Author: Iain Reading
Series: Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency #1
Genre: YA Adventure and Mystery
Published: November 30, 2012
Synopsis:
Kitty Hawk
and the Curse of the Yukon Gold is the thrilling first installment in a new young adult series
of adventure mystery stories by Iain Reading. This first book of the Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency
Series introduces Kitty Hawk, an intrepid teenage pilot with her own De
Havilland Beaver seaplane and a nose for mystery and intrigue. A cross between
Amelia Earhart, Nancy Drew and Pippi Longstocking, Kitty is a quirky young
heroine with boundless curiosity and a knack for getting herself into all kinds
of precarious situations.
After leaving her
home in the western Canadian fishing village of Tofino to spend the summer in
Alaska studying humpback whales, Kitty finds herself caught up in an
unforgettable adventure involving stolen gold, devious criminals, ghostly
shipwrecks, and bone-chilling curses. Kitty's adventure begins with the
lingering mystery of a sunken ship called the Clara Nevada. As the plot
continues to unfold, this spirited story will have readers anxiously following
every twist and turn as they are swept along through the history of the
Klondike Gold Rush to a suspenseful final climatic chase across the rugged
terrain of Canada's Yukon.
Kitty Hawk
and the Curse of the Yukon Gold is a perfect book to fire the imagination of readers of all
ages. Filled with fascinating and highly Google-able locations and history this
book will inspire anyone to learn and experience more for themselves.
There are currently five books in the Kitty Hawk Flying Detective
Agency Series: Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon
Gold (book 1), Kitty Hawk and the Hunt for Hemingway's
Ghost (book 2), Kitty Hawk and the Icelandic Intrigue (book 3), and Kitty Hawk and the Tragedy of the RMS
Titanic (book 4), and Kitty Hawk and the Mystery of the
Masterpieces (book 5).
Each book can be read as a standalone.
“In the Kitty Hawk Flying
Detective Agency Series the heroine finds herself in a new geographic location
in each book. The series will eventually have a total of 13 books in it (maybe
more) and her flight around the world will be completed in the end,” says Iain.
“The books are sequential but one could definitely read any of the later
ones before reading the earlier ones.”
For more information, go to http://www.kittyhawkworld.com/
Excerpt:
Prologue
Back Where The Entire Adventure Began
As soon as the engine
began to sputter, I knew that I was in real trouble. Up until then, I had
somehow managed to convince myself that there was just something wrong with the
fuel gauges. After all, how could I possibly have burnt through my remaining
fuel as quickly as the gauges seemed to indicate? It simply wasn't possible.
But with the engine choking and gasping, clinging to life on the last fumes of
aviation fuel, it was clear that when the fuel gauges read, "Empty,"
they weren't kidding around.
The lightning strike
that took out my radio and direction-finding gear hadn't worried me all that
much. (Okay, I admit it worried me a little bit.) It wasn't the first time that
this had happened to me, and besides, I still had my compasses to direct me to
where I was going. But I did get a little bit concerned when I found nothing
but open ocean as far my eyes could see at precisely the location where I fully
expected to find tiny Howland Island—and its supply of fuel for the next leg of
my journey—waiting for me. The rapidly descending needles on my fuel gauges
made me even more nervous as I continued to scout for the island, but only when
the engine began to die did I realize that I really had a serious problem on my
hands.
The mystery of the
disappearing fuel.
The enigma of the
missing island.
The conundrum of what
do I do now?
"Exactly,"
the little voice inside my head said to me in one of those annoying
'I-told-you-so' kind of voices. "What do you do now?"
"First, I am going
to stay calm," I replied. "And think this through."
"You'd better
think fast," the little voice said, and I could almost hear it tapping on
the face of a tiny wristwatch somewhere up there in my psyche. "If you
want to make it to your twentieth birthday, that is. Don't forget that you're almost out of
fuel."
"Thanks a
lot," I replied. "You're a big help."
Easing forward with the
control wheel I pushed my trusty De Havilland Beaver into a nosedive. Residual
fuel from the custom-made fuel tanks at the back of the passenger cabin
dutifully followed the laws of gravity and spilled forward, accumulating at the
front and allowing the fuel pumps to transfer the last remaining drops of fuel
into the main forward belly tank. This maneuver breathed life back into the
engine and bought me a few more precious minutes to ponder my situation.
"Mayday, mayday,
mayday," I said, keying my radio transmitter as I leveled my flight path
out again. "This is aircraft Charlie Foxtrot Kilo Tango Yankee, calling
any ground station or vessel hearing this message, over."
I keyed the mic off and
listened intently for a reply. Any reply. Please? But there was nothing. There
was barely even static. My radio was definitely fried.
It was hard to believe
that it would all come down to this. After the months of preparation and
training. After all the adventures that I'd had, the friends I'd made, the
beauty I'd experienced, the differences and similarities I'd discovered from
one culture to the next and from one human being to the next. All of this in
the course of my epic flight around the entire world.
Or I should say,
"my epic flight almost around the entire world," in light of
my current situation.
And the irony of it was
absolutely incredible. Three-quarters of a century earlier the most famous
female pilot of them all had disappeared over this exact same endless patch of
Pacific Ocean on her own quest to circle the globe. And she had disappeared
while searching for precisely the same island that was also eluding me as I scanned
the horizon with increasing desperation.
"Okay," I
thought to myself. "Just be cool and take this one step at a time to think
the situation through." I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing,
slowing it down and reining in the impulse to panic. Inside my head, I quickly
and methodically replayed every flight that I'd ever flown. Every emergency I'd
ever faced. Every grain of experience that I had accumulated along the long
road that had led me to this very moment. Somewhere in there was a detail that
was the solution to my current predicament. I was sure of it. And all I had to
do was find it.
Maybe the answer to my
current situation lay somewhere among the ancient temples of Angkor in
Cambodia? Or in the steamy jungles of east Africa? Or inside the towering
pyramids of Giza? Or among the soaring minarets of Sarajevo? Or on the emerald
rolling hills and cliffs of western Ireland? Or on the harsh and rocky lava
fields of Iceland?
Wherever the answer
was, it was going to have to materialize quickly, or another female pilot (me)
would run the risk of being as well-known throughout the world as Amelia
Earhart. And for exactly the same reason.
"It's been a good
run at least," the little voice inside my head observed, turning oddly
philosophical as the fuel supplies ran critically low. "You've had more
experiences on this journey around the world than some people do in their
entire lifetime."
"That's it!"
I thought.
Maybe the answer to all
this lies even further back in time? All the way back to the summer that had
inspired me to undertake this epic journey in the first place. All the way back
to where North America meets the Pacific Ocean—the islands and glaciers and
whales of Alaska.
All the way back to
where this entire adventure began.
1. What does your writing process
look like? Do you know the whole story when you start? Or
do you just start writing and go with it (seat of the pants
writing)? If you plan it out, how do you do
that? Outline, note cards, post-it notes, etc.?
I always compare my writing process to being on
a subway train. Before I get on I know where I am starting out and
where I am going. I even know all the stops along the
way. But what I don't know is what exactly will happen between each
of those stops. I can usually guess, but there's always something unexpected
that happens. And as I make my way through the story I take walks
and think ahead to what is going to happen next, while still keeping in mine
all the future stops and my destination. And once I have that clear
in my head I sit down to write it. And even then unexpected things
happen. But that's the best part of the whole process.
2. How do you come up with your ideas
for your stories?
I think that varies from book to
book. My Kitty Hawk series, for example, the idea for the entire
plot of a teenage pilot that flies around the world and solves mysteries came
directly from the heroine's name. Kitty Hawk (the place where the
Wright Brothers flew the first airplane) as the name of a teenage
pilot. That series almost wrote itself. The idea for
another of my books, the dragon of the month club, came from the television
show Modern Family. In one episode Jay has a subscription to the
sausage of the month club. And I thought, what if there was a dragon
of the month club? Hmmmmm, I thought. And then the idea
of the whole book suddenly became clear.
3. How long have you been writing?
About three years now. A bit
more. But maybe the better question is how long I had NOT been
writing. For a long time before that… and unfortunately
the last year or more. I made my life very busy and have to figure
out how to juggle that and still keep writing.
4. What tips do you have for aspiring
writers?
I am not sure I am much of an authority, but
here goes… three things:
1) Writing a book is not as difficult as you
might think;
2) If you're writing for the first time and you
want to write a book series… write the third book first. Then shelve
it. Then write the first book and go from there. You'll
be much more familiar with the process and characters that way. (Of
course this is slightly weird advice….); and lastly
3) Write the book you are capable of writing –
not the book you might WANT to write. I would like to write books
like a lot of my favourite authors, but I am not them, so I
can't. And trying to do so only will end in frustration.
5. How much research do you do in
order to make your books as historically accurate as you want?
I generally do a LOT of
research. This includes good old Google, of course, but also reading
every book on the subject that I can get my hands on, plus studying maps and
historical documents, trips to library archives, and best of all (for me) I
always visit the places I am writing about in order to get a sense of them and
to be inspired.
6. Favorites:
Books/authors/genres – Favourite books: Contact
by Carl Sagan and The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux.
Movies/TV Shows – Favourite
movie: Moneyball (don't ask me why…. I can watch it over
and over and over – and I don't even like baseball). Favourite
television show: I have to say Modern Family, don't I? Since it
inspired one of my books.
Music – Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone,
but I really like my own music. I guess that's why I wrote and
recorded - because I wanted to hear it. But for real music I would
say: Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, Taylor Swift and The Script.
Food/writing snack – There's no time for
snacking while writing! Ha ha. But one of my favourite
snacks is something they have in Holland called Mexicantjes which are little
round crackers with cheese flavour. And you get them with soft soft
white cheese with chives and it is SOOOOOO good.
About the Author:
Iain Reading is passionate about Root Beer,
music, and writing. He is Canadian, but currently resides in the Netherlands
working for the United Nations.
Iain is the author of the Kitty Hawk Flying
Detective Agency Series, The Wizards of Waterfire Series, and the dragon of the
month club. To learn more, go to http://www.amazon.com/Iain-Reading/e/B00B0NGI6Q/
