I recently shared a Spotlight for J.M. Gulmire’s MG novel Kay-9 The Robot Dog. Gulmire was kind enough to send along this guest post about the creation of the book. I’ll have more to say about the book soon, but for now, let’s whet our appetite with this bit of behind-the-scenes.
Shaping Smiles with Kay-9 The Robot Dog
Writing is magic. Reading is all about discovering that magic, but getting the words out is quite an adventure.
I learned this after 12 years of writing and submitting work. I played the agent querying game so often you’d think I’d have at least earned some kind of annoyance award. And I have to admit, my first children’s chapter book was a bit off the rails.
I mean how many kids are dying to read about getting A Vacuum for my Birthday?!
But I live with a house full of elves and they wanted to laugh. They like the outlandish and absurd. I’m quite fond of it too so I just kept writing.
Then one day, my favorite impish little elf asked me to write a story about a robot dog. I’d never heard of a story like that so I was all about it. I love dogs and writing, but I didn’t know much about robots, so we started playing with some kits and instead of just writing a story however the words came I sat down and sprinkled some fairy dust on my manuscript.
This helped me to list out what I wanted to happen and how the characters would come to life. I had no idea that an outline could be so shiny, but once it was done I couldn’t stop writing.
I began the story right away and suddenly something amazing happened. No more plot holes, no more hang ups. Everything came together as I sat down at the same time every day. I wanted to let my characters speak for themselves so I talked to them like I would anyone else and their voices called to me from the page.
Before I knew it my elves were reading and laughing at Kay-9 The Robot Dog. We had so much fun that I queried all the agents and papered the indie publishing world with submissions. I’m happy to say that the story got a lot of love. Despite this, the gatekeepers stood over me shaking their heads.
My book was too different, they said.
How could this be? Kids like the weird, the new, the exciting. I knew my story was alive and wagging its tail, just waiting to be loved.
It made me sad to know that so many great books are forgotten before they have a chance to be read, all because someone said, “No.”
I fell into a mystical sleep for a few years, waiting for this awful spell to wear off. Thankfully, when I came to and rubbed my eyes the elves were waiting for me. They patted my back and handed me my book and said, “Make it yourself!”
So that’s what I did.
Kay-9 not only came to life on Sept. 5 this year, the world of claymation sucked me in so I could create fun cartoon shorts to go along with the story. I didn’t need to fly around the world. All I wanted was to make someone smile and maybe start some laughter.
And that’s just what happened. My silly story, Kay-9 The Robot Dog hit #1 in its genre on Amazon and the clay keeps dancing.
Books are silly like that. They live in us every day. We just have to do what we can to properly shape them and share them with other booklovers.
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