Local Author wins Prestigious Children's Literary Award

Micki Bare recently traveled to Raleigh to accept a prestigious literary award for her middle grade novel, Society of the Sentinelia, which was released on May 27, 2022.

In 1994, Micki moved back to North Carolina after living in South Carolina for five years. She was hired as the director of the local Head Start program, which was headquartered in Asheboro and moved to Asheboro in 1998 with her boys after her divorce to be closer to work. All three of her boys graduated from Asheboro High School.

Micki is well known in the community and wrote a column for The Courier-Tribune for over 18 years. She also served on many Asheboro-Randolph Chamber committees and its Board. For 13 years, she has lived within walking distance of downtown.

She grew up loving to write. Her grandmother gave Micki her first diary and instead of jotting personal thoughts, hopes, and dreams, she crafted stories with her limited knowledge of words supplemented by pictures. By the second grade, she was writing short stories every day as soon as she finished her homework. She was the news editor of her high school’s paper and wrote for NC State’s Technician as an undergraduate.

While still in college, she drafted a book for young children: Thurston T. Turtle Moves to Hubbleville. Over the years, she would pull it out, revise it, send out queries, and get rejections.

In 2001, she began writing a human-interest column for The Courier-Tribune. By 2004, she had enough material to publish—through a very small and now defunct NC publisher—an anthology of columns tied together by a family theme. While it’s now out of print, it was a great way to dip her toes into the world of publishing. In 2005, one of her short essays was accepted for the anthology The Kid Turned Out Fine (Adams Media, 2006).

Meanwhile, she never gave up on that original manuscript. Thurston T. Turtle Moves to Hubbleville was finally published in 2010 by a small press in Florida. They also published Thurston T. Turtle and the Legend of the Lemonade and Thurston T. Turtle and the Precarious Puppy. The company sold in 2014, and all three titles were rereleased under the new publisher in 2015.

She also took a stab at writing women’s fiction, but found it just was not a good fit for her. While she did prove to herself she could write novel-length works, her heart continued to be drawn to children’s literature.

Starting in 2015, she began taking pictures of knotholes and oddly shaped trees. She tacked them to a board in her home office. She also had this odd word on a scrap piece of paper with the description, “Not a fairy.” Then, in 2018, she woke up in the middle of the night with an idea, grabbed a pencil and notepad, went into the living room, and scratched out what morphed into the first scene of the second chapter of Society of the Sentinelia. At the time, all she knew was the name of the main character and her human best friend, and that they were both 11 years old.

Armed with a vision, she went to the 2018 SCBWICarolinas fall conference determined to learn all she could about writing for middle grade audiences. She spent the next year drafting Society of the Sentinelia. She would walk to work on Mondays as she conveniently worked downtown at the time—and then stop at Times Square Pizza on her way home, order a salad and write a chapter. On weekends, she met up with friends at The Coffee Xchange (now Nannie Mae’s) or Brewskies and wrote for hours.

Much like peddling the Thurston T. Turtle series, she would send out queries for Society of the Sentinelia, only to receive a pile of rejections in return. Then she received a thoughtful, personalized rejection that suggested her 11-year-old protagonist sounded more like a 40-year-old research scientist. She received similar feedback from her aunt’s critique group in Chicago, who graciously agreed to beta read the manuscript.

During the pandemic, she participated in virtual workshops and conferences that greatly helped her find her characters’ voices. Another intense revision came next, as did a side short story.

While some writers had trouble finding their muse during the pandemic, Micki did not. Her daily 3-mile hikes coupled with time for yoga and meditation gave her ample juice for writing up a storm. The short story landed in an anthology created to raise money for independent bookstores. Her’s was the only young adult fiction piece in the anthology. One of the other contributors invited them to read their works aloud in a virtual literary “live show” being hosted during the pandemic and Micki volunteered. The host loved her performance and the story, and they struck up a warm acquaintanceship.

By the time she was done with the latest draft of her middle grade novel, she’d learned that her new acquaintance was a partner in a publishing company and also one of its editors. While she knew they published crime and mystery novels, Micki figured it couldn't hurt to reach out to see if she might know someone in the publishing world that could help her with her middle grade novel. She had Micki send her a pitch along with the manuscript. At that point Micki was elated, as she imagined her book being discussed at some big publishers conference with a children’s book publisher.

A few months later, she got back in touch with Micki, but it was not with a referral to another publisher. Rather, her company had been working to expand into middle grade and young adult books for several years and she wanted to offer Micki their first children’s literature contract!

In 2021 Micki signed a contract for a total of five books to be published under the newly created Level Elevate imprint of Level Best Books in Maryland. Society of the Sentinelia , the first in the series, was published May 27, 2022.

Zahra of the Uwharries series

Set in the Birkhead Wilderness of the Uwharrie Mountains in central North Carolina, Society of the Sentinelia and BLIND FAIRY are the first two of five in the Zahra of the Uwharries series that chronicles Zahra’s unique and critical role in saving her species.

Society of the Sentinelia

Zahra, a sprite-like tween no bigger than a loblolly pinecone, befriends an 11-year-old human on a quest to find her parents and sister. When a neighbor muddles their plans, kidnaps Zahra, and threatens her new friend, Zahra discovers unnerving truths about herself and her family.

On December 2, 2022, Micki received the AAUW NC Young People’s Literature Award for the book. According to the AAUW NC website, “Since 1953, AAUW of North Carolina has partnered with the NC Literary and Historical Association to present an award in recognition of the most significant work of original juvenile literature published over the course of the last year by a North Carolina author.”

The next book in the Zahra of the Uwharries series, BLIND FAIRY, will be published May 2023.

Blind Fairy

Zahra, a scraebin about as tall as a wild dandelion, is summoned by her mentor fairy after cicadas emerge to lull her colony into a deep sleep. Zahra soon learns she is The Convener, a responsibility she doesn’t want. After accepting her destiny, a turtle with amethyst eyes leads her to a lone, blind scraebin born with the markings of a fairy. Together, Zahra and the blind fairy must save the scraebin colonies. But when 12-year-old Brant, a human, snatches the blind fairy, and then Zahra suffers a concussion and injured wing, the obstacles appear too daunting to overcome.

I can’t wait to read the next installment of this series and if you have middle grade children or grandchildren, this would be a great series to start them on. You can purchase the book on Amazon or through local retailers. More retail and wholesale book sales information can be found at https://www.mickibareauthor.com/books.