Drawn
Chris
Ledbetter
YA Paranormal Interracial Romance
Released: June 5, 2015
215 pages
Caught between the sweltering fall
landscape of Wilmington, NC beaches and southern illusions and expectations,
all sixteen year-old Cameron Shade thinks about is art. That, and for Farrah Spangled
to view him as more than just a friend. Cameron longs to win her heart through
art.
After
several warm interactions with Farrah, including painting together at the
beach, Cameron discovers just how complex Farrah’s life is with her boyfriend
and her family. Following a tense run-in with Farrah’s father, she forbids
Cameron to ever speak to her again, but Cameron’s convinced there’s more behind
the request.
To impress
Farrah with a last-ditch effort, Cameron sketches her portrait. But the sketchbook
he uses hides a dark secret. Farrah’s now in grave danger because the sketch he
drew of her siphons her real-life’s soul into the sketchbook. Cameron now has
twenty days to extract Farrah. To save her, he must draw himself into the
book.
If he fails…
they both die.
Excerpt:
I slide into
art class right before the bell tolls. I sit down and flip open my sketchpad.
Today’s warm-up is retraining on shading properties. A sphere the size of a
basketball, but with the color and texture of a Ping-Pong ball, sits on the
front table with a desk lamp shining on it. I tighten my grip around the
obsidian shaft of my graphite pencil and produce long sweeping arcs, punctuated
with short scrawls on my sketch paper.
Our task is to draw four similar
spheres and shade each one using a different technique: tonal, scumble, smudge,
and crosshatch. Shading is the key to chiaroscuro,
the interplay of light and dark in art. It’s how the artist turns flat,
two-dimensional objects into three-dimensional beings.
With my hand whirring on the mundane
warm-up activity, I shoot a glance toward Jameson Scott across the room. My
mind drifts briefly to the online video game based on the U.S. Navy SEALs we’d
played the previous night. We play DEVGRU:
War On Terror, on a team with two guys who live in other
cities––Charlottesville, VA and Charleston, SC.
In gearing up for a tournament, we had a good run last night. Still
amazes me that we can play on a team together and reside in three different
places.
Jameson flashes me a DEVGRU-based
hand signal. He motions his hands overhead in two sharp flicks forward, which
basically tells me the equivalent of get
your ass back to work. His large, seventies-style Afro bobs back and forth
when he returns his attention to his work.
After the warm-up activity that I
could’ve done in my sleep, Mr. Jaques stands at the front of the class in his
signature slumped posture. “When beginning a work from scratch, as artists, we
project images in our minds of what we wish to sketch, right?” He grabs a
handful of his long, graying hippie hair, looking like he just stepped out of
Woodstock. “In our minds, we view it clear as day. So why is it harder to draw
an image from our minds than one on a physical plane before our eyes?”
No one answers. He walks between our
drawing tables and continues, “The biggest hindrance is scale. We can see a
picture in front of us and gauge it against its canvas, right? How far it is
from the top, and sides, etc. The image in our minds has no direct,
translatable scale. It changes and shifts… fog rolls in and out… lines blur,
sharpen, and then haze again. It’s amorphous.”
God, but that man can ramble. I rest
my chin in my hand and glance over at Jameson. He takes two fingers and points
at his eyes and then to the teacher. He’s taking this DEVGRU team leader role a
bit too far.
The Jaques monologue, or as we say,
his sermon, continues. “The best of
us can manage that internal image so that sketching from our minds is like
copying from a physical picture. That’s
why we work on shading, light against dark, as a means to convey substance and
structure… in short, reality.”
I spin my pencil around my thumb,
waiting for him to get to the end of this massive address. I should be used to
it.
“All right, my little Van Gogh’s and
Goghette’s, I have a challenge for you,” he says in his best British accent.
Lord knows why he does this. He’s not British. “For the next twenty minutes of
class, you are to recreate a picture that I will flash on the overhead for
exactly five minutes. After that, you must recreate from memory. Whoever does
the best shall receive a homework pass. Pencils at the ready.”
The wheels squeak as he rolls the
overhead projector into place, and then turns out the light. Each student turns
on his or her desk lamp. I think the strength in each bulb is something like
three watts. Maybe two and a half. Mr. Jaques flips the switch and then a
gorgeous picture of Taylor Swift pops up. She stands with her hands on her
hips, sheathed in a black licorice-colored bandage dress. Two-thirds of her
body is turned away and her hair is a waterfall of citron and goldenrod curls.
Author Bio:
Christopher S. Ledbetter grew up in
Durham, NC before moving to Charlottesville, VA in 11th grade. After graduating
high school, he attended Hampton University, where he promptly joined the best
marching band on the east coast, without having one shred of experience.
He taught high school and coached football for six years in Culpeper, VA. He enjoys the occasional Spartan Race, and is working toward a triathlon.
As a self-described, young reluctant reader, he writes young adult stories specifically to reach other reluctant readers. As a participant in the prestigious Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program, he was blessed to be mentored by Suzanne Morgan Williams, 2012 SCBWI member of the year.
He now lives in Wilmington, NC with his family.
He taught high school and coached football for six years in Culpeper, VA. He enjoys the occasional Spartan Race, and is working toward a triathlon.
As a self-described, young reluctant reader, he writes young adult stories specifically to reach other reluctant readers. As a participant in the prestigious Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program, he was blessed to be mentored by Suzanne Morgan Williams, 2012 SCBWI member of the year.
He now lives in Wilmington, NC with his family.
Website: http://www.csledbetter.com
Giveaway: $30 Amazon Gift Card
a Rafflecopter giveaway
No comments:
Post a Comment