Visalia author Jane Porter to speak at COS

Visalia native Jane Porter will discuss her new book, “It’s You” (Berkley, $15), at the College of the Sequoias at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10, in the Ponderosa Building. Admission is free and open to the public.

Porter will talk about the research and preparation involved in building the characters and setting of the story.

The local author has written 50 novels. She started sending books to publishers while studying at UCLA. It took 16 years and 15 rejections before she finally got one published. That’s why the one piece of advice she always gives prospective writers is to be tenacious and keep working their “writing muscles.”

“As a little girl I spent hours on my bed, staring out the window, dreaming of far off places, fearless knights, and happy-ever-after endings,” she says in her bio. “In my imagination I was never the geeky bookworm with the thick coke-bottle glasses, but a princess, a magical fairy, a Joan-of-Arc crusader.”

She spent a year in Europe when she was 13 and has been an avid world traveler ever since. But it has always been her roots in the Valley that have inspired her to write.

Her father, former Visalia mayor and College of the Sequoias instructor Tom Porter, inspired her as a storyteller through his readings of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. “It’s You,” was inspired by Dr. Porter’s knowledge and passion for WWII history.

Porter credits her parents and grandparents with giving her that passion through the way they pushed her to write when she was young.

She’s sold more than five million books.

This is the first in the 2015-16 season of Cultural and Historical Awareness Program (CHAP) events sponsored by COS. The CHAP program’s theme for 2015-16 is “Freedom and Inquiry,” and the speakers and performers to follow this season will all speak to those values.

Porter’s the founder of Tule Publishing Group, a company that celebrates the creative process, and empowerment of writers, particularly those focusing on commercial fiction.

Meet the authors

The Oakhurst Library will host an Authors’ Faire from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, in the Library’s Community Room. Central Valley writers, publishers, editors, illustrators and various writing groups have been invited to come to the library. The general public is invited to attend

You will have a chance to meet the authors, buy signed copies of their books and learn about the publishing industry.

If you’re a published author, you can reserve your free table at www.surveymonkey.com/r/authorsfaire.

For more information, call the Library at (559) 683-4838 or go to www.easysite.com/fobl.

Series continues

Fresno’s Steven Hammond is releasing the fourth installment of his “Rise of the Penguins” saga, “The Royal Creed” (Rockhopper Books, $14.99).

The book brings together surviving characters from the other books to go on a quest for peace.

The other books in the series include: “”Rise of the Penguins”; “The Warlord, The Warrior, The War”; and “Whispers of Shadows.” His books look at the battle between man and penguin.

Hammond says that “there are plenty of surprises and twists in this installment of the series, including an expanded mythology that delves deeper into the penguin’s history and belief system.”

A fifth book — “Order of Kings” — is in the works and scheduled for a November release.

Other books of interest

▪ “Camp Olvido” (Miami University Press,” $15): Lawrence Coates, chair of the Department of English at Bowling Green State University, has written a book about a California migrant labor camp in 1932. A child's sudden illness leads to tensions between workers wishing to break camp and the land barons enforcing their contracts. It’s available at Amazon.com.

▪ “The Vulgarist” ( Amazon Digital Services, Inc., $2.99): The ebook by former Farmersville resident Peter Reynosa whose first novel is a dystopian tale. “The book is actually about what would happen if Western civilization came to be solely dominated by the philosophy of rationalism and only rationalism,” Reynosa says. Look for his work at Amazon.com.

▪ “Wing Over Wendover Meets the King” (AuthorHouse, $14.95): Local author Eric Stephen Bocks continues his books that often include falconry. In this offering, a young boy hits his head and wakes up in medieval England. It is available online.

This story was originally published September 5, 2015 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Visalia author Jane Porter to speak at COS."