John Paul Tucker holds degrees in Theatre
and Theology and has many years experience as an Ontario Certified English
Language Teacher, in addition to teaching mime, puppetry and Drama to teens and
children. His unique journey has furnished him with an eclectic head of ideas.
He is currently celebrating his 50th
article on www.thewriterslessonbook.com,
an educational website he created for writers, featuring writing tips and
techniques harvested from the books we love to read. He has published poems in
the Toronto Sun, Little Trinity Print Magazine and Imago Arts
e-magazine. His poem City Sidewalks won first prize in a Toronto
wide poetry contest. Two of his short stories, The Crooked Tree and The
Debt Collector have each won a prize awarded by The Word Guild and The
Prescott Journal respectively. You will find one of his fantasy
stories recently published in the popular Hot Apple Cider anthology Christmas
with Hot Apple Cider. JP has been busy polishing up The Rooster and the
Raven King & The Rise of the Crimson King, Books II & III of
The Song of Fridorfold trilogy, pursuing Cary, Clarisse and Gregory on
their fantastic adventures.
John Paul is excited to be putting the
final touches to his fourth novel, a YA fantasy inspired by the remarkable
storyteller, George MacDonald. Gather the latest news about JP’s upcoming
novels, enjoy a book trailer, dive into some free stories and poems, contribute
some art work, take a peek at some photos, or for no other reason drop by to
say hello at his official author website www.johnpaultucker.com.
John’s latest book is the middle grade
fantasy adventure, Shelter
Island.
Website Address: https://www.johnpaultucker.com
Facebook Address: https://www.facebook.com/johnpaultucker.author/
Title: SHELTER
ISLAND
Author: John Paul Tucker
Publisher: Brownridge Publishing
Pages: 224
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy Adventure
Author: John Paul Tucker
Publisher: Brownridge Publishing
Pages: 224
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy Adventure
BOOK BLURB:
Thirteen-year-old Cary and his sister Clarisse must return home every day
after school to mind their eight year old brother, Gregory. “It’s a
non-negotiable,” insist their work-obsessed parents. There is another problem.
Clarisse and Gregory don’t like Cary much, and Cary doesn’t much like anything,
especially being tagged with his gummy-fingered little brother. But their
troubles are about to grow talons.
While bickering over the contents of a small, intricately embroidered
pouch, the siblings unintentionally summon three mail-clad birds, who hasten
their three young conscripts to Shelter Island, refuge to a long divided realm
hidden from the children’s homeland for hundreds of years. Spotted above enemy
territory, the small company is attacked. Clarisse and Gregory escape to the
caves of Husgard. Cary’s captors dispatch him to Vangorfold, a centuries old
stronghold sworn to Husgard’s destruction. Entangled in a centuries old conflict,
the children’s own blur of problems comes into sharp focus, hastening the
fortunes, for good or ill, not only of a forgotten civilization of birds, but
of the children’s homeland.
ORDER YOUR COPY:
Amazon
Thank you for this interview! I’d like to know more about you as a person
first. What do you do when you’re not
writing?
Perhaps a little background first
— I trained professionally for a career in theatre as an actor. The mounds of
script study, rehearsals, and play watching come in handy for writing dialogue,
standing a story on its feet, setting a stage, and chugging the plot along. I
like action, suspenseful plot development and drama! What else? I studied dance
and sword fighting. These days, I like to play chess, swim and walk my dog. I
also like to make bread and bake cakes. When I can afford it, I love to share
dinner out with friends and family, followed by a play or the ballet. Creating
book trailers is high on my list – it’s like creating mini movies! Did I
mention drawing? Oh, it’ll make you cringe, but I can crack my jaw!
When did you start writing?
According to my mother, my kindergarten teacher told her
that one day I would be an author. Where the teacher got that from, I haven’t a
clue, and that ‘one day’ ended up a long way down a winding road. But I’ve
always enjoyed stories, particularly fantasy or fairy tales. The natural world
has always struck me as a magical place, infiltrated by presences we cannot
see. Perhaps, my kindergarten teacher saw how much I loved to listen to or tell
stories. She also reported that I liked to take long naps. Which should mean I
can write in my sleep, right? Getting back to answering the question, at
seventeen years of age I started off in a professional career in theatre and
pursued writing on the side. Eventually, writing stories got promoted from a
side dish to the main course.
As a published author, what would you say was the most
pivotal point of your writing life?
I have always found stories compelling. Books opened up new
worlds and introduced peculiar characters I would have liked to have had as
friends. Stories taught me profound truths which I could not have grasped any
other way. But it was Ernest Hemmingway’s Old
Man and the Sea and Jonathan
Livingston Seagull, a novella by Richard Bach which had the greatest impact
on my young and impressionable imagination. I wept for Hemmingway’s old
fisherman. But my very young self refused to accept that the old man’s
experience, which read like a sad, almost nihilistic parable, was the
inevitable outcome of every enthusiastic pursuit. Jonathan Seagull, in contrast,
swept alongside a fledgling artist and promised much, much more than meets the
eye. I was astounded that stories could wield so much power. Perhaps, those
novels were the grand impetus, from which there would be no turning back.
If you could go anywhere in the world to start writing your
next book, where would that be and why?
If it has survived, I would pull up a chair at his old desk
(I think it had secret drawers) in the study of George Macdonald (Author of The Princess and the Goblin &
numerous outstanding fairy tales). Who knows? I may uncover a lost manuscript,
or perhaps share the honor of shouldering the mantle of the prolific
storyteller as I write.
Second choice? Within walking distance of a wind-swept ocean
coastline. I love long walks to take a break from writing and I can think of no
better place to blow out the cobwebs and rekindle the imagination.
If you had 4 hours of extra time today, what would you do?
All expenses paid? Dinner for four followed by a play or the
ballet.
Where would you like to set a story that you haven’t done
yet?
A pond.
Back to your present book, Shelter Island, how did you publish it?
I found Brownridge Publishing with
a little detective work. I was thumbing through the results of a writing
contest, taking note of publishers which publish in my genre and found
Brownridge beside a winning entry. I visited the publisher’s site, discovered
Brownridge was a small, yet growing traditional publisher with shared ideals,
so I submitted. The editor liked my submission, but declined. The manuscript
was a picture book, which she wasn’t publishing at the time. I replied to her
email: As it so happens, I have just finished, and am
currently editing a middle grade fantasy novel, the first of a trilogy
titled The Song Of Fridorfold. She read it. Liked it.
Her daughter read it. Liked it. She offered to publish it.
In writing your book, did you travel anywhere for research?
Back and forth from study to kitchen.
Why was writing Shelter Island so important to you?
After
submitting my manuscript to an editor, he commented, You know you are
bucking the trend here. I thought, I hope so. Shelter Island is a story for readers, like the book’s protagonists Cary,
Clarisse, and Gregory, who must look somewhere other than their own troubled
hearts to find the courage they need to face extraordinary circumstances and
enemies older, stronger and more cunning. A lot of children’s books beat the
same feeble drum. Their message? Just dig deep enough, take charge of
yourself, and everything will work out. Simply reach into your heart and
you will find everything you need. That advice seems a naive sort of
cure-all. What if one’s ‘heart’ should fail? What if he reaches into his heart
and finds nothing but the ashes of regret and loneliness? Exploring the
possibilities that arose from such questions made a strong contribution to Shelter Island.
Where do you get your best ideas and why do you think that
is?
For one, I have a overactive imagination. I remember my Mom
got a call from my junior grade school teacher. The teacher asked my bewildered
mother why my older brother ‘John’ wasn’t attending school. “He doesn’t have an
older brother,” she answered. Apparently, I talked about him at school
sometimes. I also love art, fine art, theatre art and literature because in
good art invisible things (the corporeal), like love, hope and their enemies,
and material things (the temporal), get all tangled up. Art has the capacity to
reflect the ‘whole’ world and to reach into deeper places. I also happen to
bother God a lot in prayer, gathering crumbs that fall from the master’s
table.
Any final words?
On Shelter Island
you can fly, but you can never run!
No comments:
Post a Comment