Dear Readers, please welcome Linda Rondeau to our blog...her book isn't actually published yet, so we'll have to wait. At the end, I'll actually share a link to her Amazon site so we might consider her other works. Lots of interesting!
Biographical Information:
Award-winning author, Linda Wood Rondeau writes stories that grip the heart, inspired by her nearly thirty years of social work. When not writing or speaking, she enjoys the occasional round of golf, visiting museums, and taking walks with her best friend in life, her husband of forty-five years. The couple resides in Hagerstown, Maryland where both are active in their local church. Readers may learn more about the author, read her blog, or sign up for her newsletter by visiting www.lindarondeau.com. Serving as an editor for Elk Lake Publishing, Rondeau has published more than fourteen books in total.
Description of GLICK/My Favorite Alien
Jeremy Bannister, orphaned and having moved to Ellis Grove from Santa Monica to live with elderly relatives, finds the Indiana town of Ellis Grove strange enough. He is grateful for the skateboard park and his two friends, Brandi and Tuan. His aunt has entered him into a skateboarding contest he is sure to win ... if the town bully doesn't kill him first.
Jeremy and his friends encounter an alien, stranded on Earth because of damage to his tele-transportation device. They learn he had been sent to the planet to study human cultures. The children nickname him, GLICK, short for Gatherer of Lore and Intergalactic Cultural Knowledge.
GLICK proves to be a handful as the children try to help him find a way to return to his planet. He takes off to other places without warning and gets himself into dangerous situations, interfering with Jeremy's chances of winning the contest. Yet, Jeremy and GLICK forge a forever bond.
Through GLICK's help, Jeremy discovers friendship can transcend all cultural differences.
Excerpt:
Chapter 2: A Mysterious Box
I thought Billy’s punch had caused me to hallucinate. What else would explain this four-foot, green-scaled, brown-robed something like a man … the one I’d seen in the beginner bowl? Was it a dwarf dressed like a Jedi knight? At second glance, I didn’t think the thing before me was human. I couldn’t tell if it had feet or not, though something like round rollers protruded from underneath his robe. At any rate, Billy was gone. That was a good thing. Before I could blink twice, the dwarf disappeared.
“Jeremy? What’s going on?”
I turned toward the voice. My friend Tuan had pulled into the park on his new Schwinn, followed by the Brandi-mobile, his sister’s electric cart. The Brandi-mobile was painted fluorescent fuchsia, Brandi’s favorite color, and had been detailed in a psychedelic tie-dye pattern. She always wore a matching helmet. All the kids thought the Brandi-mobile was cool and begged their parents to buy them a cart like Brandi’s.
Brandi reached for the leg braces she stored in an easy-to-reach compartment behind her. She pushed her legs out the wide door, snapped the braces into place, and pulled herself from her vehicle. Once, I’d offered to help her, but she snapped at me. “I can do it myself.”
“Jeremy, what are you staring at? Looks like a thin cloud,” Brandi asked as she and Tuan sidled next to me.
“Yeah. What are you looking at?” Tuan asked. “There’s nothing there but a crazy kind of mist.”
I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head like I’d been dreaming. “Whatever it was I saw, I don’t think it was from Earth. I must have been daydreaming.”
Using the tip of one of her crutches, Brandi shoved a tiny rectangular box toward Tuan. It was shiny, sort of silvery, but I couldn’t tell for sure what color it was. It looked a little like the same color as Uncle David’s truck. On the top of the box were five strange symbols. “What’s this?”
I bent down and snatched it up. “L—let me s—see.”
“It looks like a computer game,” Brandi said as she leaned over my shoulder. Brandi was curious about everything, always wanting to know how things worked. Once, she took my skateboard apart and wanted to know the names of all the pieces. Then she put it back together, and it worked fine … even better than before she took it apart. “What are those decorations?” she asked.
She started to tap one of the symbols, but I pulled the box from her reach. “D—don’t touch anything. I d—d—don’t think it’s a t—t—toy. I think it b—b—belongs to s—s—something … err … someone I just m—m—met. He must have dropped it when he disappeared.”
Tuan laughed. “There’s no one in the park but us. Everyone else has gone home. Mr. Garcia’s getting ready to lock the gates. Are you sick?” He mimicked Aunt Caroline and felt my forehead. Brandi laughed. Not just a girlish snicker.
Brandi’s laugh came all the way from her toes. She found pleasure in other people’s discomfort, like when people fell or were embarrassed about something. I didn’t like the way she and Tuan made fun of people. But there was so much I did like about them, so I overlooked the things I didn’t.
“S—stop it!” I jerked Tuan’s hand away. “I’m s—s—serious.”
“Hey, I’m sorry, Jeremy. I was only kidding, you know.”
I shouldn’t have shouted at Tuan. He and Brandi were the only friends I had in Ellis Grove. We were all in Mr. Kelso’s homeroom and took most of our classes together. Ellis Grove Central School was all in one building. The elementary classes were on the first floor, the middle school classes were on the second floor, and the high school was on the third floor. There was an elevator that was only used for special needs students. Brandi was able to use it because of her cerebral palsy. Sometimes, she’d sneak me into the elevator … maybe just to show off the special key she wore on a chain like a necklace.
I had only been in Ellis Grove for three months. On my first day at my new school, Tuan went out of his way to help me find my classes. He told me lots of useful information about our teachers and some of the other students. Tuan also warned me to stay away from Billy Radcliffe.
If I had to leave my home in Santa Monica after my parents died to go live with elderly relative that I’d never met before, I was at least grateful for friends like Tuan and Brandi.
“I’m s—sorry I yelled, T—T—Tuan.”
“Something’s got you scared. Is Billy Radcliffe bothering you again?” Tuan asked.
“It’s n—not just B—Billy. If I t—told you, you w—would not b—b—believe me.”
“Try us,” Brandi said. “I’d like to know what that box is for.”
Tuan was smart, probably the smartest kid in Ellis Grove Central School. He had been a contestant for Nickelodeon’s Make the Grade television show. If anyone could figure out the mystery box, he could. “Here.”
Tuan turned it every which way. “It looks a little like the micro-centrifuges at the university science lab. My dad’s friend is a professor there. He took Dad and me on a tour of the place once. Some of the centrifuges were as big as washing machines, and others were so tiny you could put them in your pocket … like this one.
“What’s a centrifuge doing here?” Brandi asked.
“Beats me,” Tuan said. “Those machines cost a fortune. I don’t think anyone would just leave it on the ground.”
“Maybe it’s a bomb left by a terrorist,” Brandi said.
Tuan snorted. “Don’t be stupid, Brandi. What would a terrorist be doing in Ellis Grove, Indiana, population 3,042?”
“I think it—it b—belongs –t—to …”
“Who?” Brandi asked.
“You’ll think I’m c—c—crazy.”
“No, we won’t, will we, Brandi?” Tuan said.
“Absolutely not!” Brandi nodded like a bobblehead doll. She liked to tease, but she only teased her friends. So I didn’t mind.
“I think I s—s—saw a m—m—monster. The b—box is prob—probably the mon—monster’s.”
Tuan put his hands across his stomach and laughed, pretending to fall over and then scrambling to the picnic table. He sat down with a theatrical plunk. Tuan liked to exaggerate everything. Brandi laughed, too, and leaned against a tree.
“A monster? In Ellis Grove? You’ve been watching too many scary movies,” Tuan said.
“W—w—whatever it w—w—was, it must have d—d—dropped this machine. He m—m—might n—need this.”
“You’re sure it was a he?” Brandi asked.
“I—d—don’t know. It happened so f—f—fast.” I explained my fight with Billy Radcliffe, how he’d tried to strangle me and then fell. How he tried to hit me with a rock, but it flew out of his hand. Through broken sentences, I explained what the monster looked like, how he wore a brownish long hooded robe with long loose sleeves. I couldn’t be certain, but the hood looked like it might have a veil attached. I couldn’t see behind the veil, but I could tell his hands were knobby and green-looking. He only had four fingers on each hand. Again, I wasn’t certain, but I thought I saw two sets of arms.
“Did it wear a rope around his waist like Obi-Wan?
“N—no. N—not that I re—mem—remember.” I told them how I could see something that looked like green rollers underneath his robe.
“I don’t know what you saw, Jeremy. But I believe you saw something unusual,” Tuan said.
Brandi pointed at the box. “And then there’s this contraption.”
“I s—saw him touch one of these s—s—symbols before he d—d—dis—disappeared.”
“Which one?” Brandi asked.
“Jeremy, what are you doing?” Tuan asked.
I tapped the symbol I thought the monster had tapped. Instantly, my body felt light, similar to the weightlessness I experienced at space camp two summers ago. Like falling but never landing.
I stretched out my arms to see if they were still attached. A mist surrounded me.
Ouch! Something had zapped me like a shock from an electrical appliance. Only there was nothing like that near me.
“Jeremy! Jeremy! Where are you?” Brandi paced back and forth and kept calling my name. Why couldn’t she see me when I could see her?
Tuan shook as he walked in circles like a puppy chasing its tail. “Jeremy quit playing games. You’re scaring us. Where are you?”
“B—Brandi, Tuan, I’m right h—here.”
They still acted like they couldn’t see or hear me. Was I invisible? Is that what the symbol did? Make the creature and me invisible? Or maybe I was transported to another dimension …
I pinched my hand.
Good.
I was still in physical form.
I looked up, and there, three feet from me, the dwarf-monster stood, scratching his knobby green head, like a small watermelon with lots of bumps in several rows from the top of his head to what might have been a green neck, more like a block supporting his head.
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