We have a mother and son team with us today. Charles Siefken wrote Kai's Journey while in high school and his mom, Wendy Siefken is his biggest fan and supporter. She wrote this piece about a book that made a lasting impression on her talented son, Charlie.
Charlie read a book called Eragon by Christopher Paolini and it really made an impression on him not only because of the book but also because the author was still in high school when he wrote it!
Charlie has always had trouble in school grasping concepts like everyone else. He learned differently than other children his age. He had dyslexia and issues with cross modalities. School was really tough for him. He found a way to get out of most school projects by just shutting down. It was a great struggle for him especially English. When he found Eragon it seemed to be the turning point in turning him around about school. He wasn’t a fast reader but he read the book. It helped him with his reading, and everything else in English class and a few other classes.
Now jump a couple of years forward and he is writing stories. Always writing ideas, talking ideas of story lines and characters and what the world would look like where they live. Instead of doing his journal homework like they requested he wrote stories, pages and pages of stories. Finally the principal came up with a plan for Charlie. He had been on an Individual Education Plan, or IEP, for several years and not much was working. So the principal came up with the idea of Charlie to write, edit and publish a book. It had to meet certain criteria for having elements of math, history, geography; obviously English was a big factor in it. Not the principal, teachers nor we knew anything about publishing a book. We had to research everything.
Since Charlie was still a minor I decided to spear head the contacting agents and publishing companies. We wrote the book, got it edited with the help of family and friends but stalled on finding an agent to represent us. Finally one day a teacher sent home an article in a local paper about Amanda Hocking and her story. That gave us the idea to try our hand at Indie Publishing. We knew the book still needed professional editing but we figured one challenge at a time. We did our research found out about the different ways to publish an e-book and would you believe Charlie wanted a paperback book? He wanted a book he could hold in his hands and be able to say, “I created this.”
We found out CreateSpace gave us that. So off we went and published the book. Charlie did graduate high school with as a published author and was selling books! We made a promise a long time ago that we would finish the book and we would get published. We both agreed we wanted to put out the best book we could possibly do. When MasterKoda Select Publishing opened their doors it was like a sign from heaven telling us this was the way to go. So now we have a book out under MKSP and have finally gotten the professional editing the story so desperately needed plus professional help with the cover design as well! This story hasn’t ended yet but we are looking forward to what the future holds.
Bio for Charles Siefken
Charles Siefken (1992-present) is a recent graduate of high school. This is his first book of many to be published. He currently resides in rural central Iowa where he enjoys reading sci/fi books and playing video games among other things. We have found a publisher, MasterKoda Select Publishing! Christopher Paolini was his inspiration to become a writer. Charles is the Author and Wendy Siefken is his co-author.
Charlie's book can be found here at amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Kais-Journey-Chronicles-Clover-ebook/dp/B00D3O48DK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371696428&sr=8-1&keywords=Kai%27s+Journey
And Wendy's and Charlie's Blog is here: http://siefkenpublications.info/
Charlie read a book called Eragon by Christopher Paolini and it really made an impression on him not only because of the book but also because the author was still in high school when he wrote it!
Charlie has always had trouble in school grasping concepts like everyone else. He learned differently than other children his age. He had dyslexia and issues with cross modalities. School was really tough for him. He found a way to get out of most school projects by just shutting down. It was a great struggle for him especially English. When he found Eragon it seemed to be the turning point in turning him around about school. He wasn’t a fast reader but he read the book. It helped him with his reading, and everything else in English class and a few other classes.
Now jump a couple of years forward and he is writing stories. Always writing ideas, talking ideas of story lines and characters and what the world would look like where they live. Instead of doing his journal homework like they requested he wrote stories, pages and pages of stories. Finally the principal came up with a plan for Charlie. He had been on an Individual Education Plan, or IEP, for several years and not much was working. So the principal came up with the idea of Charlie to write, edit and publish a book. It had to meet certain criteria for having elements of math, history, geography; obviously English was a big factor in it. Not the principal, teachers nor we knew anything about publishing a book. We had to research everything.
Since Charlie was still a minor I decided to spear head the contacting agents and publishing companies. We wrote the book, got it edited with the help of family and friends but stalled on finding an agent to represent us. Finally one day a teacher sent home an article in a local paper about Amanda Hocking and her story. That gave us the idea to try our hand at Indie Publishing. We knew the book still needed professional editing but we figured one challenge at a time. We did our research found out about the different ways to publish an e-book and would you believe Charlie wanted a paperback book? He wanted a book he could hold in his hands and be able to say, “I created this.”
We found out CreateSpace gave us that. So off we went and published the book. Charlie did graduate high school with as a published author and was selling books! We made a promise a long time ago that we would finish the book and we would get published. We both agreed we wanted to put out the best book we could possibly do. When MasterKoda Select Publishing opened their doors it was like a sign from heaven telling us this was the way to go. So now we have a book out under MKSP and have finally gotten the professional editing the story so desperately needed plus professional help with the cover design as well! This story hasn’t ended yet but we are looking forward to what the future holds.
Bio for Charles Siefken
Charles Siefken (1992-present) is a recent graduate of high school. This is his first book of many to be published. He currently resides in rural central Iowa where he enjoys reading sci/fi books and playing video games among other things. We have found a publisher, MasterKoda Select Publishing! Christopher Paolini was his inspiration to become a writer. Charles is the Author and Wendy Siefken is his co-author.
Charlie's book can be found here at amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Kais-Journey-Chronicles-Clover-ebook/dp/B00D3O48DK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371696428&sr=8-1&keywords=Kai%27s+Journey
And Wendy's and Charlie's Blog is here: http://siefkenpublications.info/
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