During an recent assembly with Ocracoke 3rd through 8th graders, Laurie McKay passed around a copy of the letter her editor sent her after her first book was selected for publication.
"The letter starts, 'I can't wait to publish your book!' and has two paragraphs about how good it is, and eleven pages of all the changes she wanted me to make," she laughed. She reminded the kids that a book has these elements: character, plot, setting, pacing, and dialogue. "Guess what [my editor] wanted me to change? Character, plot, setting, pacing... she told me my dialogue was good."
Apparently, you've got to have a thick skin to get a book published. Laurie admits that at first she felt terrible about all the problems in her book, but now she realizes that making changes is part of the process. Laurie did what her editor wanted, sent her manuscript back, and got an 8-page letter with more stuff to fix. "Revision is a big part of publishing," Laurie said. And editors really do make your writing better.
Laurie's first book was Villain Keeper, and she has now written two sequels, Quest Maker (just out in paperback) and Realm Breaker (just out in hardcover!) The three books comprise "The Last Dragon Charmer" series. It's a travel-between-worlds, fantasy, heroic-quest, action story set in Asheville, NC, a land without magic where Prince Caden accidentally ends up. Given the excited questions about specific characters and plot twists, she has Ocracoke kids hooked. Laurie has also written a 4th book that she's hoping to get published – this one takes place on a barrier island (but not our barrie island. Oh well.)
Laurie shared slides with the kids that showed the way her editor and the copy editor would mark up her manuscript and go back and forth about tiny details, right down to single words. ("Tubers" caused some confusion.) She led the students in a Life-or-Death game, asking them to choose the comments her editor said about passages in her book. If they got it right, they galloped away on a snow stallion. A wrong answer meant certain death in the fiery breath of a dragon.
She showed the kids slides of her book's cover art in all its stages, including some sketches that didn't get used at all. The kids were surprised to learn how little input she has on the artwork and cover design – about 2%. (She insisted that the horse on the cover be white, as he is in the story, and not brown, which the publisher liked.) Other ins and outs of publishing include getting an agent, having to write sequels on a deadline, getting better at writing the more you do it, and getting paid an advance. The young writers-to-be were taking it all in and asking lots of questions.
"I always loved to write, and started when I was a girl," Laurie said. "I would write and then I would stop because it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. I never thought I could do it as a career." She encouraged the kids to keep writing.
Asked why she set the book in Asheville, Laurie explained that "Asheville is a fiery name, and there are mountains, so I thought: that's a good place for a dragon." She's an NC native and former middle school teacher who now lives in Durham; her family vacationed in Asheville when she was young.
This was her first visit to Ocracoke, where she enjoyed a nice stay at Captain's Landing with her mom, and was treated to an Eduardo's lunch with the 4th and 5th grade classes, and their teachers, Ms Jeanie and Ms Paige. They hosted her because they are reading Villain Keeper and have their own copies to keep. Now those copes are signed by the author!
Laurie told the 4th and 5th graders that the original Star Wars trilogy was an influence on her, though she didn't realize it until later.
"My mom told me when I was was working on the sequel to make sure it's a great sequel like 'Empire Strikes Back'," she said.