A New Chapter

No, not in the book, but in life! As of last week Friday, May 23rd, I am no longer a high school student. The bittersweet feeling will surely stick around for a while.

In updates to what else that's been happening, I just spoke at a Career Fair at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School! I was assigned a classroom to speak at for 45 minutes for three sessions. I was so nervous at first but after the first session, I began to get the hang of things. The students were really cooperative and a lot of them liked to write! As an activity, I had them work together and we created a character which they then had to write a short story about. Even with the short timeframe, what I got back was really amazing.

I really hope that these kids continue with writing because I'm sure it'll take many of them far in life. Even after the short time spent with them, I feel they were generally good kids who liked to write and come up with stories and plots and characters. Its nice to see that a love for writing is still alive and well! I hope that maybe I'll be able to go back next year to speak again! I would love that opportunity to see more kids who enjoy writing and to show them that anything is possible no matter how old you are.

Songs!

Hello again! Its been over a week since my last post, but today I have wonderful news indeed! A few nights ago my friend Janica and I went to a recording studio (thanks to Mike Odo) to better record the three songs in Found (buy it HERE) with great results! Although it took several hours, we managed to get them all recorded before one o'clock AM. I have uploaded them onto my SoundCloud account. You can find the link in the back of the book!

The first song is titled Duncan's Song. Its the first song in the story which Lizzie does not perform, but she does write in her composition book.

The second song is the trio's Christmas song titles Perfect Christmas, which they do sing in the story. Although we were not able to get piano in it, it still sounds great!

The third song is a song Janica and I collaborated on. Its kind of like my gift to you for reading the book all the way through. If you enjoyed the book, this song may give you a few "feels" as I'd like to say it. There are no lyrics for this written in the book, but Lizzie mentions it. Once you listen to it, I'm sure it'll be obvious as to what song it is. (It's seriously one of my favorites. Check it out!) On this track there are some harmonics played by Mike's friend Kasey.

So I hope you will check out these songs! We worked very hard on them so it'd be so great to have people listen to them and connect them to the moments in the book. Also, in no way do my friend and I resemble Lizzie's voice or Marina's voice perfectly. We have our moments but those girls take the cake. But! That doesn't take away from how proud I am about these recordings and these songs. Let me know how you like them!

More News After a Long Break

Hi there dear readers I hope you've been well. It's been a while since my last Wednesday post and I apologize for that. And now it's Thursday, so I'm even more sorry. But I come bearing great news! As of a few days ago, Found is available for purchase on Amazon! Just search up "Found Marley" and a link to order the book should pop up. Or- you can just click HERE for a direct link to the site. As of Tuesday, I received my 20 free copies to distribute as I see fit. I may give a few away to family and maybe friends, but I'll be focusing on the libraries first.

Am I excited, you ask? Why I'm absolutely ecstatic! When I got my authors proof on April 8th, I finally got to see the final product of my hard work. It was my book and it completely thrilled me. Everyone who happens to find out- whether I tell them or someone else does -is very proud of me and I love that. From what I've been told by people, I'll be getting an overwhelming amount of support from my peers as well as my teachers. The head of the English Dept. at the school has even asked me to do a book reading and of course I said I would. Hopefully I'll do my writing justice by reading it! I still need to pick out what parts to read, but that's news to save for another day.

Now that the book is out there I'll be posting a lot more on here! There are only 25 days left until graduation, so I'll have a lot more time after then to post. So hopefully when people start to read the book, they'll take some time to visit the blog! There will be polls up every month or maybe every week. Considering how many people actually visit and vote. But anyway, I hope that you check out my book and I'll be posting more news next week!

Love, Marley.

Books News?

Hello dear readers how are you all doing? I hope you are awaiting the release of Found! I know that I am. It's hard since the publishing company is all the way in the East coast. Living on an island in the middle of the ocean can be a bit hindering with time. I'll be emailing my mentor today to see if there are any updates with my book. Hopefully I'll be able to get my rough copy of the actual book and then give them the okay to make a few more copies for me.

Waiting can be a pain, can't it? I also made things a bit difficult for them with the amount of fonts I used in the book. It never occurred to me that they wouldn't have access to the fonts I used. A+ writing skills! The fonts were the only reasons editing the manuscript took so long. So if you're reading this and waiting for the book, I'm very sorry! Once I hear back from my mentor I will make sure to give you all an update! I'll also be posting reviews that a few students at my school did as well as my mentor's and my English teacher's.

I hope you are all having a nice week so far. Finals this week, so things are kind of hectic! But I hope wherever you may be, you're getting through the day as well as the week. Bye 'til next time~

The First Official One

Hello there dear reader! Hope your day was lovely.
Here I am, sitting on my bed, drinking some crystal light, and writing my first official blog post! Am I blogging yet? I'm not all too sure! Right now, I'm taking it slow and trying not to mess up anything. I've never made an actual blog before. (As I don't think reblogging things on Tumblr counts as official blogging.) So all of this right here may prove to be a lot of work for me.
Still, I'm determined to post often for fans of Found. Hopefully there will be people who want to learn more about the characters as well as hear about book updates. I'm going to try and make this blog as helpful as possible as painless as I can.
So good night readers, I'll be off now. Have a nice night/day wherever you may be!