Hello, adventurous readers! Do you know what I love? Adventure. And mystery. Enter Kitty Hawk, the plane-flying Nancy Drew of Iain Reading's Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency series! (Does Reading not have the coolest last name ever?) A mixture of crime solving, travel, and history, this multi-book series is set to be a ride of a read, taking you here, there, and everywhere, and bringing the settings on the page to life. I'm very excited to have Iain on the blog today to share his secrets to creating one of Kitty Hawk's wild stories--and a peek at the seventh installment!
Here's Iain to tell you all about The Evolution of a Kitty Hawk Adventure!
I am often asked how I come up with the stories
and mysteries for books in the Kitty Hawk series.
As anyone who has read Kitty Hawk can tell you,
each adventure starts with a place – a specific geographic location where Kitty
Hawk flies in for a visit on her around-the-world flight. That place
sets the tone for the story and somehow always leads me into figuring out what
the mystery will be.
Egypt will be the location for Kitty Hawk Book
#7.
The next step in the process for me is to start
getting inspired. This usually involves getting in touch with an
artist for the cover art and starting to get some sketches
done. This is something I can highly recommend: getting cover art
done BEFORE you finish (or even start) the book itself. Nothing is
more inspiring than this, if you ask me.
Here are some sketches and artwork drafts for
the cover of Kitty Hawk #7.
The next step is research. This
involves a lot of reading about the history of a place, and usually also
involves visiting the place itself to find out more and be further inspired.
Example: In Kitty Hawk #7 our intrepid heroine
is going to visit the Pyramids at Giza – which means that our
much-less-intrepid author also has to visit them.
When are we going to get to actually writing the
book? (You ask.) Not quite yet. Now we need a
mystery or some puzzles of some kind. That requires more research
and a lot of thinking and figuring out.
This is one of the puzzles from Kitty Hawk #7.
And last but not least.... we finally
get to writing the book. You can probably guess how this last phase
goes. Sitting down every day and writing. It's a magical
process, if you ask me. There's something really truly amazing about
bringing a story to life. You almost feel like you're living it
yourself.
Psssst. Here's a
secret.... I actually haven't got to this last phase in the Kitty
Hawk #7 book yet. Because there's actually one step BEFORE all the
ones that I've just laid out for you: finishing the PREVIOUS book in the
series. And sometimes that's the most challenging step of all.
Author: Iain Reading
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Publishing Date: December 3, 2012
Pages: 262
Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold is the thrilling first installment in a new series of adventure mystery stories that are one part travel, one part history and five parts adventure. This first book of the Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency Series introduces Kitty Hawk, an intrepid teenage pilot with her own De Havilland Beaver seaplane and a nose for mystery and intrigue. A cross between Amelia Earhart, Nancy Drew and Pippi Longstocking, Kitty is a quirky young heroine with boundless curiosity and a knack for getting herself into all kinds of precarious situations.
After leaving her home in the western Canadian fishing village of Tofino to spend the summer in Alaska studying humpback whales Kitty finds herself caught up in an unforgettable adventure involving stolen gold, devious criminals, ghostly shipwrecks, and bone-chilling curses. Kitty's adventure begins with the lingering mystery of a sunken ship called the Clara Nevada and as the plot continues to unfold this spirited story will have armchair explorers and amateur detectives alike anxiously following every twist and turn as they are swept along through the history of the Klondike Gold Rush to a suspenseful final climatic chase across the rugged terrain of Canada's Yukon, the harsh land made famous in the stories and poems of such writers as Jack London, Robert Service and Pierre Berton. It is a riveting tale that brings to glorious life the landscape and history of Alaska's inside passage and Canada's Yukon, as Kitty is caught up in an epic mystery set against the backdrop of the scenery of the Klondike Gold Rush.
Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold is a perfect book to fire the imagination of readers of all ages. Filled with fascinating and highly Google-able locations and history this book will inspire anyone to learn and experience more for themselves as Kitty prepares for her next adventure - flying around the world!

To learn more about Iain, check out his website!
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