#finks rat

[theascendantking]

[missmarlomello]

little fink and ninette doodle <3

[bookish-fan-things]

The Captive Kingdom Launch Party HIGHLIGHTS

Jen has a dog that won't play fetch and a cat that hallucinates

The Kings English Bookstore is home to many authors in Utah and it has been hit hard by Covid-19. She asks for us to support them or your local indie bookstore!!!

The King's English Bookshop | matching books to readers since 1977

November 14, there is going to be an author extravaganza to support TKE Bookstore

Shortly after the False Prince came out, she was still a very new author, she got a tweet from R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps saying how much he loved TFP. She was so excited and she wanted to thank him personally but didn't know his name, and he had called her Jennifer so she didn't want to say Mr. Stine.So she ended up just saying, thanks!

Book 5 is due to her editor Monday (October 5, 2020) and she said she would be finishing this (the launch) then getting right back to it!

She showed her open project folders (there are a LOT)

Working on a World War 1 story and she showed history books she is reading such as History of the World War, A World Undone, and Weird War One.

One of her new works is about a kid with no memory, a magic sharpie, and a dice game called Boggle that sometimes talks to him and he sees a message in the dice: “they know ur here go”

Q&A!!!

Disney, book to movie adaptation possibilities? She'd be fine with it if they asked. She wants it to be made right. She wants someone who comes to at it with a fan’s perspective.

Paramount Pictures had optioned the rights to the False Prince, what happened? When you have a contract, every six months they have to decide whether to extend, cancel, or make the movie. As her six months was coming up, they fired their CEO, so everything evaporated.

How does it affect you emotionally when one of your characters goes through something traumatic or extremely challenging? She has a background in theatre and she comes to writing from a theatrical perspective. It plays out in her head like it's on stage so she becomes every character. She goes through everything with her characters, she feels it, she dreads it, she feels awful, but she's learned that “Most of us are in this stasis of being where we are just comfortable being exactly who we are and when something hard happens to us, even if we hate it, it forces us to grow. The hard thing creates heroes. So my characters start out believing they are just ordinary people, but when I do the hard things, my characters become very heroic characters. I do hard things to them because I love watching them grow.” I had to include this quote because it was so great

Favorite background character who you think gets overlooked a lot? Kerwyn, he is one of the very few stable things in the lives of the main characters, he is just good, strong, and loyal. Amarinda, she’s ok with being overlooked but she is so strong and intelligent.

Characters based on yourself? Not really, she doesn't think she is interesting enough to write about, but Sage, like her, is left handed, climbs, and has her sense of humor. She relates closely to the main character from the Scourge, Ani, and sees a lot of herself in her, but didn't base Ani on herself, they just have a lot in common.

Jen discussed how she plots out her books and how many drafts she goes through: she's got to know the twist so she can layout the hints. She shows an example of a chart of how much each character and what the reader knows. She rewrites a lot and feels it come together. First rewrite is fixing major plot issues. Second, logic. Dialogue. Description. Word choice. Could be 10-15 drafts before her editor sees it, who sees things Jen missed.

Have your characters ever taken you by surprise (with twists)? The ending of Mark of the Thief book one, she didn't expect, so she had to make some changes. Usually on top of it, and has something called the Rule of Five. Has a general idea, and makes herself come up with five possible ways the idea could play out. 1, usually pretty predictable. 5, usually really weird. 2, 3, and 4 she really gets creative. “Limitations are the mother of creativity.”

How she gets her character names: baby name books and websites (Imogen and Tobias). Symbolic, Sage (wise, a way for him to stick it to his dad and say he has wisdom), Connor (con man), Jaron (teenage boy she knew who was just a great person and outstanding kid, and if we had royalty in our country he would be a prince). Put sounds together, places, Amarinda, Mott, Roden, Kerwyn. (She also gave an example for writers to use: UTAH, UTAR, TUTAR, TOTAR, TOTARA, city of Totara!!)

She explained how she does her fantasy world building and it is mainly based on what she will need in the plot (ie Carthya is landlocked, mountains to the north, waterways that would be needed, it is resource wealthy making it desirable, etc)

Culture and religion in world building: how many gods or none? saints and devils! causing good and bad things in your life. Sage feels like he is constantly being harassed by the devils. It became a social thing in the world.

Would she want to live there [in Carthya]? Sometimes, but not in the last book that she is editing now!! *wink*

Where's fink's rat? Fink’s rat is on the castle grounds. She said this. It's canon. Fink’s. Rat. Is. In. The. Castle. (See @thedevilsofcarthya for full transcript of Jen discussing this)

TCK trailer: created by her family, particularly her son, Chase, and the voiceover was her son in law. Chase wanted to do something different and take a risk.

Your career as an author? When she started writing she knew nothing and nobody just had a manuscript that was ‘awful’ and will be buried with her. (I personally would read ANYTHING she wrote). She submitted her second one to “every agent with a pulse” and everyone said no. She wrote a new one, they said no. Fourth manuscript, she felt ready to break in, Apprentice to a Madman, she thought it was the best thing ever, submitted it and got a rejection scribble, not a letter, worked on it and kept getting rejected. One publisher had rep for taking everybody so she sent in hers. A couple months later, on her birthday, she got a call from a friend that they got an acceptance letter from the same publisher as she had submitted hers, got her own… rejected…She thought a lot about it and decided to erase everything she thought she knew about publishing and once she had a new idea, that manuscript got her agent and first publisher. That letter on her birthday was the last rejection letter she received. “Remember you can start from nowhere and find success.”

When asked for descriptions of the characters so an artist can draw them, she said, they look like how you envision them, there is no ‘right’. (Shows fanart from the competition that is on her blog!)

Blog | Jennifer A. Nielsen - Author

TCK art print was created by her niece, Ireland. It is her concept of the characters.

Writing during covid and quarantine? She's a strong believer that when God closes a door, he opens a window. She misses the opportunities to be in schools and bookshops. Just discovered a new WW2 true story she is researching. Various stories at different stages. Very excited for stories she has created because of Covid. “We will get through this, we will, and we're going to be stronger at the end because remember, when we go through hard things we get stronger."

[enchanted-prose]

ascendance month day #1

[antoniahale]

Someone should make a fanfic where Fink's rat escapes and Fink is running all over the palace looking for it trying to find it before Jaron sees.

[rmsri]

Did I preoder the captive kingdom yes, did I read it all in one setting yes. Do I regret anything no! Trust me when I say it did not disappoint!!

[theascendantking]

Finding out that Fink’s Rat is canonically in the Carthyan castle is the best thing that’s happened to me in 2020.

[bookish-fan-things]

Y'all...does this mean finks rat IS coming back???