Thank you Kirby Larson for the invitation to write for your blog, Friend Friday! This appeared on November 25, the day after Thanksgiving. As I wrote it, I realized that I have a lot to be thankful for!

Friend Friday

Thank you Kirby for the opportunity to share my thoughts, books, and—well—life with your wonderful followers. We writers don’t always get a chance to talk about our craft, and when we do it’s like exhaling a breath we’ve been holding onto for a while. It’s a relief and a pleasure.

I started my writing career as a publisher/editor of small local magazines. As rewarding as that was, there seemed to be something missing. Twenty years later, I found what I was looking for—writing fiction. Not just any kind of fiction. Mysteries and the paranormal was what I really wanted to write. And it had to be for kids, not adults.  Because, not only are kids cool, but all the psychics (or intuitives as they prefer to be called) that I’d interviewed over the years had major issues dealing with their gifts when they were kids. They pretty much wanted them to go away. They just wanted to be normal. And so, the Zoey Christopher mystery series was born.

Zoey is a typical teenager with one exception—she often has visions. Sometimes visions from the past, and sometimes visions of disastrous events before they happen. As much as she’d like to ignore these visions, she feels obliged to do whatever she can to change things for the better.

In Haunted Echo, the first book of the series, Zoey is on vacation on a Caribbean Island with her best friend, Becca, when she encounters a ghost—a former slave who lived in the mid 1800s. Tempe, the young slave-ghost asks Zoey to help her. Zoey’s visions of past events help Tempe understand what happened to her and why she seems stuck in the earthly realm. I based this fictional story on some of the experiences of an intuitive friend that I’d interviewed.

In Fireworks, the newly released second book of the series, Zoey’s visions tell her that her best friend is in trouble. But when she calls, Becca is fine. It isn’t until Becca disappears that Zoey realizes that she’s been kidnapped and it’s up to her to save Becca—with the help of Dan, the new guy who has the gift of seeing auras. Dan’s character is based on a young teen I’d interviewed who had this gift. He hated being different and tried his best to keep this a secret from his peers, making him somewhat of a loner. Dan would probably have suffered the same fate if he hadn’t met Zoey. Ah, yes. Young love prevails. I’m not sure I could write a novel that doesn’t have at least a hint of romance in it!

When I write I keep two objectives in mind. The first is to entertain. Kids today have too many outlets (i.e. social media) to give any book their attention unless they find it entertaining. I’ve found through school visits and feedback from my readers that ghosts and visions keep their interest. Secondly, if just one gifted child’s life is made easier because of my series, all the time and effort put into writing them would be more than rewarding.

Writing is a joy for me, as it is for my many writer friends, especially the ones in my critique group. I am so grateful for them and for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). If any aspiring writers of children’s literature is reading this blog, I can’t express strongly enough the benefits of joining this society and of finding a group of writers that you can share your work with. The rewards are in the sharing, not only with your readers, but with your writing peers. Best of luck to all of you.

 Original post can be found at: http://www.kirbylarson.com/friend-friday-125/

Books and Cupcakes

Thank you Word Spelunking for this fun interview.

http://wordspelunking.blogspot.com/2017/07/interview-and-giveaway-janet-mclaughlin.html

FIREWORKS Cover Reveal

 

A hot new boy in town with a powerful gift and a best friend in danger will have Zoey and readers seeing "fireworks!" Book available soon! http://absolutelovepublishing.com/fireworks/

Why I Use My Craft to Create Goodness

Do you remember the thrill of reading your first book? I do. It was one from The Bobbsey Twins series. I can still remember the feel of it. The smell of it. Reading that book set something free inside of me. Even at that very young age, I knew. The knowledge of the world was available to me. All I had to do was find the right books.

That same feeling came over me in my early twenties when a chance comment set me in search of information on Edgar Cayce, the Sleeping Prophet. I knew instinctively that this was a path I needed to explore. In the following decades, I moved from Cayce to Jane Roberts, to Wayne Dyer, to Deepak Chopra, to Lee Carroll, and others. I personally interviewed several psychics, or intuitives as most prefer to be called. Their stories were inspirational and sometimes chilling.

After years of research, I had a cache of knowledge that I wanted to share. I also was aware that, starting around the early 1990s, the children who were being incarnated into our world changed. They were savvier, more skeptical, and less malleable. Many were coming in with abilities that frightened them or made them feel “different.” In fact, those were the most common themes I found with the intuitives that I interviewed—fear and isolation.

I wanted to use the knowledge I’d accumulated over the years to help these special kids to feel more comfortable about who they are. To see that they aren’t alone. That’s when I decided to write a novel about a gifted teen who felt isolated in her world because she was different. A girl who eventually learned to share her secret with close friends and to use her gifts to help others. That was the birth of The Soul Sight Mysteries series.

Finding Absolute Love Publishing was the Universe’s gift to me. Working with like-minded women who “get” what I am trying to do; who don’t try to change the essence of my story but instead work to enhance it; whose underlying message—“to create and publish projects promoting goodness in the world”—is so in sync with mine. Together, I believe, we are creating an opportunity for the children who read my books to not only have hours of enjoyment losing themselves in the world of Zoey Christopher but also to learn that helping others is rewarding in and of itself. And, maybe, even realize that being different isn’t so bad after all.

This post first appeared on the Absolute Love Publishing Company Website.  http://absolutelovepublishing.com/why-i-use-my-craft-to-create-goodness-by-janet-mclaughlin/