Hi Ben! I’m so glad you could drop by the Village today and tell us about the sequel to your debut novel, THE EYE OF RA. What’s the name of the next book in the series, and can you tell us a bit about it, please?

Thank you for having me, Kathie! It’s an honor to be featured on MGBookVillage. You and the others do such great things for the middle grade community. Thank you.

My new book is SOL INVICTUS and picks up where THE EYE OF RA left off, specifically following John and Sarah. In book two, I tease a bit more about the overall series arc, but the meat of the adventure is when John and Sarah travel back to an ancient Roman frontier town called Aventicum in modern day Switzerland. They’ve been given a cryptic message that they must unite the Roman emperor of Gaul with one of the Alemanni (Germanic) “barbarians” if they wish to fulfill their quest. Along the way they have to survive in the Alps, battle fearsome wild beasts in the gladiator ring, and evade capture during a chariot chase. And all while dealing with their own internal struggles around the balance between independence versus being part of a whole, and how those two things can coexist.

How did writing the second book differ from writing the first one, and what’s one thing you did differently this time?

I plotted a lot more from the outset with this book. I love to just sit down and write and let my mind wander and follow the movie along, so to speak. That is how book one started, in collaboration with my sons. Then, of course, once we had some meat to a story, I did outline the whole thing and went back and revised heavily so that the outcome is different than it was when we started. But with book two, while I did brainstorm with my boys for ideas, I completed a more thorough outline before diving in to the writing. I also plotted more of the overall series arc and completed a skeleton for book three at the same time as book two. The day I stop learning is the day I die and this writing process is no exception!

Do you find that feedback from your readers influences the direction of the series, or do you have an idea ahead of time where it’s going?

Definitely both. I love to hear feedback about what worked well and what maybe didn’t excite as much. You can learn from both types of feedback. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything, and I certainly need to remember that this is my story and story-telling can be a subjective art, but I do incorporate a lot of the ideas from my readers (especially my sons, of course!) because often they are brilliant ideas! For one example, my sons introduced the idea of a puppy into the mix and that spawned my thinking about a wolf, and research led me to the story of Fenrir, and… Well, I do like to keep some surprises…

Have you changed your writing schedule over the last few months, and if so, how has that impacted you?

Well, my writing schedule has changed quite a bit, but not primarily because of COVID per se, which is what I think you’re driving at. What has most impacted my writing schedule is the various multi-tasking necessary with having multiple books in various stages of development or production. I’m still marketing my first book, but that’s taking a bit of a back seat because I’m now focusing more of those efforts on Sol Invictus – this cover reveal, contacting ARC-reviewers and bloggers, etc. And I’m also writing the third book. To be honest, I don’t love the marketing aspects of book selling. Or, said more accurately and in the positive: I most enjoy the writing part of being an author. 🙂

Let’s talk about the new book’s cover. I know you have the same illustrator; can you tell us about the experience of working with them?

Anne Glenn (http://anneglenndesign.co.uk/) is a very talented and distinguished illustrator and designer. She’s worked with a lot of big names and big publishing houses so I feel very lucky to be working with her. Her beautiful work speaks for itself!

It’s time for the big reveal!

Oh wow, there are so many great details in this cover; it looks like an action-packed ride!

What is it that you hope young readers will take away from your books?

The thing I loved about reading when I was a kid (and still do, of course) was the ability of a book to transport me to another time and place, or even to within another body, to see the world outside of my own horse blinders. I could be and do anything. I love the adventure, the possibilities, and the learning that come with that shift in perspective. And, though maybe I didn’t fully grok it at the time, reading let me work through my own “stuff.” In the best books, I could empathize with the character. They may be completely different from me, but I subconsciously learned from our shared humanity and shared challenges. I feared with them, I reveled with them, I overcame with them.

And besides, a little escapism isn’t such a bad thing, as long as there’s a good story wrapped inside of all the thrills.

Are there more books to come in the series, and if so, can you tell us anything about what you’re working on right now?

I am working on book three now! All will be revealed about who John and Sarah really are, and why they’ve been traveling in time. Their character growth will ratchet up along a self-actualization curve and bring them more into their own skins.

For the core of the adventure, they’ll be traveling to the time of the Aztec people (who actually called themselves the Mexica) in modern-day central Mexico, around the ancient city of Tenochtitlan (where Mexico City now resides). One of my challenges with this third book will be the names! For example, Huitzilopochtli was the sun god (among other things) and a primary deity for the Aztecs. Yes, I listened to pronunciation guides.

Where can people go to find out more about you and your writing?

BenGartner.com is the best place. I’m active on Twitter (@BGartnerWriting), and less so on Instagram (BGartnerWriting) and Facebook (BenGartnerAuthor).

Pre-orders for SOL INVICTUS coming February 2021 are available now:

All the Digital: https://books2read.com/sol-invictus-ben-gartner

Print pre-orders: Coming soon! You can sign up for my newsletter to learn more here: http://bit.ly/ben-gartner-mailing-list

Thank you for allowing us to be part of your cover reveal, Ben.

It has been my pleasure! Thank you so much. And thank you again for all the time and effort you volunteer for our middle grade community – authors, readers, teachers, librarians, thank you!

Ben Gartner is the award-winning author of The Eye of Ra adventure series for middle graders. His books take readers for a thrilling ride, maybe even teaching them something in the meantime. Ben can be found living and writing near the mountains with his wife and two boys.

We believe it’s important to support debut authors, especially during such challenging times. We created a list of 2021 MG debut authors and their release dates, along with links to their books on Goodreads. A huge thank you to Sam Subity for sharing his resources with us, and making our job very easy! We will update the information as more becomes available, and you can access it any time as a heading on the main page of our website.

If you are a traditionally published MG debut author and would like to be added to the list, or if this information needs to be updated, please feel free to send us an email.

Hi Claire, and welcome to MG Book Village! It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that we were chatting about your debut novel, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, so you’ve been very busy! Can you tell us a bit about your new novel, THE KATE IN BETWEEN, which is scheduled to be released on May 18, 2021 with Quill Tree Books?

THE KATE IN BETWEEN is about what happens when 12-year-old Kate goes viral for saving her best friend Haddie’s life. Only, just like so often happens in our digital culture, what actually happened isn’t what it looks like. Kate had actually recently ditched Haddie for a more popular crew, and the reason Haddie needed saving in the first place was Kate’s fault. It leads to all kinds of questions: who is Kate, really, when nobody’s looking? Who is Haddie? Are they good, are they bad? What do those words even mean? It’s about friendship conflict, which I had a lot of in middle school, but more importantly, it’s about discovering who you really are and what you really stand for. And we’re back in Wisconsin again–only this time, instead of the Northwoods, Kate is living in my hometown of Madison!

What’s one thing you learned from writing your first published book that you did differently while writing the second?

Writing KATE was a very collaborative process with my editor, which I’m not used to! I usually write by the seat of my pants, so having to have things plotted out ahead of time was out of my comfort zone. But I learned from WHAT HAPPENS NEXT just how important a great editor is, and I was really thankful to work with Alyssa Miele at Quill Tree once again. 

What three things can you tell our readers about this story or its inspiration?

First of all, I went through some incredibly difficult friendship conflict in middle school, as I mentioned above. It’s easy to write this off as drama, as if it’s something shallow and inconsequential to the rest of a girl’s life. But the truth is, middle school is a very formative time, and things that happened to me during those years are things I continue to wrestle with and mull over today. It’s the time of life when we’re really deciding what we believe about the world, so the interpersonal complexities we walk through at 12 are anything but inconsequential. Secondly, Kate’s mom is wrapped up in a multi-level marketing scheme. MLMs are really popular among women my age and I wanted to write about the effect being in one can have on someone’s family members. Thirdly, when I started the book, I couldn’t stop thinking about how differently kids are growing up now than they were in the 90s, when I was growing up. We simply didn’t have the access to share media the way middle schoolers do now–how is it changing the way they act and react to things? That was really interesting and fun to explore.

OK, let’s talk about the cover. I really love the colors that were chosen. Who was the illustrator, and did you have any input in its development?

Richie Pope illustrated the cover. Let me just say this: I have heard horror stories about writers not really liking their cover and having to do all of this awkward back-and-forth, and that has never happened to me. Both times I’ve seen my book covers, I have been in awe of the illustrator’s talent and the way they were able to bring the story to life! I was asked for input this time around but I told them the truth: I honestly had no vision in my head of this cover. I wanted the illustrator to be free to create something he thought would tease the story and expose a bit of the message. I think Richie hit it out of the park!

Let’s do the big reveal!!

Wow, it’s so eye-catching. When I look at it, the first word that comes to mind is “secret”. If you could describe it in one word, what comes to mind, and why?

I would say “conflicted”. Kate just looks so unsure, and I love that, because so much of the book rests on that feeling–that I-don’t-really-know worry. She truly looks like a Kate who’s in between versions of herself. 

Releasing one book and writing another during a pandemic are far from ideal conditions for any author, so let me first say congratulations for hanging in there. How have you managed to juggle all of your different hats during such an uncertain time?

Oh, my gosh. KATE was written before the pandemic hit, but I did all of the editing with absolutely no childcare! I have two very little kids so it was definitely a juggling act. Thankfully, I have an amazingly supportive husband who has a flexible job as well, so we were able to kind of pass the baton and balance everything. I also had to give myself time limits of how long I could look at the news. It was easy to read COVID horror stories and then be distracted while I was supposed to be living in Kate’s world!

Are you working on any other writing projects you can share with us at this time?

I’m dabbling in a bit of ghostwriting at the moment, so it’s very hush hush! But I would love to return with another middle grade book under my own name soon–I’m constantly thinking of ideas and scribbling stories. 

Where can our readers go to find out more about you and your writing?

You can head to claireswinarski.com–I particularly love visiting classrooms virtually, so teachers, please feel free to reach out!

Thank you so much for joining us today, Claire, and I can’t wait to read this book when it’s available!

Thanks, Kathie! May can’t come quickly enough.