Paperbacks are HERE!!!

/ aikemp / Leave a comment

Hey everyone! The paperbacks are IN!!! You can buy them HERE for $9.99. We’re pretty excited to finally see them in a non-digital form. If you want to help spread the word about Windmill Keepers, be sure to review the books on Goodreads or Amazon (or both!).

Thanks to everyone that helped to make this a reality. Despite all the roadblocks and low moments I’ve experienced this year, it’s been amazing. In only eight months, I’ve had three lifelong dreams come true. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

A. Kemp

The Importance of Great Teachers

/ aikemp / Leave a comment

Hey everyone! Windmill Keepers  is slowly making its way from the hands of our close friends and into the hands of their close friends. The spread begins! I’m proud to say this book has helped me come to another conclusion as well.

The day after we published to Amazon, I was talking to someone about my career and where I was headed in life. I admitted that I hadn’t been happy since I started my current job. He asked me what I wanted to be when my contract was finally up, and I didn’t have an immediate answer.

I have a graduate degree in Criminal Justice and Criminology, but it did me very little good when I graduated. There wasn’t anything open to a 23 year-old with no experience in the field, despite my fancy paper. Unable to break into investigations, as originally planned, I ended up joining a tiny, forgotten branch of the military. I managed to do some good at my last unit, but I wanted to move on in four years. I never expected to tricked into a seven-year contract. Now that I’m here, the only thing I can do is make the best of my situation and plan for my next career.

I’ve considered getting some more qualifications in forensics and working in a lab. After all, that was my concentration in college, and what I was best at. I’ve also considered going into robotics and possibly working in another country. But at the end of the day, I have a family to think of, and entry-level work at 31 sounds like financial suicide.

When I ran these options by my husband and sister, I added one more. I mentioned teaching, and they said that was where they could see me being the happiest. I can’t disagree with them.

I think having great teachers is extremely important. They’re the unsung heroes of America. In fact, their presence and words can alter a life. I can speak from experience on that one.

I was home-schooled until I was eight. When I finally started, the staff was worried I would be behind and placed me in second grade instead of third. My first teacher was Mrs. Moore. She was an old, puffy woman who wore lots of animal print button downs. Back in her golden years, teachers were still allowed to beat children who didn’t listen. To give you an indication of how that year would go for me, she missed those days terribly and often told us she wished America would bring it back.

We spent our days in a cinder block building, at the end of an abandoned road. There was nothing around us but cornfields, empty farm houses, and a military base on the horizon. The Midwestern sun turned our schoolhouse into an oven. With no air-conditioning, we had to make due with fans and open windows.

It was in the middle of this blistering heat that I remember silently crying as I wrote my mother and father an apology letter for being a bad daughter and student. Mrs. Moore watched me from her desk, tapping her long nails and lecturing to the class about how she used to beat ill-behaved children who talked in class. My face was red and hot, despite the fan blowing against the back of my neck.

When I was done, she read it to the class and said I didn’t do a good enough job because I didn’t admit to my guilt. She wrote an angry note in ugly red ink to my parents on the back. Then she told a girl across from me that once I fixed my attitude, she needed to teach me how to properly brush my hair. But I sat with my back to a fan, and it was that girl that had been talking – not me.

My parents sent me out of the room when they had a meeting with Mrs. Moore about the note. Apparently, my teacher admitted to calling me stupid in front of the class, and suggested that I couldn’t handle higher thinking. My summer vacation started a week early that year when my mother refused to send me back.

The next year, I had a new teacher, in a new grade and a new building. The old one was shutdown and replaced with an air-conditioned elementary school on base. Mrs. Guerrero had been a third grade teacher for just a little bit less than Mrs. Moore had been teaching second grade. But the difference changed my life.

Mrs. Guerrero encouraged me. She told me what I needed to work on, as well as what I was good at. With her, I won a poetry contest and placed third in the Young Authors program. She told me I was smart. When I saw Mrs. Moore in the hallway, I refused to look at her.

By fourth grade, I was in the advanced class. By seventh, I was homeschooling myself to skip eighth grade. The next year, I was a ninth grade student-worker at a college prep school. All along the way, I had amazing teachers that encouraged me and made me push myself (even if I nearly failed math in sixth grade).

Sometimes, I wonder where I would be if I had another Mrs. Moore in my life.  Would I have gone to college? Would I have tried to write a book? I have a feeling I wouldn’t have.

Teachers have such a huge impact on the people around them. They can make or break a young mind. I have so much thanks to give the people that encouraged me. I want to do that for another child. I know it will be scary starting something new after 30, but I think I can do it and keep my writing career as well. I have five years to go to get my qualifications and move into something better. I know I can make that happen. And when I do, I’m going to be someone else’s Mrs. Guerrero.

A. Kemp

P.S. Just a reminder that you can  purchase the e-book version of Windmill Keepers HERE for $5.99. If you like it, share it with a friend! Or review it on Amazon. Every bit helps 🙂

Windmill Keepers Book One NOW AVAILABLE!

/ aikemp / 2 Comments

Keepers Pair

Hey guys! I.Kemp here of the A.I.Kemp partnership now announcing that Windmill Keepers: Book One is finally available for worldwide purchase through the Amazon Kindle Store! You may buy the book HERE!! for $5.99 or read it for free with Kindle Unlimited!

“The Windsor Miller Corporation has taken over the turbines of Europe and is set to eliminate their competition with cheap energy. Unknown to their consumers, the root of the company’s success lies in their social service program. Throwaway children are forced to maintain the colossal windmills with no regard for their safety or lives. Sickness, abuse, and bloody accidents are a dark reality for these children, known as Keepers.

When her father suddenly dies, Kite Lyons is resigned to spend her life as a slave to one of Windsor’s windmill farms. As a sixteen-year-old Keeper, Kite has two years left before she is moved to a Windsor factory. But when an accident claims the life of a close friend, the trauma of her companion’s death drives Kite to make a bold decision. Armed with a set of notes and the genius mind she inherited from her father, Kite teams up with her four mill mates to craft a daring escape plan. But the road to freedom is filled with detours, and before Kite can save anyone, she must come to terms with her greatest loss and find the courage to defy an oligarchy.”

We would like to thank everyone who made this possible, including all the friends, family, professors, and classmates throughout the years who encouraged and criticized. We’d also like to thank Nadège Richards who did a beautiful formatting job and our editor Shannon Thompson.

We are currently working with Create Space to release a paperback version that is scheduled to come out in the next coming month and be available for $9.99. Please stay tuned for further details on that announcement!

Seven Days

/ aikemp / 3 Comments

Just a quick announcement! In less than seven days, Windmill Keepers will be out on Amazon.

It’s been a long journey guys. Thanks for going along with the ride.

Traditional, Indie, and Self

/ aikemp / Leave a comment

Back in June, I was supposed to attend UtopYA 2015. The government, however, owns a large part of my life (read: all of it), and told me to pack up my husband and move from the Keys all the way to Northern Cali. So, I. Kemp and the wonderful Gabriellia Kemp went in my stead.

One of the things I. Kemp brought back was an opinion that we were best off going the self-publishing route. Prior to this decision, I had been torn between which route to continue pursuing. I realize now that my hesitation was formed from the same uneducated opinions that non-writers often hold.

When I was still and college and far too optimistic for my own good, I thought that you sent an idea to an agent and they made a schedule for you to submit your work while pitching it to publishing houses. That was completely wrong. I learned during my first writer’s conference that it’s nearly impossible to get something published without first having it completed. This put my current work on hold and started Windmill Keepers.

When self-publishing was just starting to gain momentum from e-books, I read an article by an old editor who worked for a traditional publishing house. She spent about eight hundred or so words bashing self-published writers as being unprofessional, whining losers who couldn’t stomach the traditional route. I read the comments and saw dozens of people singing her praise. Almost all of them were employed by the Big Five. I was so foolish back then, that I believed them.

Indie publishing crossed my mind briefly, but for some reason I imagined them as being those dollar store romance books. Self-publishers, in my mind, were even worse than that. They were fan fiction with slightly altered names for the characters and places. I thought publishing through those routes was worse than not being published at all.

I was so, so wrong.  Continue reading →

Writing with Depression

/ aikemp / 1 Comment

It feels like forever since I last wrote anything about Windmill Keepers. There’s been a backlog of tiny disasters in my life that finally banded together in the form of a giant monster. I haven’t slain it yet, but I’m armoring myself for battle.

It’s no secret that I struggle with depression. The whole soul-crushing hopelessness is something of a family affair. I know for a fact that both my grandmothers had it, and possibly my parents as well. I’m not sure when they developed it, but I can’t actually remember a time when I didn’t feel overwhelmingly sad out of the blue. Even as a child, I remember this heavy weight that would settle over me like a thick fog. Sometimes I fought my way out. Sometimes I just waited for the sun to come back.

I’ve tried different tricks to force myself to get better. Upbeat music, long walks, exercising, writing – nothing really works. And that’s the difficult part to explain to people who don’t suffer from it. You can’t just make yourself happy. Emotions don’t work that way, especially not when you’re depressed.

Little things seem like a big deal when you’re in a rut, and big things seem impossible. Getting up can be like climbing a mountain. But sufferers still do it. Each day, I wake up for work, get dressed, and then proceed to ignore eight hours worth of frustration. Unless it gets really bad, no one even realizes I’m fighting an uphill battle whenever I need to do the dishes or run errands.

As strange as depression is, it’s even stranger when you’re a writer (and stranger still if you write comedy). Unlike Poe, most of us are writing more then just sadness and despair. We’re telling stories with characters that go through difficult times as well as great ones. A hero that cries for three hundred pages isn’t very interesting, after all. We need depth.

In Windmill Keepers, I had to try and write a scene where my characters are victorious and in joyful disbelief. What I ended up writing was the most muted celebration since the invention of the earmuffs. I had to go back and redo the whole scene on a better day. Ironically, when I had to write about a funeral, it was a sunny 80 degrees in the Florida Keys and I was having a fantastic day. I tried to dampen the mood with shades and songs about death. It didn’t work out.

Writing is already a complicated matter, but when you add a dash of depression, it’s doubly so. About the only benefit I see to it is when I’m writing sad scenes on down days. Those are some of the most accurate and honest moments I’ve ever created. Still, I’d trade them in an instant if I could make my chest stop hurting for days at a time.

Here’s the odd thing: I’m an optimistic person when it comes to others’ problems. A few months ago, I spent an hour giving someone the greatest “life gets better” speech in my personal history. But I couldn’t talk myself into breakfast today. I had a supervisor tell me I needed to be stronger. He called me weak. What he doesn’t get is that I’ve had to be twice as strong as my peers for twenty-six years. I’m not superwoman. I’m bound to stumble from time to time.

I think everyone needs to remember how hard we try. People with depression don’t need talks on what makes them happy. And we don’t need people calling us pathetic. People with depression need support. We need to know there’s someone out there, waiting for us to make it through the storm.

My surname has a motto. Lucem Spero. It means “I hope for light.” Even in my darkest moments, I try to hold onto that. After everything my sister and I have been through, we’d be foolish not to. That tiny bit of light at the end of all our dark tunnels has been the only thing pulling us through. No matter how bad it gets, I will always have my family. They’re my flickering beacon at the end of this storm. If you are brave enough, then be someone else’s.

Now, it’s time I got back to battling that monster. I’ll see you all again when I’ve reached that light of mine.

-A. Kemp

Fan Art From My Biggest Fan

/ aikemp / 1 Comment

casey-gabby

Check out this awesome art Gabriellia Kemp drew for us! Being the youngest meant she always had five times as much talent as the rest of us. She’s pretty awesome.

This is Casey, whom you will meet in the first chapter of Windmill Keepers. I’m pretty attached to her, even if she has her ups and downs.

How to Give and Receive Criticism

/ aikemp / Leave a comment

Writing is an art that takes far more skill than one might expect. Natural talent only extends as far as one’s vocabulary. It’s an art that requires constant development, reworking, and creativity. This is why written works can be so personal for their creators – and why criticism can be so poorly received.

When I was in my early college years, I sent off a query with the first ten pages of my now-shelved manuscript attached. I was hopeful that I would get an instant reply, telling me I was the next J.K. Rowling. A quick rejection letter showed up in my inbox the next month and I spent half a week listening to sad punk songs about failure and rejection.

The letter wasn’t cruel or anything like that. It was a basic, cookie-cutter “no thank you.” But at the time, I kept saying that a reason or feedback would make me feel better. Seven years on, I know that’s not true. I would have been even more bitter, no matter how kind the criticism was. After all, I was convinced that I wrote something new, funny and creative. Back then, I wasn’t able to accept rejection with optimism. It took me a whole year of such experiences to learn that criticism was a blessing in disguise.

Even as an adult, it takes a certain degree of emotional maturity to handle negative comments. Very prideful people sometimes find it hard to admit mistakes and personal shortcomings. For example, I know of an extreme case where a young woman is so convinced of her knowledge that to this day she believes Mr. Rogers was a Navy Seal with several recorded kills and tattoo sleeves. Even after pulling up his full biography, which has his life-long occupation listed as being a Presbyterian minister, she refuses to believe it. She holds onto racist, and homophobic beliefs. Because she is afraid to accept any constructive criticism or challenges about her beliefs, she never grows. It’s sad, really.

If you never listen to the opinions of another, and refuse to reflect on your own thoughts and beliefs, then you are destined to stay in one place. The same is true of writing. If beta readers or editors tell an author that there was something lacking in a book, then it is important for the writer to consider their remarks. And if an author hears these comments over and over again, then the issue demands the writer’s attention.

Artists are great critics of their own work. Anyone who has ever reread or reviewed old writings and drawings knows the painful pride that comes from seeing intense improvement over old masterpieces. But when it comes to listening to others, we sometimes forget how to. And sometimes, we forget how to give criticism as well.

It doesn’t do anyone any good to send reviews like “this was a giant waste of money and time,” or “this book was disgusting” because at the end of the day, the writer may not know what they did wrong. If the author continues to get so many hurtful reviews, they may stop listening to feedback altogether, or even give up on writing. This is very similar what happened with E.L. James. The backlash against her writing was not necessarily wrong on a moral sense (the book was certainly glorifying abusive relationships and misrepresenting the BDSM community). The way the criticism was given, however, was not constructive. As such, she chose to ignore the hurtful comments and put out another book, this time sympathizing with the abuser by telling the story from his POV.

There may not be any guarantee that someone will listen to criticism, but if it is given, it should most definitely be constructive, rather than destructive. Help build your writing, as well as another’s by learning how to give and receive such comments. After all, as readers and writers, we’re all all in this together.

Winding Down

/ aikemp / Leave a comment

This week has been really busy for the both of us. We’ve been working on getting the final touches done on Windmill Keepers and sending it off to be formatted. Someday, I really want to be able to do it on my own, but with no prior knowledge, we’re willing to pay a bit extra to make sure it looks professional.

Izzy added a map to help the readers understand the layout of the Glasgow Windmill Farm a bit better. I feel like it was a good addition and helps clarify the daily travels of the characters. I attempted to draw one out for her as a template. My lack of drawing talent, however, created something that looked like a kindergartner’s self-portrait. Good thing I have an artist as my co-writer.

I’m starting to get really excited about this book. I mean, I’ve always had some confidence in it, but this is the realest it has ever felt. Izzy and I are looking forward to the day when we can finally hold it in our hands. Even if not very many people read it, I don’t regret the time I spent working on this novel.

It’s difficult to explain, but this is more than just a story to me now. It’s a piece of my life. And over the course of its creation, a lot of mine and Izzy’s lives have changed. Izzy changed colleges, changed majors, and hacked her way through a difficult art program. I finished two degrees, made it through boot camp, and moved to southern Florida, and then back across the country to northern California. We’ve moved into our first, second, and third apartments. Somewhere between all of this, I started dating my best friend. Back in March, we said our vows in the shadow of a lighthouse on Sanibel Island.

Through all of this, Windmill Keepers has been my only constant. Although the main character and I are very different, we both went through immense changes. From the first page to the last, I left my college years and entered an entirely new life. From the first page to the last, the Keeper, Kite Lyons, grew and changed and embraced the greatness that always lived inside of her.

It’s amazing and terrifying to finally see this stretch of road coming to an end.