Hi guys!
How are you this fine fine day?
If you answered with an enthusiastic FANTASTIC...great!
If not, no worries...I'll try to brighten your day, after all, this IS Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers and what better way to turn your frown upside down than with a new book for your wish list? Can't think of one can you. Didn't think so. ^_^ Now, let's indulge...
This being the second post of a somehow double booked day (don't ask me how, but yeah...it happens; no worries though, the more the merrier and the more FUN for all of YOU!), I wanted to bring you something exciting, something new, something bookish and yet...with a twist. How so you might ask? I'll tell you how, or rather show you because the star of the "different" pick of the day is coming at you via blog tour courtesy of Pump Up Your Book Promotions...RIGHT NOW!
That's right, another blog tour, but this time around we're featuring a Young Adult title filled to the brim with excitement, adventure, magic, and the simplest of quests that we all undertake at some point...to fit in. Finding where we belong and what's REALLY important is a life long process, though if you're lucky you find bits and pieces of that equation early on. In the case of our eleven year old lead Neil, he's on the right path...but the journey will still be a long one. This is the first book in a planned trilogy that promises much more to come as we see from the "about" below...
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The Neil Abbott Trilogy
The day after a winter storm raged up and down the East Coast and rendered the village of Albatross all but inaccessible, Neil Abbott was found freezing in the woods just outside the village, his jacket draped over a nearby bush. He was seventeen years old. There were those who said that, encouraged by the tragic events of the previous year, and in particular the previous week of his life, Neil had finally succumbed to the madness his unusual behaviour had been foretelling since he was a child. They were wrong.
He was saving the world.
To understand how, one needs to understand each of the three transformational experiences that defined Neil’s life.
Wondertown is the first.
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Curious?
I thought you might be.
Let's take a closer look at book 1....
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by
Wondertown is a full-length fantasy novel from Mac Fallows that includes twelve original songs—each one an extension of the story sung by the characters themselves- and seventeen illustrations from acclaimed illustrator, Emrah Elmasli.
The story centers around Neil Abbott, an undersized, introverted eleven-year old boy with the ability to tell about people by touching their possessions. He doesn’t fit in either at home or at school and rarely speaks to anyone, with the exception of his grandmother, who has a secret talent of her own.
One day, after a particularly difficult week, Neil asks his grandmother if she thinks he’s normal, and she responds by telling him the remarkable story of an unlikely hero, who long ago crossed the five parts of the world to free his only friend from a demon lord.
Filled with hidden meaning and at times mirroring Neil’s life, Wondertown is an unforgettable journey to a place inside each of us few of us dare to go.
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See?
TOLD YOU it sounded cool.
Now, about that "thing" that made it different or stand out from the rest...it's not purely the story nor the writing per se (though I have not read the work myself at present) but the fact that it's a MUSICAL story and I'm not talking Annie or Oklahoma here. I mean that the story is interactive in a way that I've never experienced before and it's doubtful that most of you have either for the songs are extensions of the story itself, sung by the characters, highlighting different pieces of the adventure as it unfolds.
How's THAT for different?
I mean I've heard the voices of literary characters in my head before during a read but never have they LITERALLY spoken (or sung) to me before. Pretty nifty if I do say so myself and definitely something I'll be checking out in the future...
*adds to wish list*
Now, how would you like to learn a bit more about how the story came to be? Well, you're in luck! Thanks to Pump Up Your Book Promotions, I was given the option of something MORE than simply a spotlight (though those ARE pretty darn cool!) and lucked out with this awesome Guest Post from the author himself. Ready...set...read!
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The Story Behind Wondertown
The first time I tried
to write Wondertown, I was around twenty years old. I’d written a collection of
related songs, but the story behind them was still a bit fuzzy, so I tried to
pull the songs together with a screenplay. A few years later a dramaturgist in
Prague set me straight.
“Very amateurish,” he
said. “The story sounded much more intriguing when you explained it. Reading it
was quite a disappointment, to be honest. You clearly have no understanding of
screenplays or production values. Why not try writing this Wondertown as a
book.”
I asked him if he thought a book with songs made
sense. He shrugged and said that in any case, it couldn’t be much worse.
I came to Prague by a series of unfortunate
events. I was hawking a 4 track demo of the songs of Wondertown to record
companies in Europe thinking I might generate some interest in my musical
screenplay. I started in London, where I was rejected half a dozen times, after
which I headed to France. I crossed the English Channel on a hovercraft then strode
through Calais at nightfall like I was intent on pushing back the Germans. I
wound up in the French countryside, hitchhiking blindly at the side of an on
ramp. Neither the rain nor my humungous backpack earned me any sympathy with
the locals and after a few hours I gave up and pitched camp in a nearby
field. After partially heating a tin of ravioli on my portable stove, I lay in
my sleeping bag without an air mattress to shield me from the frozen ground. I
remember doing push-ups to raise my body temperature until I was interrupted by
a few stray French dogs that found my ravioli can and proceeded to run barking
around my tent until I gathered up my things and cleared out. I tramped wearily
back to town and waited three-and–a-half hours in the pre-dawn chill for the
seven-thirty express to Paris. At some point — I think it must have been when
the dogs were chasing me — I’d overrun what were, to my mind, the bounds of
acceptable failure. In the train station in Calais, sitting alone on the
platform, I began to think that maybe my musical screenplay wasn’t such a good
idea.
Still, I carried on as people invariably do when
they are unable to either turn back or sit still. I went to Paris, where I
received two more face-to-face rejections, then took a night train to Munich,
where I received another three. After that I hitchhiked through Austria to
Italy, passed the night in an olive grove outside of Verona, then plummeted
clear to Brindisi in the south of Italy. I waited two and a half days for the
Mediterranean to flatten out, then sailed first to Corfu Town, where I logged
another rejection, then to mainland Greece, where I collected two more. Then I
rode a bus to Thessolaniki, a series of cars to Beograd, and a train to Vienna,
somehow managing to be rejected four more times along the way.
After leaving Calais, I’d wandered through the
bottom half of Europe without a map or any clear sense of where I was heading
and the trip had long since started to feel like one long, U-shaped push into
the ridiculous. But just when I was ready to return home and give up on my
dream, I met an old Hungarian man on a park bench.
I told him I’d had my fill of Europe and he
responded by hiking up first one pant leg then the other to show off his many
scars. “The western view of the world is funny, like a Western movie,” he said.
“Central Europe, on the other hand, is like an Eastern movie, if there
is such a thing. And I’ll tell you something else.” He tucked his pants back
into his boots. “It isn't funny at all.”
He asked where I was from. When I told him I was
from Canada, he said, “You have no hate in your country. In Europe, a man is
defined by his hate. It is not only acceptable, it is who he is. That is what
makes me Hungarian and another Russian. It is not the language or the culture.
These things are not in our blood; they are not in the ground. You
understand?”
I didn’t.
“You should go to Czechoslovakia.” He
clearly disliked the word, heaving it out of his mouth like it was covered in
mold. “Prague is a mysterious place. It hides itself from visitors like a shy
housecat. But if you stay long enough, the ground will speak to you. They hate
each other, you know.”
“Who does?”
“The Czechs and Slovaks. They’ll split like the
Red Sea the moment the dust has settled.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Trust me. The Czechs and Slovaks will divorce
each other the same way they divorced the Russians: Muslim style, with words.”
“I have heard that it’s pretty cheap right now,”
I offered.
“Prague? Not for the Czechs.” This fact seemed
to satisfy him. “But for you it must certainly be.”
I thanked him for his counsel; I knew where I
was heading next.
“Prague survived Hitler because of its beauty,”
he called after me. “It even survived Stalin and his crazy ego. But it won’t
survive this Letna Hill, mark my words. Prague is like a woman — freedom will
ruin it completely.”
I could hear his rumbling laughter as I rounded
the corner. It was as if God himself were laughing at me for the plans I was
making.
Stepping off the train
in Prague's Main Railway Station with my screenplay and 4-track demo in the
midst of the second winter of Vaslav Havel's velvet presidency, I found
Prague’s social fabric less like velvet and more like sackcloth. I was appalled
to see men and women of my generation with their children in tow soliciting
tourists to come home with them as paying guests. One man said he was a doctor,
another an engineer. A drunken man who said he was Prague's most famous living
artist was offering his studio for five dollars a day. There was no warmth, no
glow to liven the bleak colours of a society worn to the bone. The city was on
life support, its spirit bleeding out.
I imagined that I was an
impressive sight with my face unshaven, my hair unraveling, my gloves torn at
the knuckles and worn through at the fingertips and my jeans still reeking and
sullied from the nights I'd passed in the frozen forests of Bavaria. However,
my boots gave me away. The latest in hiking boot technology, my two hundred and
fifty dollar Gortex footwear made it clear that I was only passing through… and
that I had no intention of getting my feet wet.
I
landed an apartment on the outskirts of town, which is where I met the
dramaturgist who set me on the path to my first musical book. It took me quite
a few years before I got around to writing Wondertown as a novel, but in the
end, it was clear that he’d been right. I never saw the dramaturgist again, nor
have I returned to Prague since. But every time I hear the songs of Wondertown
I am briefly reminded of the place where they found new life and the man who
helped me free them into the world.
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Reclusive writer and composer Mac Fallows first began pitching the idea of a musical book for teens and adults to music and book publishers in the late eighties. But without the technology to support his vision, he didn’t get far.
So instead, he set out to travel the world in search of new challenges . . . and stories. He went on to write and produce over 100 songs in a dozen languages in places including Dakar, Mumbai, Prague, and Santiago for singers including Youssou N’dour, Shankar Mahadevan, Pape and Cheikh, and Kavita Krishnamoorthy.
Along the way he lived with taxi drivers and their families, camped in farmers’ fields, butchered bulls, sold tea, raised chickens, translated travel contracts, worked as a session musician, a construction worker, a teacher, and toured the biggest festivals in Europe as a member of one of Africa’s most celebrated bands.
Wondertown is the first true musical story he's published. It includes a full-length fantasy novel, 12 related songs and 17 illustrations.
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Special thanks to Dorothy and the whole crew over at Pump Up Your Book Promotions for the chance to bring this unique title and multi-stop tour to you. (THANKS!) For more information on this tour as well as those forth coming, be sure to stop by their
site, add them on
Google+, like them on
Facebook or follow along on
Twitter! Oh and don't forget to check out
Dorothy's blog as well for a look at the world from the publicist's desk!
Until next time...happy reading!
