’s as if you can go there and walk around. You can smell the pipe smoke in the Prancing Pony and feel the sun on your face as you drift along the Anduin. It really is magical. I wish that I could write that well!

Describe your writing process. How do you handle writer’s block and other challenges?
You know, I really don’t get writer’s block. Knock on wood! I think the reason is that I don’t see myself as “writing.” I see myself as “recording.” The characters all belong to themselves. I just sit there and write down what they do and say. That keeps the pressure to perform to a minimum. I have no clue what is going to happen or who is going to pop in. I just keep typing.

In fact, my novel, Riddle in Stone, wasn’t going to be a novel. It was just a fun writing activity. Every day, I wrote for fifteen minutes or so about this odd guy named Edmund. I had no idea who he was or what he wanted. I just let him walk out of his front door and things happened to him.

To me, that’s the process. You have a group of characters and you just let them do what it is they need to do. I don’t try to make them create a story for me. I don’t have an ending in mind. I just watch and record. It’s amazing how many times they surprise even me! Boy! I probably sound insane, don’t I?

What are your future writing plans?
Well, if Riddle in Stone sells well enough, I want to keep writing about my main character—Edmund. My publisher (Diversion Books) has asked for a second book, Betrayal in the Highlands, and says it’ll be released in August. Fingers crossed!!