(M MG M) Guest Post- E.S. Lark

I want to thank E.S. Lark for participating in the March MG Madness today with a guest post! E.S. is the author of the MG series The Children of Avalon. 

Fourteen-year-old Kyle Briggins didn’t enter Camelot Junior High with an evil sorceress or Excalibur in mind. But when a mistake in roll call brands him as Kyle Pendragon—a surname shared with King Arthur, his part in an old legend begins to surface. School bullies and teachers aren’t the only ones making such ridiculous claims either. The class pet, a talking ferret named Merlin, insists Kyle is the real King Arthur, and if that wasn’t bad enough, his math teacher is Morgana, an evil sorceress who’d happily kill him for the throne. Traveling to ancient Camelot with a talkative ferret as his sidekick is nothing compared to the characters he’ll meet once they get there. Stuck in the middle of a legend, Kyle must face Morgana, her dark realm of nightmares, and brave the school dance. Should he survive, he’ll have to make the hardest choice imaginable; stay in the magical kingdom of Avalon or return home to new friends, his own Knights of the Round Table.

Fifteen-year-old Miya never expected her spring break to end with a last-minute trip to Avalon. But when she finds her favorite tree hollowed out overnight, she and her best friend Kyle are drawn into a world most can only dream about. Fascinated by Arthurian legends, Miya’s obsession turns to dread when she realizes Avalon’s covered in a thick layer of ice. And that’s not the worst of it. Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, informs her that most of King Arthur’s court has fallen under a silencing spell—including Merlin, the great wizard. With Kyle stuck taking Arthur’s place, it’s up to Miya to find the Holy Grail. But finding the elusive goblet will be nearly impossible once Miya realizes she has to die in order to retrieve it.

An Author and Her Characters 

by E. S. Lark

Every morning, I wake up, pull out my best mug and throw it into the microwave to heat some water for my tea. I’m sure we all have a similar technique to waking up in the morning, but I also make tea as a way of settling into my characters. As a reader, I know how attached I can get to certain characters, but when you’re the author and the one controlling everything about them, that experience is both humbling and scary.

When a character first pops into my head, I jot down what I know about them and go about my business. Sometimes, this is the last time I hear from that character. However, for the determined few, a new character becomes akin to having a song stuck in your head. I can’t stop thinking about them, and it gets so bad sometimes that I cannot sleep. It’s maddening, but for an author, in the most wonderful of ways. Without our characters, there would be no story (at least for my novels there wouldn’t be).

From writing the very first words about a character, I get attached. I crave their company and will (sometimes) even put off family events to fall into my own imagination. For me, my characters are like my extended family that I rarely get to see. So of course, when they come to visit, I want to spend as much time with them as I can before they disappear.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only author who feels this way about her characters. However, I think the hardest part of spending so much time with my characters is knowing I have to let them go. I just finished publishing the sequel to two different series in February of this year. Sadly, I had mixed feelings about that. I felt accomplished to know I’d taken my characters as far as they could go, but then I had a second, darker feeling. Loss. Except for maybe a short story as my way of visiting those characters, I’d finished writing about them.

After spending years with my gryphons along with Merlin in my middle grade series, I hate the idea of my not needing to write about them again. This isn’t to say I won’t, but none of those characters are in any of my future projects. This feeling of grief hits me every time I finish writing about a cast of characters, and it never gets any easier. Still, I continue to write and fall in love with characters only to lose them months or even years later.
Such is the life of an author and her characters. So, when you read your favorite book and feel your eyes teary up because of the death of a character or the ending of a book, know that we authors go through those pains as well. Killing a character is never easy, but almost always necessary. Besides, what kind of author would I be if all I wrote about was pink puppies and purple kittens?

You can learn more about E. S. Lark and her books at http:/www.eslark.com.

Be sure to stop by the March MG Madness home post and enter the big month long giveaway to win a box of MG books and swag! You can earn extra entries in the big giveaway by answering a question whose answer can be found in the guest post above...go HERE to enter

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Purchase: Amazon

Emily Lark writes fantasy for all ages with a strong emphasis on young adult and middle grade readers. When she isn't weaving spells or summoning creatures from the abyss, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their small collection of pets. Encouraged by one of her professors back in 2003 to pursue a career in writing, Emily left the world of early childhood eduction behind and began writing articles for content websites. Family is extremely important to Emily, which probably explains why she lives less than fifteen minutes away from her childhood home in rural Pennsylvania.