Chickadee Prince Books is pleased to announce some new additions to our Fall 2018 slate:
Mark Laporta, the author of the acclaimed Ixdahan trilogy, launches Against the Glare of Darkness, a new SF trilogy, with the first outing, Probability Shadow. October
Granville Burgess, a well-known New York playwright, continues his Amish trilogy with Book 2, Fork in the Crick. September.
Donna Levin, who made a great splash here in 2017 with There’s More Than One Way Home, has He Could Be Another Bill Gates, a new autism-lit novel that is already winning pre-publication raves. October.
We’re also actively looking for two new authors to join us – please get in touch.
New York, NY, April 2018 – FORK IN THE CRICK, the second novel from author and playwright Granville Wyche Burgess, will be published in September 2018 by Chickadee Prince Books. A literary romantic novel set among the Amish community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Fork is a gripping tale of thwarted romance and attempted murder, which continues the story of Rebecca Zook, a young Amish woman torn between her traditional community her passion to be an artist. Like Stone in the Crick, the first book in Burgess’s Rebecca Zook saga, Fork is a beautifully written depiction of a secretive community, which transcends the romance genre, and is based on a deep and personal knowledge of the Amish people.
When Stone was published in 2016, Kirkus wrote, “Burgess makes good use of his setting. Rebecca’s Amish culture isn’t just a backdrop; it’s part of her…. The gentle love story also respects Rebecca’s values. A sensitive story about finding oneself in a community,” and Elizabeth Oberbeck, author of The Dressmaker (Henry Holt & Co.) praised the novel as “A witty novel, full of humor and intelligence, with memorable characters who feel life-like enough to hug.”
Fork in the Crick, like all Chickadee Prince Books, is available through Ingram, or directly from the publisher.
About the Author: GRANVILLE WYCHE BURGESS received an Emmy nomination for his writing on the soap opera, Capitol. He has also received awards from the CBS/Foundation for the Dramatist Guild, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He has also written for the television series, Tales From The Darkside, and for PBS. His musical, Conrack, based on the Pat Conroy memoir The Water Is Wide had a sold-out run at Ford’s Theatre and was attended by President George H.W. Bush and the first lady, Barbara Bush. Mr. Burgess’s plays and musicals have been performed throughout the United States.
About the Publisher: Chickadee Prince Books is a young Brooklyn small press, which publishes only acclaimed fiction and non-fiction. CPB is the publisher of the Watt O’Hugh literary science fiction series, in 2017 published the critically acclaimed Amazon bestseller, There’s More than One Way Home by Donna Levin, and will publish three new titles in Fall 2018.
Contact: Mark Laporta/ Publicity@ChickadeePrince.com / 917-617-3560
Fork in the Crick by Granville Wyche Burgess | Chickadee Prince Books | Distributor: Ingram
A conversation with Granville Wyche Burgess, playwright and author of Fork in the Crick (Rebecca Zook’s Amish Romance, Book 2), published by Chickadee Prince Books in September 2018.
Interviewed by Donna Levin, author of There’s More Than One Way Home (2017)
Donna: Fork in the Crick is your second in a series of novels set in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County. Tell us how you came to write Amish fiction.
Granville: My wife, Reba Beeson, was raised on an Amish farm in Lancaster County, a farm we still visit at least once a month. In marrying outside her faith, Reba had to confront certain “challenges” from her family, and a few years ago her cousin Howard suggested we write up these challenges as a series of humorous family anecdotes. The stories just naturally morphed into an Amish romance, and, as we worked, we added a subplot of mystery and danger. The root of the series, however, is definitely autobiographical: a young man from South Carolina, like me, meets and falls in love with an Amish woman and together they struggle to follow their heart’s desire.
Does Reba read your drafts and give you input?
Yes! Reba tells me anecdotes about her life on her Amish farm, the meanings behind the coverings that Amish wear, the church services, recipes. She answers who drives a buggy and why some buggies are covered and others not and what it was like to harvest tobacco and how hay was put in the barns. She is my fountain of knowledge about Amish culture and faith, one from which I drink greedily and often.
One of Rebecca’s chief conflicts is over whether she can express herself as an artist through her talented quilt-making, but in the process risk committing the sin of pride. As an artist yourself, I doubt you consider pride in one’s artistic endeavors a sin, or even a mistake.
As an artist myself, it never occurred to me not to be proud of my art. The artistic ego is the engine that drives the artistic process. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw the beauty in the idea of not drawing attention to oneself, and to focus more on my thanks to God for having been given the gift of artistic expression. I think the Amish cautions about the sin of pride are very valuable because they help to keep the focus on the work, and not on the person who created the work.
There are hints that Rebecca’s love interest, Gregory, might have Amish roots. Can we predict that this couple will have to choose between the Amish life and the “English” world?
In my third book, they will definitely have to choose between the two worlds. I’m leaving open the possibility that the choice I think they will make now, before I begin writing, may not be the choice the characters actually make once I start writing and they take on a life of their own. Characters can really surprise the writers creating them.
Do you personally find the simplicity of Amish life attractive?
I admire very much the Amish commitment to simplicity of being. I have lived most of my adult life in the fast-paced Northeast, but I try as often as possible to get back into nature by taking a quiet walk in the woods, to go to church and find peace in prayer, to appreciate the pure taste of a vegetable grown in my own garden.
How do you envision the future of the Amish community in the age of globalization, when technology is a bigger part of our lives than ever?
When I go back to Reba’s farm, I see the Amish in the fields, I hear them speaking their Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, I watch the school children march happily by our window, and I tend not to worry so much. The Amish will always have their deep faith in God, and that will sustain in these globalized and tech-driven times.
You’re known for teleplays and stage plays. Why write a novel, and an Amish one at that, at this stage of your career? How has it been to shift from the play to the prose model?
It was a challenge and I love challenges, especially artistic ones. An Amish romance was a good fit for me because I am extremely romantic and I have an abiding faith in God. And it surprised me how easy is was to shift from dramatic to narrative writing. The words just flowed, I am happy to say. Of course, saying less is oh-so-much-harder than saying more.
You’ve had at least 10 plays and musicals produced, and they represent an extremely wide range of subjects. Why these far-reaching interests?
My writing simply reflects who I am. My mother loved Winnie-The-Pooh, so I adapted it to a musical. I was born and raised in South Carolina in the days of segregation, and I felt keenly the injustice of how African-Americans were denied the basic rights that I enjoyed, so I have written about this injustice. My next project is a play about Maine, because a friend of mine wants me to adapt her favorite book, and so I am going to challenge myself again by writing about something I know nothing about.
Tell us about one of your most acclaimed works, the musical Conrack.
It’s based on Pat Conroy’s memoir The Water Is Wide, about a white teacher who goes to teach on an island off the coast of South Carolina in 1969 only to discover that the children there have been terribly neglected. In fighting “the system” to get his kids the education they deserve, Conroy—called “Conrack” by the children—discovers his own path through life.
The original composer, Lee Pockriss, wrote 18 gold records, among them Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini. I wrote a musical with the composer of that classic? Wow! And when we presented it at Ford’s Theatre, then President George H.W. Bush came to see it with his wife and the Prime Minister of England and his wife. Another wow!
I have just finished directing it in Pat’s hometown of Beaufort, SC, and the people there loved it, including Pat’s immediate family. Pat’s widow gave me a closing-night gift that brought tears to my eyes: a ballpoint pen. Her card said: “This is one of the pens Pat wrote with. I only give them to very special people.” So you see, Conrack has brought me so many wonderful memories, as well as the incredible pleasure of seeing audiences respond so enthusiastically to my work.
When can we expect to see Book 3?
When the characters start writing it! I shall just have to trust that, when I sit down to write, God will speak and the words will flow.
Chickadee Prince Books is pleased to announce some new additions to our Fall 2018 slate:
Mark Laporta, the author of the acclaimed Ixdahan trilogy, launches Against the Glare of Darkness, a new SF trilogy, with the first outing, Probability Shadow. October
Granville Burgess, a well-known New York playwright, continues his Amish trilogy with Book 2, Fork in the Crick. September.
Donna Levin, who made a great splash here in 2017 with There’s More Than One Way Home, has He Could Be Another Bill Gates, a new autism-lit novel that is already winning pre-publication raves. October.
We’re also actively looking for two new authors to join us – please get in touch.
Mark Laporta recently appeared on Patzi Gil’s radio show, which is syndicated to 47 stations, to talk about his acclaimed YA SF trilogy, The Changing Hearts of Ixdahan Daherek.
Chickadee Prince Books is proud and thrilled that Henry McGee, truly one of the giants of modern media entertainment, has praised Donna Levin’s There’s More Than One Way Home.
“Donna Levin has spun a romantic murder mystery,” says Mr. McGee, “that will keep readers enthralled from beginning to end.”
This acclaimed new novel tells the story of the young mother of a boy on the autism spectrum, and the impact on her marriage, and within San Francisco’s political society, that result when the boy is accused of murder.
Mr. McGee, a brilliant innovator and an inductee into the prestigious Video Hall of Fame, knows whereof he speaks. As the long-serving president of HBO’s Home Entertainment division for 18 years (he worked for the groundbreaking cable television network for a total of 34 years), he was instrumental in supervising the distribution of many of our greatest films and TV shows into living rooms in America and more than 70 other nations via video and DVD, groundbreaking television shows like The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Band of Brothers and Game of Thrones. Today, he’s a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.
This titan of both Hollywood and Ivy League academia joins acclaimed authors like Jacquelyn Mitchard, Donna Gillespie, Lesley Kagen, Rita Mae Brown and Lalita Tademy, along with critics from Kirkus Reviews, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and Booklist, who have praised There’s More Than One Way Home and Donna Levin’s literary achievements over the years.
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There’s More Than One Way Home is now available from Chickadee Prince Books in paperback and e-book.
We’ve had a great spring / summer at Chickadee Prince Books so far, and we hope for even greater things to come.
During his decades as a celebrated Los Angeles defense lawyer, Ed Rucker represented some of the most famous defendants of the late 20th century. Now he’s the author of The Inevitable Witness, the first novel in his new Bobby Earl series of legal thrillers, which has garnered great reviews and coverage in Kirkus, the Strand Magazine, and the Bookpleasures website, and standing room only crowds and plenty of books sold at publication parties at Diesel in Los Angeles and the Corner Bookstore in New York. Read a though-provoking interview with Ed here.
Donna Levin is the author of the contemporary fiction “autism lit” novel, There’s More Than One Way Home, and she has been giving readings and presentations all over the place, from Books Inc. in San Francisco to the California public libraries, and Home has gotten incredible reviews, from Kirkus (“A witty, modern voice delivers a captivating tale about a mysterious death”) and Foreword (“deals substantively with issues like autism, and by doing so, stands to appeal to a broad audience as a worthy entry into popular fiction.”) to a starred review in Booklist. Donna was featured on the front page of the Smithsonian website (wondering whether Mr. Darcy might have been on the autism spectrum), was recently interviewed on KUCI in Irvine, CBS radio in Boston, and on Cyrus Webb’s podcast, all of which you can listen to here. More to come: Donna appears at the Brooklyn public library on June 13 and the New York Public Library on June 15!
Mirror at the Heart of Time, the final book in Mark Laporta’s acclaimed YA SF trilogy landed in bookstores on Thursday; the series that Kirkus calls “a fabulous read,” has not disappointed in its ultimate chapter. Jodi Scaife writes in the Fanbase Press website, “if you enjoy world building and inventive science fiction that shows the wonders of the universe, Mirror at the Heart of Time, is an excellent read,” Joe Crowe of Science Fiction Revolution raves, “It contains teen drama, political intrigue, and neat sci-fi stuff with space-time and the multiverse. It’s light-hearted and sweet, and contains an optimism that many SF writers forget about … I approve,” Tay Laroi of Cheapreads writes, “Mirror at the Heart of Time is a brilliant conclusion to an equally brilliant series that will leave readers ecstatic, on the edge of their seats, and heart-broken to see such great characters go,” and the celebrated SF writer and critic Don D’Amassa praises the Ixdahan trilogy on his website as well. Mark is a featured guest-blogger on the Watt O’Hugh website today, and he will appear on Patzi Gil’s Joy on Paper radio show on June 20! Read a witty and imaginative interview with Mark here.
Finally, please do take a look at the terrific reviews for In Love with Alice, the second book in Alon Preiss’s series of thirtover novels about the last third of the 20th century! A beautiful and poetic novel that continues to win new fans. And please read a strange and interesting interview with Preiss here and here.
Please support the independent press and independent thought!
From Tay Laroi, book critic at The Truth About Books and Cheap Reads websites:
Mirror at the Heart of Time is a brilliant conclusion to an equally brilliant series that will leave readers ecstatic, on the edge of their seats, and heart broken to see such great characters go, but it’s well worth it.
In the thrilling conclusion of “The Changing Hearts of Ixdhan Daherek,” Ixdahan and Lena face the universe’s greatest threat yet: a force that seeks to erode time itself. After all they’ve been through together, defeating a culture based on a miracle diet, getting a girl from the future back to her time, and finally figuring out their relationship once and for all should be a piece of cake…right?
In case you haven’t noticed, I adore these books. The wonderful characters, the outlandish conflicts, the strange worlds and aliens, all of it. Mirror at the Heart of Time is no exception. In addition everything I loved about the first two books, the trilogy’s conclusion reaches a level of maturity that makes it a must-read for fans of YA, especially fans of YA sci-fi and fantasy.
I’ve talked at lengths about Laporta’s great world building and creative story telling in the reviews for Heart of Earth and Heart of Mystery, but I can’t emphasize enough how great his characters are, especially in this final installment. It’s been quite the adventure watching Ixdahan and Lena grow as characters over the course of these books and Laporta gives them the perfect send off, both for the characters as well the readers, I think.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth mentioning again: If you write YA, sci-fi or otherwise, I highly recommend this series just to see how Laporta writes teenagers, because he does it brilliantly.
So, if you’re a fan of YA, sci-fi, or you want to take a few hours and feel like a kid again, check out the entire Changing Hearts series. It’s a smart, funny, endearing trip through the cosmos you won’t soon forget.
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Note: Mirror at the Heart of Time was published June 1, 2017 and is available at a bookstore near you, on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The entire trilogy, The Changing Hearts of Ixdahan Daherek, is also available as a 3-book Kindle-only collection on Amazon, where you can catch up on the entire Ixdahan saga from the beginning.
Translating Your Experiences with the Autism Spectrum into Memoir or Fiction
Lived Experience Writing Workshop for People with Disabilities
When: Thursday, June 15th, 12:00pm-1:30pm
Where: Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, 40 West 20th Street (btw 6th and 5th Ave), New York, NY
Donna Levin, whose most recent novel, There’s More Than One Way Home, involves a family with a member on the autism spectrum, leads a workshop on using personal experience with autism in writing and publishing.
The workshop is aimed at adults on the autism spectrum, family members and others in the autism community (and related communities of neurodiversity) who want to write about their experiences and publish.
Donna will discuss the growth of the genre of “autism lit”, the challenges of translating personal experience into fiction or memoir, and the paths toward publishing.
For more information or to RSVP, please contact Jonathon Epstein, AHRC NYC Transition Developer, at (646) 538-1410 or Jonathon.Epstein@ahrcnyc.org.
Donna Levin is the author of several novels, including Extraordinary Means and California Street, and two books on the craft of writing. Her work is included in the California State Library’s collection of California novels.
Mirror at the Heart of Time, by Mark Laporta, will be published by Chickadee Prince Books on June 1, 2017 in trade paperback and ebook. Available right now for pre-order from Amazon or your local bookstore. See the whole trilogy here.
Interviewed by Mark Lipowicz
Lipowicz: You’ve just finished the third book in your trilogy, which tells the story of Ixdahan Daherek, an adolescent criminal on an alien planet who is sentenced to life as a human high schooler on Earth. Where did this idea come from?
Laporta: I started from my own recollection: that being a human teenager felt like the worst punishment in the universe. The contradictory physical and psychological impulses, the mixed messages from adults and the lack of any meaningful function in society drove me around the bend. So I imagined an alien teenager actually receiving that punishment — for selling state secrets to the enemy.
In Book One, when Ixdahan is in human form and renamed “Derek,” his emotions seem pretty human. Was there something from his Homeworld that I should have noticed?
As I see it, sentience is sentience, and it seems reasonable to assume that some alien intelligences would be a lot like ours. To be sentient and self-aware is to be self-conscious and riddled with self-doubt. And given a species that reproduces sexually, there’s liable to be a lot of common ground between humans and aliens. So in the breathless minutes before a hot date, I can imagine an alien life form asking, “Do these pants make my antennae look fat?”
In Ixdahan’s case, part of his punishment is an overlay of brainwave patterns that mimic the cadence of the human mind. So initially, he “thinks human,” whether he wants to or not. Later, as he learns to value his friendships with Lena and Vance, he discovers what behaviors support and preserve those relationships, aided by his telepathic ability.
But he never stops being an alien. There’s much about human culture he never grasps, even by the end of the trilogy. None of his experience on Earth erodes his vastly more complex mind, cultivated by “direct to cortex” learning in several fields, enhanced by his telepathic perceptions and supplemented by his understanding of the wider universe.
When Ixdahan, in human form, meets Lena, a high school girl, she finds his fish-out-of-water dorkiness appealing. Where would you say Ixdahan, Lena and the others find their motivation to be brave and save the planet?
Like many teenagers, my characters start out preoccupied with social status, looks, fashion, school, parental authority and the question, “Who am I?” But as evidence of an impending alien invasion mounts up, they take action — partly because they believe the adults in their lives will never take that evidence seriously.
In Ixdahan’s case, his involvement also stems from a growing sense of personal responsibility for the impending crisis. For Lena and Vance, the empathy they develop for Ixdahan’s curious plight further strengthens their commitment to the cause. He has, unexpectedly, become a close friend they’d do anything for.
While I’ve read a lot of books, I don’t remember any characters or situations quite like those in the Changing Hearts series. Is there a source of inspiration you can tell us about?
My favorite stories are ones where the main characters’ best qualities lead them straight into an abyss. Ixdahan is determined, defiant, devious and brilliant — just smart enough to do the stupid thing that gets him exiled to Earth. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, he has to redefine both his place in the universe and the universe itself.
But the main inspiration for the series is the unpredictable way actions in real life lead to random consequences which, many years later, appear to have had a purpose after all. Underlying all that are aspects of the human condition I can’t claim to have discovered, but which haven’t received as much attention as they deserve.
Did Ixdahan and the other aliens you describe invent the “Galactic Array,” which enables them to communicate telepathically across great distances? Or is it built into their DNA?
I never tell the full history of the Galactic Array, but I do allude to “the inter-species panel of programming consultants” who have maintained it for centuries. It’s a space-based system of satellites and deep space buoys that detects, magnifies and transmits the signals produced by telepathic minds. The Array enables Ixdahan to connect with minds thousands of parsecs away. As needed, the aliens in Ixdahan’s neighborhood can also use ship-bound or planet-bound mentallic transponders to further strengthen the signal. The Galactic Array also functions as a kind of interstellar Internet.
I liked how Lena and others took on some of the “DNA” of the aliens.
Well, of course, Lena does so literally, when she’s accidentally infected with a Vrukaari mind-control virus. But aside from that, yes, she and Vance in particular gain a wider perspective by dealing with Ixdahan. Besides, saving a planet will do that to you, especially once you realize there are other inhabited worlds you never knew existed.
When we see aliens in human skin — as we have many times in TV and film — we’re comfortable around them. We can focus on how they’re similar to us, rather than on how different they are. In Heart of Earth, did you want us to see Ixdahan more as a human teenager, or as an heir to power in his Homeworld?
Ixdahan is forced to adapt to life on Earth by adopting human customs and expressing himself in human terms, just to survive. His mind has been shoved into a human body, and is affected by human senses, hormones and physical limitations. But his orientation and thought patterns remain those of his Snaldrialooran homeworld. Snaldrialoor is the frame of reference by which he judges everything.
I can see where Ixdahan learns from other cultures. Does he also have some gift he shares with those cultures?
Between the force of his personality, his alien outlook and the impending crisis he had a hand in creating, Ixdahan forces Lena, Vance and, to a lesser extent, Callie Ann, to see beyond their comfortable, narrow concerns and gaze out into the universe. Throughout the rest of the series, his inquisitive mind, commitment to ideals and unflinching willingness to act on those ideals, helps awaken the moribund spirit of the Onkendren and leads the frightened Zoktylese to shake off tyranny.
What’s the hardest thing when writing about Ixdahan’s Homeworld?
The challenge is maintaining a firm distinction between the cultural biases and attitudes that shape life on Snaldrialoor vs those that shape life on Earth. Because the Snaldrialoorans are thousands of years ahead of us in technology and their detailed vision of the universe, it doesn’t take much to make them distinct from humans.
I’ve also hinted at an official religion, dating back millennia, that reveres cosmic figures like the “Sentient Masters of the Infinite Continuum.” Also, unlike Earth, Snaldrialoor has a unified world government and has long-ago solved the social problems that still dog our heels on Earth.
Meantime we get to see how other cultures fare when they encounter Ixdahan and the beings of his world.
Keep in mind that these alien worlds have had thousands more years to create their societies than we have. And, as you can see, they still don’t get everything right. Both the upright Snaldrialoorans and the evil Vrukaari still maintain military fleets and standing armies. They might have worked out life on their own worlds, but there’s still a need for an elaborate diplomatic corps, including Ixdahan’s father, Pertahru.
Ixdahan & Company are in their third “episode.” Do you see them developing in more sweeping stories, or is another direction possible?
It’s possible a few of the characters in Mirror at the Heart of Time might appear in stories of their own at a later date. Even now, I’m curious to know what happens to Hewlontri, Vendera and the Multiversals immediately following the end of the series. But at the moment, I have another universe in mind, that I’m developing in a new, unrelated storyline. For now, I’m excited to explore a new set of themes in a different fictional landscape.
I see you have a lot of stories to tell!
Right. Which reminds me, I’d better get back to work.
“Donna Levin has spun a romantic murder mystery,” says Mr. McGee, “that will keep readers enthralled from beginning to end.”
During his decades as a celebrated Los Angeles defense lawyer, Ed Rucker represented some of the most famous defendants of the late 20th century. Now he’s the author of 
the front page of 
Bookforum, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, reading from his moving memoir 
Finally, please do take a look at the terrific reviews for 
Lena face the universe’s greatest threat yet: a force that seeks to erode time itself. After all they’ve been through together, defeating a culture based on a miracle diet, getting a girl from the future back to her time, and finally figuring out their relationship once and for all should be a piece of cake…right?
