Scene
Monday, April 20, 2015
NorthernStar.info/DeKalb_Scene H @NSScene
9
Author talks publishing novel Student Reina McKenzie gives writing advice
[‘Stepping out of Line’] and what does it mean to you? A: ... It is a young adult novel. I tell a lot of people it’s very PocaAndrew Roberts hontas-y, There’s the main characStaff writer ter Hyko and she lives on a fictionT @Andy_Roberts331 al island off the coast of a mainAuthor Reina McKenzie, a soph- land. Her people are set in their omore at U of I, was invited to NIU ways and she doesn’t necessarily to talk about the release of her third agree with them. Strangers come book, “Stepping Out of Line.” in and start taking over things and The talk inshe’s like, ‘I want to do something cluded portions about this.’ She meets up with one about writing of these new strangers ... and they and how to selfkind of join forces, for lack of a publish. McKbetter term, to step out of line and enzie has selfsee what they can do. published three Reina McKenzie books including Author Q: What was your thought “Stepping Out of Line,” “The Trou- process when you got started? ble Trio,” and “Niño-Niña,” which What went from just, ‘This is is published in English and Spanish. going to be a story’ to ‘This is McKenzie plans to be a Bilingual going to be a novel?’ Speech and Language Pathologist, according to her Facebook page. So you want to figure out Q: What’s the kind of thing ‘OK, what’s my goal with this? Do I want to share it that gets you going to write a with a lot of people?’ I did story? a lot of looking around at A: ... A lot of times certain different websites, figured songs will inspire a plot idea or out what a book needs to be a character. Seeing an awesome able to be sold.’.” movie it’s like, ‘Man, I want to do Reina McKenzie something awesome like that.’ So Author it will inspire me to get back into writing. This specific novel was inspired by a Pokemon game I got A: ... I was writing in a notebook for my 16th birthday. one day — this was sophomore year of high school — and one of Q: How would you describe my friends took my notebook and
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Buy the book
Purchase Reina McKenzie’s “Stepping Out Of Line” at amzn.to/1Q7NKHQ. started to read it and was like, ‘Hey, this is really good. Can I give it back to you at lunch?’ So she took my notebook, read through everything that I had so far in there, and was like ‘Do you have any more?’ For weeks, she would keep asking, ‘Hey, after you write something give it to me. You should publish this it’s really good.’ So once I made the decision to actually publish it I was like, now I have to finish it. Q: How did you self-publish it? A: Very simple. You just go online and you look up self-publishing and you figure out which website you want and what will work best for you. There are so many different ones with different prices, different options. So you want to figure out ‘OK, what’s my goal with this? Do I want to share it with a lot of people?’ I did a lot of looking around at different websites, figured out what a book needs to be able to be sold. After I did all of that research I decided to go with CreateSpace. The parent site is actually Amazon.com, which is really neat because after your book is published it’s made available on Amazon.
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