This Friday, Jan. 22 @ 5:30 PCT (that’s 8:30 Eastern), please join me via Zoom for a reading from my YA novel Altitude. Authors Kip Greenthal and Laurie Parker will follow. Thanks to Nikyta Palmisani for organizing this event, “Hygge in the Heart”! See you there in your little Zoom square!
For a novelist with a blog, I gotta say, I RARELY blog about my novels. But watching some eagles wheel in the sky the other day, it hit me: could there be better binge-reading during a national lockdown than a trilogy about someone who can FLY?
So The Flying Burgowski is written for young adults. Even better! Now you can escape Earth’s quotidian clutches AND get back in touch with your inner teenager.
Who hasn’t yearned to fly?
On Dalby Island in Washington, Jocelyn Burgowski is turning fourteen, and life sucks. Her mom’s an alcoholic. Her dad just re-married; her brother is a butt. Only Jocelyn’s flying dreams keep her going: they seem so real!
Then, on her birthday, those dreams come true.
Learning her new powers in secret, Joss revels in the freedom we all long for. But when she and her brother are sent to live with Mom, Jocelyn is faced with a choice. Must she sacrifice her powers to save her mother? Does she have the strength to heal the damage caused by secrets of the past?
Or maybe you’ve been living in close quarters with said teens (or any children, age 11 and up) and they’ve read everything in the house, including the labels on your cleaning products? Great! Gift ’em my series…and yourself with the bliss of uninterruption.
What if someone hated you just for who you are?
On tiny Dalby Island, fourteen year-old Jocelyn Burgowski has a hidden enemy. Her flying power is no longer joyous and free—somebody wants to bring the Flyer down. But can Joss fight a force she doesn’t understand? Can she protect her powers without revealing her secret? And can she open her heart to the promise of real love when love itself could be her enemy?
During this period of pandemic, I’m offering a special deal: personalized, autographed copies of MY ENTIRE TRILOGY SENT DIRECTLY TO YOUR HOME for $25. (Normally, $35!)
What does “To thine own self be true” really mean, anyway?
After a summer of heartbreak and betrayal slumped into an epically rotten year, 16 year-old Jocelyn (The Flying) Burgowski is clawing her way back to her confident Flyer self. Leaving family and friends on little Dalby Island to face junior year on the mainland, Joss wonders if flying has permanently cut her off from the deep relationships she yearns for. The last person who knew about her power almost destroyed it—so how’s a Flyer supposed to find true love and friendship?
How does this work? Email me, gretchen.wing@gmail.com , with your postal address and the name of the person you’d like the autograph made out to. I’ll put the books in the good ol’ U.S. Mail, while you send me a check for $25 (plus a tip for postage if you feel so inclined). And…voila! You’ve just bought yourself the perfect escape.
Of course if you want the books immediately you can download them on Kindle, or wait a tad longer for print copies from Amazon. Even better, use this link to have your favorite Indie bookstore to order them for you!
Listed prices will apply in that case. But if you want the set for $25 with my personal notation…you know what to do!
Hey, you know you’ve been having WAY too much screen time these days. Take a break with a book or three.
If you’re a regular reader of Wing’s World, don’t worry–I’m not suddenly going all-out Promo Mode. I just happen to believe that my books were made for this moment–and I should know, right? I made ’em. I so look forward to hearing from you!
Isn’t “have fun” the best advice for nearly everything? Marathons? Weddings? Even certain kinds of funerals? Okay…childbirth, maybe not so much. But book launches? You betcha.
Here are the ingredients I added to my launch of Altitude this past weekend:
1. Comfy environment—our sweet library’s main room, complete with fireplace
2. Refreshments—cookies and cake and savory nibbles provided by me and some wonderful friends
3. One brief, action-filled chapter read out loud in my most animated set of voices
4. A 15-minute armchair interview by my trusted writing friend Lorna, who asked challenging questions I had not seen in advance
Just readin’ a story to a few dozen friends…
That’s it! The rest was just selling and signing and hugging and thanking.
If you’re an author who happens to be shy, this format gives you some structure to hide behind. If you’re a show-off like me, it gives you a platform to share yourself beyond what your words on the page have done.
And refreshments? They ensure everyone’s goodwill. If your book is not their cup of tea, they can just go have a cup of tea. 🙂
(Design by Bob Lanphear; hands photo by Heather Harrison; hands themselves: Anah-Kate Drahn) Thanks, all!
“To thine own self be true…” Yeah, right.
I banked toward the warehouses, skimming the trees. Gotta find some way to USE my power…Reaching the first ratty rooftop, I hovered, quivering. If I could get Vivian back to the sky… put our powers together—What’s THAT?
Not a seagull. This sound was coming from the alley below. A quiet wail—kittens crying. Was that rusty blue shipping container there before? I landed behind the gnarliest warehouse and peeked into the alley. From street level, the giant rusty container towered above me. The kitten-cries were definitely coming from inside. Maybe someone dumped a pregnant cat in there. The box was hinged at one end—a pair of doors belted with a big ol’ rusty chain and padlock. Why lock a cat in?
“Kitty-kitty-kitty?” I called. “You in there? Poor thing!”
Two syllables floated from the stinking metal monster. A word I recognized from my Mandarin Terms a Traveler Should Know: “Bāng wǒ.” Help.
After a summer of betrayal and heartbreak and an epically rotten year, 16 year-old Jocelyn (The Flying) Burgowski is fleeing family and friends on Dalby Island for school on the mainland. What good is flying if it wrecks relationships? The guy she fell for almost destroyed her power. Now, discovering the ugly underbelly of mainland life, has Joss stumbled upon a fellow Flyer—only to bring her down? Confronting the dual forces of magic and maturity, Joss must face the question: what does “to thine own self be true” really mean?
[*Note: Confessions of the Clueless Part I was my #hashtag rant. Here comes Part II.]
Nothing like working on the cover design of a book to let you know how hard you’ve made life for yourself. I’ve been looking for an image that…
…captures the dark beauty of the Pacific Northwest, without being too beautiful
…suggests the ugliness of the American industrial underbelly, without being too ugly
…encompasses an aerial view, but not from too high
…orients the viewer toward the water, but still keeps the shoreline visible
…won’t involve me in complicated and expensive negotiations over copyright usage
…allows for the addition of text elements in line with the previous books in the series
Turns out I really could not have thought up a more difficult set of requirements. Starting with beautiful vs. ugly: waterfront pictures are generally taken for two purposes, a) to lure tourists, or b) to lure business. The first wants only beauty; the second, only utility. And don’t forget that je-ne-sais-quois whiff of Northwest! Gotta have some dark forest in there. I searched internet images from Oregon to British Columbia. These were a couple of the finalists:
Port Angeles, WA–good on ya!
Or maybe, further north:
Powell River, BC, anyone? Great town.
But the image dilemma is really a stand-in for the difficulty my books face in terms of categorizing. You see, the Flying Burgowski series
…takes its time to drop its heroine into the action, and said action involves no combat, no werewolves, no vampires, and not a single zombie.
…is fantastical enough to involve flying humans, but otherwise very much real-world (sorry, no parallel universe lurking just behind Platform Nine and Three Quarters!)
…deals with political issues like religious extremism, homophobia, and human trafficking
…has a middle-grades heroine, but one who faces adult themes like divorce and addiction from a very early age
…follows said heroine into her mid-teen years where, guess what? sexual maturity is suddenly an issue.
Let me dwell on that last point a moment. Jocelyn Burgowski’s personal literary hero, Harry Potter, also ages in his series, has a crush, finds a girlfriend. But author J.K. Rowling managed to keep Harry’s physical responses to said girlfriend–his natural teenage lust–safely off the page. Author G.K. Wing was not that unrealistic, or smart, depending on your perspective.
So, bottom line? How would YOU characterize this series? Have I made these books difficult to advertise, or what?
I call the first two books of the Flying Burgowski trilogy Middle Grades Fantasy, and the last one YA Fantasy–because I have to call them SOMEthing. But you know what? I’d really just rather call it a damn good read. Can that be a thing?
…
because stories are important
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