In Our Midst!

Black Mountain, NC - We've had many award-winning books and authors over the past few years, but this is the first SELAH AWARD!

We're all so glad and excited for Kristen Hogrefe! Her book is OUTSTANDING! In fact, so outstanding that she didn't win only one award at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference Banquet last night; she won TWO!

She also won the SELAH Director's Choice Award for THE REVISIONARY!

We are so proud to see Write Integrity Press on the award slide and tickled for Kristen, but we aren't the least bit surprised! This book ... the whole series ... is stellar!

A Revisionary rewrites the rules.

A Rogue breaks them.

Which one is she?

Nineteen-year-old Portia Abernathy plans to earn a Dome seat and rewrite the Codex rules to rescue her exiled brother. Her journey demands answers from the past civilization, but uncovering the truth means breaking the rules she set out to rewrite.

Where will the world be in 2149? If citizens forget their past, they will be lost in an identity crisis. That's exactly the state of the American Socialists United (ASU). This dystopian story opens in Cube 1519, a ghetto where the only use for obsolete cell phones is to throw them like rocks at mongrels. Portia and her father survive like many other citizens, with no electricity or technology and no expectation for a better life.

Yet Portia remembers her brother Darius—before he was taken from her. Now that's she's graduated, she determines to get him back. She thinks earning a Dome seat as a Revisionary candidate will be her ticket to rewriting the Codex and reversing his sentence. However, when she receives her draft and arrives at the Crystal Globe University for training, she discovers the world is very different outside her cube and that prisoners like Darius aren't the only ones trapped by the system.

Written for young adults, THE REVISIONARY offers a suspenseful plot, flashbacks to America's Revolutionary era, and rediscovery of the founding values needed to rebuild Portia's unraveling world. "In school, teens hear that if they don't learn from history's lessons, they're destined to repeat them," author Kristen Hogrefe says. "Portia lives in a world where leaders wield ignorance to control citizens. Only when Portia sets out to rescue her brother does she realize the lie she's been living and determines to break free."

Blockbuster novels like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Giver popularized the dystopian YA genre. THE REVISIONARY builds a dystopia of a different kind—one that looks backward to find wisdom to move forward to offer an underlying message of heritage and hope.

Download your copy of THE REVISIONARY. (Affiliate link) And while you're at it, get THE REVOLUTIONARY (Affiliate link) too! 

Teacher Appreciation

by Cynthia T. Toney

6 DATES TO DISASTER is only 99¢ this week!

Teacher Appreciation Week in May got me thinking about the vast differences in ways that teachers are portrayed in some of today’s teen and YA novels, compared to others.

And the ways that students treat teachers in fiction and in real life.

Just as teenagers don’t always show appreciation or respect for their parents, they likewise don’t always show the same for their teachers.

To anyone who has parented or taught teens, their seeming neglect in expressing gratitude or fondness for their teachers might be chalked up to teens’ inability or discomfort in expressing their emotions. In some families, children are taught— directly or indirectly—not to express their feelings. Fear of ridicule or rejection keeps their emotions bottled up, tender or not. And I’ve known families where no one says “Thank you,” not even to non-family members who perform a favor for them.

But what do teens reveal about their feelings in a survey? Well, that’s another matter.

The website StageofLife.com “has spent years working with tens of thousands of teens to pull exclusive statistics” about them. A 2015 survey of high school and college students was conducted to determine whether or not teachers had affected their lives.

The survey found that 98.6% felt a teacher had positively impacted them. Although 64.5% said a teacher had negatively impacted their lives, apparently most survey takers had at least one of the type of teacher we wish for all students. Surprisingly, 81% reported giving their teachers recognition or showing gratitude for positively impacting them. Such affirmation might range from a simple thank you to a gift to a nomination for Teacher of the Year. It’s hard to know for certain but reassuring that even when teens don’t learn to express gratitude or fondness at home, they still might open their hearts to a teacher.  

For some teenagers, an unfortunate reality is that a teacher may be the only recognizable positive adult influence in a teen’s life. Thank goodness for teachers who can provide guidance when a child’s parent is absent in one form or another.

But for those of us who do our best in parenting our child, we still might try to get to know his or her teachers. (In spite of my busy life, I wish I had made more of an effort when my daughter was in school.) The result would be beneficial in multiple ways. The parent would set an example for the child by demonstrating regard for the teacher as a fellow human being with his or her own physical and emotional well-being and limitations.  The parent would learn first-hand if the teacher reflects the parent’s values and beliefs and could then monitor the student’s work for that teacher if the parent has any concern. Parent and child could have deeper discussions beyond “How was school today?” With the establishment of a real parent-teacher relationship, at first sign of a teen’s academic or behavioral trouble, or complaint about a teacher’s behavior, the parent has a starting place grounded in mutual respect—or at least knowledge of each other.

In the third novel of the Bird Face series, 6 Dates to Disaster, the main character relies on a favorite teacher for guidance in helping a classmate. All of the series books show teachers in a positive light. I wish more teen novels did so. Not that bad teachers don’t exist. But if all the books that teens read portray teachers as selfish, lazy, ignorant, sex-crazed, or mean, how will that affect their respect for good teachers?

Perhaps a teen you know and care about has benefited from the guidance of a caring teacher. It doesn’t have to be a teen in your family but perhaps one in your community who has had no other adult to guide him. That teen young man or young woman might need your suggestions in showing appropriate appreciation for his or her teacher.

I wish I’d shown more appreciation toward my own teachers when I had them.

James 3:1 ESV

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”

A Whole Series in a Matter of Weeks!

If you weren't part of the Laramie on the Lam lovers when this series first debuted, you'll love its Second Edition! Perfect for read-alouds or first chapter books for emergent readers! And active kids, both boys and girls, will enjoy the crazy adventures that Laramie cooks up! 

Get ready, get set! Write Integrity Press is primed to release an entire series in a month an a half. Every week, you'll be able to grab the next middle-grade adventure episode in the Laramie on the Lam series! With six books in all, your youngsters will enjoy an entire summer of reading!

Here's the first, with its release this week! Book 1 - LARAMIE AND THE LAW (Wyoming) Releasing May 14 in e-book and print versions. On Amazon!

Boy on the Run

The LARAMIE ON THE LAM series teaches youngsters:

• The importance and value of depending on their parents, and the joys of visiting interesting, historic, and scenic places around our country. 
• How to get along with others—even if an "other" is an enemy. 
• The comfort of knowing God is always watching over. 

Laramie Wyoming is not a typical 11-year-old boy—unless typical is being chased by bank robbers all across America!

Eleven-year-old Laramie Wyoming thought he was being polite by holding the door for the men coming out of the bank. But when one of them slips $30,000 into Laramie’s backpack, his world begins to spin out of control.

To make matters worse, Laramie’s family decides to buy a motorhome and travel the country for the next year so his mom can gather research for her travel books. That part sounds like fun, but Laramie is stunned to find out his parents are taking in Prentiss Williams, Laramie’s worst enemy and the meanest kid in school, as a foster child. A year in a motorhome with Prentiss Williams? What were his parents thinking? Laramie would be black and blue the entire year. How will he survive?

The thieves are determined to get that $30,000 back. Even though the money is reported to the police and no longer in Laramie’s possession, the robbers want their loot and will go to any lengths to retrieve it even chasing Laramie, his little sister Cheyenne, Prentiss, and Laramie’s parents all across the United States to get it.

The boys visit and explore across the country and they’re chased the whole way (but have some mysterious help). Read how Laramie and Prentiss outwit, outrun, and battle it out with the thieves during their tumultuous year while learning interesting, historical and just plain cool facts about each location along the way.