Posts tagged Brandon Sparks and the Hidden Sun

After seven long years of hard work and imagination, Joshua Fuld presents Brandon Sparks and the Hidden Sun, the spellbinding first novel in the Brandon Sparks series.

Gazing up at the twinkling stars, twelve-year-old Brandon Sparks never could have imagined the universe was such a dark and dangerous place.

For Brandon, escaping from Earth to a starship seems the most exciting adventure imaginable; the perfect refuge from his mundane and bully-filled life. But when the adults aboard his new home are rendered comatose by a mysterious alien race, adventure plunges quickly into nightmare.

With only other children to rely on, the ragtag crew of the Hidden Sun must band together if they are to survive. Brandon will need to find the strength buried deep within, because in space, the bullies are as deadly as they are unforgiving.

Author’s Note:

The decision to write a children’s novel came from a love of the Harry Potter series, and as a way to challenge myself creatively. I had already written manuscripts for movies and TV, but how would I fare with a longer format and would I be able to write for an age group that was not my own? I sat down at the desk in my tiny Manhattan bedroom (which didn’t have a door by the way), and began to write. Over the course of the next year I completed the first draft of Brandon Sparks and the Hidden Sun.

Along the way there was a fascination with writing something so epic that it could be spread out over the course of seven novels. At the time I was just trying to get through the first one and didn’t have many thoughts of what would come next. I knew that I would include a cliffhanger at the end of the novel but I did not know what would come next.

Brandon Sparks and the Hidden Sun sets the stage for the rest of the series in the same way as a TV pilot does for a television show. This is only the beginning and the story just gets better as you go on.

A Lollibracken is a bipedal winged scavenger with a large skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Its legs are extremely powerful allowing it to run fast as well as propel it into the air for flight. Its two arms are equally powerful featuring four clawed digits strong enough to tear through metal and stone. Two wings sit behind the shoulder blades, with a wingspan equal to the length of the creature from nose to tip of tail (though there are examples featuring wingspans longer than this). Lollibrackens are almost completely covered in dense, over lapping scales that are able to withstand extreme heat and cold. They are able to excrete a glue-like substance from between the scales on their back allowing them to carry food and other supplies without it falling off during flight or travel. Lollibrackens are scavengers who eat both animal and plant matter. Their unique ability to hold their breath for up to four hours, combined with their temperature resistant bodies allow them to hunt in space. Both male and female lollibrackens are born with purple scales. At age twelve, their scales begin to change color as they go through puberty. At the end of this transformation, the females will be red in color, and the males blue. The depth of color is determined by genetic factors.

The lollibracken home planet is Glore, and they live mainly in the northern hemisphere near the north pole. They live in small colonies.

Authors Note:

When I wrote Brandon Sparks and the Hidden Sun I didn’t have an outline or a plan, I just knew that Brandon would become captain and the enemy would be the Ptevos. When I got deeper into the story, I quickly realized that some sort of swerve was necessary. Yes the Ptevos are a great enemy but I wanted a secondary enemy and a way to tease readers about what was to come in future books, so I came up with the idea of the lollibrackens, or their original name, “a dinosaur/dragon in space.” They can hold their breath for long periods of time and withstand both the cold of space and the heat of passing through a planet’s atmosphere. I named them specifically for the lollipop joke.

A note about the Brandon Sparks Universe – C.K.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to use this space to tell you what the Brandon Sparks novels are about. It would be appropriate to give you a brief synopsis of the six novels but that is not what I intend to do. You can already find descriptions of the first two novels in the series, Brandon Sparks and the Hidden Sun and Brandon Sparks and the Star Shadow. Instead I have decided to share with you the discovering of Brandon Sparks by a young person.

Roughly four years ago my doorbell rang and in walked my nine-year-old granddaughter, Halley. My daughter, Kara, and her husband, Mark, were taking my wife to the theater. I had happily offered myself as a babysitter to escape the indescribable torture of sitting through the politically oriented Broadway shows that Dolores holds so dear. Instead I had the pleasure of spending the day with my favorite granddaughter and introducing her, in the most basic of ways, to the subject I am most passionate about.

After filling up on ice cream sandwiches, I told Halley that I wanted to read her a story. She of course said that she was too old to be read to, truth be told, she was, but though she devoured books as a small child, she had lost the love of reading over the years. Both of her parents worked long hours and though they were deeply involved with her education, the need for casual reading did not rank as a high priority. Regardless, I pulled out an old copy of Brandon Sparks and the Hidden Sun that I kept in the odds-and-ends drawer in my kitchen and slid it in front of her. The pages had begun to yellow, but the cover was clear; a young boy sleeping in bed, the early morning sunlight streaming through his bedroom window while the stars and night sky swirled magically on his ceiling.

As is typical of someone who does not read novels often, Halley asked me if the book had any pictures in it. I laughed at this and told her that it did. It had thousands of pictures, but she would need to use her imagination to see them. Halley gave me that all-too-familiar look an older person gets when someone wants convey that they just said something that makes them sound really old. I asked her for a bit of patience as I folded back the cover and began to read. When I had finished the introduction, I asked her if she wanted me to continue. She said, “Yes,” and just as I was about to begin, my phone rang. As I spoke on the phone I noticed that Halley had picked up the book and began reading it herself. After my phone call I excused myself from the room, and peeked back in at the last minute to see my granddaughter fully immersed in the story.

We barely spoke the rest of the day but that did not bother me at all. A big grin filled my face as I watched my granddaughter consumed by the wonderful story of Brandon Sparks. When my family returned from the theater, Halley had gotten through the first third of the book. It took her the rest of the weekend to complete the novel. She called me Sunday evening and asked me if there was any more. I told her, “You have only just scratched the surface.”