These are the last few days before my Frozen Secrets book officially launches. It’s sort of like a birthday, so I figure it will feel like any other day (like when you were a kid and grown-ups asked if you felt any older – ?).
Book Launches and Stuff
I would love nothing better than to host a huge book launch party with signing desk and long lines of fans waiting for a chance to talk to me. But this is my debut novel. And I don’t want to waste my day. I was chatting with a book reviewer a few weeks ago, and she said I should go ahead and do one, that I might be pleasantly surprised.
Tempting, but no.
Maybe when I’m launching my second book and I have dozens of readers in the area who would love to meet me and be the first to get the next book. Actually, that might not happen until my twentieth book. Needless to say, I’m not having an official book launch party. I think I’ll take the family out to dinner to celebrate. And I’m sure I’ll spread the word on social media. But that’s about it.
Countdown List
I did come up with the idea to do a week-long countdown list with (non-spoilery) things from the book. I’ve been posted them on social media, and we’re down to two days left. Because I don’t want to have to come back here to post just one thing, I’ll be posting the entire list here. Just think of it as one of the perks of reading it on the blog.
7 days: There are 7 people on the Good Guys / Bad Guys list that Max makes with his friends (technically, there are eight people listed, but one of those is a double-count – hopefully that’s not too spoilery).
6 days: Each Europa Academy squad (see below) has three teams (Varsity, JV, and 8th grade), and each of those teams fields two sleds for the Iditarod race. That means 6 Iditarod sleds per team (for 18 sleds total, which means 36 racers total).
5 days: Max and Jonathan’s families are both selected to go to Europa. At the orientation, Max and Jonathan meet Cameron. Then on the space station, the three boys meet Mei Li and Elise. These five friends are the main characters of the book. Technically, Frozen Secrets is from Max Parker’s perspective. But never fear, the other four books in the series will be from the point of view of each of the other friends. Book 2 will be from Mei Li’s POV. And I’m tentatively planning Book 3 for Cameron, Book 4 for Jonathan, and Book 5 for Elise. We’ll see.
4 days: The homes of the future will have integrated Artificial Intelligences. Who knows what that will actually be like, but I have some fun imagining it in the book. Four house AIs are mentioned by name: Serenity, Fred, Harold, & Chaz. Serenity is the patient computer of Max’s home on Earth. Fred is only mentioned in passing (he’s the house computer for Jonathan’s family), Harold is the AI that comes with Max’s family’s townhouse in Europa City, and Chaz only has a short line in a scene in the middle (you’ll have to go find it – I can’t tell you who’s house it is).
3 days: Schools usually participate in sports and other competitive activities with other nearby school (Rivalries – yay!). But there aren’t any nearby schools on Europa. So they decided to split the students into teams to compete against themselves (sort of like Houses in Harry Potter). The administration didn’t want the students grouped by their country or region of origin, or even the language they speak. So they created three squads (North, Central, and South) and put students in them depending on whether they were from the North, Central, or South area of their home country (Rivalries – yay!).
2 days: Max’s family goes back to Earth for the Christmas holiday break. While there, he and his sister, Kelli go out to run an errand (I can’t tell you what it is), and they get chased by two crazy people on motorcycles. Hopefully that’s not too much of a spoiler. They’re on the Houston Mesh where only centrally-connected, self-driving cars are allowed to enter. So it’s hard to believe anything like this could happen. And you thought self-driving cars were boring.
1 day: The whole reason Max gets in trouble in the first place is because he hears about a secret chemical. It’s sort of important for the whole plot. I took some liberties with nuclear chemistry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Next Book Plotting
I can’t say much yet, but I’ve gotten enough positive feedback on Frozen Secrets that I think I’ll work on writing the second book in the series before I’ll go off and write an eBook only series for adults in Kindle Unlimited. I’m not 100% sure how the plot will go at this point, but let me just say that Mei Li is awesome. Send encouragement if you agree.