“We lived in God’s blind spot.“
Want a story about child slavery, a genius girl, and a daring plot to escape? Like to save money? If so, you’ll love this announcement…
It’s time for a sale!! Starting on September 22nd at midnight, the e-book version of Windmill Keepers will be available for only $2.99 on Amazon! The sale ends midnight, September 29th, so get it while you can, and don’t forget to review on Goodreads. 🙂
A. Kemp
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!
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
Whenever I sit down to write a new character, I end up pausing to double check my research. I think one of the most important aspects of literary casts is diversity, but it’s something you have to do right. It is dangerous to fall into the trap of describing unfamiliar characters through stereotypes. I believe, however, that it is equally as bad to ignore a character’s culture.
We live in a vastly complicated world, and it’s not pretty by any means. Racism, sexism, and countless other deplorable beliefs exist in our day-to-day lives. Some of us are lucky and do not encounter these problems very often. Others, not so much. This is something I became increasingly aware of as I learned to be more socially conscious with my writing.
When a character comes from a specific culture, they bring their baggage with them. You cannot take a white character and change their race without that shift affecting their lives. When you face different prejudices, you develop a different mindset, after all.
In the case of a devout Muslim character, for example, they are going to carry some of their religious background with them. That background is going to be vastly different from that of a devout Catholic. In that same regard, a Muslim character in Somalia is going to encounter different problems than one living in France. Location, history, and sociology are all things one has to consider when they try to introduce minority characters.
Ignoring a group’s social struggles and pressures paints an untrue picture of the world. It does not mean that a character can’t be an anomaly from their social group. In fact, that could be a huge part of their personality. This variance, however, is something the author should point out. I feel this is especially true when writing for young audiences.
And this is where things get tricky in terms of balancing a character. While a person should carry some marks of their culture, these imprints should not be counted on to create an entire character. Humans are far more complex than that.
In my book, for example, I have a girl from India who bears scars of abuse for being an unwanted daughter. Female abuse and infanticide is a serious problem in India. While it does not represent all of India, and there are many Indian families that love and cherish their daughters, it is a problem that still exists throughout the country. This character carries this maltreatment in the burns on her back.
Her scars, however, do not define her person in its entirety. She has managed to rise above the psychological trauma. She is fashionable, physically strong, a loyal friend, a feminist, a romantic, funny, and just a little bit strange. Her culture encouraged the growth of these traits through both good and bad experiences. She is the product of her society, but not the embodiment of it.
I want to see more honest depictions of different cultures in literature, especially where children are involved. And while I’m trying my best to get everything right, I know there are points where I am going to mess up. I’m not from the cultures I am trying to represent and so there is no way I could write them with perfect accuracy. I have struggled with this notion for some time. I worry that I am doing more harm than good, but whitewashing my books feels worse.
There has recently been a movement to see more diverse books, characters, and authors in our bookstore. While I cannot and should not be the forefront of this movement, I hope that I can help support it. The most I can ask is that if I get something wrong, then someone will let me know. Explain to me where I messed up. That way, I can acknowledge my mistake and take steps to never make the same error. I want to make things better, not worse.
I’ve written about empowering young girls before on a previous blog, but I felt like it needed to be mentioned again. There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and very little of it is good. Still, I don’t want to give up hope that our generation can turn things around.
As a writer, I want to see the world get better instead of worse. For that reason, I’ve always tried to be socially conscious when writing. After all, books had a profound impact on me as a young teen. Every time I sit down at the keyboard, I try to create real characters. They’re people of different races, from different cultures and backgrounds. I’m of the view that minorities shouldn’t be tokens you get gold stars for (such as: “my main character has a black friend, so I did a good job”). They deserve to be main characters, and our increasingly diverse population of young people deserve to see themselves reflected as heroes in literature.
I try to fight against misconceptions that I had as a young child. Hijabs do not equal oppression, a boy crying does not make him weak, and having a mental disorder does not make someone violent or evil. These are some of the messages I try to send. Young female characters, in particular, hold a special place in my heart.
As a child, I read dozens and dozens of adventures with boys as the main character. Treasure Island, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Kidnapped, Oliver Twist, The Yearling and even Watership Down (which was about rabbits) all had male heroes. Modern day books such as Holes, Harry Potter, Airborn, Looking for Alaska, and Unwind also feature male heroes. Needless to say, there were a lot of heroic, adventurous boys on my schools’ required reading lists and not a lot of girls. Thankfully, things have started to change.
In the YA genre, female writers have been making great strides, and they’ve brought a lot of their girl power with them. Female-centered stories with strong leads began to emerge in rapid succession once a new generation of writers got their turn at the plate. Now, a huge section of the YA market is dedicated to female protagonists. Male writers have also started creating stronger female characters. Kenneth Oppel’s Kate de Vries and Scott Westerfield’s Deryn Sharp played hugely important and powerful roles throughout their respective trilogies. It was a change I was glad to see happen.
It always pleases me when I see girls being depicted as powerful, be it though traditional or nontraditional roles. IN addition, diverse female characters send the message that women can be masters of their own story. This should be true of every female, regardless of their race, if they are boyish or girly, fat or thin, weak or strong.
Girls hold up half the sky, and they deserve the same respect and rights as men – be it in literature or real life. This is a message I am always trying to send through my female characters. After all, it’s hard to be a girl. Every woman on television is thin, beautiful, rich, well-dressed, and overwhelmingly white. Our lives are determined by corporations and governments that are 80% to 97% male. Women are 51% of the population, but we are voiceless when it comes to determining the laws that govern us. This is one of many reasons why we need feminism to achieve equality. In literature, I feel like women are finally starting to gain ground.
When I was young, I wanted to write, but I also wanted to get into robotics and engineering. My science teachers never encouraged me. I was told by a teacher in grade school that girls had a harder time in math and science. When I grew up and learned why such statements were wrong, I promised to do better. I hope I’ve done just that.
A.i. Kemp 