The Legend Series Blog Tour: Day 5

Please welcome author L.F. Young as he continues his online blog tour for the enticing Legend Series! Today is Day 5 of the tour, and it's my pleasure to share these words of a very important character in Young's MG novels... Willie the Dragon. Be sure to check out the puzzle below, as well as the Morning Rain Publishing coupon which can be used for your book purchasing delight. And don't forget to enter the raffle! You could win book swag!

Hello everyone, and thank you Jessica for inviting me to say a few words on your beautiful blog. My name is Willie, and I am a dragon. That is to say, I was named Willie by Ryan. I didn’t have a name, back then. Ryan and I have grown to be close friends, and I have been asked to explain what my typical day is like. That’s a tough question for a real live dragon. I guess what I mean is, my day is a little bit boring compared to the stories most people think they know about dragons. I have never

burnt down a village. I actually can’t breathe fire, and I can’t fly, either, although apparently some of my ancestors did. Mostly, I live underground, and I keep out of sight during the day, asleep in my lair. I don’t think humans would understand my species, well, other than Ryan, of course. We liked each other right away.

Let me see… I can tell when night falls and it’s time to get up, even from underground. Ryan told me about time and clocks and watches, but I just use my nose to tell time. I wake up when the smell of the air in my tunnel system changes, and I know I won’t be spotted as I look for food. My favourite foods are what Ryan calls tomatoes, but I can only get good vegetables and fruit like that in the summer, and I am sure the farmer doesn’t mind. After all, the deer and rabbits get their fill, and I

don’t even leave a mess. I also like the red juicy things on trees that he called apples, and there are a lot of those trees nearby. I spend a long time eating as I go along the countryside under the cover of darkness. In fact, I eat for most of the night. The other thing I really like to do is swim in my winter feeding grounds: the ocean. There, I can have as much of the seaweed and plants as I want, and the bonus is I have never seen a human down where I go for meals. I am also a great swimmer, and I can stay submerged for a very long time. I have been to a lot of places in the world by travelling in the oceans, but New Brunswick is the best, and now that I have found a friend, I won’t be so lonely. I hope you like our story, and I know you will learn some pretty interesting things about the ocean and about nature all around us. I sure enjoyed this chance to talk to everyone. Thanks again, Jessica.

In 1995, Lockard Young started banging away at the computer, and before long he had completed five chapters of a book. Because the characters were named after his children, he thought it fitting to read the tale to them. Enthralled by the story, they demanded more and so Lockard wrote. The end result was a story entitled, Ryan’s Legend, and then its sequel, the Legend Returns. Two books were born, and so was a hobby.

A plumber by trade, Lockard lives with his wife in the countryside of rural New Brunswick. In addition to a number of stories he has “in the works,” Lockard also has an impressive poetry collection, inspired by his trip to South Africa.

                                                                                                                   Morning Rain Publishing

http://morningrainpublishing.com/project/ryans-legend/

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Learn about book cover design during tomorrow's Day 6 of the tour by visiting http://morningrainpublishing.com
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Creating a Book Club

As a child I didn't have a great variety of book outlets. For a short time a public library became available in my tiny, isolated community, but due to the great expense of shipping books back and forth, it's doors soon slammed closed. There was a large library in our school, though for some strange reason it was almost never utilized. I believe it was because the books needed fresh cataloging... All that to say, the people in my life who recognized my love for literature, my yearning for more of it, thankfully nurtured it in any way they could. My mother shared the novels of her youth with me, and read countless fairy tales by my bedside. My father allowed access to his collection of biographies and history books, despite their adult content. And my teachers shared the greatest works of fiction and fantasy, which were my favorite, and often purchased titles I inquired about.

I was fortunate.

Throughout the years of reading I longed for others like me. I wished to yarn about the fantastic worlds I discovered between pages with more than just the loving adults around me. They were great and all... but I was a kid!

There were of course a few friends who enjoyed reading as I did, but none were ever as consumed, dedicated, or (let's face it) obsessed, as I was. How much I would have loved a nerdy "and not ashamed of it" book club.

For this reason, I have decided to create a Middle Grade book group at my current place of work, Penson School. I introduce to you the I Love Books Club!

I want to make this club a space for any young book lover to feel at home in their passion for the power of words. This will not be your ordinary, sit around the table and be quiet, book group. I aim to reveal the energy behind the book lover's soul through vivid conversation, character charades, cover vs. content knuckle rounds, novel themed costume meets, and more! I can't wait to get started.

Another special feature I'd like to introduce to the I Love Books Club is a monthly Author Q&A or Meet and Greet event. These need not be face to face, but may be worked online through email, video, or by live Skyping. If you are a Middle Grade or Picture Book author interested in making a group of book fans very happy (as well as interested in your work) please get in touch.

Let's spread the book love! You can visit the I Love Books Club blog and keep up to date on what we're reading, what we're celebrating, and more, by clicking the link below. We'll be enjoying our first meeting this Tuesday!

Visit the I Love Books Club Blog

A Great Contest for Book Lovers

If you love reading, and winning stuff, check out this awesome contest Morning Rain Publishing is hosting.  This would make a great buddy, group, or solo project.

Make sure to share it with your friends!

The Wishing Stone on Gull Cliff Island

You've studied the photo to the left.  Have you figured out what it is you see?  Imagine it fitting in the palm of your hand, fragile, crumbling, yet strong.  Very old, yet once a child's.

Let me begin here...

An island can be seen a distance off the harbour of Harrington, Quebec.  It is small, and upon it quaint buildings like country houses in miniature sparsely dot its landscape.  Locals know the island as Gull Cliff, and many, if not most, have family members who once lived there during the warm, berry bright months of summer.  The island once housed a small community of fishermen and women with their families, who owned days filled with duties and hearts filled with pride.  But as time sped forward time changed, as did the faces of those who ran about the island's meshes and pussy willow fields.  Eventually the community it once housed dwindled.  Some homes were transported over ice or sea, while others remained to be kept for pleasure, for those leisure moments which suddenly were more prevalent than they had ever been before.

This time belonged to my mother and her siblings, to her parents and their friends.  She once roamed the secret folds of Gull Cliff's rock body.  And as I visited the island this summer, taking my novel which was written for those like her, I felt the ghost of her youth flitting about me, could almost hear her youth's laughter ringing upon the wind.

It was in fact a photograph of my mother and her sister on Gull Cliff which inspired the Wishing Stone's creation.  A black and white of a time nearly forgotten by some, unknown to many others.  It was with great pleasure I walked the hard ground of the island with my children of the West skipping and roaming alongside me.  There was a sense of knowing my story began there too, as did the tales of so many others of the Lower North Shore.  And I don't simply mean that island specifically, but those beginning lands, those places of the North Shore which were to begin what became a thriving faction.  There are many.

As I investigated an old building with a gentleman by the name of Bill Anderson, who once lived on Gull Cliff and now retreats there because the island continues to give him joy, I discovered it to be the oldest that remained on the island, over a hundred years.  And what moved my heart to new heights was knowledge that the hands of my great, great, great grandfather had built it, Thomas Strickland, of whom my youngest son had been named.

As we looked upon an unfolded strip of papers, hard because they'd been long ago worked with a flour mix (in replace of glue) and pressed upon the walls as wallpaper, I was reminded of how the ease of acquiring 'things' has drastically changed since Gull Cliff's time.  The strip had been saved for this purpose.  It was beautiful in all its simplicity, breathtaking for its age.

Stepping from my great grandfather's building, I saw my sister and her husband walking toward me.  Beside them our mother was beaming.  When we grew close a hand outstretched, and curled upon it sat a tiny, misshapen shoe.  A child's shoe, a girl's shoe, and it had been found upon the site where Mum's childhood home once stood.  Remember that photo above?

Who's shoe had it been?  We gazed upon it like a treasure, for it was that.  The possible stories behind it flooded into my mind, took me away on spread wings.  Some small child had greatly missed that one shoe I was sure, some time ago.  Might it have been Mum's?  Or her sister's?  Or perhaps it belonged to a curious visitor to a site where a remembered house was no more.  We wondered, and the shoe was kept.  It now sits with my sister in her Alberta home.

I think everyone left Gull Cliff that day feeling something special within them.  It is what revisiting history does to people.  That sense that you can almost touch a time past, can just about feel a spirit of old pull forward.  It's an odd thing and leaves one contemplating, feeling whole and yet empty all at once.

One thing is sure my family felt closer.  My father and mother were there, my sister and brother, their partners, their children.  My own husband and children too.  Could old great grumpa Tom feel us there?  Might he somehow be aware that his blood was then reaching out to him, thankful for the sweat he'd once spilled... for us?  We were.  We are.

The Wishing Stone and Other Myths: Learned on Gull Cliff Island, written in Alberta Canada, written about the Lower North Shore of Quebec, now understands its namesake.

The journey will never be forgotten.