Zed and Tuesday ought to be living the good life. After all, it’s not every day two kids take down an evil dictator and their mom gets put in charge of an entire dimension.
Welcome to one of the June 7th stops on the blog tour for Tales of the Forgotten Founders by C. W. Allen with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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Author Guest Post
Writing Middle Grade: The Power of In-Between
While I have published a few short stories and essays for adults, my true love and the bulk of my publishing effort is definitely with middle grade novels, especially stories with a mystery or speculative angle. It’s what I read in my free time, and it’s where my storytelling naturally drifts. There’s a mantra that goes around the writing community: “Write the book you want to read.” This is definitely true, since a writer will need that fire for the story to keep slogging through the long writing process, and the often unforgiving publishing process after that. But I think there’s an extra layer of meaning to the mantra, that it’s a privilege to contribute to the body of work that sustained me through my own tween years (and beyond). There’s no feeling in the world like seeing your own story on the same library and bookstore shelves as your heroes.
I so vividly remember what it felt like to be my readers’ age. Being a tween is equally frustrating and magical. On one hand, there’s a sense of being stuck in-between: too young for teen privileges, but old enough that adults have more expectations of you. On the other hand, being in-between can be a kind of superpower: middle grade readers are capable enough to do things independently, but still young enough to have a sense of wonder, creativity, and idealism that the world often leeches out of people as they age. I think this dynamic creates a lot of interesting opportunities for characters to have independent adventures while still seeing the world differently than adults do. It also presents some unique challenges. An adult character is in charge of their own money, schedule, and transportation. They don’t need permission to do things. Even if their decisions might have negative consequences, doing what they want is still a matter of simply choosing to. Kids have a lot more restrictions, which creates more interesting plot hurdles for the characters to get over.
I have another mantra I try to apply to all my writing: I want to create “stories where kids succeed because they’re kids, not in spite of it.” I want my characters to show off the superpowers kids have, the skills adults forget about, rather than pulling off their successes “okay for a kid, I guess.” I hope my readers will see themselves in the characters’ struggles and cheer their victories, and take away some extra confidence about fighting their own battles, whatever they may be.
About the Book
Tales of the Forgotten Founders
The Falinnheim Chronicles Book Three
by C. W. Allen
Published 6 June 2023
Cinnabar Moth Publishing LLC
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy
Page Count: 294
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Zed and Tuesday ought to be living the good life. After all, it’s not every day two kids take down an evil dictator and their mom gets put in charge of an entire dimension. But after moving into Falinnheim’s palace, they learn that life as royalty isn’t as carefree as they’d imagined.
Mysterious hidden passages aren’t the only secrets lurking within the palace walls. When the siblings discover a stash of banned books, they realize everything they’ve been told about Falinnheim’s history might be a lie. And though contact between worlds has been cut off for centuries, returning home might not be as impossible as their parents claim.
Could the adventures of a runaway monk, a reluctant viking, a silent ambassador, and a rebel librarian hold the solutions to both problems? To find the truth, Tuesday and Zed will have to learn the stories of Falinnheim’s forgotten founders.
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK
Excerpt
The tale of Cyril the Librarian begins with a library, a fire, and a daring plan.
This story is not about Cyril. But all stories are connected, just as all people are, so this is where we must begin. We’ll get to Selene in a minute.
Long, long before Cyril’s story began, a man named Alexander ruled the world. At least, that’s what Alexander decided to tell everyone. In reality, he didn’t even know about most of the world, let alone run it. But Alexander came from a long line of kings and was the student of a long line of philosophers and generals, each with their own roots in legendary tales of heroism and greatness. The only way young Alexander could see to take his place among their stories was to create one of his own. So when he’d finished taking over all the lands and kingdoms he knew about, he proclaimed those were all the lands that existed.
Alexander was an ambitious man, but not a terribly creative one, so the title he took to celebrate his achievements was simply Alexander the Great. (A better name than Alexander the Adequate, you must admit. But still—not the most original.) He became king of Macedon at the age of twenty, and by the age of thirty he was king of Greece, Babylon, Persia, and Egypt as well. And by the age of thirty-two, he was dead.
He was called Alexander the Great, not Alexander the Healthy and Long-lived.
This story is not about Alexander either.
About the Author
C.W. Allen is a Nebraskan by birth, a Texan by experience, a Hoosier by marriage, and a Utahn by geography. She knew she wanted to be a writer the moment she read The Westing Game at age twelve, but took a few detours along the way as a veterinary nurse, an appliance repair secretary, and a homeschool parent. She writes long stories for children and short stories for former children. When she’s not writing, she helps other writers hone their craft as a board member of the League of Utah Writers.
Her debut novel Relatively Normal Secrets is the winner of the Gold Quill Award, being named the best children’s book of the year by a Utah author. The Falinnheim Chronicles series continues with The Secret Benefits of Invisibility (Cinnabar Moth, 2022) and Tales of the Forgotten Founders (Cinnabar Moth, 2023). She also has shorter work published in numerous anthologies. Keep up with her latest projects at cwallenbooks.com.
Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Author Page | Amazon | Goodreads
Giveaway Alert!
C. W. Allen will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B&N Gfit card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
a Rafflecopter giveaway| June 5 | Books in the Hall | June 6 | Read Your Writes Book Reviews |
| June 7 | Kenyan Poet | June 7 | Westveil Publishing |
| June 8 | Literary Gold | June 9 | Sandra’s Book Club |
| June 9 | Long and Short Reviews | June 12 | Joanne Guidoccio |
| June 13 | Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews | June 13 | Travel the Ages |
| June 14 | Fabulous and Brunette | June 15 | The Avid Reader |
| June 15 | Andi’s Middle Grade and Chapter Books | June 16 | Sybrina’s Book Blog |
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
The cover is nice!
Thank you for hosting today.
Thank you for hosting! I will never stop shouting from the rooftops that middle grade stories are for readers of EVERY age!