Title: A Song for Jordan
Author: Mya Kay
Genre: Contemporary YA
Mya Kay’s A SONG FOR JORDAN (Amazon/Mya Kay Publishing; December 15, 2012; $15.00 Print, Kindle $7.99) is a story that will take you along an emotional and mental journey with Jordan Crystal Myers as she searches for a father that her family hates. Everything fifteen-year-old Jordan Crystal Myers knows about music comes from her father, from arranging notes to playing several different instruments. One day, she’d love to meet him.
A musician who left her mother, Melissa, when she was born, Jordan longs to have a relationship with the man that gave her the gift of music. Even knowing that her grandparent’s wanted her mother to abort her and that her mother doesn’t want her to find him doesn’t stop Jordan from asking questions.
A bi-racial teen already facing the pain of being mixed in an image driven society puts her search on hold when she lands a competitive music internship in Atlanta with SyncDeep Music Group, a label run by one of her favorite musicians. For the next six weeks, Jordan gets to arrange music, play and network with some of the music industry’s biggest artists. Two weeks before the internship is over, she’s abruptly fired and finding out her mother is the reason behind her termination causes Jordan to lose all hope – until she realizes she may have just found what she’s been looking for all along.
All the lies she’s heard come to light in this gripping tale that will leave your heart wrenching for Jordan as she searches for the one thing she longs for most. A SONG FOR JORDAN will leave bitter mothers who keep their children away from their fathers feeling sorry for the pain they’ve caused.
Author Bio
Mya Kay is the author or Speechless: Short Stories and a screenwriter. She is currently a teacher in South Korea teaching English as a Second Language. You can follow her on twitter, facebook or learn more about her at her website www.myakbooks.com.
Building a Strong “Weak”
Protagonist
When I first
created Jordan (my protagonist in my newest novel, A Song for Jordan), I knew
that I wanted her to be weak. But even weak characters have to have character.
Nobody wants to root for an underdog that doesn’t make people sympathize with
them. With Jordan, there were three things I wanted to focus on most:
1) I wanted her to shine even through her
weakness.
2) I wanted her to be compelling.
3) I wanted readers to be able to see her
alter ego (the new her that would eventually shine through)
I think building a
strong protagonist is hard enough. But when you have a character that naturally
doesn’t put up a fight for the things they want in life, you have to give them
another dynamic so that readers will want to know what’s going to happen next
with this person.
Jordan actually
ended up being stronger than I even I gave her credit for. Whenever she played
the piano or wrote a new song, her strength shined through. It was just a
silent strength. And it didn’t come packaged the way most people would think.
I believe writers
should understand that even when you have a character that is supposed to be “weak”
and ends up transforming in the end, there still needs to be a strength that
your readers can see, even if it’s subliminal. Here are some key ways to make
sure your “weak” character has a poise that your readers still find
fascinating:
1.) Make
sure you give your character something they have to gain before the end of the
story. Your character
shouldn’t just have an outside end goal, but an internal end goal. A lot of How-To
books say this, but I think people have to remember that this is especially
important with weak characters.
2.) Make
sure your character’s internal goal is realistic. For me, I had to make sure Jordan didn’t get too “strong”
too fast. She had a long way to go from being timid to boisterous when it came
to relationships in her life. If she had just gone off on someone early in the
book, readers would’ve felt like they didn’t know who she was. Even with weak
characters, readers want to feel like they know how the person is going to
react. The pattern of behavior should only break at some point after the
climax.
3.) Give
your antagonist some power. In
a book like A Song for Jordan, there was more than one antagonist. Everybody
wasn’t a bully, but I definitely needed for my antagonists to have some power.
They all were able to control Jordan some way, somehow, even if it was just
mentally. It made Jordan’s weakness seem more believable. It was understood
that “maybe Jordan acts this way because so-and-so is this way”.
4.) Finally,
make sure your character’s weakness makes sense. Jordan didn’t have to be super weak for her weakness
to be believable. It was a matter of making her weakness and the plot flow
right together. Of course, the antagonists in the book made this easier. That’s
why it’s important to know what and who your main character is going to have to
face before you start. Map it out so that you can figure out which scenes you
can use to show your protagonist’s weakness and eventually growth.
Just as I
mentioned above, even a weak character has to grow. That’s the most important
thing to remember when working with your main character. Show growth. Give your
readers something to root for. Otherwise, you will lose them before your story
even starts.
I always take time off during December and early January = being the mom of a large family is a full time job that I fit in around work and writing most of the year, but for the Christmas and New Year seasons they get all of me. Not that they particularly want me - the older ones have their own lives and families and interests and the younger ones are at an age where I am little more than a walking wallet -
