Today it’s my turn on the blog tour for Careful What You Hear. I’m sharing a guest post written by the author with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the tour and to Helen Dunlap Newton for writing her guest post.

Blurb:

After a surgical mix-up gave 13-year-old Noah Baker mind reading powers, he became a spy tasked with stopping the bad guys.

Ever since he accidentally got an experimental cochlear implant, Noah and his secret agent partner, Lena, have been going on secret missions for the government. Now, they’re in for a reward for all their hard work—Space Camp! But all is not as it seems. When Noah accidentally overhears thoughts that reveal a plot to steal top secret plans from nearby Redstone Arsenal, he must make a choice.

From award-winning author and educator, Helen Dunlap Newton, Careful What You Hear is an engaging middle-grade read.

Guest Post:

Helen Dunlap Newton’s post is entitled “To Tell The Truth.”

I appreciate any opportunity to speak to adults and especially students about my middle grade novels and my writing process. I’ve presented my books at bookstore signings, school and library visits, book festivals, educational conventions, museums, and Zoom meetings. Often, during “question and answer time,” a student will ask, “Did (some event) in the story really happen?” 

That is the ultimate compliment to me because I spend hours, weeks, sometimes years, attempting to make my stories so believable that my readers get lost in the life of the protagonist. When they ask if it really happened, they’re admitting that the characters and some of the situations are real to them.

I ask students what fiction means, and they say, “fake.” That is a correct answer, but there is usually some truth in a work of fiction. For example, in my latest middle grade novel, Careful What You Hear, all the characters were made up in my imagination. I don’t picture them as anyone I know even though they seem very real to me. Perhaps they exist as actual people in my mind because each character has bits and pieces of people I either know from my life or from television shows or movies. 

Noah Baker, the protagonist Careful What You Hear, lost his hearing in a car accident and was given a cochlear implant to help him hear sounds. He was accidently implanted with a government experimental model. Not only does he hear robotic-like sounds but he also hears the thoughts of people near him. The government asks him to work for them as a spy.

Cochlear implants are real devices, but to my knowledge, no one in the real world can hear thoughts with one. This is where fact and fiction meet. 

Lena Robinson, a supporting character in Careful What You Hear, lost her leg in a boating accident before she met Noah. She has an eidetic memory (never forgets anything she reads, sees, or hears) and seemingly has nerves of steel. The government asked her to be Noah’s partner and fitted her with the latest kinds of prosthesis to help her run, walk, and swim. Like Noah’s cochlear, the prothesis are real devices that real people use. Having an eidetic memory is a genuine gift. 

The trick is to include bits and pieces of our real world combined with enough genuine technology and settings that readers question which element is fiction and which is authentic.

Careful What You Hear, seems very real because I researched anything that was genuine. I went to Teacher’s Space Camp, but I still researched many details about the property, the Aviation Challenge Noah attended, and the Cyber camp Lena experienced. I have seen the view from a window seat when taking off from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, DC., but I researched the flight pattern we would have taken to make sure I remembered which buildings we would see. I studied road maps of Huntsville, Alabama, and found pictures of the huge complex of Redstone Arsenal there. I read articles about what it’s like to ride in a fighter jet and checked the menus at Space Camp to see if they still had rocket-shaped French fries. (I could not find conclusive information about the shapes of foods, but I included it in Careful What You Hear because there were rocket-shaped fries when my son and I were there.) I researched new advances in cochlear implants and the available attachments. My favorite research was when I watched the 2022 Top Gun: Maverick movie. I wanted details to be accurate, believable.

Many years ago, there was a TV show called To Tell the Truth. The premise was a group of three people came onto the stage. They each introduced themselves with the same name. One was telling the truth and the other two were not. A panel of celebrities asked them questions about their occupation or accomplishment and tried to determine who was telling the truth. 

I guess that’s what authors of fiction do. We mix the real and pretend, hoping our readers will be so entertained they don’t care which is which.

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Careful What You Hear is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: