LM Preston: My post-high school

LM Preston, Author of the Explorer X series and The Pack

LIFE AFTER HIGH SCHOOL

My senior year ended with a bag. Several things went wrong and quite a few went right. I was supposed to go to Penn State University. But, crap happens. My plans for packing up and going to live on miles away from home were cut short due to a family catastrophe. With that catastrophe I had to grow up pretty fast. Let’s face it, as a product of a teen mom – I was used to it. I’d always thought about life by planning a plan A, B and C. At that point I had to do the below. Most high school graduates find themselves having to make similar choices.

GOT A JOB

Luckily at the time, Washington DC had a program for graduating seniors where they spent 4 weeks training you in job skills – and guess what else? They gave you a job afterwards and they paid you while you went. During that time I went to resume writing workshops, learned clerical job skills and took on my first student ‘stay in school job’. I was able to work 20hrs a week with pay at the end of the program. In addition I worked at a local drugstore in order to save money for Community College and pay rent in the room I was renting from a friend.

GO TO COLLEGE

At the time, since I had limited funds and didn’t know how to apply for scholarships or financial aid, I just applied to Community College. I took 5 classes while working my two part-time jobs. My other friends were at four-year colleges, partying it up and wasting their parents money. But for me, this was serious business. School, a degree, was a way for me to survive in the future and get out of the rooming house I lived in.

By chance I met another college student who asked me why I didn’t have a scholarship (my grades were a 4.0) and I told her I didn’t know how to apply or find them. She sat me down and taught me. She didn’t realize that she was my angel. After that, it was on to a 4-year university where I lived on campus and of course – still worked 2 part-time jobs. Why? Because I needed money to survive and I didn’t have a mom or dad to give it to me. I didn't stop there, I pursued my Master's degree and made sure it was a specialty that I would be able to make enough to take care of myself.

THINGS I LEARNED

Yeah, post High School was a struggle for me – but, I wouldn’t change it for a moment. Why? Because I grew up, learned to take care of myself, realized that partying, drinking, and drugging was a waste of my time. I, unlike my peers in college, had no where to go when break time came. I had no parents homes I packed up and went to. I learned through the school of hardnocks – to sink or swim, and I was determined to swim. You can too!

by: LM Preston, author of The Pack and Explorer X - Alpha, www.lmpreston.com, http://lmpreston.blogspot.com

~~~

You can read my review of LM's novel, Explorer X - Alpha, here. It's one for tweens who are into sci-fi.

Contest Time

Giveaway Item(s): A copy of Explorer X - Alpha with magnet and poster

# of Winners: 1

Eligibility: International

Entries (Leave links if needed)

+1 New follower (MANDATORY)

+2 Old follower

+1 Link (5 max)

+1 Add Stop, Drop, and Read! to your blogroll

Author Interview: LM Preston + CONTEST

LM Preston sci-fi novel debut, Explorer X-Alpha, was recently released earlier this month! She's here at Stop, Drop, and Read! for an author interview. Scroll down to the bottom of the interview and you will have the chance to win the novel for yourself!

If you want to learn more about LM Preston or her books, check out at www.lmpreston.com.

Firstly, what inspired you to write Explorer X-Alpha?

It all started on a long car trip to Florida . My husband, kids and I were on our way to my ‘ Happy Place ’. Ok, I’ll admit it. I am still a big kid. I love to play, and imagine.

Anyway, while on this long drive, my husband turns to me and says, “You should write a book. You loved to write when we were younger and you haven’t written since.”

I thought about what his said and replied,” Well, I did try to write that one book, but it was boring and didn’t keep my interest.”

Then he told me,” You should write science fiction. You like it, and you work in the IT field. That way you have no boundaries, you create your own.”

When it came to creating the future in your novel, did you already have an idea of what kind of world you wanted? Or did you create it along the way as you wrote it?

World building is my favorite part of writing sci-fi. I usually spend a few weeks cutting and pasting aspects of the world I am creating on construction paper, and in a file I put all the pictures that I grab from the internet to describe this new world. As I write, I make changes on the fly while I get caught up in the experience of that new world.

What do you find is the easiest part in writing? And the hardest?

For me the easiest part is writing. I tend to write obsessively until the story is dumped out of my head. I also enjoy editing because I feel like an artist chipping away at stone to fine tune every aspect of my story. Each time I do it, the story improves and I grow as a writer.

The hardest part of writing is creating an outline.

What kind of stories or genres do you still have yet to try out?

I would like to write a horror or mystery novel.

Do you have any authors that you were influenced by?

I love Dean Koontz, James Patterson, Dave Meadows, and James Campbell.

Do you have any novels you are working on at the moment or will be releasing soon? If so, can you please give us a brief summary about them?

The Pack releases this August. It's an adventurous upper YA novel about a blind vigilante who sets out to save her brother and the missing kids on Mars (check out the book trailer @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_u2eq_RDgk) . Explorer X - Beta comes out next year. I just finished writing Bandits which is an upper YA novel about a boy named Daniel's quest to find his father's killer and treasure.

Lastly, give us an interesting fact about yourself that not many know of!

I love, love, love karoke. Every chance I get I sing on stage. Now, at the moment I am on stage - I feel like a star. Too bad I can't hold a tune.

~~~

Now that you have learned more about LM, you can win a copy of Explorer X-Alpha (including poster and magnet)!

To enter: (Please have everything in one comment in the post)
+1 comment
+2 new follower through Google Friend Connect
+3 old follower through Google Friend Connect
+2 add Stop, Drop, and Read! to your blog list (link)
+2 for every time you link the contest (link)

This contest is open to international. Contest will end on March 31/10.

Explorer X-Alpha by LM Preston

Title: Explorer X-Alpha
Author: LM Preston
Age Group: Tweens
# of Pages: 366
My Rating: 2.5/5

Far in the future where one is able to communicate telepathically through technology and be able to own robots, kids could finally travel to Mars. Aadi is going to be one of the many campers that will go to a new space camp and experience a world outside of their own. There, Aadi makes some friends and learns new and exciting things.

What Aadi and the others do not know is that the camp is setting them up for something bigger. Much bigger. In fact, their lives will no longer be the same as their body slowly changes into something different...

Explorer X-Alpha has a unique plot that is uncommon to most juvenile fiction today. There aren't many sci-fi novels that focuses on Mars or other planets of the future. The layout of the story is quite intriguing with great concepts. However, I was not very fond with the simplistic writing therefore making it hard for me to fully enjoy the novel. There were also a lot of characters and because their personalities did not all distinguish them from one another, I had a hard time figuring out who was who in the beginning.

The story was a bit slow in the beginning so I did not get through it as quickly as I hoped. There were times where I had to motivate myself to continue reading it. Also, sometimes the events that occurred within the novel confused me but I think my quick reading was to be blamed. If the writing style was suited to my preferences, then I definitely would have liked this novel much more.

I think Explorer X-Alpha definitely suits the taste of boys around the ages of ten or eleven because it has a lot of action and not that complex to read. So if you have a son or younger brother who hates to read, have them try out Explorer X-Alpha.

Review copy provided by LM Preston.

Trailer Tuesday: Explorer X - Alpha by LM. Preston

Title: Explorer X - Alpha

Author: LM. Preston

Description: For most kids, a trip to space camp is a trip of a lifetime, for Aadi it was life altering. After receiving a camp immunization needed for travel to Mars, Aadi finds that the immunization is the catalyst of an insidious experiment. Lucky for him, he was engineered to survive, thrive, and dominate. Without realizing he is being trained to conquer worlds, and manipulated under the guise of a camp, he unfolds the plot too late for a change of fate.

I'm going to review this one in a couple of months. Look forward to it!