Carter Roy's Blog

Still another pass or two to make on the revised manuscript you see here, but book three is more or less finished! Final title still to be announced, as well as publication date, cover reveal, and more. But I always feel a mixture of relief and joy when I get to this point. Now all that remains to be done is the fine tuning.

Christmas has come early this year. How’s that, you ask? Because I just learned that The Blood Guard has snagged one of the dozen spots on the state of Missouri’s annual Truman readers’ award list!

Titles on the list will be read over the course of the next year and voted upon by students in March of 2017. Recipients of the awards will be announced at the 2017 Missouri Association of School Librarians Spring Conference.

This marks The Blood Guard‘s fifth state reader’s award listing, and I couldn’t be more proud that so many readers are responding to the story. Whichever of us wins the award, it’s a great honor to be ranked alongside these eleven other writers I admire, and an honor to know that The Blood Guard will be read by students all across the Show Me state. What a great way to bring 2015 to a close!

I confess: When a favorite series of books or movies are between installments, I troll the internet looking for clues about what will happen next. A Star Wars fan? Then like me, you were practically moved to tears by the brief glimpse of Han Solo and Chewbacca at the end of the Force Awakens trailer. Or perhaps you also dig Jeff Kinney’s consistently hilarious Wimpy Kid series. Then you’ve known for ages that book 10 is called Old School, and that in it, Greg Heffley has to go without his beloved modern conveniences (such as iPhones, or computers, or—gasp!—blogs on author websites such as this one). Or, as I’m sure you fans of Divergent already know, the fifth and final entry, Detergent, will wash away all the complaints readers had with Allegiant, the trilogy finale. (Okay, I made up that last one.) At any rate, for you clue seekers, several things I can promise will not happen in the third Blood Guard novel: 

—There will not be a love story.  I know, I know: you dream of Sammy at last expressing his secret crush for Greta, of Jack revealing himself to be smitten with Ronan’s mother, of Agatha declaring that she carries an undying flame for the four Dobermans of the Apocalypse. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not going to happen. You want love stories? Check the teen section of the bookstore.

—Ronan will not learn to fly.  Jack wasn’t lying to him in the first book: the Blood Guard don’t know how to fly. Sadly for Ronan, if he leaps off of a high place—a tall building, say, or one of the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge—he won’t fly. Instead, he will drop like a stone.

—The Four Dobermans of the Apocalypse will not talk. Come on: They’re dogs.

—The Bend Sinister will not perform a song-and-dance number.  Rumors that they’ll sing “I’m clinically insane!” to the music of “Singin’ in the Rain” are not true. Not only do they not consider themselves crazy, but they are also completely incapable of carrying a tune. (As you would know if you’d been there for the Blood Guard karaoke night.)

—Greta will not get a tattoo. For one thing, her parents won’t allow it, saying she’s too young. And for another, she’s not really sure what she’d have tattooed. A quotation from a favorite book or writer? A math problem? The image of one of her straight-A report cards?

—It will not all turn out to have “only been a dream!”  Have you ever come across that sort of ending to a story you love? You get through all of a novel/trilogy/television show only to discover that the writer(s) didn’t know a way out of the predicaments they’d plotted, so they had the main character wake up and say something to the effect of, “Whew! I’m so glad that wasn’t real, Lassie!” (If you wasted any time watching Lost, you know that there are even worse ways to make a story ultimately pointless.)

—It will not leave any threads unknotted. That is to say, it will tie up all the story threads from books one and two—including some that you think I forgot about, or which you didn’t even notice because they flew past so quickly.

For instance: why did Ms. Hand have all those weapons with her? Before she went after Ronan, did she have another mission? Did it have anything to do with all of the other Bend Sinister agents swarming around the New York area?

I guess you’ll just have to read book three to find out.

Believe me when I tell you this: a librarian saved my life.

I was eight and a sweet kid despite an exceedingly grim home life. (Too little money and too many problems—while there may be as many unhappy families as there are stories about them, suffice to say ours was a family unhappier than most.)

That was when Thomas S. Huse came into my life. He took over the school library at Palomar Elementary, as well as the school’s gifted program, and because I had been a middling member of the latter, I became a fixture in the former. Over the next few years, Mr. Huse changed my world for the better, though the long-term effects wouldn’t be clear for decades.

Mr. Huse didn’t just introduce me to books—everything from Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins stories to Robert Silverberg’s middle-grade adventures and more—but also he opened up story itself. It wasn’t enough that I was a reader, but I also had to write. Stories were to be illustrated and bound for the library shelves, plays were to be cast and enacted for the school, and, when I showed an interest in filmmaking, he contrived a way for me to direct a Claymation film that later won the California Student Film Festival. (Thank you, Mr. Huse.) He transformed me into a devoted reader, a filmmaker, a writer, and a storyteller. He opened up the world so that, when the time came, I’d be ready to go forth into it.

That time came, of course. The family collapsed, but I escaped—off to film school at U.S.C., where I got my B.A. (Thank you, Mr. Huse), then to Hollins University, where I got my M.A. and won a writing award. (Thank you, Mr. Huse.) Later, tapping into the love of reading he’d nurtured, I became a children’s book editor. (Thank you, Mr. Huse.) And now, with The Glass Gauntlet and The Blood Guard, I get to write stories like those Mr. Huse once put in my hands, saying, “I think you’ll like this one.” (Thank you, Mr. Huse.)

I hope he’d like this one, too. Thanks for everything to Mr. Huse, and to you, as well—true friends to books and to readers alike.

Not literally, of course, but in a far better figurative sense: He showed me that there was much more to life. He did that whole Great Expectations thing to me, so that I had something I’d never known until then that I was missing: a future.

One thing to know about me is this: I read books. A lot of them. Some I buy and some are sent to me for free, but the end result is that every month ten to twenty new books turn up in the house. Which, you know, is a nice thing—a house full of unread books is a happy place.

Anyway, I thought I’d start a regular feature here in which I reveal that month’s book haul and comment on the acquisitions. And then later, perhaps I’ll comment on my reactions to what I’ve read—sort of like a mix of what some teens do on YouTube and Nick Hornby’s column at The Believer.

Here is my inaugural book haul for August: The top two titles, by Etgar Keret and Connor Franta I am reading for a memoir project I’ve been working on off and on for the past decade or so. The third, Steering the Craft, is a revised book about writing by the great, great Ursula K. LeGuin, whose Earthsea Trilogy I still count among my all-time favorites. (Even though it is now six books.) Fourth is a novel nominated for this year’s Man-Booker Prize in England, and then we have three books for middle-grade readers: Mac Barnett’s bestselling The Terrible Two, Bruce Coville’s twenty-years-in-the-making sequel to his hilarious Goblins in the Castle (among my top two or three of his novels), and the newest novel by Rebecca Stead, who won the Newbery Award a few years ago. Her writing has an easy genius to it that makes storytelling look simpler than it is. Finally, there is Traitor’s Blade, a swashbuckling adventure with swordfighting—recommended to me by a friend who knows that I love that sort of thing. Missing from the stack (because it is in my satchel) is last year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, All the Light We Cannot See.

Have you read any of these books? Interested in any of them? Would love to know people’s thoughts before I dive into these.

The cover in the US

The cover in the UK

What is the Glass Gauntlet? Is it a grueling aptitude test in which teens compete for an unbelievably large cash scholarship? Or is it a set of sinister physical competitions that rewards cheaters and punishes those who play by the rules? Or is it an armored glove made of a hard, transparent ceramic that can be used to do … something mysterious and terrifying? Could it be all of these things?

The one thing for certain is that it is the title of the second entry in the Blood Guard series—and that it was published in the United States and the United Kingdom this past August. Here’s what some of the early readers are saying: Emily at Don’t Judge. Read. writes, “I love this series and where it’s headed. I highly recommend this book, this series.” Middle-grade reading maven Greg Pattridge at Always in the Middle writes, “The action spills off the pages at the perfect moments. There’s tension, some gruesome but not too gruesome parts, and more than a few scenes [that] had me in awe, scratching my head, and saying ‘How did he come up with that one?'” And Tika at Fangirl Confessions says, “The pacing was just as fast, the characters as humorous and witty as they can be, and the battle scenes and plot twists that I love so much were done exceptionally well! The Glass Gauntlet definitely didn’t suffer from the ‘sequel blues.'”

Want a sample? Click on the cover over there to your right and listen to the opening of the audiobook. What are you waiting for?

On November 5, at eleven a.m., I will be speaking to a group of sixth graders as part of the KidsRead series at New York City’s famous Center for Fiction. The only nonprofit organization in the United States dedicated to the art and craft of fiction, the Center for Fiction is home to a ton of lectures, classes, and literary events, as well as a great bookstore. It’s all housed in the Mercantile Library building—a lending library that was founded way back in 1820 before there was a public library system. I’ll be talking about both The Blood Guard and the process of writing stories—how to get started, how to find your story, and what to do with it when it’s done. Can’t wait!

As I have mentioned below, this site is undergoing a savvy top-to-bottom redesign that will make it more beautiful! easier to navigate! more appealingly intuitive! and more all-around-useful for fans of the Blood Guard series, as well as anyone interested in other books and other stories by Carter Roy.

So what will this site feature, you may wonder? I’m glad you asked. First and foremost will be this blog, in which I will post news about The Blood Guard and The Glass Gauntlet, as well as the to-be-revealed third book in the series. The blog will also feature notices about appearances, award nominations, and anything else remotely of interest. (For example, expect biweekly photographs of my book hauls.) Second, there is a new quiz in the works—”Which Blood Guard Character Are You?”—which will narrow down, via a process of elimination, where you fall on the spectrum of personalities in the series. Are you snarky-but-pure Greta Sustermann? Diabolically single-minded Ms. Hand? Or more of the Jack Dawkins type? Soon enough, you’ll be able to find out. Third, there were be two short stories published a few years ago, which exist outside of the world of the Blood Guard but of which I am rather fond. It seemed those should live somewhere, and so now they will live here. Fourth, I will post news of foreign publications, including the book covers, which are always fun. Fifth, expect some original Blood Guard stories—not just new self-contained short stories, but also bits left out of the books in my tireless cutting during revisions. (Fully twice as many pages were written for The Glass Gauntlet than ended up in the book. Sometimes writing a novel is discovering what needs to be left out.) Sixth … do I really need to list anything more? Suffice to say that more is coming, and that it will be eight kinds of awesome, and that you may want to check back. (Or even comment! I love to hear from you.)

the full realm of this world is

And the happy news just keeps rolling in!

I just received notice that The Blood Guard has popped up on the South Dakota Library Association’s annual list of finalists for their Young Adult Reading Program Award. Beginning with Teen Reads week this October, students are invited to rate the nominated titles with a score of 1 to 5. Those votes help determine the winner come next spring.

It is an honor to be counted among the dozen blisteringly good nominees for this middle-grade award, and an honor to know that The Blood Guard will be read by teens in all of the great places of the state of South Dakota.

And the happy news just keeps rolling in!

I just received notice that The Blood Guard has popped up on the South Dakota Library Association’s annual list of finalists for their Young Adult Reading Program Award. Beginning with Teen Reads week this October, students are invited to rate the nominated titles with a score of 1 to 5. Those votes help determine the winner come next spring.

It is an honor to be counted among the dozen blisteringly good nominees for this middle-grade award, and an honor to know that The Blood Guard will be read by teens in all of the great places of the state of South Dakota.