Virtual Book Tour: Splotch by @kenhicksnyc #interview #giveaway #middlegrade - A Life Through Books

Monday, September 10, 2018

Virtual Book Tour: Splotch by @kenhicksnyc #interview #giveaway #middlegrade

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Middle Reader Fantasy
Publisher: MuseItYA a division of MuseItUp Publishing.

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Alice’s parents refuse to let her have a dog, so when Alice sees a paint stain on the sidewalk that looks like a dog, she decides that she will make him a virtual pet. She calls him Splotch and downloads a picture of him to her computer. To her surprise, he escapes from the computer and begins to act as Alice’s self-appointed protector. Unfortunately, he sees most people as potential enemies of Alice, including her teacher and the school principal, and he is not shy about giving those various enemies a bite. When Splotch starts to attack Alice’s best friend, Alice knows there is a big problem. But how will she get Splotch to stop being a guard dog and go back into the computer?


Interview

What is the hardest part of writing your books?

We write mysteries and thrillers for adults, fantasies and time travel for tweens and young adults, and fantasies for middle readers. For this reason, setting the proper tone at the beginning of a book for its specific genre is both the most important part of our writing and the hardest because we want it to be just right.

What songs are most played on your Ipod?

Neither of us use an ipod. When we have the radio on at home, it is most often the classical music station. We are also partial to Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell. Not necessarily in that order. They are all at the top of our lists.

Do you have critique partners or beta readers?

No, with a caveat. Since we write together, we are our own critique partners and beta readers. While we are writing, the pages go back and forth between us, critiqued and beta-read. In addition, we are very lucky that our daughter reads our novels in the early stages and gives us the benefit of her editing and critiques. She is priceless.

What book are you reading now?

Anne is a serial reader. Her present book is Cry The Beloved Country. She last read Howard’s End.

Ken is simultaneously reading Les Miserables, Abalom, Absalom, and Maigret is Afraid.

How did you start your writing career?

When Anne was at Bryn Mawr college and Ken was at Haverford, they wrote a book together for a course. It was called A Moon and a Tune and was put in a closet and has never emerged, except to a different closet whenever we moved. Still, it was a beginning, and we look back on it after 48 years with fondness.

Tell us about your next release.


Our next release will be a mystery/thriller for adults. It will be called Over My Dead Body and is the fourth in our Jane Larson Series. It involves a woman lawyer in New York City, who works hard for her clients and can’t seem to stay out of trouble for very long. The previously published Jane Larson Books are Weave A Murderous Web, Mind Me, Milady, and Praise Her, Praise Diana.

About the Authors

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Anne Rothman-Hicks is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College where, in 1969, at a college dance, she met a student from Haverford named Kenneth Hicks. They have been together pretty much ever since, getting married, having children, writing books, making art, and generally conspiring to live lives that are happy, creative, and good.

Anne and Ken’s most recent novels and stories are set in New York City, where they have lived for most of their married lives.

Their middle reader series, Alice and Friends, features Alice, a 10-year-old girl with a vivid imagination that gets her into and out of trouble. The titles are, STONE FACES, BROWNSTONE FACES, and SPLOTCH.

In Ken and Anne’s tween book, THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM, Jennifer and James find a pigeon in Central Park whose foot was caught in a bit of string attached to a fence. Only this pigeon was actually a man before he was turned into a pigeon over a hundred years earlier. Now he needs some help to be turned back into a man before a certain hawk captures and eats him instead.

A sequel, REMEMBERING THOMAS, has been published by MuseItUp Publishing in March of 2018.



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2 comments:

  1. Thank you for posting

    ReplyDelete
  2. Splotch, just saying that puts a smile on my face. Thanks for sharing.
    sherry @ fundinmental

    ReplyDelete