The Dyerville Tales Blog Tour {Guest Post & Giveaway}

I'm so thrilled to have The Dyerville Tales Blog Tour stopping by today! Last month I had the pleasure of reviewing this fantastical story and interviewing author M.P. Kozlowsky. Below you can check out a Guest Post from the author and enter the awesome Giveaway...

The Dyerville Tales

by M.P. Kozlowsky

4/22/14

Walden Pond Press

Neil Gaiman’s Coraline meets Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs in M. P. Kozlowsky’s The Dyerville Tales, a powerfully imaginative middle-grade novel that blurs the line between fantasy and reality, from the author of Juniper Berry.

Vince Elgin is an orphan, having lost his mother and father in a fire when he was young. With only a senile grandfather he barely knows to call family, Vince was interned in a group home, dreaming that his father, whose body was never found, might one day return for him. When a letter arrives telling Vince his grandfather has passed away, he is convinced that if his father is still alive, he’ll find him at the funeral. He strikes out for the small town of Dyerville carrying only one thing with him: his grandfather’s journal. The journal tells a fantastical story of witches and giants and magic, one that can’t be true. But as Vince reads on, he finds that his very real adventure may have more in common with his grandfather’s than he ever could have known.

Its unique voice and ability to combine creepiness with great story and character development make The Dyerville Tales a real standout middle-grade novel.

Goodreads / Amazon / B&N 

In Search of Time to Write

Writers, in my experience, are a rather finicky bunch, constantly searching for the Goldilocks of situations in which to regularly expunge their brains of exposition and exciting plot twists for their future readership.  I know because I’ve been there.  

Years ago I needed complete silence to write.  I needed zero distractions.  I needed a long block of time without the slightest of interruptions.  If anything disturbed my writing, however slight, it threw everything off.  There were days when the super had to stop by to do some work and I was forced to throw up my hands and declare my writing dead for the day – I couldn’t begin knowing he might show up any minute and I couldn’t continue when he left, my mind and flow irreparably broken.  Phone calls were like an ax to the screen and it got so bad that if I ran out of bread to eat for lunch, my routine was so thrown off that any writing would have to wait until the next day after a trip to the supermarket so that I could have my peanut butter with toast just like every day before, as if this was in some way tied into the work I produced.

This, of course, may be an extreme, but I know of many writers who need things to be just so in order to get some pages done.  There are great writers – absolute masters – who will never be published because of these idiosyncrasies and irrational demands.  But are these really just elaborate excuses?  A fear of failure?  Perhaps.  Some people state they can’t find the time, some say they’re too busy or too tired or they have children or a job or countless other responsibilities, and I understand that; I truly do.  As evidenced above, I needed things to be just so.

But things change.  I got married, I had two children.  There was no more silence, no more uninterrupted stretch of hours to write.  I was faced with a drastic choice, adapt or kill the dream.  I chose to adapt.  I now write during my youngest’s naps and while my eldest plays with her toys or watches TV.  I have to write through noise, through questions, through severe guilt and inconvenience and a million other things that come with parenting.  I have to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I have to do laundry and food shopping and care for a 15 year old dog.  If inspiration is not there, I cannot wait for it to rear its head.  I have to plunge my hands into the darkness of my mind and pull it free whether it’s ready or not.  I get an hour and a half at a time.  Twice a day.  If I’m lucky.  I don’t write at night because that time is for me to share with my wife.  I don’t write on the weekends because that time is for me to share with my family.  I have to make this work.

Many people, I know, would throw up their hands and complete their novel in the serenity of retirement.  I’ve been there.  But when you are a writer, the need to write has to burn through you, your fingertips have to sizzle with a desperate necessity to hit the keys.  You have to make time.  And all you need is 500 words.  That’s it.  Two pages.  This essay.  500 words a day is one book a year.  And if you can hit 1,000, that’s two books.  

Not everyone can have a life completely devoted to writing.  Not everyone can have a spouse like Nabokov’s, taking care of every little thing so that your genius can flourish.  True, we all need someone in our corner – my career would never have even began without the support of my wife – but it is up to us to prove we really want it.  Our situations cannot control us.  We have to take control of our situations.  We have to bend time, manipulating it to better serve us.  That is the true strength of a writer.  And the ability to thrive is in all of us.  Seize it.

• M.P. Kozlowsky, New York City, April 2014

goodreads * website * twitter

M.P. Kozlowsky was a high school English teacher before becoming a writer. Juniper Berry is his first book. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

Walden Pond Press

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Win a signed hardcover copy of 

The Dyerville Tales!

The awesome peeps at Walden Pond Press have generoulsy offered one signed hardcover edition for one winner.

DETAILS

-US only

-ends 5/9

-must be 13+, one free entry per person

-winner will be emailed and must claim prize within 48 hours

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DON'T MISS ANY OF THE BLOG TOUR STOPS

4/28 - Word Spelunking Book Blog 

4/29 - Book Smugglers

4/29 - KidLit Frenzy

4/30 - Mundie Kids

5/1 - Bunbury In the Stacks

5/2 - A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust

5/3 - The Book Rat

5/5 - Mundie Kids

5/6 - Bluestocking Thinking

5/7 - Small Review

5/7 - Paige in Training

5/8 - Novel Novice

5/9 - The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia

5/9 - Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers

5/9 - Buried in Books

5/10 - The Book Monsters

5/13 - The Flashlight Reader

5/14 - The Hiding Spot 

(MMGM) M.P. Kozlowsky, author of The Dyerville Tales {Review, Interview, Giveaway}

Be sure to check out the full schedule of this year’s 3rd Annual March MG Madness and enter to win a box of 6 books!

I'm so thrilled to have M.P. Kozlowsky stopping by the March MG Madness today! Check out our Interview, my Review, and the Giveaway below...

The Dyerville Tales

by M.P. Kozlowsky

4/22/14

Walden Pond Press

A young orphan searches for his family and the meaning in his grandfather's book of lost fairy tales in this stunningly original coming-of-age middle-grade fantasy

Vince Elgin is an orphan, having lost his mother and his father in a fire when he was young, but beyond that, his life hasn't been much of a fairy tale. With only a senile grandfather he barely knows to call family, Vince was remanded to a group home, where he spun fantastical stories, dreaming of the possibility that his father, whose body was never found, might one day return for him. But it's been a long time since the fire, a long time since Vince has told himself a story worth believing in.

That's when a letter arrives, telling Vince his grandfather has passed away. Vince cannot explain it, but he's convinced that if his father is somehow still alive, he'll find him at the funeral. He strikes out for his grandfather's small hometown of Dyerville carrying only one thing with him: his grandfather's journal. The journal tells a story that could not possibly be true, a story of his grandfather's young life involving witches, giants, magical books, and evil spirits. But as Vince reads on and gets closer to Dyerville, fact and fiction begin to intertwine, and Vince finds that his very real adventure may have more in common with his grandfather's than he ever could have known.

M. P. Kozlowsky, the author of Juniper Berry, has crafted a powerfully imaginative novel of the spaces in life where fantasy and reality intersect, a touching story of the things we give up to recover the things we've lost.

Goodreads / Amazon / B&N 

M.P. Kozlowsky’s Juniper Berry is one of my most favorite middle-grade books, so I was super excited to dive into his The Dyerville Tales, and I’m happy to report that this fantasy tale does not disappoint!

Orphaned Vince Elgin lost his parents in a fire several years ago and receives word that is only living relative, his beloved grandfather, has died. Vince receives a book of tales belonging to his grandfather. Wild, thrilling tales full of magic, mythical creatures, and more. Tales that his grandfather claims are not only about him, but very true. Believing his father is alive, Vince runs away to attend his grandfather’s funeral, hoping to be reunited with his dad. Along the way, Vince encounters his own adventures while reading his grandfathers truly grand tales.

Wildly and profoundly imaginative, The Dyerville Tales is a gorgeous middle-grade fantasy! Kozlowsky proves once again that he is a master at spinning fantasy stories full of achingly lovely, yet captivatingly haunting whimsy, exciting adventure, and unforgettable characters.

Kozlowsky expertly weaves together Vince’s modern, coming of age situation with his grandfather’s fantastical tales, creating a story that feels both fresh and timeless. From evil witches, vicious giants, talking horses, magical weapons, golden boys, and so much more, the fantasy elements in The Dyerville Tales enthrall and excite, chill and captivate.The magical world of Vince’s grandfather’s tales is so vividly laid out and explored, with awe-inspiring imagination bursting off every page. Young readers will be easily swept away into the elder Vincent’s tales. But the younger Vince’s own adventures and misadventures, full of stowing away on a train, villainous bank robbers, and determined orphanage mistresses, is its own kind of page-turner. Vince’s story is a powerfully poignant and palpable one I felt deeply.   

Both Vincents (Vince and his grandfather) make for endearing, memorable heroes that readers will relate to and cheer for. But Kozlowsky’s excellently crafted secondary characters, from lovable Anthony; brave Orin; sweet Marie; and charming MJ, also shine and captured my heart. And of course, no grand fantasy tale is complete without its villain, and Kozlowsky gives readers an extra vile one in the Evil Witch *shudders* .

The Dyerville Tales concludes in the most breathtaking, and really only acceptable, way that left my heart humming with happines.

My Final Thoughts: M.P. Kozlowsky is such a spectacular storyteller who spins such gorgeous stories, and The Dyerville Tales is proof of that! Fantasy lovers young and old won’t be able to put this book down.

MY RATING

What three words best describe The Dyerville Tales?

Compelling.  Deceptive.  Illuminating.

Can you give us your best one sentence pitch to convince readers, especially reluctant readers, to give The Dyerville Tales a try?

The Dyerville Tales is something different, something unlike all other middle grade novels; it is a book that pulls fantasy from reality and reality from fantasy and melds it together into a compulsive read full of giants and witches and gnomes and magic and suspense, all with sympathetic and embraceable characters that will linger in one's memories for a long time to come, characters who may even reveal something about ourselves.

Grab a copy of The Dyerville Tales and answer the following:

favorite chapter?  The Forbidden Room

favorite page?  Page 232, when Vincent learns just what kind of magic is possible in the land beyond the door on the cliff.

flip to a random page and give us a 1-2 sentence teaser?  

The two ran out of the room and down the hall, only to find that the lion hadn't escaped at all.  Rather, it was threateningly circling the sleeping giant.

What inspired The Dyerville Tales? How did the story come to be?

This book would not exist were it not for my grandfather, to whom the book is dedicated.  He was a natural storyteller, a man who would gather the children of his village in Italy and tell them stories for hours on end.  He did the same thing with me and my brothers.  Luckily, I happened to record one of these sessions when I was five, maybe six years old - they are the only stories of his I remember.  I have carried that cassette with me ever since and it contains the essence for the fairy tales you read in The Dyerville Tales.  I like to believe I inherited my storytelling abilities from him and hopefully this book would do him proud.  

There are some memorable characters in The Dyerville Tales, do you have a favorite? What do you love about him/her? Did any of your characters end up surprising even you with the way they turned out?

My favorite character is Vince (to be clear, not Vincent, his somewhat double, who encompasses the fairy tales aspects of the book).  I feel his pain, the anguish of everything he lost and is so desperate to find.  I relate to it; I understand it deeply and such emotions carry the book to its conclusion.  The last part of this question, which character ended up surprising me, is a little more difficult.  I suppose I would have to say Anthony, Vince's best friend at the orphanage, who wasn't really in the original draft at all and who provides some comedic relief, which I had not planned as it is not really my forte.  

If you could live inside any fairytale world/story, which would you choose? What would you do there?

Wouldn't everyone want to live in Neverland, where they could play with the Lost Boys and experience endless adventures and never grow up?  Isn't that what everyone tries and fails to capture in this aging world of ours?

As a middle-grade author, why do you think middle-grade is so important? What do you love about writing and reading middle-grade?

I believe that writing middle grade books is, perhaps, one of the most freeing experiences an author can have.  At no other age level is there such openness from the reader, such a willingness to completely lose oneself in story.  Very often, the books that influence us most are not the epic novels or the classic literature we read in high school or college or after; it is the fairy tales and magical worlds of our childhood, many times the very ones that help guide us through it.  For a writer, there is no better time or place to reach an audience than when and where they need it most.

What is your all time favorite middle-grade book, middle-grade hero, and middle-grade heroine?

Always a difficult question, and rarely do I like to give a concrete answer.  I will say that The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne has one of the most emotionally rich endings of any book, middle grade or not.  There are countless great heroes and heroines in middle grade literature and I can only hope that I one day create a character that can stand among them.

Fill in the blanks:

I’m really awesome at deflecting.

I’m really embarrassed to admit that (see above).

The last great book I read was The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq.

If you were to create and bake a cupcake inspired by The Dyerville Tales, what would it look and taste like, and what would you call it?

I'm afraid preparing cupcakes is far beyond my abilities.  I can agree, however, that they are indeed like books in that they should both be consumed in large bites and often.

goodreads * website * twitter

M.P. Kozlowsky was a high school English teacher before becoming a writer. Juniper Berry is his first book. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

Win a finished copy of

The Dyerville Tales!

The lovely peeps at Walden Pond Press have offered up one book.

DETAILS

-US only

-ends 4/4

-must be 13+

-winner will be emailed and must claim prize within 48 hours

-I am NOT responsible for lost, damaged, or stolen prizes

Fill out Rafflecopter form:

a Rafflecopter giveaway