Jack Chaucer's Blog - Posts Tagged "ya"

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 …

I've written 17 chapters so far and I think there will be at least 40 this time around, so it will be longer than "Streaks of Blue." There are multiple points of view, though Nicole gets the first 13 chapters all to herself in Part 1. Part 2 has featured four different male characters' points of view: Adam Upton, Roger Janicek (Nicole's dad) and two new characters, William Osborne and Steve Pearson. Then it will switch back to Nikki again for a while.
It's been interesting to fill in some of the blanks from the first book while at the same time sending Nikki on a whole new story arc. I still have many miles to go on it, but my goal at this point is to publish it by spring 2016.

Find a chapter title listing so far at http://queensarewild.wordpress.com/

I’ve written 25 chapters so far for the sequel to “Streaks of Blue.” Progress has been slow but steady, with more than 54,000 words already written and a likely target of 70,000-75,000 for this book, considerably longer than the first one. The arc for the second book will extend into a third book, tentatively titled, “Nikki Roulette: Red or Black?” There is also a chance this series will go beyond three books.
My goal for “Nikki Blue: Source of Trouble” is to publish it in the spring of 2016, though I may have ARCs of it ready for NetGalley before that.
Here is a chapter title listing so far:
1. Rainbows and Unicorns, Part 1
2. Enterprise Story
3. Weirdos Make the World Go Round
4. Hot Tip
5. Silver Sands
6. Busted in Bridgeport
7. 25 Grand
8. Money Trail
9. Coffee in the Lobby
10. The Other Kind of Auditing
11. Rainbows and Unicorns, Part 2
12. Your Enemy’s Enemy
13. As Long As We’re Both Being Honest
14. Climbing the Lion
15. Captain Rookie
16. Howl at the Moon
17. Nikki Blue
18. Earth Wing
19. Mars Wing
20. “I Crashed My Car Into The Bridge … I Love It”
21. Cruise Missiles
22. Adam Bomb
23. Nikki Beach
24. Loveless Fascination
25. Channel 77

I’ve completed the second draft for “Nikki Blue: Source of Trouble” and continue to revise parts of it before moving on to copy editing and polishing. The sequel to “Streaks of Blue” is set in 2018-19; has scenes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Florida and South Africa; and is currently around 76,000 words. I have a short prologue, which I’ve teased below, and 48 chapters, which I’ve listed below the prologue with the 5 POV characters and chapter titles. I’m still shooting to have the ARC out on NetGalley late this year and publish it next spring in both e-book and paperback formats.

PROLOGUE

Nikki Janicek

Life sucks sometimes. It can start at an early age and even young children can detect the varying degrees of suck. They don’t let the rigid restraints of their new language stop them from reacting with brutal honesty either.

I still think about the boy in the cereal aisle of the supermarket. He must’ve been 3 or 4. His mom had tried to steer him away from a chocolate marshmallow cereal and sell him on two healthier ones. She held them up, one in each hand, as he stared her down while standing in the back of the shopping cart.

“That’s bad,” he tapped one box.

“And that’s worser!” he slapped the other, knocking it out of her hand and onto the floor.

It was raw. It was awesome. Rawesome.

My bad was getting shot by Thomas Lee Harvey on the night of September 14, 2014, outside our New Hampshire high school.

Not being rawesome and allowing myself to be coerced (more like bribed) into talking to him nearly four years later, even via Skype from two states away, was worser.

There are cereal killers, and then there are serial killers. From my perspective, Thomas was worser. He’d wanted to kill everybody in our school and he ended up killing nobody … thanks to me.

I reached out to Adam Upton — his utterly depressed friend and accomplice at the time — and derailed their massive shooting plot on the night before it was supposed to happen. Thomas shot Adam in the ass and me in the side, but we both lived.

Adam told the police everything, testified against Thomas, served less than a year in jail and eventually got hired as an unarmed mall cop near where we grew up. I emerged as a hero for saving countless lives and even appeared on “AC 360.” And Thomas, who fled after shooting us and nearly made it to Vermont before police apprehended him, got locked up — along with all of his unquenched bloodlust — in the New Hampshire State Prison for Men until 2039.

He still had 21 years to go. I bet he didn’t expect to spend any of that time staring back at me, the person he once called Dead Girl Walking.

And yet there we were, face to face in cyberspace … thanks to The Bridge.

Scientology is bad.

The Bridge is …

INDEX
PART 1: All Nikki Janicek’s Point of View
CHAPTER 1: Enterprise Story
CHAPTER 2: Weirdos Make the World Go Round
CHAPTER 3: Hot Tip
CHAPTER 4: Silver Sands
CHAPTER 5: Busted in Bridgeport
CHAPTER 6: 25 Grand
CHAPTER 7: Money Trail
CHAPTER 8: Coffee in the Lobby
CHAPTER 9: The Other Kind of Auditing
CHAPTER 10: Rainbows and Unicorns
CHAPTER 11: Your Enemy’s Enemy
CHAPTER 12: As Long As We’re Both Being Honest

PART 2
CHAPTER 13, Adam Upton’s POV: Lion and Truth
CHAPTER 14, Roger Janicek’s POV: Captain Rookie
CHAPTER 15, William Osborne’s POV: Howl at the Moon
CHAPTER 16, Steve Pearson’s POV: Nikki Blue
CHAPTER 17, Nikki: Earth Wing
CHAPTER 18, Nikki: Mars Wing
CHAPTER 19, Nikki: I Crashed My Car into The Bridge … I Love It!
CHAPTER 20, William: Cruise Missiles
CHAPTER 21, Nikki: Adam Bomb
CHAPTER 22, William: Nikki Beach
CHAPTER 23, Nikki: Loveless Fascination

PART 3
CHAPTER 24, Adam: Channel 77
CHAPTER 25, Nikki: Cape Town or Crash
CHAPTER 26, Nikki: A World Without Guns
CHAPTER 27, Nikki: Boundaries
CHAPTER 28, Adam: Bury the Truth
CHAPTER 29, William: Premature Wisdom
CHAPTER 30, Adam: Go to Jail, Collect $20K
CHAPTER 31, William: Jarring Threat
CHAPTER 32, Roger: The Graduate
CHAPTER 33, Nikki: Nikki Sapphire
CHAPTER 34, Steve: Trojan Horse
CHAPTER 35, Nikki: So Human, So Alien

PART 4
CHAPTER 36, Steve: The Interview
CHAPTER 37, Nikki: Dead-end Street
CHAPTER 38, Adam: Book Brawl
CHAPTER 39, Nikki: Scared
CHAPTER 40, Adam: In Stitches
CHAPTER 41, William: Little Candle of Hate
CHAPTER 42, Nikki: Tentacles
CHAPTER 43, William: Peephole
CHAPTER 44, Adam: Trap
CHAPTER 45, Nikki: Felicia
CHAPTER 46, Roger: Roy Roger
CHAPTER 47, Nikki: No Room to Heal
CHAPTER 48, Nikki: Fireman’s Carry

Happy St. Patrick’s Day,
Jack Chaucer

It’s never easy condensing a novel into a blurb; 86,000-plus words into a hundred or so. Here’s my latest attempt for “Nikki Blue: Source of Trouble,” the sequel to “Streaks of Blue.”

Nicole Janicek has survived being shot, but can she overcome the blues of her early 20s?
Nearly four years after foiling a shooting plot at her high school and saving countless lives, Nikki begins a short-lived internship as a newspaper reporter; gets hired as a flak by an organization whose leadership consists of people labeled troublemakers by the Church of Scientology; confronts the source of her nightmares, Thomas Lee Harvey; puts her long-term relationship with Derek Schobell to the test; learns a disturbing secret from her friend, Adam Upton, and considers a high-risk offer to leave the planet forever.
Can this former teenage hero and trailblazer rescue herself from the consequences of her own decisions? Or does every path in front of her lead to trouble?