Book Release: Haze Island

I’m so happy to be back to writing after several years of putting it on the backburner. I’ve completed my Master’s of Theological Studies and am ready to jump back in to the craft. And I’m doing that by publishing my new book! Funny thing is, this book has nothing to do with my recent years of seminary study.

Haze Island is a young adult fiction novella, a genre I’ve never attempted. A story I wanted to tell camped out in my thoughts. It started around the table with my family, all of us adding to a story line that I proposed as we sat down for dinner one day. This was the beginning of Spring Break ten years ago. 

Ten. Years. Ago.

I decided to spend that week writing a short story that followed the plot we’d developed. 

But the story got a little bit long so it turned into a novelette. 

(I had to Google that because I had no idea what I’d written, I just knew it was longer than a short story, now I know it was a novelette. And now you know too.) According to my extensive “ask the Internet” research, a novelette is 7,500 to 20k words.

When I completed it, I sent the document to some beta-readers who said, “Great story, we can’t wait to read the end of it!”

I thought to myself, “That WAS the end of it.” 

But I mulled over their comments and decided, “You know what? I can write more and I can include local culture and scenery from this fun island we get to live on.”

That led me to conduct research which included spending the night on the Clan Jetties with my son, attending the Jade Emperor’s Birthday Celebration with my husband, and interviewing a local celebrity and member of a motorcycle riding club. I had so much fun and learned a lot.

The novelette turned into a novella. (Research again: a novella is around 20k to 50k words.)

I set it aside for years. I pulled it out a few times and worked some more. All along I kept notes of fun tidbits to add. And finally, I decided to plunge ahead and finish the thing.

I’m hoping you and other readers will enjoy reading Haze Island and will love meeting the characters as much as I enjoyed researching and writing about them! And if you do read it, I want to give you a thank you gift! 

A Gift for You!

If you post a review by September 30 and send me a screenshot of it along with your mailing address to jana@janakelley.com, I’ll send you a bookmark as a thank you, and I’ll enter your name into a drawing to receive an additional free gift!

By the way, I don’t blog too much about the books I’m working on, but if you are interested in knowing more, I send an occasional email. You can sign up for it with the form on the left. Just fill in your name and email address and accept the confirmation email that it sends to you (this helps ensure that you really did choose to subscribe).

I can’t wait to hear what you think of Haze Island. Thanks, as always, for your encouragement and for cheering me on.