Bil Lepp’s Save the Parents and Other Quirky Children’s Books I Can’t Get Published

Igra Diggira Rabbit Poo: The Crew goes into Wendell’s story to save his parents.

Elves & Trials Errors, But Mostly Errors: The crew enters Mary and Thromon’s world to test their skills. Humorous disaster occurs.

We Finally Find Out Who is Who

The Meeting: Why do the parents always get killed and what’s it mean to be a character in a kid’s book?

Peter and Terri pull Wendell from his story

I wrote a novel for kids. It’s quirky, just like everything else here.

Peter has become aware that he is a character in a YA series, and he hates the whole genre. Peter hates the genre because YA authors all too often abduct, main, or outright kill the parents of the protagonist in some ridiculous manner.  These superfluous crimes are committed so that the protagonist will be motivated to hunt down the antagonist who murdered her/his parents, stole the fortune, and is trying to take over the world.  Peter is fed up with YA authors callously killing characters simply to thicken the plot, and without regard to the true feelings of the characters left living.

Terri believes that she is a perfectly ordinary teenaged girl living a perfectly ordinary teenaged life until Peter takes her outside the margin of her story and into the text of his series.

Peter convinces Terri that she can save her parents if she is willing to work with him. He then explains that they are on the hard drive of his author’s computer. His author is a woman nicknamed Scribble, and Scribble is a world famous YA novelist hosting a workshop for aspiring YA writers. Those writers have all emailed their manuscripts to Scribble. Peter enters these manuscripts and extracts the protagonists from each. He explains his disdain for YA novels to them, and he tells the characters they have to ability to act independently of their author’s imagination, and his plan to fix their stories. Peter assures the characters that because their stories have yet to be published, there is time to infiltrate their manuscripts, alter the events, and save their parents.

The characters Peter has recruited include the sort of cast one might expect from a half dozen cliché YA novels. There is a boy magician (not a boy wizard- that was taken), elfin twins, four orphaned siblings, a conflicted vampire, and a sad little girl.

This band of characters set up camp on Scribble’s hard drive and use her computer as a base from which they email themselves to their various author’s computers, enter their manuscripts, and manipulate their stories.  The authors, all gathered at a workshop, are mystified by the changes occurring in their documents, and are especially surprised when the characters from fellow workshop attendees begin appearing in all the narratives.

Peter and crew soon discover that their status as self-aware fictional characters affords them certain physical powers within stories not available to non-aware characters. As the crew sets about fixing each other’s tales they make several other significant discoveries. First, it becomes clear that some stories, such as children being raised by rabbits or people being killed by rabid dolphins, simply are not worth saving. Second, they discover that being a fictional character often means becoming the life long friend, moral guide, and maybe even the first love to their readers. Finally, the crew discovers that simply giving a story a happy ending does not necessarily fix a story. Some stories need to work themselves out, and some stories need to be sad, even tragic, to be useful.

I wrote a novel for kids. It’s quirky, just like everything else here. My intent is to read it to you, but I’m not great at voices, as you shall discover. It’s a YA or Middle Grade sci-fi/fantasy romp, or somewhere in between and also sort of an anti-YA and Middle Grade novel. Hope you enjoy this first segment. Feel free to pay a little if you’d like. #ya #kidslit #middlegradefiction #funny

Title tells it all...

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