K.V. Flynn is on the Author Schmooze @ Seth Herman's Blog

Fellow author Seth Herman had me on his blog this week. Check out what he had to say and what he asked on his Author Schmooze with K.V. Flynn...

Seth said, Hey all! Today we have the super-cool K.V. Flynn on the blog. K.V.'s got a YA/MG action book that debuted about two weeks ago called ON THE MOVE, and it's been getting great reviews. Plus, the whole concept is awesome - skater dudes caught in the middle of a warzone? Is there any concept more awesome than that?

Check out what K.V. has to say below, and then go grab a copy for yourself!

1. First of all, welcome to the blog! It's an honor to have you aboard. And congrats on the release of ON THE MOVE! I have to admit, though, I haven't read a YA/MG+ action book in, er, well, ever. Say something that will make me want to read this book right now.

Super fun skateboarding for Callum and his best middle-school skate buddies. Lots of action. A mystery. A war! Adventure. Great friends. Green tech and amazing inventions. And a dream skate safari to some of the best parks and spots through California and Oregon!

2. Nice! That book blurb sounds pretty awesome. Tell me, how is the release of your first book in the ON THE MOVE trilogy different than the others?

ON THE MOVE is about five kids finishing middle school in a SoCal beach town called Surfside. They narrowly miss being grounded for life after they sneak out of town on the bus for a great skateboard day just before promotion from 8 grade. Their pal Justice ends up with a wicked broken leg, but their parents soon forget about it because weird, tense things are happening in the news. So Callum, Levi and his bff Apollo are soon deep into their best summer ever at PEAK skateboard camp where they learn tricks from the pros, grind on endless street courses, and careen off one awesome ramp straight into the lake. It is mad fun until the War breaks out: the teens watch major cities blown up on TV, have no idea what’s happened to their parents, and then lose virtually all communication with the outside world.

Stranded, the boarder buddies strike out on their own to find their families, travelling north through all of California and Oregon, following a network of underground message boards and savvy riders who they find holed up in skate parks along the way. They pick up their school buddy Mateo Beltran, hitch a ride with their Native friend Obbie, on his way to safety on his dad’s reservation in Washington state, and even get some surprising help as they try to figure out a world gone crazy while they are On the Move.

ON THE RIM, the next book in this series, is a prequel set during eighth grade, when our band of buddies goes on a school Europe trip and gets separated from the group by some scary frightening goings-on. They end up in the dark skateboard underground of Marseilles, France.

ON THE LIPSIDE is set two years in the future, when our boys are in high school after the War and set about to build a Skateistan-type skate park for peace in another beachside town, like the one where they grew up, but this one is in…Saudi Arabia!

3. Wow, that's some adventurous trilogy! Tell me, how has your writing changed as you’ve matured as a writer?

The more we write, the better we get. The more we listen to the world around us, and try to understand what moves people and touches their hearts, the cleaner our stories become and the better we tell them.

4. Tell me about Callum Vicente, your protagonist. How did you come up with him? Base him on any real-life characters?

Callum narrates ON THE MOVE, and is based on a teen I knew super well. So, this character has a very similar middle school life in a small SoCal beach town, he loves to skate and play music and do well in school. He has a great group of friends, all very different, but tight through thick and thin. He has a storyteller’s compassion and sense of humor, and he and his buddies know how to JHF (Just Have Fun). Like the real kid, Callum knows how to keep his wits about him and his bros tight when the world goes wild and they have to figure out really tough and challenging things to find their families.

5. This blog likes to point out that hard work - and hard work alone - will earn an author his/her due publication. Tell me about your process for ON THE MOVE. How many drafts? How many months? How long did revisions take? Is that more or less than what you’re used to?

Yup, I started ON THE MOVE 5 years ago, easy. I did a little on it here and there until I could take a sabbatical from my day job and finish it. Then, while I got a manager pretty quickly, it took many months to match me with the best agent to present it to publishers. After that, my agent worked super hard to get it sold to Astraea Press. That was back in Feb/March 2014 so, while I’m publishing on Sept. 2 and that seems quick, there were indeed many revisions and edits for their great editors over the spring and summer of this year. It’s my first published novel, after doing adult and literary short stories, so I guess I’ll get used to it, sure!

6. Are you agented? How did you land your agent? How long did it take you? How long before you got this book published (from the first draft until actual publication)?

I think it took a year… and plenty of rejections… to go through the one-by-one submission/elimination process until I signed with Leticia Gomez of Saavy Literary. She is ideal because of her deep support for multi-cultural YA fiction. So, if the first draft was done in summer 2012, here we are end of summer 2014 finally publishing!

7. What's up next - a sequel, or something else?

Like I mentioned above, I’m writing the prequel, which is called ON THE RIM. I did a cool skate safari/research trip this summer to Germany, France and Barcelona, Spain, tracing the eighth-grade adventures of my inspiration for Callum, when he and his school friends took their trip 5 years ago. It was a blast. I’ll be posting photos in my blog on www.OnTheMoveBooks.comthroughout the fall. I’m almost half-way to my first draft.

8. That is probably the coolest research trip I have ever heard of. Holy smokes.

Tell me, What are a few things that come with being published that a non-published writer might not know? Aside from all the name-screaming fans, of course.

You need a big-time social media presence, and have to work constantly, building and informing your community, becoming maybe a bit more “out there” than writers tend to be. Sure, we love to communicate with the gente, mix it up, hear what they’re up to. But it’s also a little distracting from digging down and writing… Then again, so is skating, dancing, walking the dog, hitting the sunset… It’s hard to sit down and write, sometimes!

9. Do you have a writing schedule, or are you a kind of "whenever the mood hits" kind of guy?

I try to write pages every day. Sometimes I don’t get them typed in, and sometimes my day job + the release of ON THE MOVE get in the way. But I try not to be hard on myself, at the moment: it’s a big deal to release a book with a publisher like Astraea, and help get the word out after all these years. So that’s part of my writing schedule, too, for the moment—writing tweets! Tumblr skate pix! FB updates for the fans!

10. Any thought to writing other genres? Or are you loving YA/MG+ Action and all its glory?

I love this genre. I love writing with and for teens. I love the energy and action of contemporary boy characters. And post-apocalyptic fiction has intrigued me since I was a kid, myself, not to mention having faves like Hunger Games, On the Beach, and Maximum Ride, et al that I love to emulate.

11. Since I live in a very religiously-charged part of the world, I have to ask – any religious undertones in this book, or in your writing in general? Or do you keep your faith and your writing separate?

ON THE MOVE comes from Astraea Press, so is a clean read and very cool for tweens and teens 10-15 in any sort of family or background. The kids are multi-cultural and reflect a wide variety of faiths and races. Religion is not a core theme of the book, though.

12. Favorite YA novel of all time? Favorite book on the craft of writing?

I’ve read many many YA/MG+—I almost want to say, them all!—and really dig so many YA books and authors. No question that Hunger Games is a terrific and visionary, forceful piece of writing, though, from page one.

BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott.

13. Any favorite writing websites?

Not my thing, really—I follow skater sites. Want a list!?

14. How can we learn more about you? Book signings, appearances, short stories you've published prior to this series, movies you’ve starred in...?

I’m a man of mystery. It’s more about the book. But I do blog at www.OnTheMoveBooks.com, and KV Flynn does use @OnTheMoveBooks and tumblr.OnTheMoveBooks to stay tight with the skate and indie YA book world.

Amazing, thanks so much!

I gotta say, Thanks, Seth. Isn't he the best!?

For more about ON THE MOVE:

Amazon: http://goo.gl/JfHH4A

Barnes & Noble: http://goo.gl/Yme3aE

iTunes: http://goo.gl/nt6U03

Smashwords: http://goo.gl/1JEFYx

Amazon UK: http://goo.gl/KOywL4

Kobo: http://goo.gl/xtE0MN

You know that you can always find me on

TWITTER: @OnTheMoveBooks.com

Tumblr.com/OnTheMoveBooks