Young Adult Author, Kai Strand, Wants to Shift Your Perspective
SUPER VILLAIN ACADEMY – where you
learn to be good at being bad.
In book one of the Super Villain
Academy series; KING OF BAD, Jeff Mean finds out he’s a super
villain and his urge to start fires makes a lot more sense.
The making of a main character is a
tricky business. Plus, there are many novels based in academies and
private schools, and I wanted both my main character and my school to
be different. That’s when it hit me that I needed to tell the story
about the bad guy. What made him bad? What is it like to be bad? Is
he the baddest of them all? Writing the good verses evil scenario
from the evil standpoint shifts the perspective on the classic
battle. Plus the motivations for the supporting characters – most
being villains themselves – is different than normal. It’s like
walking a tightrope to keep the characters bad, yet make them likable
enough that the reader sympathizes with their struggles and even
routes for them.
In POLAR OPPOSITES, my newly released
second book in the series, I confused the issue more and gave the
supers an equal balance of good and bad. Having to learn how to be
good when you’ve always been bad is difficult, even awkward. But
when you suddenly care about consequences, you’re left with little
choice but to try to figure it out. That’s the main reason Oceanus’
ex-villain, ex-boyfriend, Set, decides to help her current boyfriend,
Jeff, search for her when she goes missing. Or so Jeff believes.
What journey will our supers go on in
book three? My goal is that-for the reader-it will be an unexpected
one. It is said there are no new ideas, there are just new ways of
addressing old ideas. I think Jeff’s stories fit well within that
adage. Tag along with him and ask yourself – am I a hero or a
villain? The answer isn’t always cut and dry.
About POLAR OPPOSITES:
The supers are balanced. All’s well
in the super world. Right? When dogs drag Oceanus away, Jeff learns
the supers are so balanced, they no longer care to get involved. The
only one who seems to care is Oci’s ex-villain, ex-boyfriend, Set.
With Jeff’s own powers unbalanced and spiraling out of control, he
wonders if they will find Oci before he looses control completely,
and if they’ll find her alive.
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About the author:
When her children were young and the
electricity winked out, Kai Strand gathered her family around the
fireplace and they told stories, one sentence at a time. Her boys
were rather fond of the ending, “And then everybody died. The end.”
Now an award winning children’s author, Kai crafts fiction for kids
and teens to provide an escape hatch from their reality. With a
selection of novels for young adult and middle grade readers and
short stories for the younger ones, Kai entertains children of all
ages, and their adults. Learn more about Kai and her books on her
website, www.kaistrand.com.
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