Writing historical fiction for young readers?

Do you write historical fiction for youngsters? Want to share your writing with young readers online? Or maybe you just want to read the work of others online. Wattpad is a site that allows you to browse the work of newbie and published writers. It contains work in all genres, including historical fiction, with a special appeal to young readers (teens). For the published writer, Wattpad might be a place to increase sales if you post a chapter and then include a link to the title in an e-store. Then a reader could go to the link and purchase your book.

The site is free, but you must create an account to use it. I was able to create an account via Facebook. I plan to use this site as a reader in order to discover what young people are reading and writing in the genre of historical fiction. I think an exploration of the material on Wattpad will inform me as I create my own historical stories for young readers.

Has the internet killed reading books?

Because I teach in the English Dept. of a large Midwestern University, I am surrounded by people who love to read books—students and faculty.  Therefore, I am always puzzled when folks lament that no one reads books anymore because information on the internet is both pervasive and ubiquitous.  As a reader of books and a writer of them, the idea of the internet replacing books for reading pleasure gives me pause. You probably feel the same.

Thus, I was interested to read this article from The Atlantic, “The Next Time Someone Says the Internet Killed Reading Books, Show Them This Chart.” Of course, the study is a little skewed, as the author of the article acknowledges, but still.  Makes me feel better. How about you?

Send personal documents to your Kindle Library

I have completed a first draft of a historical manuscript and have let it sit long enough so that I can look it over with a fresh eye.  I could print it out of course, but I am a big fan of the Kindle as a reading device.  I also have a Kindle app on my iPad and iPhone, so I can read my Kindle collection anywhere, anytime. So how to get my Word manuscript to my Kindle device?

Send to Kindle is a free Windows program from Amazon that lets you send a document from your computer to your Kindle Library.  First, you install Send to Kindle on your computer.  Then when you click on a saved document, you have an option to “send to kindle” so that you can read it on your mobile device.  That is what I did with my story draft, and I was able to read through the ms without having to sit at my desk to read it on the computer screen.

Literature Map

I happened across an interesting website one day last week called Literature Map: A tourist map of literature.  When you go to the site, you type in the name of a writer, and the site develops a word map of other authors who write books similar to the author whose name you entered into the search box.  The site is useful for finding writers in a particular genre or who write in a particular style that you write. So, for example, if you type in “Hemingway,” you get a word map that includes Salinger, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Eggers and Wilde, among others. All are writers found in the literary canon, in this case.

I typed in my own name just for fun. The site didn’t recognize me.  No surprise there.  But when I clicked “yes” to the prompt “are you sure of the spelling?” the site added me to the database for “suggest a new writer.”  So that’s something.  Site visitors are then asked to vote to include writers in the database.  I’ll be curious to see the literature map the site creates for me as a writer of historical fiction, won’t you?  That is, if I win the election.

Bookshelves

Recently my publisher decided to forego the publishing of print books for eBooks.  It is cheaper I suppose, and technology enables readers to download reading material instantly. My last book was published as an eBook, in fact.  All of my print books are now available as eBooks.  It makes me a little sad to think that I will never be able to hold one of my books in my hands again.

Although I own a Kindle and an iPad on which I have downloaded many books, I do prefer to hold a paper book in my hands.  I like the smell of the ink and the way the pages feel.  I like the sound of those pages when I turn them. I like to organize them on my bookshelves at camp, and I like the way the colors of the covers brighten the room. 

You can see my bookshelf here.

When I am visiting others folks’ homes, I like to explore their bookshelves to see what they like to read. That’s why I was delighted to find a website called Breathing Books devoted to showcasing photographs of other readers’ bookshelves. Call me old fashioned.

Here is the link for bookshelf voyeurs: http://breathingbooks.tumblr.com/