We're both huge fans of books that take classic fairy tales and reinvent them, so we're really excited to be a part of the blog tour for Adam Dreece's
Yellow Hoods series! Adam stopped by to give us his Top Five Things he Fussed Over, and we hope you enjoy his list as much as we did. It's really insightful, and has a few things we never would have thought of!
Be sure to stop by the rest of the wonderful tour stops (you can find the schedule by clicking the banner above), and don't forget to enter the giveaway for your chance to win one of 4 boxed sets of
The Yellow Hoods series! You can enter via the Rafflecopter form at the end of this post.
The Yellow Hoods Series
As the Yellow Hoods series starts, we see a pastoral world on the brink of a great change. Steam-based and other technologies are emerging, hence the genre “Emergent Steam Punk”. But this is written in the tradition of hard science fiction– you will find no gratuitous gears here. In the series, Adam Dreece masterfully weaves together familiar elements from fairy tales with realistic characters, bringing them to life. Here we meet the Nikolas Klaus: a kind of fusion of Santa Claus and Nikola Tesla and his granddaughter, young Tee who evokes Little Red Riding Hood but with the force of personality of a Katniss (Hunger Games) or Buffy (aka the Vampire Slayer). You may laugh and you may cry, but I guarantee you will enjoy the ride.
Title: Along Came a Wolf (Bk 1)
Series: The Yellow Hoods
Author: Adam Dreece
Publication Date: April 14, 2014
Synopsis: Someone is on the hunt for the steam engine plans, and believes that master inventor, Nikolas Klaus, has them. Thought dead by most, and forgotten by many, the quiet grandfather has been living for years in the sleepy mountain town of Minette, keeping his inventions mostly to himself and watching his granddaughter grow up.
Twelve-year-old Tee, and her two best friends, Elly and Richy, come together as the heroic Yellow Hoods in the face of life threatening danger. Whose side are the Cochon brothers on, and will they tip the balance? Will Nikolas’ ties to one of the secret societies cost him Tee’s life?
Title: Breadcrumb Trail (Bk 2)
Series: The Yellow Hoods
Author: Adam Dreece
Publication Date: August 18, 2014
Synopsis: In an act of desperation, inventor Maxwell Watt sends his teenage son to Nikolas Klaus with the secret plans for his steam engine. The Fare, a nefarious secret society, learns of the game-changing invention and accelerate their timeline to neutralize Klaus and reclaim control over the kingdoms.
While wars spark to the south, children in Mineau have started to go missing–again.
Captain Archambault suspects the return of the Ginger Lady. With the help of the Yellow Hoods and their friends, the search is on to find the missing children before it is too late.
What is the secret that ties the Yellow Hoods to the Ginger Lady? Who are the Red Hoods really?
Title: All the King’s Men (Bk 3)
Series: The Yellow Hoods
Author: Adam Dreece
Publication Date: April 15, 2015
Synopsis: More than a hundred years ago, a king declared that all geniuses, scientists and inventors were abominations, save for those willing to become his Conventioneers. His edict spread like wildfire through the kingdoms, and drove the hunted into the arms of the secret societies, the Tub and the Fare.
Decades later, having taken control of the remains of the crushed Fare, a young Marcus Pieman follows up on rumors of a homeless, teenage Abominator in his city. When the scared Nikolas Klaus looked up at Marcus for the first time, a tremendous bond was forged.
A betrayal leads Tee to a showdown with her greatest foe. Who breaks and who lays bleeding in the middle of nowhere?
And Mounira learns the truth about the once great inventor, Christophe Creangle.
YOU CAN FIND & PURCHASE ALL BOOKS IN THE SERIES HERE:
(For Each Individual Book)
About the Author
Adam Dreece burst onto the young adult fiction scene in 2014. His debut novel,
Along Came a Wolf, hit the shelves in April, launching what is now the bestselling series
The Yellow Hoods. Book Two,
Breadcrumb Trail, quickly followed in September, locking in Dreece's status as a force to be reckoned with. Now Book Three,
All the King’s-Men, is about to be released and is expected to take its place on the Amazon and Calgary Herald Best Seller Lists, alongside its predecessors.
For twenty-five years Adam had written stories and set them aside, including a memoir covering his battle with terrible scar pain and then being hit with severe asthma. He’d always given the priority and focus to his technical career. In January 2015, he became a full time author.
Adam’s a devoted husband and father of three great kids. Though driven, he ensures there is always time for his family, fans, and fellow authors.
With his tween daughter as his muse and the first to hear the rough drafts, it’s no surprise that he’s a huge proponent of strong female characters, something very clear in
The Yellow Hoods.
Author Links:
5 Steve Jobs-Type Things Adam Fussed Over With His Books
With the words done and the cover art complete, there was plenty that I insisted on tweaking until I felt they were just right. Here’s the top 5:
1. Font size
I opted to have an 11pt font instead of the standard 9pt font. As a dyslexic and as someone with supposedly large eye apertures, and knowing that there will be younger and older readers reading the book, I decided to opt for higher print costs but make the books easier to read. The slightly larger font allows for less information to be pulled in for people like me allowing for better focus, is less intimidating for the younger person and makes those needing glasses more comfortable. I couldn’t very well create a book that I wouldn’t be able to read comfortably, now could I?
2. Word frequency in paragraphs
My dyslexic brain finds patterns very easily. Some books will have a good 8 to 10 paragraphs in a row (and I’m not exaggerating, he says looking at a specific book on his bookshelf) that all start with a character’s name. My brain will focus on that, and now it’s fighting for my attention to investigate other patterns. I also lose my place easily because of the repeated structure. Thus I decided to make sure, unless it was impossible, that my books don’t have a repeating start.
3. Look from ten feet away as well as in hand
People need to be pulled in by the book, which requires it to be clearly visible from a distance and up close. I have put the book covers and looked at them from a distance, approach them, played with them, until it looked and felt right.
4. Weight of the book
I wanted the book to feel the right weight, to have credibility in how it felt in the hand and for the make being charged. It sounds funny, but I’ve watched countless people do that. They look at the cover, they read the back of the book, and then I watch their hand bob up and down slightly as they weigh its value and their decision. I’ve been told many, many times that “my books are great value” even before someone has read them.
5. White space around the text
One thing that drives me absolutely batsheep crazy is when an author has such narrow margins that it looks like they thought you were allowed to write on every possible space on the page. To read what’s in the bound margin, you have to break the spin, then the words go all the way from about a quarter inch or less at the top (he looks at another book on his shelf) all the way down to the very last row of the page. For my brain, its unreadable. There’s no place for my fingers, there’s no framing of the text.
This is done to reduce printing costs, and again, I’d rather make a bit less money but provide a much better reader experience than save myself 4 pages and ticked off a reader.
