Jack Chaucer's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"

Jack Chaucer’s little e-book has grown up into a paperback and, beginning next week, the legendary Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington, Conn., will begin stocking it — right in time for summer beach read season! A big shout-out to Hickory Stick owner Fran Kielty.

I just hope that sleepy little hamlet is ready for the likes of Margeaux “Check Asshole” Quigley and King Robert “Balls” Ballentine!

First, I just want to thank everyone for their interest and support. This novel is my own little attempt to turn something horrific that happened on December 14, 2012, into something positive. The massacre left all of us feeling helpless. As a novelist, I turned to writing about this issue directly because what happened that day should NEVER be forgotten and we all need to do SOMETHING about it to prevent the next Newtown.

Based on early reviews from readers young and old, inside the USA and out, “Streaks of Blue” already has inspired a teen in Georgia (Russia) to reconnect with former friends, a mom in upstate New York to squeeze her young son much tighter and a teen in India to go mountain climbing. There are currently 10 reviews up on Amazon and about 16 on my Goodreads page if you want to get the full perspective. Not every review is 5 stars, but even the 3-star reviewers are impressed with main character Nicole Janicek. They all agree she is a rare gem of a female lead in the YA genre for her bravery and compassion along a difficult journey.

Again, I will be donating half of the proceeds from this book to the Newtown Memorial Fund. Below are numerous purchase links for the book, which is now available virtually everywhere online and at Amazon for the paperback version:

Amazon/Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Streaks-Blue-An...

Barnes & Noble:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/strea...

Apple:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/strea...

Kobo:

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/book...

Smashwords:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...



Thanks!

Jack

Here’s an update on Amazon sales since “Streaks of Blue” was published on 9-27.
Seven paperbacks have sold on Amazon so far. That is my best month since I started publishing on Amazon in May with “Queens are Wild.” My royalty is $3.22 on every paperback for net proceeds of $22.54. That means I pledge $11.27 so far to the Newtown Memorial Fund.

There is a greater lag time on e-book sales, but so far two people have told me they bought the book on Kindle and two more on Apple iTunes. I’ll pass along those figures when Smashwords relays them to me.

As an indie author/publisher, every sale is a well-earned victory. Thank you to those who have bought “Streaks of Blue” and I plan to donate half of whatever proceeds the book has reaped on the first anniversary of the Newtown shooting, 12-14-13. For more info, visit www.newtownmemorialfund.org

Below are numerous purchase links for the book, which is now available virtually everywhere online and at Amazon for the paperback version:

Amazon/Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Streaks-Blue-An...

Barnes & Noble:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/strea...

Apple:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/strea...

Kobo:

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/book...

Smashwords:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...


Thanks!

Jack

"Streaks of Blue" has sold 25 copies so far for a net proceeds of $68.40. That's $34.20 raised for the Newtown Memorial Fund thus far. Thank you to all you have bought the book and I appreciate anything you can do to spread the word. Special shout-out to avid hiker Vin Mansolillo, the inspiration for Vin's character in the final scene on Mount Kearsarge North. He bought a copy and said he really enjoyed the book. He said he got so into the story that he sometimes forgot the person who wrote it used to be the little kid who tagged along with him and my old man on a whole bunch of hikes in the White Mountains back in the 80s.

BY ALAN BISBORT
REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

Like so many people in the area, Litchfield author John Cullen could not get the unspeakable horror at Sandy Hook Elementary School out of his head. The father of 2-year-old twins, he was forced to think the unthinkable: How safe are my kids, really, if such a thing can happen at Sandy Hook?

Even for someone who has worked in newsrooms for 22 years, and thought he'd seen and heard every permutation on human tragedy, Cullen was left dazed by what happened in Newtown on Dec. 14, 2012.

"This event will never go away," said Cullen, a layout editor at the Republican-American whose pen name is Jack Chaucer. "It seemed like the rock bottom of civilization had been reached. Twenty first-graders are gone just like that? It was a hopeless and helpless feeling, but you want to do something on top of donating money to change the world your kids live in. It almost forced me to write about it."

He said he felt numb for a month after Sandy Hook.

"As a novelist, my mindset was either I write nothing for a long, long time, or I tackle this head on," said Cullen, who previously wrote the futuristic thriller "Queens are Wild" (2012). "Any other subject seemed trivial."

So, he did what came most naturally to him — he began writing. Before long, he realized that the act of writing had gone beyond the therapeutic and he suddenly had a cast of characters, a setting and a plot that carried him along as much as he helped shape it.

"I knew I wanted a girl with blue hair as the main character," he said. "Thematically, we are in a streak of blue with all of the shootings that have happened. But I also knew that I wanted the students to be older, in their teens. And I didn't want to saddle any specific town, so I made up a fictional town and set it in New Hampshire."

The end result is a newly published 259-page novel with a long title: "Streaks of Blue: How the Angels of Newtown Inspired One Girl to Save Her School." The book is available in both trade paperback edition ($11.99 at Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington, Conn., and Amazon) and as an e-book ($2.99 at Kindle, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and smashwords.com). Cullen is donating half of the proceeds to the Newtown Memorial Fund, which supports the families of all 26 victims and others affected by the massacre.

Though the general plot backdrop was inspired by the Sandy Hook tragedy, the danger lurking within the story bears more resemblance to the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., in April 1999. At Columbine, two boys filled with hostility toward their classmates plotted out their shooting rampage with military-like precision weeks ahead of time.

With a slightly futuristic cast to it — set mostly in the weeks leading up to the two-year anniversary of Sandy Hook in December 2014 — "Streaks of Blue" imagines a similar story arc taking shape at Lakeview Regional High School in New Hampshire. The would-be Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are Adam Upton (echoes of Adam Lanza, the shooter at Sandy Hook) and Thomas "Lee" Harvey (as in Oswald, the alleged shooter of JFK). Their main "beef" is the contempt with which the majority of the school holds them for being "trailer trash." They also come from broken families with a history of drug and alcohol abuse.

The only person standing between them and their goal of annihilation is 17-year-old Nicole Janicek. A sensitive, outdoorsy girl who likes to dye her hair blue, "Nikki" has a scary premonition while camping under the stars on Mount Washington just before her senior year. In the dream, the "angels of Newtown" appear and urge Nicole to reconnect with Adam, a boy she used to know in elementary school.

The angels not only warn Nicole about the shooting plot, but they also give her hope that a friendship with Adam could prevent it.

"My hope was to channel their bravery, strength and goodness into Nicole," Cullen said. "So far, based on the positive reaction to the book — and especially Nikki's character — I think that's how it turned out."

During its launch this fall, "Streaks of Blue" garnered 345 requests for advance copies from around the world on the website NetGalley. To date, the book has been reviewed by 47 readers on Goodreads and 17 on Amazon. The interest and feedback, particularly from teens and teachers, has been particularly gratifying, Cullen said.

"A teenage girl in Georgia (Asia) wrote in her review that she felt as if I had actually been to her own high school," Cullen said. "She was inspired to reconnect with former friends after reading the book. Another teen in India wrote that she wanted to start mountain climbing. I love that the story had such an impact on two young people from the other side of the world."

He noted that he tapped into his own experiences from growing up in Rhode Island. One particularly effective scene in "Streaks of Blue" — in which a teacher makes Nikki's class discuss the lyrics from the album "Synchronicity" by The Police — was drawn from real events in Cullen's high school classroom experience.

"My English lit teacher Paul Richards did that exact same lesson with us back in 1985," he said. "My point in using it in 'Streaks of Blue' is that same discussion becomes very different today. You can't talk about a song like 'Murder By Numbers' the same as we did in 1985. Back then there were no Columbines or Newtowns."

Whether Nikki succeeds or fails in her attempt — no spoilers here — "Streaks of Blue" directly addresses the issue of school violence, but in a creative, compelling and non-preachy manner.

"I don't attack guns. I don't focus a lot on mental health. I do focus on human relationships and having the courage to be friends with people who don't have many friends," Cullen said. "At the end of the day, I wanted to write something meaningful. If you can reach out and inspire a kid to help another kid before he or she does something terrible, then I would be happy."

For information, visit the author's website, http://queensarewild.wordpress.com, and Goodreads page, http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/....

BOOK TALK AND SIGNING EVENT

Litchfield author John Cullen will appear for a book discussion and signing Dec. 1 at 2 p.m. at the Hickory Stick Bookshop, 2 Green Hill Road, Washington, Conn. Both Cullen and Hickory Stick will donate a portion of the proceeds to Newtown-related charities.

It was a fantastic day at the Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington, Conn., on Sunday. I met some great people, signed some books and raised a lot more money for the Newtown Memorial Fund. Members from a book club in Northfield came to the signing and told me they have chosen “Streaks of Blue” as their next book club selection. They even invited me to discuss the book with them at a dinner party in January. I signed books for a ninth-grader all the way up to an elderly couple from Newtown. One woman bought three copies. Thank you to all who turned out and to Hickory Stick owner Fran Keilty for hosting this event. Fran also will be donating a portion of the proceeds to a Newtown-related charity.

The great news is I get 60 percent of paperback sales at Hickory Stick. That means those 11 copies sold add $79.13 to the $119.09 in royalties already collected.

“Streaks of Blue” has now sold 58 copies in just over 2 months for a total proceeds of $198.22. That’s $99.11 raised for the Newtown Memorial Fund!

Two more Amazon paperbacks sold just under the wire. 78 copies of “Streaks of Blue” = $127.16, which I just donated to the Newtown Memorial Fund. Thanks to all my awesome and generous readers! Any copies sold from now on will go toward my donation on 12-14-14. The book is actually set in 2014 so I hope it does even better next year. God bless the angels of Newtown and their families on this sad first anniversary.

P.S. My radio interview with Larry Rifkin of WATR-1320 AM went very well on Friday — an interesting conversation about how we prevent the next one. Sadly, that very day, there was another shooting in Colorado, just eight miles from Columbine. Two more victims plus the shooter. Our struggle continues …

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Candace:
"That's just so unlike you, Nikki. You're the good girl. You get the good grades, rescue your high school from assassins ..."

Nikki:
"Assassins?" I nearly choked. "Those two?"

Candace:
"OK, maybe I'm being overly cinematic."



Coming Oct. 9th

Adam Upton:
"Nikki, wait up! I didn't mean to laugh. You're the last person in the world I'd call a quitter. You didn't quit on me, even though I lied to you and tricked you with the LSD," I shouted.

She froze on a rocky hill about 20 feet above me. I'm pretty sure she would've gone to the top without me if I hadn't yelled what I just yelled as fast as I did. The "LSD" part seemed to echo all around us. I thought it was a pretty rad effect until a guy and his young son came climbing down the trail, past Nikki and eventually next to me. I stood there smiling and nodding at them like an asshole.