Middle grade books

CelebrateSmallThings_Badge Celebrate the Small Things is a weekly celebration created by VikLit and now hosted by Lexa Cain to celebrate the happenings of the week, however small or large. You can learn all about it and sign up for it here.

This week I’m celebrating blue skies, mowed lawns, and the upcoming visit of my brother and his family from PA.

I’m also celebrating the arrival of C. Lee McKenzie’s latest —

Sign of the Green Dragon!

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Three plucky sleuths. A crumbling skeleton. A buried treasure.

After six months in a new school, Sam’s finally fitting in. He’s the one kid with enough talent to hit the winning home run and bring the baseball trophy back to Haggarty Elementary. But Sam’s guardian is shipping him off to boarding school before that can happen.

When teammates, Joey and Roger, hear his bad news, they plot to hide him until the big game. Their secret cave is a perfect place until an earthquake shatters a wall and reveals a wooden chest with a red-eyed dragon carved into its top. Inside, a bony hand clutches a map with a note, promising treasure.

With Joey and Roger, Sam sets off to track down the clues and hopefully discover treasure. When some puzzle pieces start to make sense, the boys become lost in a labyrinth of underground tunnels, trapped by dangerous thieves and sealed inside an airless tomb.

Sign of the Green Dragon gets a high five for fantasy, fun and some fearsome adventure. If you like intrepid would-be knights on impossible and dangerous quests, you’ll love this story. As one reader says, this book, “has more twists than a dragon’s tail.”

Buy now to jump into the adventure.

AMAZON

Lee20_250 I love to write for young readers, and I write both young adult and middle grade fiction. I fall into the hybrid author category with four traditionally published young adult novels–Sliding on the Edge, The Princess of Las Pulgas, Double Negative and Sudden Secrets–and three self-published middle grade adventure/fantasies. Sign of the Green Dragon is my third Indie out August 3. Alligators Overhead and the sequel, The Great Time Lock Disaster were my first two. It’s fun to know both sides of this writing business. Italia Gandolfo represents me, and I’m about to send her my latest young adult story. Fingers crossed.

I’m very fortunate to have some great five star reviews from readers and reviewers. And I’m really pleased that I’m learning this business. Promotion has been my biggest challenge. I’ve had to learn how to schedule, so I can still write and do the promo I need to do for my other books. It’s a full-time job.

When I’m not writing I’m practicing yoga, doing sun salutations in my garden (AKA weeding) or scratching my head over how all of this writing stuff started. I’m still not sure, but the ride has been exhilarating and so much different than I’d expected.

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What other celebrations are going on out there?

T is for — Trixie Belden from The Trixie Belden Mysteries

I loved to read mysteries when I was growing up. I read every Nancy Drew book I could find, and I wrote about her last year for my A to Z “N” post. This year, I’m writing about another teen mystery series I loved: The Trixie Belden Mysteries.

Trixie Belden is a young teen with three brothers who lives in the Hudson Valley of New York. She and her best friend and neighbor, Honey Wheeler, stumble into all kinds of mysteries at home and during their travels. They brave many dangers and, along with their brothers, manage to solve the mysteries.

I liked Trixie, because she was an ordinary kid with the same insecurities and angst as any teen of that day and age. Coming from a family with two brothers, I could relate to her on that score as well. The stories were good clean fun with enough mystery and excitement to keep me reading to the very end.

The first book in the series, Trixie Belden and The Secret of the Old Mansion, was published in 1948. The series had 39 books in all, the last being The Mystery of the Galloping Ghost, published in 1986. For middle-graders who like mysteries, they are well worth the read.

To learn more about Trixie Belden, visit http://www.trixie-belden.com/index.html.