Landon Snow and the Auctor's Riddle

I'm in the middle of a children's book that is wonderful. It's Landon Snow and the Auctor's Riddle by RK Mortenson. The story is about a boy named Landon Snow who finds himself in this bookland fantasy world. The book would make a great gift for the young book lovers in your family and I already have a copy for my children. If you want to check out more about this book go to:

https://exchange.nccsc.k12.in.us/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.landonsnow.com

https://exchange.nccsc.k12.in.us/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1593108818

Now I have an awesome gift for you. I was going to do this in three installments, but since my uncle passed away and his funeral is tomorrow, I'm going to put everything in this post. (If there's a way to prepost, let me know.) I have an interview I conducted with RK Mortenson. I've broken it into three sections.

Personal

How did you arrive at being a military chaplain?
I was serving a small church in Eugene, Oregon when I received a letter from the Navy recruiting ministers to be chaplains. I fell ill for a month struggling with the decision to leave my church and join the Navy, but it kept nagging at me. Finally I spent some time alone at the coast praying and seeking God's will, and I was assured He was calling me to become a Navy chaplain.

As a boy, did you have the love of books that Landon Snow has?
I did, but not quite as strongly. Of course, if I had had a library like the majestic one in Button Up to visit, I might have loved books even more. My love for reading and for simply being around books grew exponentially through college and seminary.

What was your favorite book growing up?
A fantasy called Watership Down by Richard Adams. It's an adventure seen through the eyes of rabbits. It's really an adult book; it's not written for children. I read it in fifth grade, and it was the first book that kept me up late at night with a flashlight under the covers. I was riveted.

Are you from Minnesota? If yes, is that why the book is set there? If not, why was the book set there?
I grew up in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. My mother's parents lived on a farm in Jenkins, a very small town north of Brainerd. My childhood journeys from the suburbs north to the country provided the basis for the Snow family's similar trek at the beginning of the book.

Writing

Do you have any formal writing training? If so, what?
I have a B.A. in Communication Arts with an English minor. I also have an M. Div. from seminary. My work toward those degrees involved a lot of writing, although I had very little training in creative writing and none in writing for publication.

What kind of training would you recommend for other writers?
I really think the best training begins with reading widely and studying how other writers "do it." By that I mean not only reading for content and/or pleasure, but slowing down and noticing the usage of words and language, and seeing how a scene develops and how transitions are made and how dialogue occurs. Then practice, practice, practice. Write write write. Have your work critiqued by someone who knows something about writing, and keep writing. I would also recommend attending a writers conference to learn about the craft, learn about the publishing industry, and network with other writers and professionals in the business.

Are you a seat of the pants writer or do you plan out your novel beforehand? Why does this work best for you?
I primarily write by the seat of my pants. I have never done character sketches or outlines or any planning before working on a novel. Now that I'm writing sequels for Landon Snow, I do start the novel with a general idea in mind of where it's going to go. I think of it as a target I'm aiming for, this idea, and the trajectory of the story will take me from the beginning to the end. I am a thinker-writer, meaning I work from images in my head I've been mulling over and over before sitting down to write a scene.

How did this story take form? Was there a small idea that blossomed or did the idea come in larger pieces?
I first wrote the poem that is now the Auctor's Riddle in the summer of 1994. Later that year I woke one night to what I was sure was flute music coming from outside. I looked out the second story apartment window across a field to a school. The next day I started writing a tale about a boy named Landon who wakes in the middle of the night and ventures across a field to...a library. There books speak to him and eventually direct him to the big book in the middle of the room: the Book of Meanings.

The original Landon's Tale was about 70 pages, and the fantasy portion turned out to be Landon's dream. It was very episodic and nonsensical, ala Alice in Wonderland, which was a strong influence.

Cut to 8 years later...I dig out Landon's Tale and rewrite it, "packaging" the fantasy portion in a new way and giving Landon a family: mom, dad, two sisters and grandparents. This version I pitched and eventually sold to Barbour Publishing, and then I did still more retooling of much of the story. It still is whimsical and nonsensical, but it actually kind of has a plot now.


If you don’t mind, walk us through the publishing process that you experienced.

I'd sent queries to editors and agents for about ten years, to no avail. The breakthrough came when I attended a writers conference (Writing for the Soul, August 2004) where I met editors and pitched the story in person. I called "Landon's Tale" (as it was titled at the time) "Alice in Wonderland meets the Book of Ecclesiastes." The whimsy of Alice with the wisdom of Solomon. That may be pushing it; it's heavy on the whimsy, but it caught the editor's attention along with my ten-minute verbal synopsis.

A different editor at Barbour eventually sent me a one-page response to the story, with some suggestions/ideas for changes. One major one was, I had the beginning and end of the book (the "real-world" scenes) in the grandfather's POV, and the editor wanted it in Landon's. I was able to do this, but I struggled a lot with trying to make these episodic scenes somehow stick together and have a theme or thread running through. They also wanted a new title, something with more pizzazz. I solved (I use the term somewhat loosely) both issues by making the Auctor's poem a "riddle," and voila! There was my new title as well.

If you didn’t answer this above, do you have an agent? If yes, how did you come about to sign with the agent? If not, is there a reason why you did this without an agent?

I do have an agent now, Janet Kobobel Grant. I did not have an agent when I got the first contract...or the second contract for book 2. But I then acquired Janet (if "acquired" is the appropriate term) and she negotiated the second and now the third contracts for Landon Snow books. More than having a contract in hand, however, I had received a recommendation to Janet from another author based not on Landon Snow but on a Navy/spiritual memoir proposal that impressed this author as well as Janet Grant. The memoir proposal has yet to find a home.

Novel

Is the character of Landon Snow based on anyone?
There is some of me in Landon Snow, but not too much. He is not based on anyone else.

What parts of The Auctor’s Riddle do you find the most satisfying?
That's an interesting question. Are you talking about the book as a whole or literally the riddle? For the book: I really like chapter 2, which features Grandpa Karl telling the legend behind Bartholomew G. Benneford and the building of the House of Knowledge and Adventure. That chapter almost got cut, but I really didnt' want to let it go. I had to find a creative way to keep it in the flow of the story.

In the riddle I like the phrase: So ticks celestial time. I like the rhythm and the imagery (from the preceding lines) of the earth, moon and sun moving in clocklike synchronicity.

How did you come up with the riddle?
This remains a mystery to me. I was on night duty at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, in the Army National Guard at the time doing two weeks of training. I was sitting in a darkened communications hut amid the glow of radio equipment, looking out the open door to what was literally a dark and stormy night. Suddenly the poem came to me and I took out a pen and notepad and began writing. The final version remains very close to that original late-night scribbling.

You’ve started your book signing tour and the assistant manager of the store in Jacksonville said you won the prize for the most successful author signing since they opened. What do you think made the signing so successful?
Ah, this one I know. :-) I mailed postcards of the book cover as invitations to my premiere book signing to over 100 people whom I know. I also contacted a few local Christian schools about it. And the week of the event there was a great article about me and my family and the book in a beaches community supplement to the local paper. Plus Barnes & Noble had put up many posters in the store and listed the event in their newsletter two months running. So all that added up to a good turnout for my first event. I've had a number of other good events at stores, churches and schools. I've also had a store event where I signed all of two copies.

What do you have on slate for future Landon Snow stories?
Straight from Barbour's Spring 2006 catalog, here's promo copy for Book 2, entitled Landon Snow and the Shadows of Malus Quidam:
"Landon Snow is heading into the darkness, hot on the trail of his younger sister Holly who has set off on a mission of her own. Emerging in the magical realm of Wonderwood, Landon discovers that Holly has been ensnared by shadows and has fallen under Ludo’s spell. With the help of his old friends—a horse named Melech, elfish Odds, and the poet/prophet Vates—Landon learns what he needs to do to set his sister free. But he’ll need lots of courage. Will Landon be able to rescue Holly from the shadows of darkness and free the Odds from Malus Quidam’s evil power?"
Book 2 will be released in March of 2006. I'm in the early stages of working on Book 3, and I'm having fun with it.

Thank you, RK Mortenson for your time and your insights.