Sarah Mackenzie (00:06):

Hey. Hey, Sarah Mackenzie here. I’m your host here at the Read-Aloud Revival podcast, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with homeschooling. Today on the show, I want to introduce you to one of my new favorite authors. She’s younger than most published authors. In fact, she says she decided to publish her first book at nine years old.

(00:29):

When she was 10, she attended her first writing conference. When she was 13 she self-published her first book. She was homeschooled. You probably could have already guessed that. And she has been on a roll ever since. Now she’s 20 and she’s making books I know your families are going to love. I’m telling you, she is Read-Aloud Revival people, and we have some fun, fun things to tell you in this episode. Millie Florence, welcome to the read aloud Revival.

Millie Florence (00:56):

Hello, Sarah and hello everyone. I am so excited to be here. Oh my goodness. I’ve grown up listening to this podcast, so it’s a very surreal feeling to be here.

Sarah Mackenzie (01:08):

It’s so fun. I’ve always dreamed about maybe one day will get to meet authors who grew up listening to the podcast or grew up reading books on our book list and things, and it was so fun. We should tell everybody actually about how we met.

Millie Florence (01:24):

Yes, oh my goodness. Because it’s a very fun story.

Sarah Mackenzie (01:29):

It is. It was Missouri, right? It was in Missouri at the Great Homeschool Conference. You tell it actually.

Millie Florence (01:34):

All right. I’ll be interested to hear your perspective as well. But yeah, and I’ve been going to Great Homeschool conventions and selling books for three years at this point. So this was my third year at the convention, and of course Sarah had been here all the years I’d been there in the past as well, but we never met, and I think there was also a part of me that was a little bit nervous to go seek you out because I’m like, “That’s Sarah Mackenzie.”

Sarah Mackenzie (01:59):

I’m not intimidating, I promise. I’ll just give you a hug.

Millie Florence (02:05):

Yeah. I found that out very quickly as you’ll see. Yeah. So it’s my third year at the convention and I just got off from my booth, and me and my dad and my sister decide to go to a restaurant to get dinner, and it’s 10 o’clock at night. At this point.

Sarah Mackenzie (02:26):

This is normal dinnertime hour for people who work at a convention, by the way. If you’re speaking or exhibiting at a convention, you know 10 o’clock is when you finally get to eat.

Millie Florence (02:36):

Yeah, exactly. So we head out of our hotel room and get in the elevator, and it goes down a couple floors and then the elevator doors open and who happens to step on but Sarah Mackenzie and Colleen Kessler, who’s also a podcast that I’m familiar with? And I’m just standing there, I think frozen for a good three seconds, I think I tapped on your shoulder. I’m like, “Oh my goodness, you’re Sarah Mackenzie.” And we have a 30-second conversation, I guess, where I am basically like, “Hi, I’m a big fan of your podcast.” You give me a hug. And I’m like, “Oh, I am also an author at Great Homeschool Conventions. I have a booth in the vendor hall and yeah, my name is Millie Florence.” And you’re like, “Yeah, I’ll maybe come check it out later.” And that was our first conversation. It was just 30 seconds in the elevator. And I remember afterwards walking out of the elevator with my dad and my sister to the car, and just the excitement around me, I’m like, “Oh my goodness, I just met Sarah Mackenzie.”

Sarah Mackenzie (03:52):

The elevator was an extra great detail because in the writing world, we’re always told you need to be ready to talk about your work and what you do in what they call an elevator pitch. So if you’re ever in the elevator with an editor or something and they say, “What are you working on?” You can give them a 20-second pitch on your book. And they’re called elevator pitches. And so it’s just funny that this actually really was-

Millie Florence (04:14):

It was a literal elevator pitch. Yeah.

Sarah Mackenzie (04:17):

Okay. Also, at these conferences, I do tend to get approached by a lot of publishers, independent publishers, curriculum makers, authors. It’s so interesting to me that I did absolutely tell you, I’m going to come check out your booth. And I usually do. When I say that, I usually, sometimes I can’t get there, I try, but sometimes conferences, they’re so nuts. They’re so busy for me, but sometimes I can’t get there. But I was like, “I’m going to go try.” But something stuck out about you. I just think that I got a little Holy Spirit edge or something that was like-

Millie Florence (04:48):

Oh, same. That whole moment, that whole conversation was 100%, God planned this.

Sarah Mackenzie (04:55):

Yeah. I got back to my hotel room that night after I had finished eating and was like, “What was her name? Millie, Millie. It was Millie something.” So I start looking, I don’t think you gave me a card, did you? I don’t think so.

Millie Florence (05:09):

I didn’t.

Sarah Mackenzie (05:11):

Yeah, so I found you, it’s a Holy Spirit nudge, and I just started poking around on your website and was like, “Huh.” I watched a couple of your little YouTube shorts where you’re talking about story arc, character transformation, was like, “This girl knows what she’s talking about.” And I just started that night. I bought Honey Butter, your first, the book that you self-published at 13 on my Kindle and started reading it. I was like, “Wait, she published this at 13? Wait a second.” ,So I sought you out, I think the next day. Is that right? I can’t remember exactly.

Millie Florence (05:46):

Okay. So I have a little bit of the story that needs to happen before we get to the second time we meet, actually.

Sarah Mackenzie (05:52):

Oh, okay.

Millie Florence (05:52):

Yeah. Because you say, oh, you get really busy at conventions, so you’re not always able to stop by people’s booths even when you tell them you will. And quite honestly, I wasn’t expecting you to, because I know how busy you are. So me and my dad were talking that night, because I was still very excited that I’d met you, and we were like, “Okay, what you need to do is go over to her booth the next day and be like, ‘Hey, remember me from the elevator,’ and then we can talk.” So that’s what I have in mind going into the next day. The next day, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually told you this, Sarah, but the next day, I’m at my booth signing a book for someone, and another mom comes down the aisle, goes straight to my booth, picks up a copy of Honey Butter and goes, “Hey, can I buy this? Sarah Mackenzie just told me it was phenomenal.”

(06:46):

And you got to bear in mind it was a 30-second conversation elevator, and then the next day, someone is buying my book because you recommended it. And I think I asked this poor mom three times, “Are you serious? Did she actually say that? What happened?”

Sarah Mackenzie (07:06):

You didn’t know. I read the whole book that night in my hotel room.I’m a reader, you guys, I couldn’t stop reading it. Also, the protagonist in Honey Butter is a homeschooled character, which is something I know a lot of Read-Aloud families are like, “Man, I wish there was more books with homeschoolers in them.” So I was like, “Oh, this could totally be a book that our people would be interested in.” So that was fun.

Millie Florence (07:29):

So that was a very cool experience. And yes, it does have a homeschooled character. One of the two main characters is a… Well, she was a homeschooler and during the time of the book, she’s a road schooler, because her parents are traveling around while homeschooling, which is very fun. Yeah.

Sarah Mackenzie (07:42):

Did you ever do that in your homeschooling?

Millie Florence (07:45):

We did not. It’s something our family has talked about, because we have traveled a bit, but it’s never been for an extended period of time.

Sarah Mackenzie (07:52):

Same. I’m really big on, I love traveling. I love traveling with my family. The idea of all of us being in the same trailer. I mean, I really like my people. I also really like my space. I don’t know, my sister’s family has done road schooling and it’s very inspiring. All the different places that you can go, I’m always jealous of, oh, look, all the experiences they can have sounds amazing.

(08:19):

I read your first book, that was Honey Butter, and then you’ve been on a roll, like I said in the intro here, you’ve been on a roll ever since. But before we talk about your specific books and the very exciting things happening with your specific books right now, tell me about when you knew you wanted to be an author. Because one of the things that we have found at Read-Aloud Revival, because if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s because you want your kids to love reading, or your kids already do love reading, or you want to make it more likely that they will love reading.

(08:49):

And what happens when kids love reading is then a lot of them, not all of them, but for a lot of them, they also decide, “Hey, I think I want to write.” And so next time, on the very next episode of this podcast, I’m going to be talking with Brett Harris and Kara Swanson from Young Writers Workshop about how parents can give their kids feedback and encourage their young writers. But before we get there, I was so excited to have you on first so I could talk to you, a homeschooled kid who’s now not a kid, who’s now a young adult who can look back and go, “Okay, I knew I wanted to be an author when I was this age, and this is what really helped. These are the things that helped that my parents did or didn’t do.” So tell me when you knew you wanted to be an author. I think I spoiled that in the intro.

Millie Florence (09:40):

So, as for just writing and telling stories, I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t want to be a writer and a storyteller in some capacity. One of my earliest memories is of laying under the covers at night, whispering stories to myself when I was supposed to be asleep. I don’t know how much my parents appreciated that, because I was five or six at the time. But yeah, I’ve just always been obsessed with telling stories and, yeah, like you said in the intro, it was around age nine that I actually began looking into publication. And for me, that always just felt like a very natural next step. It was very obvious to me. I was like, “Whoa, I love writing and I love telling stories. The thing you do when you tell stories is share them with other people. And the way you do that is put them in books, like the ones I check out from the library.” That was my thought process.

Sarah Mackenzie (10:33):

Yeah, very logical. Yeah.

Millie Florence (10:35):

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I decided, yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. And it grew from there. Like you said, I went to my first writing conference when I was 10. That was the Illinois Young Authors Conference, which unfortunately does not happen anymore. They lost funding over 2020, which is really sad.

Sarah Mackenzie (10:54):

Bummer.

Millie Florence (10:54):

Yeah. But before they lost funding, I actually was invited to speak at that conference, and then they lost funding and I never got to, but it was a very cool moment that I was invited to speak at the conference that gave me so much inspiration when I was 10 years old. And yeah, I went on, I did a lot of research, and I won’t get into too many of the nitty-gritty specifics, but I self-published my first book, Honey Butter, when I was 13, and that was the beginning of it.

Sarah Mackenzie (11:25):

So, what do you think, what led to that? There’s a difference between a kid saying, especially like a 10-year-old and then a 13-year-old saying, “Oh, I want to write,” and then being able to actually finish a story and then be able to self-teach, basically become an auto didact, right? Enough to be able to figure out what makes a story, what do you need to do, and then to pull up to write the whole thing, and then get it to a stage where you can share it with other people. So what do you think helped with that? I mean, the question that every listener of this podcast whose homeschooling wants to know is, which curriculum taught you to do that?

Millie Florence (12:01):

I think you already know my answer to this one, Sarah.

Sarah Mackenzie (12:04):

I set you up for it.

Millie Florence (12:06):

Yeah. So, my parents describe our homeschool style as eclectic, which means we didn’t use one particular curriculum. We used little bits of different curriculums or made up stuff along the way depending on what each kid needed at the time. And for reference, my family, we have five kids. I’m the oldest. I have four younger siblings.

Sarah Mackenzie (12:28):

Delightful siblings, I might add, because we got to share a meal. And so I’ve met both of your parents and a couple of your sisters, I think.

Millie Florence (12:34):

Yes. Yeah, you’ve met my two younger sisters. Yes.

Sarah Mackenzie (12:37):

So delightful.

Millie Florence (12:40):

Yeah. So our homeschooling was very delight directed, and it was based upon what we loved and what we were interested in. So in some ways, the question is not even so much, “How did homeschooling impact your writing?” It’s more about, how did my writing impact my homeschool?

Sarah Mackenzie (13:00):

Oh, wow.

Millie Florence (13:02):

Yeah, because from a very early age, I loved to do that, but I think there are lots of kids out there who, they have their obsessions and the things they love at an early age, but if you don’t cultivate that and encourage that and make kids feel like it’s valuable, it might not go anywhere. So I feel like one of the really big things my parents did to help cultivate that was just showing me that they saw my passions as valuable. And for me, specifically as an author, my mom always stopped what she was doing to spell a word when I asked how to spell a word. They would always read stuff that I wrote when I asked them to. Before I could type properly on my own, I actually would tell my stories aloud and they would type them down for me on the computer.

(13:49):

And it got to the point where I was doing this so much, and of course, I had four younger siblings who were five and under at that point. They were very busy that, first of all, they had a mother’s helper for a little while. She came to do help my mom with the dishes and folding laundry and stuff.

Sarah Mackenzie (14:08):

Yes.

Millie Florence (14:09):

But at one point they said, “Christie, your job for today is to sit down and type all of Millie’s stories.”

Sarah Mackenzie (14:16):

Amazing. That’s so amazing.

Millie Florence (14:17):

Because she, yeah, she just won’t stop.

Sarah Mackenzie (14:21):

I can see that too. As a mom of creative kids, I can totally see being like, “Okay, I see this spark and this drive in my child, and also I am swimming in babies and toddlers, and I do not have the time to type stories for her.” So I can completely understand this. This makes so much sense to me.

Millie Florence (14:39):

Yes. And something else they did further along that I think ended up being a little bit more productive than telling the babysitter to type my stories was, they got me a MP3 recorder for Christmas, and I told all my stories into that.

Sarah Mackenzie (14:53):

Oh, wow.

Millie Florence (14:55):

Yeah. And not only was that super valuable for me as a writer and that creative spark, but now that I’m 20, I have all these old hour-long recordings of me telling stories and you can hear my siblings in the background, and often I’m telling stories with my siblings. So it’s just this beautiful look back at my childhood, better than a photo album in some ways.

Sarah Mackenzie (15:17):

Oh my gosh, Millie, we need to hear this, so let’s hear it. Okay, Read-Aloud Revival, are you ready? We’re going to listen to young Millie. We’re recording into her MP3 player.

Katya (15:28):

One day, there are a bunch of monkeys in the forest. They like to live together, but sometimes one could not find the other, because it was so crowded. One grabbed the other’s hand. The other bumped and grabbed another’s hand. The two, they were screeching and hooking. They thought it was a funny game. So they grabbed a hand, too. Soon, they were singing and screeching and dancing for part of the day, and they fell and they screeched to bed.

Sarah Mackenzie (15:59):

So fun. I love it so much. Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. You know what, hearing you say all this reminds me that the most important thing we can do so often as parents isn’t necessarily knowing the thing that your child…

(16:17):

A good example is that my second daughter, who’s about to turn 20, she’ll be 20 by the time this podcast airs, she’s at art school studying sequential arts and illustration. I’m not an artsy, I don’t draw much. I can do some. I enjoy drawing. I’m just not that great at it. I definitely couldn’t teach her. She definitely outpaced me way quicker. It’s important for me to understand that and to remember that me teaching her how to draw wasn’t the most important thing I could do. Even giving her the resources and skills to learn how to draw, signing her up for top-notch art classes, I never did that. We never had the time or the funds to do it. She did a lot of teaching by watching artists on YouTube, by looking up tutorials, by practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing, and by having tons and tons of time to work on that. And so that’s what I’m hearing from you, too, is, your parents took you seriously, which means they carve out time for you.

Millie Florence (17:12):

Yes.

Sarah Mackenzie (17:14):

Because the fact that they were even willing to say, “Here, our mother’s helper, we have 18 loads of laundry on the couch and the dishes are overflowing, but instead, can you type out Millie’s story,” means you knew that you were taken seriously, which is so amazing.

Millie Florence (17:29):

Absolutely.

Sarah Mackenzie (17:30):

Yeah.

Millie Florence (17:31):

It encouraged me to take it seriously, to see it as something I could really turn into a career, something I could pursue, and I could not have done that if my parents had not modeled that to me first, that, “Hey, you should take time and put aside time to pursue these things and bring beauty to the world.” And I think that is so important.

Sarah Mackenzie (17:53):

So, would you describe the writing that you did in your homeschool, did your mom have you go through any curriculum or did she let… What did that look like?

Millie Florence (18:01):

So for me and my writing in my homeschool, I did not write any essays until I was 13 years old, and I had actually already published Honey Butter. So pretty much all of my writing was just creative writing, even the more nonfiction side of things. So for example, I remember we were doing a course on plants and herbs, and they wanted something written for that curriculum, because it was a part of a curriculum. And my mom said that I could write a poem about it if I wanted. And I remember at one time also in homeschool co-op, they had an assignment that was to write something about a historical figure, specifically an astronomer, and I wrote a rap about Henrietta Swan Levitt.

Sarah Mackenzie (18:50):

Oh my goodness. You are like Lin-Manuel Miranda, but the homeschooled female version.

Millie Florence (18:55):

Right, right.

Sarah Mackenzie (18:57):

I love it.

Millie Florence (18:58):

Yeah, it was around age 12 or 13 that I actually did start to learn essay formula and stuff. But my mom was very intentional about when I was younger, focusing more on the creative side of things and the things I loved to do, because I tended to absorb information better that way if I could choose how I wanted to write about it. And even outside of writing, we had a lot of conversation and discussion about the subjects in my homeschool, so she wouldn’t even necessarily assign me go write a thing, we would just have a discussion about it, which I think is wonderful.

(19:30):

But she was always for really encouraging that creative side in kids, because you lose that as you get older. There’s this wonderful quote by Picasso, I might get the word slightly wrong, but it is something along the lines of, “Every child is an artist. The trouble is how he remains an artist as he grows up.” And I think we should prioritize nurturing that artist in children instead of trying to get them to conform to the essay standard or whatever. And obviously those things are valuable to learn, but I think especially when kids are young, if anything, you want to err more on the side of just encouraging that creativity.

Sarah Mackenzie (20:11):

I love this so much, because what that means is then when you arrive at essay writing, whenever that happens, 13, 14, 15, you haven’t associated writing with this painful torturous… Actually, it’s a really source of joy for you, really.

Millie Florence (20:25):

Yeah, absolutely. And I wasn’t even taught anything formal in terms of grammar or even spelling until I was a little older. And the way I learned a lot of that in the beginning naturally was through my creative writing and through storytelling and read-alouds because you can kind of instinctually tell when a sentence doesn’t sound quite right. And so the main way I learned a lot of that was, I would write these stories and then my mom would read them because I was very excited about the story and I wanted her to read them. And then she would ask, “Okay, is it okay if I show you how you need to actually spell this? Is it okay if I point out your grammar mistakes?” And usually I said yes, because I wanted to be an author someday, and I knew that that was something authors had to do, was have correct spelling and grammar. And that was mainly how I learned those more technical skills up until, again, 12 or 13.

Sarah Mackenzie (21:20):

I love this so much. I feel like I’m being very affirmed today in how I homeschool my children, because I think it always catches people off guard when I say I don’t do any writing with my kids except for copy work until they’re about 12, actually. And then they all write stories, they all write letters, they all write journal. We’ll do 15 minutes. You can write whatever you want. Right now with my tens, I have two tens and an 11 at home, and we do about 15 minutes of dedicated writing time a day, but it’s just whatever they want to write. It could be a list, it could be a letter, it could be a journal entry or diary entry. A lot of times it’s stories, and my job is to sit there and spell words when they say, “Mom, how do you spell whatever?”

Millie Florence (22:00):

Yes.

Sarah Mackenzie (22:00):

It made me insane as a kid when I would ask how to spell something and either my parent or a teacher would say, “Look it up in the dictionary.”

Millie Florence (22:07):

Oh my goodness, I can’t imagine.

Sarah Mackenzie (22:10):

How am I supposed to look it up in the dictionary if it’s organized by how it’s spelled?

Millie Florence (22:17):

It even got to the point for my mom, because she was spelling stuff for us all the time, just while she’s cooking dinner, that at some point we would ask her different questions, not how to spell something, but we would be like, “Mom, what’s for dinner?” And she would go, “D-I-N-N-E-R.” She would just start spelling it.

Sarah Mackenzie (22:34):

That’s amazing. I love it so much.

Millie Florence (22:36):

Yeah.

Sarah Mackenzie (22:36):

The good thing is, instead of saying like, “Oh, sound it out,” if you just tell them how it’s spelled a couple of times in, they usually get it.

Millie Florence (22:43):

And if you think about how do you learn things as an adult, right? This was something I talked about at my homeschool co-op, my group, the leader of my group who we called the tutor, something she talked about was, when you’re an adult and let’s say you’re trying to learn the password for your job, if you’re working at a place where you have to unlock the doors, what do you do? You write it down, you check it, and you have to probably check that paper a thousand times before you actually have it memorized, but eventually you do. So there’s actually nothing wrong with learning that way.

Sarah Mackenzie (23:14):

Yeah. That’s so good. It’s very useful. It’s exactly, asking that question of how do I get this information when I need it as an adult is a really good way to approach things I think. I love that

(23:27):

We have young writers I know who are listening to this episode, I know who are excited by this idea of, wait a second, this is somebody who’s done it, who has self-published books, now has some traditionally published books just released and also in the works. So what is your advice that you would give young writers who want to do something similar?

Millie Florence (23:45):

So, my main piece of advice, and I’m saying this because it is something I never heard as a young writer, is when you’re starting out, the goal should be quantity over quality. Because I know a lot of kids, and this was me included, you feel kind of guilty if you’re like, “Oh, I can’t finish any of these projects. I get these big book ideas, but then they end up being unfinished. I move on to something else, or maybe I do stick with it, but it’s been three years and I’m still not getting anywhere.” And I want to say, no, when you’re starting out, that is not a problem. In fact, it’s a good thing. The reason you often have unfinished manuscripts and unfinished projects is because you’ll outgrow your current project skillwise before you have the time to finish it. And that just means you’re growing really fast as a writer.

Sarah Mackenzie (24:37):

I have never heard somebody say that, and it makes so much sense.

Millie Florence (24:42):

Yes. And this is something I never heard, but it’s 100% true in both my writing and all my friends who are authors as well, stuff they agree with as well. Because let’s say when you’re seven, you come up with this very cool story idea and you’re like, “Oh, it’s going to be a seven book series,” but then a couple years pass and you haven’t even finished the first draft. Okay, well, you’ve learned so much more as a writer that I bet if you went back and started a new story, structurewise it would be better because you know more about writing now and you know how character arcs works. So instead of trying to finish the character arc you created two years ago, create a new character arc now that you’re better at it. And even just do lots of short stuff, short stories, poems, free writes, writing exercises.

(25:28):

There’s nothing wrong with attempting that amazing novel or series you’ve been dreaming of, but I noticed a major improvement in my own writing when I started incorporating more short writing challenges into my day-to-day, which really helped me a lot when I did get to those longer projects. And even just a great example of that is Honey Butter, my first book that I published when I was 13.

(25:50):

It is only like 150 pages long. It is not a long book. It’s a very short book. And that was purposeful because I knew I wanted to start small and slowly, stair step bigger. I did ballet for a while when I was younger, and my ballet teacher had this saying, “I’d rather see a clean single than a dirty double.” And what she meant by that was she was talking about pique turns, and she was saying she’d rather see a dancer do one turn, which is a simpler move and nail it and do it really, really well, than attempt two turns and make it a little bit messy, even if they did complete it.

(26:25):

So that was my mindset going into Honey Butter. I want to write a story that is simple and that is short, and make it as clean as possible and best quality as possible, rather than attempt something long and complicated and maybe not feel a hundred percent confident in it by the time it’s done. So I think shorter and simpler is a great place to start, and those shorter and simpler things mean that you’ll be able to write the longer, more complex stories in the future. Because what was my second book? It was twice the length of Honey Butter, and it was a fantasy with magic system and a much more complicated plot and Latin.

Sarah Mackenzie (27:06):

That’s delightful Latin, I will say.

Millie Florence (27:10):

Yes, thank you.

Sarah Mackenzie (27:11):

Cleverly.

Millie Florence (27:13):

Yeah, and I just want to encourage young writers, if you’re struggling with anything like that, it’s not a problem. It’s a sign that you’re growing and even those unfinished projects help you grow as a writer.

Sarah Mackenzie (27:24):

So good. Okay, let’s talk about that book, that second book of yours, which you self-published at 15. Am I remembering that right?

Millie Florence (27:31):

Yes. I Self-published that at 15, and the original title was Lydia Green of Mulberry Glen.

Sarah Mackenzie (27:38):

I read this book after I finished Honey Butter, and I went, “I think we need to publish this at Waxwing.” And so I reached out to you. Well, actually, I think we did this over dinner, right?

Millie Florence (27:52):

We did, yes.

Sarah Mackenzie (27:53):

I was going to, it was the first time you and I met in person after the original time we met.

Millie Florence (27:59):

Yes.

Sarah Mackenzie (28:01):

And I think you thought we were going to talk about this, having you on the show, right? Maybe. Did you think that?

Millie Florence (28:06):

Yes.

Sarah Mackenzie (28:06):

Yeah, yeah. And instead I said, “Well, yeah, I actually want to have you on Read-Aloud Revival. Absolutely. But I really want to talk about Lydia Green of Mulberry Glen, because I would love to republish it at Waxwing with a new title, a new cover and revision.” And we are working on it now. It’s going to be our first middle grade novel. We are releasing at waxwing out in spring of 2024. We’ve retitled it Beyond Mulberry Glen, and it is astounding. I am working on some edit revisions that you did. I’m doing an edit of them right now, and it is just stunning. I’m so excited. I cannot wait. In fact, I’m really excited to finish this pass of revision so I can read aloud to my kids as I was-

Millie Florence (28:48):

That makes me so happy.

Sarah Mackenzie (28:49):

It’s so funny, Millie. I’m sitting at my kitchen table the other night and I’m working on some edits and I was trying to figure out why a sentence wasn’t working. So I went back up and I read it aloud, that section, and then I stopped and I was just thinking quietly. And then I hear my 11-year-old pitter-patter out. She pokes her head around the corner and goes, “Could you just keep reading?”

Millie Florence (29:11):

Oh, really? Oh my word.

Sarah Mackenzie (29:11):

Isn’t it amazing? I was like, “I know, right? Just wait. I’ll read you the whole thing.”

Millie Florence (29:14):

That has made my day. Oh my goodness.

Sarah Mackenzie (29:17):

The cover is being illustrated by Astrid Shekels, and she’s doing this beautiful map for the interior end papers and some beautiful interior sketches. I’m so excited about this book.

Millie Florence (29:29):

I am so excited for it to come out and just to breathe some new life into it, and for this new audience to meet all these characters that I’m so passionate about. And oh my goodness, I am so thrilled to have Astrid as an illustrator. I am so excited for everyone to see the cover. It’s amazing.

Sarah Mackenzie (29:49):

Yeah, me too. I am beside myself with excitement over here. So when this episode airs, everybody, you can go to beyondmulberryglen.com and we’ll take you to a place where you can sign up to get email notifications when that book is ready for pre-order. You’re not going to want to miss it. We’ll also send you a fun cover reveal and fun things like that. So go to beyondmulberryglen.com so you don’t miss that. It’s going to be Waxwing’s first novel, and we’re very excited about it. But you also have another novel that people don’t have to wait until spring of 24, because you have another novel we should talk about. This one’s out from Bandersnatch Books, our friends at Bandersnatch, they’re doing great work over there. And tell us about the Balter of Ashton Harper.

Millie Florence (30:33):

Yes. So the Balter of Ashton Harper is my most recent novel, my third novel for middle graders, and it is historical fantasy set in the Regency era. So imagine Jane Austen, but with magic and adventure and written for kids.

Sarah Mackenzie (30:48):

Yep, that’s exactly it. That’s such a good description. Yeah.

Millie Florence (30:53):

It’s the story of 12-year-old Ashton Harper who has three problems, and two of them are his sisters. First, Drusilla the oldest who has decided that all she cares about is muslin and courtship. Second Zizi, the youngest, a stubborn optimist who is constantly pushing her brother outside of his comfort zone, whether it’s in their dancing lessons or his disbelief in magic. And third, their invitation to audition for a ballroom dancing scholarship at the prestigious Overmorrow Academy of Arts, which could be either a dream come true or a hope-crushing failure. And as a proud, sarcastic realist, Ashton is betting on the latter. The Harper siblings set out for Overmorrow, but their opportunity evaporates when mysterious magical ruins wreak havoc on the travelers. Ashton is separated from his sisters trying to make sense of a power that he thought only existed in fairytales, and soon much more is at stake than just attending the school of his dreams. And by the time this podcast airs, that book will be out. It will be published.

Sarah Mackenzie (31:56):

Yes. Just freshly out. It just hit the shelves. So if you’re listening to this episode, you can go order your copy and I highly, highly recommend it.

Millie Florence (32:05):

Yes, you can go to my website, millieflorence.com, to find the link to that book where you can order it, as well as Honey Butter. You can actually get a free ebook and audiobook copy of Honey Butter on my website. I know this is Read-Aloud Revival, right? There are a lot of moms who are into audiobooks, so there’s actually a free audiobook version of Honey Butter narrated by me, which you can get when you go to my website and sign up for my email newsletter.

Sarah Mackenzie (32:30):

Awesome. And we’ll put links to all of this in the show notes as well, so you don’t have to miss a thing. I’m so excited. Millie, I’m excited for your work because girl, you’re 20 years old and you are on a roll, and every time I read something you wrote, I’m like, “Yes, more please.” So I’m really excited to see what you have up your sleeve next. Is there anything you want to say to Read-Aloud, Revival listeners .before we wrap up?

Millie Florence (32:52):

I just want to say thank you because this is, I’m so happy to be here and I hope everyone enjoys all my stories because my main goal with writing these is just to bring a little bit more wonder and beauty to the world. And yeah, thank you so much for having me, Sarah. This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you.

Sarah Mackenzie (33:14):

All right. It’s time for Let the Kids Speak, where we find out what Read-Aloud Revival kids are reading lately.

Cairo (33:23):

Hi, I’m Cairo and I’m 12 years old. I live in California, and my favorite book series is The Last Dragon Chronicles, because it’s funny and mind-bending. If you’re into dragon lore, you should totally check it out.

Katya (33:36):

Hi, my name is Katya, and I’m 14 years old. I live in California and my favorite book series is Crisanta Knight. If you like Harry Potter or The School Figure and Evil, you should definitely read it.

Kinley (33:49):

Hi, my name is Kinley and I’m from Damascus, Maryland, and my favorite book right now is How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell.

Eva (34:00):

Okay. My name is Eva and I’m five years old and I’m from Grand Haven, Michigan, and my favorite book is The Sad Little Kitten, because I love cats.

Sophia (34:13):

Hi, my name is Sophia and I’m 11 years old and I’m from Grand Haven, Michigan, and my favorite book is Jane of Lantern Hill, because I like the part where she gets her cats and when she cleans the house.

Eliana (34:28):

My name is Eliana and I am nine years old, and I am from Grand Haven, Michigan, and the book I like is Upside Down Magic series, because I like animals.

Ruby (34:44):

My name is Ruby and I’m from Pennsylvania. My favorite book series is The Babysitters Club.

David (34:51):

My name is David, and I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and my favorite book is Harry Potter, and I like it when Harry Potter enters the Forbidden Forest.

Sarah Mackenzie (35:05):

Thank you so much, kids. I wonder if any of you will write books like our guest today, Millie Florence. Show notes with links to all of Millie’s books are at readaloudrevival.com/234. I’ll be back in two weeks. Next up on the show are guests Brett Harris and Kara Swanson from Young Writer and Author Conservatory. They’re going to join me to talk about how to give your young creative writer feedback, even if you don’t have an English degree, even if you don’t have much writing know-how it’s such a good conversation. I cannot wait To share it with you. Until then, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.