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| Kenton Kilgore |
Kenton
Kilgore's first young adult novel is "Dragontamer's Daughters." He
took much of his inspiration for it from his childhood in Arizona and his
studies of the Navajo people. He has just released the second novel in this
series: Dragontamer's Daughters, Part 2: Stormcaller. Available for Kindle and for Nook
and iPad.
Kenton earned a B.A. in English Literature at the University of Maryland College Park, where he concentrated in creative writing, mythology, medieval English, and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. He earned an M.A. in English Literature at Washington College in Chestertown, MD. He and his family live in Stevensville, MD with too many dogs and cats.
Background: The Dragontamer's
Daughters, the first book in your series begins in the unforgiving high desert
in the Old West of an alternate Earth. Isabella,
who is almost 13 years old, and her eight-year-old sister, Alijandra scratch out a meager life
with their parents. Their home is a shack deep in the lands of the Diheneh, the
indigenous people, far from the family’s former country of Ysparria. And they
find a small dragon. And the second book continues the story.
Kenton: I don’t
anticipate writing a third Dragontamer’s
Daughters; the two books tell the whole story of the two girls and Pearl, at
least for now. I’m currently writing Lost Dogs, a young adult science-fiction
novel set on present-day Kent Island, about two dogs who witness the end of the
human race.
Jan: What was the inspiration for your young adult series
featuring girls and dragons?
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| Part 2 - Stormcaller |
Kenton: Dragontamer’s
Daughters started
off as fairy tale I wrote for my daughters, who were 9 and 4 at the time. As they grew, I kept expanding and rewriting
the story, until it became 600 pages across two books.
Jan: What
have you learned from the process of writing, publishing, and marketing to young adults?
Kenton: I’ve found
that there is a need and a desire in the young adult market for honest,
original works. There are many, many
young adult books published every year, but a lot of them are derivative,
chasing after Harry Potter or Twilight or Hunger Games. Young-adult
readers are always looking for something new and different, and my goal is to
give it to them.
Jan: You have
chosen to work with CreateSpace to produce your books. How has that worked out for you? What are the
advantages and disadvantages?
Kenton: I’ve been
nothing but pleased about working with CreateSpace. It was very easy to upload and format my
books so that they would look just as good as traditionally-published
works. By using CreateSpace, my books
are automatically available on Amazon, and I can purchase discount-rate copies
from them to sell at book signings and events.
The only costs I incurred through CreateSpace were printing and shipping
of review copies that I ordered during the final editing so that I could see
what the physical book would look like.
And even that wasn’t obligatory: CreateSpace provides a digital version
of your printed book that you can look at online to see how it will turn
out.
Jan: How have
your interests changed and evolved as a writer since your graduate school days?
Kenton: Back then,
I was all about plot and spectacle.
These days, I’m more interested in characterization. A lot of sci-fi and fantasy stories don’t
have good characters, ones that seem like real people whom you can care
about. So that’s most important to me when
I’m writing.
Jan: Who are
among your favorite writers and what are you reading now?
Kenton: Mostly, I
read non-fiction, but my favorite authors are J.R.R. Tolkien (of course), Michael
Moorcock, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Jorge Luis Borges, Cormac McCarthy, and
Ernest Hemingway. I’m also a big
Shakespeare fan, though of his tragedies and histories over his comedies. Currently, I’m reading Locksmith’s Closet, by Eastern Shore author Paul Briggs.
Jan: In December you donated 100% of your profits
from your novel to the Navaho Water Project Charity to dig a well to
provide clean water on the Navajo reservation. What was your inspiration for this project?
How can interested readers donate to this project?
Kenton: Dragontamer’s
Daughters is steeped
in Navajo culture: names, clothing, foods, family relationships, tribal
government, religious beliefs, you name it.
Even some passages of dialogue are in Navajo (or, at least my best
attempt as a non-speaker). So when I
came across the link to an article on the Navajo Water Project that my cousin
Ron Martinez had posted on Facebook, I decided to jump right on it. Anyone who’s interested in it can visit http://www.navajowaterproject.org/
Jan: What is
the best writing advice you ever received and what advice have you chosen to ignore?
Kenton: The best
advice I ever received was from J.R. Salamanca, a creative writing teacher I
had in college. He taught me to be
careful and precise with words, and to rid my writing of unnecessary or weak
ones. The advice I’ve chosen to ignore
is to “just write and don’t worry about whether it’s good or bad.” I used to do that, and it lead to a lot of
carelessness and poor writing. So, it
takes me a while to write, but I believe the quality is much better than what I
would have produced had I not been meticulous.
Where to find Kenton Kilgore online
Where to buy in print
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About Jan Bowman
Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award, Jan's stories have been nominated
for Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short
Stories, and a Pen/O’Henry award. Glimmer Train named a recent
story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short Story Awards for New
Writers.
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| Jan at Peggy's Cove - 2013 |
A recent story was a
finalist for the 2013 Broad
River Review RASH Award for Fiction,
another story was a 2013 finalist in the Phoebe Fiction Contest; another was a 2012 finalist in
the “So
To Speak” Fiction Contest. Jan’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, Roanoke Review,
Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97),
Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others. She is working on
two collections of short stories while shopping for a publisher for a completed
story collection, Mermaids & Other
Stories. She has nonfiction publications in Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts regular interviews
with writers and publishers. Learn
more at: www.janbowmanwriter.com or visit
blog: http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com
Facebook: janbowman.77@facebook.com
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