East Sierra (In Person): Becoming a Fantasy Author

BECOMING A FANTASY AUTHOR

Local novelist Kelsey Norton will talk about “Becoming a Fantasy Author” at our January 6 meeting, Thursday evening, 6:30 p.m. in the meeting room of Ridgecrest Presbyterian Church, 633 W. Las Flores. Public welcome. No charge for admission. Masks required.

Aiming her spellbinding tales at the YA market (and some younger as well as older readers), Kelsey sets her tales in the Dells, a land of humans and mystics. Mystics have differently colored streaks in their hair, each hue revealing their individual powers: magic, light, emotions, and others. Blue, yellow, pink, and so on. But Alina, born with a red streak, poses a quandary because nobody ever had a red streak before. Kelsey explores a maze of questions of identity, self-acceptance, and self-doubt throughout Alina’s story. Ultimately, the message emerges that we should understand our power even if we don’t think we have any.

Now hard at work on her third book, Kelsey feels that she always had a flare for imagination. She started writing in the third grade, with a yarn about how a skunk got its stripe. In fact, she says, “I essentially wrote if for myself at 14. I would have wanted a book like this.”

You can find her first two books, Dragon Scale Prophecies: Truth and Dragon Scale Prophecies: Courage available at Red Rock Books and online from Amazon.