Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant Blog Tour + Guest Post with Mark Jeffrey

Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant

by Mark Jeffrey

Released May 1st by HarperCollins

Goodreads Blurb:

When time mysteriously stops one day, nearly everyone in the world is trapped in suspension. But not Max Quick. Now Max must travel across America to see if he can discover how to set things right.

Along the way, he joins forces with a girl named Casey and a boy named Ian. In their hunt for answers, Max and his companions encounter ancient mysteries, magical books, and clues to the riddle of stopped time and the suspicious villains who seem to have caused it in the first place.

Yet the more Max learns about the time stop, the more it seems that his own true identity is not what he once believed...

******

"driven -- and driven well -- by good old-fashioned sci-fi storytelling." - Kirkus Reviews

ForeWord Magazine 'Book of the Year' Finalist 2005

We are extra lucky because Mark was sweet enough to write a blog post just for us about his journey to publication:

Getting published is sort of a weird thing.

For example, you would think that the cover artist and I know each other or that at least we met.  Answer: Nope.  In fact I didn't even know his name until I saw the final version of the cover and his name was written on the inside jacket flap. 

Oh I understand why that is.  Or at least I can guess: the publisher doesn't want the author harassing the artist.  Publishers are professionals when it comes to selling books.  They know how to make covers that work.  An author may be a great writer but that doesn't mean they know how to make great cover.  Imagine if they had a really terrible idea  -- and imagine if they knew the artist's phone number.  Right.  That poor artists phone would ring off the hook.  And the publisher would be upset -- especially if he author succeeded at bullying the artist into doing something really terrible.

Apparently even Mary DeGrandpre, famous for all those wonderful chapter-heading doodles in every Harry Potter book, has never met J.K Rowling. 

Here's another funny thing: when my editor told me she was sending me an edited copy of my manuscript, I was surprised to find there was no attachment to the email.  When I pointed this out to her, she said, "Oh no.  Its been FedEx'd to you.  It should be there tomorrow."  My jaw hit the floor: this was a hand-corrected hardcopy?  I had expected a Word file with Track Changes turned on.  It had simply never occurred to me that it was even possible that I might be getting a stack of paper. 

Even lawyers, who are among the least tech-friendly people I know, use Word with track changes turned on. 

So I sat there with my hand-corrected paper copy and painstakingly typed in the changes (or not -- sometimes I objected for some reason or other). 

I tell you all this because I had a very different picture in my head of what the process of actually getting published was like.  The reality was much stranger and I guess more pedestrian that I would have thought.

Still.  I'm not complaining :) Getting published may be sort of a weird thing, but there is nothing like seeing your book for sale in the bookstore for the first time.  I'm told by other more famouser authors that this actually never gets old. :)

And now, for your viewing pleasure:

 
 

Don't miss this fun middle grade
fantasy adventure!