Kyle Prue's Blog
August 20, 2020
Join me Sunday for a Facebook Live Party!
Hi everyone! This coming Sunday, August 23rd at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, join me on Facebook for a party to celebrate the release of The Ashes. There will be lots of cool PRIZES, so you don’t want to miss this.
Here’s the link to the Facebook event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/705640856660508
Make sure to add this to your upcoming events and your calendars.
Also, some fun news: I am the featured author all week in the LitRing VIP Readers Group and we are doing a major giveaway. I will be interacting there all week with readers so come and hang out and register to win the giveaway. Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRingVIP/
August 19, 2020
The Ashes is now available!
Hi everyone! At long last the final book in the Feud Trilogy, The Ashes, is finally out! This book is the conclusion and culmination of years of writing and I’m so excited to see what you all think.
Click here to get it from your local retailer.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
His fate has been foretold. Unless he can accept his destiny, the nation will fall to its doom.
Teenage warrior Neil Vapros has been captured. Imprisoned at the hands of the Empire, he’s forced to stage a daring breakout to return to his loved ones. But as he smashes the chains, he uncovers a shocking truth…
On the run and desperate to escape his fate, every attempt to resist the prophecy leads to more death and chaos. And now Neil understands that the only way anyone will live is if he embraces his own demise.
Will Neil pay the ultimate price to ensure freedom for all?
The Ashes is now available!
Click here https://books2read.com/u/bx8Zpl to get it from your local retailer.
Best,
Kyle
The Ashes
March 4, 2020
Cover Reveal for the Ashes
We are excited to reveal the beautiful cover for The Ashes! I am in love with this cover designed by Ashley Ruggirello at Cardboard Monet. The Ashes will be released March 31st, 2020, although you can preorder ebooks. We are also going to have paperbacks and gorgeous hardcovers for the entire series.
Description:
His fate has been foretold.
Unless he can accept his destiny, the nation will fall to its doom.
Teenage warrior Neil Vapros has been captured. Imprisoned at the hands of the Empire, he’s forced to stage a daring breakout to return to his loved ones. But as he smashes the chains, he uncovers a shocking truth…
On the run and desperate to escape his fate, every attempt to resist the prophecy leads to more death and chaos. And now Neil understands that the only way anyone will live is if he embraces his own demise.
Will Neil pay the ultimate price to ensure freedom for all?
The Ashes is the thrilling conclusion to the award-winning Epic Feud Trilogy. If you like edge-of-your-seat action, gripping suspense, and explosive battles, then you’ll love Kyle Prue’s riveting finale.
Preorder The Ashes to join the revolution today!
February 4, 2019
Hidden Gems Books – Author Spotlight Interview with Kyle Prue
Often, aspiring writers are warned that they might have to wait years to hit their stride. Talented teenager Kyle Prue deftly sidestepped that process when his first novel, The Sparks, received instant (and well-deserved) acclaim – winning the FAPA Presidential Awards for Best Fiction and Best Fantasy for Young Adults in 2015, earning a place as runner-up for Best Young Adult Fiction at the Florida Book Festival and Honorable Mentions at the New England Book Festival, Midwest Book Festival, Southern California Book Festival, and the International London Book Festival.
Far from letting this go to his head, Kyle used his success to kick-start a tour of over 100 middle and highschools across the country to champion literacy and writing, and also founded the Sparking Literacy foundation, dedicated to lowering the high school dropout rate by inspiring teens to read, write and follow their dreams.
As if that wasn’t enough, Kyle is also a talented actor and comedian – having trained at the Second City Comedy Club in Chicago and performing onstage and online in a variety of productions.
And yet in addition to all that, Kyle’s status as a talented ‘triple threat’ hasn’t stopped him from being an incredibly kind, down-to-Earth and warmhearted soul who’s always eager to help people from all sorts of different backgrounds achieve their dreams. We’re thrilled to have been able to sit down with him and have a chat.
July 24, 2018
Journey to the Big Screen
I am thrilled to announce that I have signed a deal with two movie producers for the Feud trilogy. The process is really interesting and I thought my readers might want to share in this journey so I decided to create a series of blog posts so you can come along for the ride.
So let’s start at the beginning. How did this happen? Did I hire an agent to shop the movie rights? Nope. Like everything, it was a bit of luck and a bit of following my heart.
It actually started with the audiobook. I may write another series on producing an audiobook, but for now, all you need to know is that when you produce an audiobook, narrators send in auditions for a script that I created with several different scenes from the book. There are two ways to pay narrators: you can pay them based on the finished length of the book (9 hours, 11 minutes for the Sparks) or split the royalty earned on audio sales.
I’m a young author so it is much riskier for a narrator to split royalties. What if no one buys the audiobook? They basically just spent a couple months in the recording booth for peanuts. Unless they know it’s going to be a bestseller, most narrators prefer to get paid by the finished hour as it is guaranteed money. But it’s expensive and a lot of authors can’t afford to pay that upfront fee. But I work with a lot of teens that have difficulty reading so we had two goals. One to create a great audiobook for my readers and second, to find a narrator that could make learning to read as engaging as possible. So, we were biting the bullet and offering to pay per finished hour. As a result, we got a lot of auditions from some really great narrators—many who are quite well known in the industry.
We spent hours listening to auditions and many of the finalists were equally great. We were asking ourselves, “How will we ever choose?” And then we listened to Jon Eric Preston. As soon as we heard it, we all shared a collective breath of fresh air. “That’s it!” I said. Preston just got it. His character voices mirrored the voices in my head as I wrote each scene. Preston’s narration is incredible. He brought the story to life in a way that allowed us all to visualize the action as if we were watching a movie.
But Preston was a fairly new narrator and didn’t have a big following. We were torn. Some of the bigger name narrators had followings that would help with audio sales. Sales are already a tough battle for me as there are millions of books and audiobooks on Amazon. How do readers find my books? A narrator with a following could help drive new readers to my books. But Preston’s audition rocked. What should I do? We debated for days but in the end, I just had to follow my heart. I wanted to give my readers the best audiobook possible. And that meant Jon Eric Preston. If you haven’t listened to the audiobook, do it! You’ll understand what I mean. You can get it here: The Sparks Audiobook or Flames Audiobook
When I speak to groups, I always talk about following your passion. And that’s what we did with the audiobook. We picked the best narrator even though it meant sales would be an uphill battle. We wanted the best audiobook that we could create and let the chips fall where they may.
But something amazing happened. Preston has 10 and 12 year old boys. He read the books to his kids and they loved them. The whole family fell in love with the series and Preston became a passionate advocate for the series. He’s an actor in LA so he sent the audiobook to a friend from college that is now a successful creative producer in LA.
She listened to the audiobook and thanks to Preston’s incredible narration, she could picture the movie and she fell in love with the idea too!!
So Preston called me and asked if I was interested in setting up a meeting to discuss movie rights. Movie rights are a whole other topic and we’ll dive in to that in our next blog post. For now, I’ll just summarize by saying, it never fails to follow your heart. Even if it hadn’t led to a movie deal, I know we created the best audiobook possible for our readers. And if you always do your best work, good things will eventually follow.
Here’s to following your passion,
Kyle
P.S. Again to hear Preston’s incredible narration, Get The Sparks Audiobookor Flames Audiobook
April 5, 2018
The Flames Audiobook Tour and Reviews
March was release month for the new audio version of The Flames, and we celebrated with an audiobook tour run by Audio Book Worm Promotions. They were stellar to work with & helped spread the word about The Flames and get a few great reviews in the process.
I’ve cherry picked a few of my favorite quotes from the reviews and also wanted to share a video from one of the reviewers Shut Up & Read. Her vlog and book reviews are pretty awesome. If you’re an author I’d recommend reaching out to her. She’s a tough critic too, but always professional from what I’ve read. My favorite part of her review was:
“I am glad to find the plot growing more and more complex with the new Lightborns coming into play and realizing that there weren’t just 3 families. It is definitely getting more intriguing and I’m excited to read the third book” ~ Holed Up in a book
Check out her YouTube channel below for more great reviews & reading challenges.
The tour was overall pretty fantastic, and now the audiobook for Flames has a few great reviews which always help with advertising, and letting readers know what they’re getting into before buying one of my books.
Below are a few more of my favorite quotes from reviewers, with links to their websites. I hope you’ll check a few of them out & follow them if you love reading books!
From Lily’s Book World: ” This series is explosive, in every possible way!”
From Zach’s YA Reviews: “I’m quite surprised with how much I fell into this story and couldn’t get out. This world is so rich and dense, the characters are phenomenal, and the story is way too easy to get swept away in.”
Zach’s review is super in depth and long! He loved the book & wrote a really awesome review that talked about romance, the protagonists, and even a bit about the audio book production – which he also loved!
The Book Addicts Review talked specifically about my narrator Preston and concluded:
“I loved listening to this one! Preston does an excellent job with each character! They all have a distinct and fun sound to them!”
Adventures in Wonderland had this to say: “I went in with high expectations, but not only does this book deliver, it blew my expectations out of the water! The plot, the characters, the story, this book has it all, plus loads of action and foreshadowing!”
Last but definitely not least Haddie’s Haven compared their original review to a second listen when the audio book came out. Haddie said: “This time around, I truly enjoyed this book even more. I have now both read and listened to The Flames, and I am still very impressed with it. Neil was brought to life by Jon Eric Preston. I was captured into the story, which is fast paced. It’s fantastically written.”
She even upped her star rating on Amazon after reviewing the audiobook! That was a pretty great review to read 
January 22, 2018
Award-winning author visits TPS, kicks off writing workshop
Looking out on an audience of nearly 50 eighth graders, Kyle Prue, an award-winning fiction author, recited a quote from renowned author Stephen King that resonated with him when he was younger: “If you can’t find the book you want to read, then you should write it.”
Mr. Prue addressed sixth through eighth graders at Raymer Elementary School in East Toledo on Friday to kick off a Read for Literacy workshop series aimed at improving teenagers’ creative writing skills.
“I want them to understand that getting good at what you love is a worthwhile endeavor,” he said. “Hopefully someone leaves inspired.”
The teen writing workshop is an opportunity for young writers to showcase their talents and for the public to see students’ level of creativity, said Matt Russell, editor-in-chief of Glass House and coordinator of the Claire’s Day teen writing program.
Read for Literacy publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction written by teenage students in Glass House, its annual literary journal. Read for Literacy was awarded a $10,000 grant from Toledo Community Foundation to expand the festival’s teen writing program.
The grant allowed Claire’s Day to hold a series of in-depth creative writing workshops for the students at Raymer, Birmingham Elementary School, and Queen of Apostles School.
Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders from each school will participate in a series of five workshops during which Mr. Russell will help them brainstorm, write, and edit their fictional writing pieces.
The energetic crowd listened intently as Mr. Prue summarized his award-winning book, The Sparks.
“We hope having a published author speaking inspires them to write,” Mr. Russell said.
The Glass House will publish at least one student from each school after the workshops wrap up.
“Our workshops are, on the surface, about storytelling,” Mr. Russell said. “But really they’re about nurturing students’ voices and giving them the confidence to communicate their original ideas.”
Raymer principal Barbara Ferguson said having a creative writing program for her students aligns with the school’s academic vision.
“We’re pushing the importance of reading,” she said. “The more you read, the better you are at spelling, writing, and speaking.”
Mr. Russell said Claire’s Day and its teen writing program helps address an even broader spectrum of literacy.
“When you talk about literacy, you’re not talking just about reading but communication,” he said.
The selected pieces are to be published and released May 19 at the annual Claire’s Day Children’s Book Festival in Maumee
Courtsey of The Blade. By JAVONTE ANDERSON | BLADE STAFF WRITER
