(828) 526-0173 | [email protected] | Copyright 2024 – All Rights Reserved.
Visual Journey
Written By: Deena Bouknight | Issue: October 2023
For our Donna Rhodes, The 7 Keepers is a hypersonic grace note to her children and grandchildren, and young-at-heart adventurers everywhere.
Donna RhodesFor our Donna Rhodes, The 7 Keepers is a hypersonic grace note
to her children and grandchildren, and
young-at-heart
adventurers everywhere.
Normally, Donna Rhodes conveys her creativity through visual pursuits. She’s spent a lifetime studying and creating music, writing, weaving, painting, and teaching, and she is active in the visual, performing, and literary arts. She also began writing several years ago for The Laurel, sharing with readers information about the cover artist; and, her nonfiction book, The Fine Art of Pin-weaving: Creative Variations has sold more than 10,000 copies.
But Rhodes is also a mother and a grandmother, and over the years she has written helpful, enjoyable books for family members – with a dream of someday writing a full-fledged children’s novel. Her pursuit was realized recently with the publication of The 7 Keepers – A middle-grade book for ages around 11-12.
The 7 Keepers is a science-fiction genre, three-book serial novel, with the first recently published, and the second and third expected out in spring 2024 and spring 2025. Rhodes, a lover of science fiction due to the creative aspects of storyline and visual inspiration, was motivated to write a book that involves children saving the world.
In her synopsis she includes: “Brothers Jack and Zane, 11 and 13, along with their eccentric grandparents, a shape-shifting alien, a beast the size of a Sasquatch with a heart of gold and the right hook of a war god, and a kick-ass girl who takes nothing-from-nobody join together as The Keepers in a prophesied war against an army of Anthro-bots. Before their battle, they travel through a wormhole to Planet Ceejix where each engages in a personal quest to ready him/her/them self for passage. As Chinese General Sun Tzu (544 B.C.) said in The Art of War, each color is beautiful. But colors in combination create more hues than imaginable. And, so it is with the powers of The Keepers.”
“The first book is 135 pages,” said Rhodes, “and each book will be a little longer and the children will be a little older for each book. My writing process has been all about function – books to instruct – but for The 7 Keepers, I see the visual happening in my head, like a movie. I write a little daily. I also did all the illustration and the cover for the book but my son, Rayford Lederer, a conceptual illustrator for a popular gaming company, will do the cover and possibly the art for the other two books.”
Rhodes plans to keep writing and pursuing art for as long as possible. Retirement is not in her vocabulary. She shared that she has many more miles to go before she sleeps.
