As you may know, the author of the beloved Last Timekeepers Series is launching her next book, Lost and Found this weekend. Lost and found is the first of her new series, Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls, and a YA series full of mystery and mayhem as well as teenagers with cool psychic abilities.
We won’t spoil it for you, though. Here’s what Sharon Ledwith has to say about her upcoming book launch:
M|W: So Sharon, for those who don’t know, what was your ‘journey to publication’ like?
Sharon: How long have I got? LOL! Seriously though, my journey to publication started in the mid-90s. One evening while I was reading, I thought how simple the structure and dialogue was in a particular romance novel I was reading. You can write, you can do this, a voice urged inside my head. Let me tell you, I almost fell off my chair! But the words rang true for me. So, I decided to act on this truth, and took a writing course—Writing your Novel—where I met a couple of like-minded would-be writer gals. Together we started a writing support group, and I wrote my first novel—a paranormal romance. This manuscript caught the eye of an agent, but I was hardly ready, and I see that now. What I needed to do was to hone my craft and get better and better with the process of writing. And that takes making a lot of mistakes at the expense of your ego. In other words: lots of rejection, rejection, rejection! Ouch!
Then one night, during my writer’s group session, one of my friends said something that floored me. She mentioned that I hit my twelve-year-old character’s voice bang on. So, this got me to thinking—how hard would it be to write a young adult novel? It was a stupid question. Of course it was hard! After thinking about what my friend had said to me, I decided I’d challenge myself and write not just a novel—but a series—that would appeal to my son, who at the time was the target age of my audience. Since I’ve always loved the time travel genre, it was a no-brainer for me, and The Last Timekeepers time travel adventure series was born.
M|W: The Last Timekeepers Time Travel Series is great! Why don’t you Tell us about your new series!
Sharon: Thought you’d never ask! Here’s the premise for Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls series:
Imagine a teenager possessing a psychic ability and struggling to cope with this freakish power, all the while trying to lead a normal life. Now, imagine being uprooted and forced to live in a small tourist town where nothing much ever happens. It’s bores-ville from the get-go. Welcome to Fairy Falls. Expect the unexpected…
Set in a small northern cottage community, Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls, speaks to many of the important issues facing teens today. With Fairy Falls as the backdrop that glues the series together, each book is a stand-alone project with a different cast of characters, one of whom possesses a unique psychic, supernatural, or prophetic ability.
Lost and Found, the first of the five-book Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls series, finds the Fairy Falls Animal Shelter in trouble. Money trouble. It’s up to an old calico cat named Whiskey—a shelter cat who has mastered the skill of observation—to find a new human pack leader so that their home will be saved. With the help of Nobel, the leader of the shelter dogs, the animals set out to use the ancient skill of telepathy to contact any human who bothers to listen to them. Unfortunately for fifteen-year-old Meagan Walsh, she hears them, loud and clear…
BTW—Lost and Found is near and dear to my heart and a true labor of love, since I wrote this novel after my experience with working at a local animal shelter as an animal care attendant. Every dog and cat featured in in this story is based on an animal which I cared for or handled in some capacity. This is a novel that truly speaks for the animals!
M|W: So what made you choose a small tourist town like Fairy Falls in particular?
Sharon: The truth is that I wrote what I knew based on the area where I was living in at the time. You see, for over eleven years we lived on a small/medium-sized lake in the heart of cottage country. So I took in the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, emotions, and feelings of this beautiful place, and added the challenges and obstacles of what it would be like for an uprooted teenager possessing a psychic ability to adjust to the day-to-day living in Fairy Falls. Meagan Walsh, the protagonist from Lost and Found tells us what she thinks of Fairy Falls right off the bat: “This town sucks!”, and she goes on to describe it as ‘a small, boring northern tourist town’. If only Meagan knew what life had planned for her in this magical place!
I actually envisioned Fairy Falls from what I remembered of a tourist town during the early 1970s, while we were visiting a friend’s cottage in northern Ontario, Canada. This town has since grown, but some small cottage towns never grew much, and when major highways were built to take on more traffic, these towns were bypassed, and much of their economy suffered. Call it the pros and cons of progress, but I think much of the innocence was lost to those quaint, tourist towns when change was forced upon them. That’s why I didn’t want to lose that ‘small, tourist town feeling’ when I created Fairy Falls. True, change is good, but there’s something about going to a tourist town and connecting with the people living there that somehow leaves you feeling better than you did before you arrived.
M|W: We’re excited to say that your launch is coming up; can you tell us what you’ve got planned?
Sharon: I’ve been scrambling to get things prepared and ready to go. Honestly, with the stuff authors have to do nowadays, it feels as if I’m birthing a baby, rather than launching a book! Some of my tasks include creating posts for my upcoming book blog tour (June 17th to 23rd), working with my web designer to make the necessary additions to include my new book and buy links, and making plans to attend the Summer Craft and Gift Show with an author friend on June 26th in Windsor. I’ve scheduled a Goodreads Giveaway for Lost and Found, Book One of Mysterious Tales from Fairy Falls starting on June 17th and ending July 4th so the winner will receive his/her book during the summer months.
I’ve also been busy contacting animal shelters and animal rescue organizations to offer them a fundraising opportunity to sell my book, Lost and Found on consignment at their events and fundraisers. I proposed that $4 from the sale of each book goes to their organization to help care for the animals. The intent for this fundraising idea spawns from creating awareness for animal shelters and the continuing challenges to keep their doors open, and care for the lost, abandoned, or surrendered animals. We must remember, without the backbone of volunteers and community support, animal shelters and rescues would not survive. I know this, and unfortunately have seen it firsthand. My persistence paid off when Second Chance Animal Rescue of Windsor/Essex County asked me if I would join them at two of their fundraisers, one of which lands on my launch date. I’ll be at their ‘Shampooch’ event with books to sign and sell! If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there, it’s for a worthy paws…er cause!
Finally, I plan on doing an online launch via Facebook Live with Justine Alley Dowsett at Mirror World Publishing on Monday, June 19th at 7-8 pm EST. I’ll be answering questions, chatting it up with the audience, going head-to-head with Justine, and reading from my book, Lost and Found. I’m looking forward to trying out this new way of reaching and engaging with readers, so I hope you can join me!
M|W: You heard her! If you can make it out to any of these events, please do! And if not, please consider joining us on Facebook to participate in our Facebook Livecast on Monday! Thanks for reading!
Publisher: Mirror World Publishing
First we split up the characters:
There’s less than two months left until Uncharted is released into the world and I’m excited and nervous and experiencing all the other feelings that come with sending a labour of love out into the world.
With a passion for media and sales, Murandy has a strong background in public relations and promotions as well as an education in Drama and Communications. Justine is an author herself and has worked in a multitude of industries, including publishing. She comes to Mirror World Publishing after acting as Producer and Business and Marketing Director for First Age Studios, a video game design company.
