Nothing gives me more of a thrill when I meet up with old friends who ask - "Nice to see you, Pam, what are you up to since you retired?" I smile and say, "Actually I'm a writer now." It gives me such pleasure to say it, and to know that it's true. I'm a writer- there I've said it again. After leaving behind my career as an Interior Designer and a brief spell taking breakdown calls for the company with the very, very nice man and his yellow van, I decided to take early retirement and concentrate on writing. I wasn't sure how to go about "it" but I had this idea and a bunch of musically inclined characters living in my head who wouldn't go away, so I decided to get it all down on paper before I became to senile to remember. I bought a reporter's notepad and a couple of pens; took myself to sit on the beach in Brighton and that's how The Raiders rock group and the beginning chapters of my first novel Three Steps to Heaven were born. Obviously now, when I look back, it was pretty dire but back then I had no concept of how a book should be written. I had ideas galore, but didn't have a clue about the craft, how to structure, dialogue, settings, POV and all those things that go into the mix to come out the other end as a novel of acceptable standards that people might just want to read. My idea for Three Steps to Heaven came from my time during the sixties when I worked in the record department of a local store. I used to hang around with musicians who frequented the place. When you spend a lot of time with guys like that you get involved in their lives and loves, watch them playing in clubs and be there when they need a shoulder to cry on. Little did I know that one day, remembering the stuff that went on, I'd use a lot of those scenarios and immortalise them in words. Three Steps to Heaven was never meant to be anything other than a one-off novel. But I couldn't let go of my characters and before I knew it I'd produced a trilogy. The sequel 'Til I Kissed You and the third and final novel Always On My Mind. Even now I'm finding it hard to let the characters go. When I began writing I tended to switch heads as I didn't understand POV. Then it eventually clicked and I decided I liked a multiple VP story told in the style of a saga. This being the case, I find it easier to write in third person. I once tried to write a short story in first person but wasn't comfortable with it, so re-wrote it in third and sold that particular story. I have conversations going on in my head all the time, characters arguing with each other. I find I go over scenes when I'm driving. So if you see a woman, sitting at traffic lights, and she looks like she's talking to herself, it's probably me, but I'm not mad, honestly! I always choose settings I'm familiar with as this makes it easier to bring them to life. I centre my stories around the fictional town of Pickford in Cheshire, which is actually Stockport and the surrounding areas. Before publishing any of my work I joined online critiquing group, YouWriteOn where I received many helpful reviews from members who went out of their way to encourage me and teach me the way to go. I also struck up a friendship with AJ Hudspith, (Johnny Vee) who became my editor. Johnny's help has been invaluable. He also introduced me to JD Smith, contactable for further info at [email protected] who designed the fabulous covers for my trilogy. The main "character" throughout my trilogy is actually a band called The Raiders, so it's a collective. The two band leaders are Eddie Mellor - the drummer, and Roy Cantello - lead guitarist and singer. They are a mixture of just about every man I ever met, including my musician partner! I had great fun creating these two and the antics they get up to. My favourite author is Lesly Pearse and it was reading her novels, particularly Georgia that made me decide I'd like to try and create warm tales of people and their lives, really make them come alive instead of storing them in my head all the time. I also enjoy work by Erica James and Joanna Trollope. Having completed and published my trilogy I thought I'd try something different for my next project and create a novel based on my own life experiences, rather than everyone else's. I'm only up to chapter five at the moment, but I'm enjoying writing it, finding it a very cathartic experience and look forward to publishing "Fast Movin' Train later this year. The one thing I've never done, which may seem an odd thing for a writer, is send my stories out to agents. As soon as I discovered it was possible to go down the self-publishing route for very little cost, that's exactly what I did. I'm so happy that I chose that way. No rejection letters cluttering up the desk for me. Just a simple belief that I can do this on my own, well with help for the editing from Johnny of course. I'm afraid I'm too impatient to wait years. With the advent of Kindle it's made all the difference in the world. My books are selling well and collecting five star reviews that I'm really proud of. I've had several short stories published in the last twelve months. Two in charity anthologies and two that I actually got paid for in a Canadian e-zine called Pages of Stories. Maybe in time that's the route I'll go down, but while I've still got ideas for novels, I'll keep plodding in that direction.
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I am in a unique position as an author because I write with co-author, David W. Small. Dave is not only my co-author, but he is also my brother. We grew up reading the same type of books, fantasy and science fiction, and that love of books resulted in our collaboration years later. As authors know, it is hard work coming up with ideas for a new book, putting those ideas to paper and then editing those words into a book that is ready for public consumption. Having two authors trying to accomplish this takes extra effort and it means leaving egos at the door. Every idea must be vetted and our reasoning is "if you can’t justify why it should be included, out it goes." We do extensive outlines for the world we are creating, the plot lines and the characters. We found out with our first book that it is imperative to do all this background work first. It certainly saves a lot of editing at the end. I live on the East Coast, Dave lives on the West Coast and we both work full-time so we each must dedicate a portion of a day to writing. My best time to write is first thing in the morning and Dave likes to write at night. This schedule actually works out well because I can edit what Dave writes and he gets to read new lines most days. We don’t impose a word quota on each other; sometimes one of us writes a paragraph and the other finishes the rest of the chapter or we each write a few paragraphs. Because of our hectic schedules, it usually takes a year to finish a book. We are currently working on a new fantasy involving assassins, witches and the Stone of Prophesy. If all goes according to plan, we should finish this story by the end of 2011. It’s been a year since we published QUEST FOR NOBILITY and the sequel, THE CRYSTAL FAÇADE in our Rule of Otharia series on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. What a difference a year makes! First, we have to thank our graphic artist, T.M. Roy, for both of the covers. They are awesome! One of the hardest things authors have to do once their book has been published is letting the public know about it. This is where social media is key. New authors should plan on having a website or a blog, an account on Facebook and also on Twitter. Don’t continually spam people about your books; rather engage others in conversation about common interests. Once people get to know you, they’ll be interested in your books as well. I also manage a writing blog, TWO ENDS OF THE PEN, and it started out as a blog about our writing, but I soon realized that I would like to help other authors get recognition for their work as well. I started offering author interviews, panel discussions and reviews of indie books. It was my way of paying it forward to my fellow authors. Now 3 years after my first blog post, the site gets 200-300 hits a day. I’m happy that readers find it interesting enough to keep coming back every day. Writing a book is just the first step on this crazy journey of being an author, but I wouldn’t change any of it. I thoroughly enjoying writing stories and am happy that readers keep buying the books. Thanks very much Tim for inviting me to your blog and letting me chatter on about my writing. Okay, I admit it: writing is therapy for me. Yes, writing allows me to work out problems. And, even better, I get to play all the characters and have things go the way I want - most of the time, unless the characters take the story in a new direction. That’s when they drive me crazy and, in retaliation, I may have to torture them. Do I sound a bit insane? Imagine how nuts I’d be if I didn’t have an outlet. After my divorce, all I did was write. I finished Vestel Virgin (Suspense in Ancient Rome) and my (then) agent shopped it around, but it was too dark for New York. Of course, it didn’t help that I wrote the novel as my marriage fell apart. I poured all my angst into the story - even visualized my ex’s girlfriend as I wrote a torture scene. But the book has a happy ending. It was cathartic to have the love story part of the novel play out the way I wanted - and the characters graciously complied. Having spent that year after my divorce working and writing (often ten hours a day), hardly seeing any people, except my writers’ group, I put Vestel Virgin (Suspense in Ancient Rome) away. I felt discouraged that I’d had two agents and still hadn’t sold a book to a publisher. (I finally picked up Vestel Virgin (Suspense in Ancient Rome) again last summer and rewrote it - it’s not as dark, I promise.) Instead of spending all my time holed up writing, I began to have a life again. I ventured out into the world, and I met a man I really liked, a fellow writer. I was so excited about meeting a kindred soul, that I had no time to write. I wanted to play! Oh sure, I wrote lousy poetry - mostly love poems rife with sexual innuendo. I wrote so much lousy poetry, that it actually improved, and some of it was even published. But the guy I fell in love with, didn’t fall in love with me - and, out of desperation (and determination to get past my divorce) I began to date other men: online, offline, in line, listening to lines. Most of the dates were horrendous. Dating after age fifty requires courage or brain damage - in fact, the experience will probably give you brain damage. In order to retain my sanity, I documented my dates in short story format. I figured, if nothing else, I made myself laugh and I was entertaining my writers’ group. Sometimes, I’d even reenact the dates at dinner parties. Finally, I started reading the stories out loud at the local library - and people thought they were funny. That gave me hope. And I wrote a few more stories. Then, last summer, my good friend, Blake Crouch, convinced me to put together a collection of nine short stories and publish them on Kindle. I needed a good title, something along the lines of "The Vagina Monologues." I came up with Dating My Vibrator (and other true fiction). Aside from writing the stories, publishing the book has saved me hundreds of dollars in therapy. I’m actually making money, instead of spending it. Being an indie author has been extremely freeing. And, best of all, I now have readers! Writing without having anyone read your work is kind of like foreplay with no hope of orgasm. If that goes on for long enough, you could end up in the psych ward. I studied Gestalt psychology for five years, and for me as a writer, finally having readers is a Gestalt experience. According to Gestalt, energy flows in waves. All experience is part of a continuum that builds to a climax - a need that grows in intensity. Once that need is met, the energy releases and subsides. And then it builds again. If a need is never met, the energy gets stuck and causes anxiety, even depression. This plays out in relationships, and it played out for me with my writing. I became depressed, and I stopped writing, because I didn’t have readers. Essentially, I short-circuited. A writer needs readers to complete the writing experience. The ebook revolution has been a major Gestalt for the publishing industry - an industry that was stuck and dying. For me, the experience of writing, publishing, having people read my work and respond - has been a form of therapy. Releasing a book is definitely a Gestalt experience. This year I plan to publish two more books. Ghost Plane and Other Disturbing Tales, a collection of weird short stories, ranging from flash fiction to gothic, will come out this summer. And I’m currently working on another historical suspense novel, Agathon’s Daughter. The book is set in ancient Greece, so it requires lots of research. Sometimes the process drives me crazy: writing and backtracking to check facts, moving forward and then backwards - the characters have me going in circles. Writing a first draft feels like punching my way out of a bag. But when I get too frustrated I just kill someone or torture them, and I feel better - of course, I’m referring to a character, not my ex. Let’s talk about being a pantser! Now, I know you’re asking… What the heck is a pantser? Hi, hello, that’s me! Okay, okay, I can’t take credit for being the only pantser out there. There are many, many, many of us. We’re the types who "fly by the seats of our pants." There is no one single "right" way to write a novel. Some people are plotters and some, like me are pantsers. At first, I didn’t realize this. I thought you had to do everything a certain way. That made writing look like such a daunting task. When I think of outlining, plot structure, and word counts it makes me balk. "I can’t write 80k words! No. I just can’t do it!" The thing is, you can do it. I did. Several times in fact. Writing doesn’t have to be hard. The biggest lesson I had to learn was to relax and not focus on the end result. That’s the thing that stops a new writer from finishing a story. When you’re on word 1 and you have 79,999 more to go to reach your goal, you feel like you’ll never make it. And that’s just the writing it down part. Beyond that you have characters to invent. Those characters need backstories and lives of their own. They need names and jobs and families. Trying to plan that all out and get it all down on paper is enough to make you go insane. Becoming a vampire is easy. Living with the condition... that's the hard part. Bleeding to death after brutal mugging, twenty-five year old Alyssa is rescued by the most unlikely hero: the handsome and aloof vampire, Lysander. His gift of immortal blood initiates Alyssa into a frightening, eternally dark world filled with: bloodlust, religious fanaticism, and thousand-year old vendettas. With Lysander as her guide, Alyssa will have to learn what it takes to survive in the immortal world. She'll have to find the strength to accept her new reality and carpe noctem; or give in, and submit to final death. Back when I started writing Immortalis Carpe Noctem, (Book one in my Immortalis series) I let that kind of stuff haunt me. I felt I had to plot everything out. I worried if my chapters would be long enough and if I could really ever hit that magical word count to qualify as a novel. It took me 5 years to finish Immortalis. I kept forcing myself into the little box of plotting out everything down to the smallest detail and then hating where the story went. My characters wouldn’t talk to me, and all because it was in my outline, I kept trying to make them do things that didn’t feel right. Then when a chapter would end before my scheduled word count, I would try to force a chapter past its point. I ended up adding in too much unnecessary detail, because I felt each chapter needed to be a specific length. Eventually, I set the manuscript aside, frustrated with it. While I let that one settle, I allowed myself to "free write," not caring if the story made sense or if it was ever going to be read by anyone. You know what I found out? My muse doesn’t like to be boxed in. I could write thousands upon thousands of words when I removed the limitations of a formal outline and dropped my word count goals. Some authors need that structure and that is great for them. Me, I needed freedom. And I bet a lot of others need it too. Becoming a vampire saved Alyssa from death, but the price was high: the loss of everything and everyone attached to her mortal life. She’s still learning to cope when a surprise confrontation with Santino Vitale, the Acta Sanctorum’s most fearsome hunter, sends her fleeing back to the world she once knew, and Fallon, the friend she’s missed more than anything. Alyssa breaks vampire law by revealing her new, true self to her old friend, a fact which causes strong division in the group that should support her most: her clan. Once I realized that, I went back and rewrote Immortalis Carpe Noctem in a short time. After that, I wrote the sequel, Hunters & Prey, and then the third book, Pandora’s Box (scheduled for release July 12, 2011). It was that "relaxing" and allowing my muse to speak without worry that helped me to finish my story. So now, whenever I see a new writer saying, "Oh, I can’t write. It’s too hard." I tell them the same thing. Just relax. Don’t worry about the end result. Get your story on paper the way you want it. After that, you can worry about "fixing" things. If you can’t get past the initial draft, you will never finish it and make yourself frustrated. After a few months as a vampire, Alyssa thought she’d learned all she needed to know about the supernatural world. But her confidence is shattered by the delivery of a mysterious package – a Pandora’s Box. Seemingly innocuous, the box is in reality an ancient prison, generated by a magic more powerful than anyone in her clan has ever known. But what manner of evil could need such force to contain it? When the box is opened, the sinister creature within is released, and only supernatural blood will satiate its thirst. The clan soon learns how it feels when the hunter becomes the hunted. Powerless against the ancient evil, the clan flees Las Vegas for Boston, with only a slim hope for salvation. Could Lysander’s old journals hold the key? And what if they don’t? And how welcome will they be in a city run by a whole different kind of supernatural being? Werewolves… Thanks for reading, and if you want to check out my work, you can find me at http://www.katiesalidas.com To purchase the Immortalis books (In print and ebook) go to: Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Amazon DE (Germany), Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords.
Hi! I’m Gerry McCullough, born and bred in Belfast Northern Ireland, and now living in County Down, not many miles away from the city. I’m married to Raymond McCullough, a Media Producer and singer/songwriter, and I have four children, now all grown and flown, alas! I’ve been writing since my childhood, almost as long as I’ve been reading, and I’ve had nearly fifty short stories published, some light, some more serious. One of the more serious ones, Primroses, won a prestigious award, the Cuirt Award for New International Writing organized as part of Galway Arts Festival in 2005, and this was a great encouragement to me. It’s been marvellous to see my short stories becoming successful, after many years of failing to get anything published, but recently things have been even better for I achieved a lifetime’s ambition when my full-length novel, Belfast Girls, was accepted for publication by Night Publishing. It’s now out on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, both as paperback and Kindle. Belfast Girls is set mainly in (guess?) Belfast, and it’s about three girls, friends since childhood in spite of their different religious backgrounds, in a country where this has too often been a major source of division. The girls grow up into the emerging post-ceasefire Belfast of material wealth, fashion, drugs, and crime, and this is the story of their lives and loves. Like Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends, even Little Women, this book doesn’t just centre on one character, but perhaps Sheila is nearer to the centre than the other two. Her off-on relationship with the moral, stubbornly judgmental John Branagh runs through the book, and the question ‘Will they get it together or not?’ has kept many readers swiftly turning the pages – or so I’m told. It’s a setting which came naturally to me. I’m concerned about my home city, which I love, and about the way things have been developing there. Also I’m pretty familiar with it, so, hey, it was the easy option, wasn’t it? I’ve always loved reading – I come from a family of readers, so it was the most natural thing in the world to me. Every fortnight I trotted off to the nearest Public Library, the Children’s Section at first, and came home with a careful selection of books by my favourite writers which kept me happy for the next two weeks. If I ran out of library books, there were always plenty of other books in my house, many of them too old for me but that didn’t matter. And the more I read, the more I wanted to write similar books myself. When I began writing, as a child, I probably copied most of my ideas from whichever book I was currently reading, or else from things which had been happening in my life. Naturally, I was my own heroine at that time. Then, as I wrote more, I learned that while other people’s books and my own life can be the spark for inspiration, it’s important to use these and develop my own plot, instead of just lifting chunks and dumping them in raw. If a book is like a meal, then the ingredients won’t necessarily be very different from the usual ones, but it’s what you do with them that matters and how well you cook them. A pinch of something unexpected, some spice here, some sweetener there, and you can create an original dish fit for a king – well, possibly! The same is true of characters. Unless you draw inspiration for your characters from aliens in outer space, they are bound to be drawn from books or from real people. But there’s no need, again, for direct copying. My own characters all have a great deal of me in them. In Belfast Girls Sheila, the ugly duckling who grows up to be a supermodel, has a lot of the shyness and lack of confidence which I experienced in my early teens; Phil, her closest friend, is a much more confident and bouncy person than I ever was, but her reluctance to be involved in her boyfriend Davy’s drug dealing and the moral conflict she goes through are feelings I can easily relate to; while Mary’s spiritual experiences mirror my own quite closely. But none of these three girls are particularly like me, generally speaking. Certainly I’m not tall and red-haired, like the beautiful Sheila. When I began writing, I wrote in the first person. Looking back, I can see that this was because I was mainly still writing about myself, and from my own point of view. Gradually I learnt to be more distanced from my characters, and often used the third person. First person has a lot of problems as far as the plot is concerned. It’s only possible to see the action from one person’s point of view, and this can create huge difficulties. You can find yourself forced to make one of the characters report on the action in a very boring, unsuccessful way whereas with a third person story you can change the point of view when it becomes necessary; and show the action directly instead of telling about it. I use both styles in short stories, but for a longer work I think third person works better. The only other person possible would be second person, and I suppose I’ve used this in a few short stories, addressing the reader as if the first person narrator is speaking directly to them, and making them an actual character, part of the action. I start with one character, and as I write about her or him, I find that they grow and develop without much thought from me. It’s, I suppose, an instinctive process. Plotting, on the other hand, needs a lot of thought. Sometimes it will develop naturally out of the interaction of the characters, and that’s usually the best type of plot. But inevitably, even then, there comes a point where you have to sit down and to some hard work, thinking out how things are going to fit together, and what needs to happen to make the part you’ve already written join onto the part you want to write eventually. I usually have at least some idea of where my book or story is headed, but when I start out I’m often still very vague about how it will get there. That’s where the work comes in.
I’ve developed a habit of writing about a thousand words a day – or at least that’s the plan. Now that the children have left home I have the use of one of our former bedrooms which has been converted to an office for me, and I like to go there reasonably early in the day and work. My system is to reread the bit I wrote on the previous day, edit it as I read, and then move on. This works for me, and overcomes my normal writer’s reluctance to start, because I’m not starting straight in to write. Reading is easy, and editing follows quite naturally, and by then my creativity has begun to flow, and I’m keen to move on with the next part – which usually I’ve been thinking about at intervals overnight. Seeing Belfast Girls published has been wonderful. With the emergence of eBooks, I’m finding that although people certainly buy the paperback, the vast majority of my sales have been on Kindle. It’s been amazing to watch the book make its way up the bestseller lists, reaching No 8 in Women’s Literary Fiction on UK Kindle recently, and being ranked at No 26 in Contemporary Romance on Amazon.com. But at the end of April, I was especially thrilled when the results of the vote for the Night Publishing Book of the Year were announced, and I found that Belfast Girls was the winner of this exciting new award. Unbelievable! Next stop No.1 on the all-genres bestsellers list, and the Booker prize! Okay, not seriously. But I am hoping to keep on moving up, a bit more at least. And well, there’s no harm in dreaming – I’ve seen so many of my childhood dreams come true already! My journey as a writer began a long, long time ago. When I was very small my mother, who was a classic romantic and fantasist, would take me into the garden or to parks and tell me wonderful stories about elves and fairies and flowers that talked. Even now, at forty, she remains my greatest inspiration and I’ve missed her terribly since her death three years ago. It’s difficult to say without it seeming like bragging but I was quite a gifted child, I walked and talked very early and by the time I was seven I was reading the complete works of William Shakespeare and I utterly fell in love with words. Nothing in my life has ever even come close to my passionate love of the written word and my desire to be a story-teller like my mum. I was writing my own, original, albeit not very good, stories before I was ten years old. I wrote anything and everything, poetry, short stories, novel attempts and, as I discovered after her death, my beloved mum kept everything I wrote – no matter how trashy and bad it was. I sent more requests to publishers than I can honestly remember and received enough rejection slips to sink the Titanic. I would cry over my rejection slips for a day or two then get on and write something else and begin the whole process again. My childhood fantasy world led me naturally to the fantasy realm, mainly through role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. Ironically enough, though, I fought this natural progression and tried to write crime thrillers. My research had told me that they were the most popular genre next to romance novels [something I could never write] so I felt that was where I should try my hand first. Many, many rejections followed, although I received some good feedback regarding my writing style, no one in the traditional publishing world wanted to know. Most of those early novels I still have, although whether or not they will ever see the light of day is another story. Perhaps, one day. When I finally turned my hand to writing the fantasy that I’d always loved I was surprised at how easily it came to me. The storyline for Erich’s Plea appeared almost whole in my mind and nagged at me for quite some time before I finally put pen to paper. In some respects it was almost as if I knew, right from the start, that this would be the one. The basic idea for Erich’s Plea and the Witchcraft Wars was the question of human emotion. At the time I was going through a painful broken engagement and had also recently been diagnosed as bi-polar. Those real life experiences of pain and the wonderful people around me who assisted me on my road to ‘sanity’ led me to ask the question of ‘how far would you actually go for someone/thing you loved?’ Thus was born the initial concept of Erich’s Plea. My main character, Slade, is a deeply flawed individual at our first meeting. He threw away his birthright as the Crown Prince and future heir of Vestland because he was rejected by his lover. He found a new love in a spiritual way of life as a druid but when he is imprisoned in Zeaburg, a notorious and hellish place, on trumped up charges he begins his slow evolution. In dreams his father, High King Erich, pleads with Slade for his help. Despite the impossibility of the situation it is Slade’s love of his father that drives him to try and escape the inescapable Zeaburg prison and rescue his father. The cast of characters in the novels are all, in one form or another, driven by powerful human emotions; love, greed, envy, lust for power, revenge and pain. So while The Witchcraft Wars fits easily into the classic fantasy adventure genre it is also, at its heart, a very deep and very real examination of the basest of human emotion. Given the basic premise of the novels all of my characters tend to change and evolve throughout the course of the books. I pushed my characters into uncomfortable situations and thoroughly enjoyed their differing reactions. I tend to be a very character driven writer, one reason I like to write in the ‘all seeing eye’ third person, so my characters are very real to me, as is the world I created. I wanted to create a world that would be utterly believable to the reader and in doing so I used a lot of real world ancient civilizations and mythologies to assist in that task. My own real world journey is reflected very heavily in the trilogy of novels. It is probably because it was so close to home, emotionally, that it actually took me a very long time to write Erich’s Plea, almost two years. The second - Ursula's Quest - and third - Slade's Destiny - novels didn’t take as long to write; probably because I was personally more emotionally and mentally stable but also because the storyline had been virtually written in my head by that stage.
I’m not the most disciplined or organised of writers but I try to write at least four thousand words a day. The great difficulty lies in writing four thousand good words. For every paragraph that I write I probably discard at least three or four and rework it several times before it is polished enough for my standards. I also now use an editor to help with the task of making my work as professional as possible. It is not enough to simply write a good story, it must also be well written technically or you will lose your potential readers as errors throw them out of your fantasy world and back into the real world. Other than that there’s little I can tell you about me as a writer or my books – well I could talk all day but there’s limited room ;) I still love words, still love writing and feel incredibly blessed to be able to do so. I’ve enjoyed being your guest Tim, thank you for the opportunity to tell people a little bit more about me and about The Witchcraft Wars. Cheers, Trace. Contact: Smashwords, Facebook, Blog. I guess these things are supposed to start off with an introduction, so here it goes: Hello everyone, my name is Brian Springer and I have a writing problem. Well, it isn’t really so much a problem as an addiction. Which sort of fits in with the theme too. Because, despite what so many aspiring authors are led to believe, if you’re not addicted to writing, chances are you won’t ever get that book done. There are simply too many distractions out there. I actually started my writing career in earnest while getting my MBA. There I was, listening to a bunch of yahoos talk about what would make the perfect PDA (this was ten years ago, before phones took over for good) when I realized I was bored off my ass. So I started writing a book. I’d always been a heavy reader and a natural writer, so I figured what the hell. Why not give it a shot. So I did, writing a bad 1984 knockoff and finishing it just as I graduated. It sucked, but hey, I proved I could do it. So when the tech bubble burst and there were no jobs out there for a student with a newly-minted MBA, I decided to write another one. So I took a slew of my favorite supernatural authors, (Dan Simmons, Stephen King and Clive Barker) and fused them with my favorite thriller authors (Stephen Hunter, David Morrell, Michael Connelly). My idea was to combine the supernatural with the traditional thriller and create a cross-genre supernatural thriller. After I finished it and sent it out, I had some interested agents, including one from a major agency who like my writing style but didn’t dabble in the supernatural. He persuaded me to write a straight thriller for him, which I did, and after finishing it and sending it to him, he snatched me up. Sweet! So now I had an agent, which as we all know, just means it’s a matter of time until you’re published, right? Well, no. Not exactly. Three years of very polite rejection letters later, we parted ways. So now I had four different books in two different genres sitting around doing nothing. And all attempts at a new book were fizzling out about 100 pages in due to my indecision created by the multiple rejections. So I floundered around for a while, trying to get something to work, when self-publishing began to take off. So I decided to take the plunge. The first book I offered was called Highway To Vengeance, about an ex-Navy SEAL who goes to war with a drug cartel to avenge the death of his wife. The other is Blood Money, about a vigilante-for-hire who is hired to rescue a biologist from a government compound who had just created a cure for AIDS that the government didn’t want getting out. Both are straight thrillers and both were really, really close to being acquired by traditional publishers. The two books have many similarities; both take place in San Diego and surrounding areas, both have similar protagonists, and both are mostly action and dialogue. Highway To Vengeance is written in the first-person while Blood Money is written in the third. Both are challenging point of views for different reasons. When writing in the first-person you have to avoid the tendency to editorialize too much. While in the third person you have to make a conscious effort to get inside the characters head more often. I like that the two books are written in different points of view because it separates the characters and keeps them from becoming too similar. Because, on the surface, they are very similar dudes. I plan to write both as series characters, and the POV differences will help keep the characters separate, or so I hope. I also have a book in mind that will bring the two characters together down the road. In Blood Money, the character (Kelton) is more introverted, so it helps to write him in the third person to keep his motives somewhat mysterious. Highway to Vengeance is a more generic plot, and I think the first-person POV allows me to get inside Highway’s head more, which helps serve to differentiate the book from a typical revenge-style thriller. In both books, the characters are the key. The plot revolves around the characters just as much as the characters inhabit the plot. I think the two elements have to be intimately connected for the book to work as a whole. Both books take place in areas of the country that I have lived in or frequent regularly. I think there is a big advantage when describing a setting if you’re familiar with it. Especially in some of the chase scenes, where an intimate knowledge of the surrounding area can help you avoid clichés associated with such scenes. Highway to Vengeance has some interludes that describe in detail Navy SEAL training, and for those I did a few interviews with people that had gone through (at least a portion of) the training along with multiple viewings of a documentary following one class through the entire 24-week training. It was very odd to have written a book about a clandestine operation involving an infiltration and killing of a possible terrorist involving a Navy SEAL a full four years before the Osama Bin Laden operation. And to have the book published less than a month before the operation actually took place is a strange and wonderful coincidence indeed. As for me, I’ve been writing for almost ten years. I write for a few hours in the morning and a few more after the kids and family go to bed. I’m a night owl by nature, and if it were up to me, I’d sleep from about 4AM to noon every day. With my wife taking care of the real world job stuff, I usually work from midnight to 3:30 AM, wake up at 6:30 to get the kids off to school, then work from 9AM to noon, then sleep from noon to 3:00 and take care of the family until they all go to sleep. It’s funny, even though I’ve been writing for ten years, until a few weeks ago, I’d always tell people I was a stay-at-home dad. But now that I’ve published a couple of books and even sold a few, I can honestly tell people I’m a writer. A slight boost of the old self-esteem there. I’m really surprised at what the self-publishing bit has done for my psyche. For years I’d write what I thought was a good book, sent it out, get a bunch of rejections, and then put it away and start on a new one. And as time went on and the rejections increased, my productivity started to decrease. I still loved to write, but I was so concerned with writing for what I thought someone in the industry wanted that I would get bogged down in my own head and not get much actual writing done. But now that I know there is a market outside of the traditional system, I’m more inclined to write what I think is good and let the traditional system be damned. If they don’t like it, oh well, I’ll just do it myself. So I guess this is where I wrap it up. I hope you didn’t think the above reading was a waste of time, and if you choose to check out any of my books, I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. Thanks Tim, and thanks to whoever slogged through my musings. Highway to Vengeance and Blood Money are available on Amazon in kindle and paperback, Barnes and Noble in nook and paperback, Smashwords, Createspace, and other various ebook outlets. Hi folks, my name is J.E. Taylor and I primarily write thrillers – erotic thrillers, main stream thrillers, YA thrillers – basically books that keep you on edge or get your blood pumping. I’ve been known to write some smut as well, but my preference is the thriller genre because I’m an adrenaline junkie and this feeds my vice. For the longest time I wrote only in third person and this is still my preference, but I entered a short story contest where the parameters stated we had to write in a POV out of our comfort zone. I chose to write in first person and that story – Nightmares – was my first story accepted for publication. Now, a majority of my short stories are in first person. I haven’t tackled a novel in that POV...yet. Early on, I was clueless. I didn’t even know how to write a proper query letter. Having a strong business background, I tackled the query letter like a business introduction letter, introducing me and my goal of being published. An extreme novice mistake. I burned through all my "most-wanted" agent list in a blink before I was invited by another author to join Backspace - a writer’s forum that changed my life. My Backspace brethren were very patient with me, showing me the errors of my ways and helping me develop as a writer. The best $40 per year investment a writer can make is joining this forum. In my early submission days, people kept referring to passive voice and needing to get into a character’s head and at first I had no clue what that meant. I decided to take some online writing courses to hone my craft and to not be so clueless. The best writing courses by far were through Margie Lawson, and I’d highly suggest them to any writer no matter where they are in their writing career. In these classes, I learned the art of writing for impact, of editing for freshness and depth and annihilating passive voice. My writing became much more active and compelling because of this and I took those poorly written manuscripts and revised them again and again until they shined. Another experience that has helped me grow as a writer is offering critiques and operating as an assistant editor at Allegory e-zine. I learned the critical need to hook a reader within the first page. If you don’t make the reader care or at least curious enough to turn the page, they won’t continue reading and you’ve lost the battle. After figuring out how to write a query and revising those first pages to have maximum impact did I start to get requests for partials and full manuscripts, it was also the precursor to getting that first publishing contract with eXcessica for my erotic Games thriller series. The day I got the acceptance was exciting, however, the most memorable moment in my career to date was participating on a writing panel at the May 2010 Backspace Conference called Writing From the Edge: Sin, Sex and Similar Taboos. Little ol’ me on a writing panel, talking as if I was an expert – discussing the art of including sex scenes in your novel without being gratuitous. The awe in the audience’s gaze threw me for a loop - they were looking at me the way I looked at David Morrell the year before and I am in no way in the same league as Mr. Morrell. It was the most humbling experience, and the most memorable. As far as writing itself is concerned, I love the act of creating new worlds, of playing God with my characters, of having control of the direction of the story – well, I’m in control most of the time – sometimes the characters revolt and take over. Although there are trying times as a writer when you’re stuck in the mud and don’t know how to get from one scene to the next, or you’re just not in the mood to write and the drivel that comes out screams with your lack of enthusiasm. But then again, isn’t that what editing is for? I also love creating my own cover art. I’ve actually pulled all the photos for my covers from either 123RF Photo or Romance Novel Covers and worked with a wonderful cover artist – Willsin Rowe when I was stuck or wanted feedback. He has done four of the six published novel covers and has also done video trailers for both Survival Games and Hunting Season. Which brings me to what I’m doing now – I’m on a lovely contest and blog tour to promote my newest release, Hunting Season. For rules, see my April 29th Blog and don’t forget to leave a comment here on this post!
Here’s the blurb for the book along with the first chapter to whet your whistle... When Kyle Winslow escapes from custody and targets everyone Special Agent Steve Williams cares about, a turn of fate brings Steve face to face with Ty Aris – a criminal mastermind topping the FBI’s most wanted list. Torn between justice and vengeance, Steve must make a decision. Join alliances with Ty, or arrest him and lose his best chance to catch the bastard who destroyed his family. "Unstoppable, breath stealing, and terrifying all at once." - Cat Connor, author of Killerbyte, Terrorbyte, and Exacerbyte. "Hunting Season goes where few venture, mixing a compelling crime thriller with supernatural forces. The action and drama is thick and fast and I guarantee you will not be able to put this book down." - Poppet, author of Seithe and Darkroom. Chapter 1 Fubar. The thought produced a quiet humph and Steve studied the falling snow outside the window, waiting. His fingers rose to the eye-patch, grazing the pliable material that covered the hollowness of the socket underneath. A shiver rippled through him and he clenched his teeth. He flexed his right hand. After six months of physical therapy, he still didn’t have the dexterity to shoot straight and his arm constantly ached where the bone splintered. His leg screamed whenever a low-pressure-system arrived; making his slight limp more prevalent, and right now, it throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Sighing, he returned his attention to the swirling white flakes. Dr. Montgomery, the FBI sponsored psychiatrist assigned to his case, slipped into the room and took a seat, opening Steve’s file. He adjusted his spectacles before resuming where they left off. "You need to deal with what happened, Steve." "The son of a bitch is still out there." Dr. Montgomery leaned forward and folded his arms on his desk. They had been through this routine a dozen times in the past few months. Dr. Montgomery, always calm and reasonable, and Steve, always falling back to his unimpassioned crime scene analysis, avoiding the trauma he endured. Steve watched the snowfall for a few minutes before continuing. "I’m an FBI agent. I should be out there looking for him." He attempted to skirt his emotions, again. "And what does the husband and father part feel?" Steve’s jaw clenched. "I’m not sure I want to answer that." "Why not?" Steve turned toward Dr. Montgomery. "Because you’ll never clear me for active duty." "Anger is a perfectly normal emotion Steve." Steve scoffed and turned, catching his reflection in the glass. A single unwavering azure eye stared back. He ground his teeth so hard they ached before meeting the doctor’s gaze. "He blew up my daughter." "Keep going." Dr. Montgomery said. "I want to kill him!" Steve closed his eyes, willing the rabid dog inside to stay caged. He drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly, fogging the windowpane in front of him. Steve turned his head toward the doctor. Fury coursed through his veins. He clenched his jaw and pulled the air in through his nose before he continued. "I should have shot him when I walked in the door." "Why didn’t you?" That question plagued Steve at least a dozen times a day since the explosion. If he had, Jennifer wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed with no hope of recovery. Instead, he paused and that cost him his daughter and his wife. "He had a detonator in his hand and he said if I didn’t put the gun down, he’d blow up Samantha." Steve’s jaw worked overtime grinding his teeth. Anger pulsed through his body, making the tips of his fingers and toes tingle and his skin burn. The rage consumed Steve. Raw, unbridled, unstoppable rage. Rage because he was stupid. Rage because his baby girl was dead. Rage because Kyle escaped. Steve’s breath came in short gasps. His jagged nails dug into the soft flesh of his palms, tempering the rage a notch. Slowly, he uncurled his fists, stretching his fingers as he stared at the floor. "The fucker’s still out there. And he isn’t done with me yet." I’m rather new to the writing game, though I’ve always put pen to paper in some form or another: poetry, essays, journaling, etc. The Time Baroness came upon me as a surprise, because I never intended to write a novel, but as an avid reader of 19th century English literature, I started fantasizing about what it would be like to live in the time-period of some of my favorite authors, especially Jane Austen. I didn’t want to be the heroines in their novels; I wanted to be me, a woman from the 21st century, visiting that time period, having interesting experiences and perhaps meeting some dashing chap. So one night as I lay in bed waiting to drift off, probably after reading a Jane Austen novel, I started to tell myself the story of a beautiful red-headed woman, a brilliant scientist and virtuoso pianist who time travels to the early 19th century, rents a mansion in County Hampshire, and begins to insinuate herself into the neighborhood. She meets a handsome violinist and they have an affair. (Cassandra, as I call my protagonist. is a much more attractive and talented version of myself.) It was just a silly fantasy at first, but then I started to think about the logistics: how would the time-travel happen? How would she manage to just appear there in the past? What might happen to complicate things? What would throw a monkey-wrench into her plan? I developed the story night after night, lying there in bed, and when eventually it got so interesting that I couldn’t sleep, I knew I had to write it down. It took me four years to get from that fantasy to my published e-book, my first draft hand-written in a series of notebooks, then many, many subsequent computer drafts, reader critiques, agent rejections and one acceptance, and finally several months working with a professional editor who taught me some things I really needed to know about writing a novel. Originally, I didn’t think about The Time Baroness belonging to a particular genre, though obviously it lends itself to Romance. Ultimately, I realized that its category is: "Time-travel fiction with a romantic/scifi theme." The scifi is a natural result of the time-travel, but I also put a lot of thought into the logistics of the science, and since the heroine comes from the future, and I describe that future to some extent, it has more of a scifi lean than other time-travel romances I’ve read. All in all, I’m not a big romance reader because when I’m not reading classic literature, I will delve into some pretty hard-core science fiction. Thus my novel was written for a reader like me: basically a woman who likes a dose of romance and/or sex in her reading but also likes a smart story. It’s a book for "nerd-girls" as I like to say, those of us who love everything from Jane Austen to Neil Gaiman. Since I’m also an actress, and my husband is a film-maker, we had an idea to do a You-tube series of me reading Pride and Prejudice, in anticipation of reading my own book. Well, I’ve only made it about 16 chapters into Pride and Prejudice; I do intend to finish it and then get started on reading The Time Baroness, and then also make it into an audio book since my husband is just the tech guy that could make that happen. But of course, all these projects can get in the way of the actual writing, as does all the promotion. But I am a disciplined writer who will set aside everything to get down to the writing. Between blogs, newspaper articles, theatre and movie reviews and the development of my second novel, The Time Goddess, a sequel to The Time Baroness, I try to put in an hour or two of writing every day, sometimes more. And I teach English as a Second Language (ESL). So it does take determination to get on that computer and make it happen. Finally I just want to give a shout out to the designers of my cover, which I think is so incredibly beautiful, sensual and elegant. Mostly it was my dad’s concept, Bill Josh Young: www.fundingbydesign.org. But since his health wasn’t great at the time he was designing it, my husband Jonathan Ellis stepped in and put on the finishing touches. My husband wears many hats, media guru that he is, and here’s the link to his website: www.ltbprod.com. He and I have a philosophy: make art. It’s as simple as that. "I’m telling mom!" As a child, that exclamation became my mantra as I cried all the way to her feet while trying to recount why those tears flowed. Each time, I found that unless the situation could be remedied by me that I’d weep - again. I wrote diaries galore about being the ‘middlest’ child in the middle of dysfunction; therefore, my first nom de plume could have been Cry Baby; mom jokingly nicknamed me Cinder Ella. Was she insinuating that my siblings might not be fully related to me or that I was worthy of Prince Charming? My latest release is a children’s book called Just ME; the main character daydreams about being someone famous and special; she’s wishing her life away! Going back to my roots, strangely, God led me to my first published book when I was aged thirty-three; it’s a tale that may make everyone cry with me before they spot the miracles inside that book entitled: Mom’s on the Roof and I Can’t Get Her Down. Before I wrote that story about ‘life after death,’ Christian based NDEs, and dying, my career centred on computers as a ‘system analyst’ college major. It makes sense that my first book would be non-fiction; although, some might call it fantasy. Those readers who make it to the end call it things such as fantastic, amazing, compelling, miraculous, and wonderful. Now, that that’s out of the way, when I write non-fiction, I’m telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth and use my name or Cynthia Meyers-Hanson. If I’m going to embellish, take poetic license, and tell my side of - I mean the main character’s side of - a story this author uses my pen name or Sydney S. Song. We both tend to write in the first person point of view but Sydney writes novels and fiction - or does she? Most of my nom de plume’s tales are merging of things I witnessed or heard about - you know gossip. My stories come from real life because I once heard that’s the best way to write. I take facts then twist, turn, and embellish them while stringing an array of unrelated tales into one unit or novel, which means those around me as well as my readers should NOT know I wrote about them but they should totally relate to the storyline. I hope! Without a strong literature background, being a system’s analyst and computer programmer after college, having a math background, I write linear. My chapters are subsets, unions of facts, and compartmentalised with my own flare for keeping secrets and punch lines until needed to finish a short story within a larger piece. I do remember a high school writing teacher saying, "New authors tend to bring the reader to their height of the plot too soon, which makes the last parts of their book the denouement an unending reiteration or rant of their punch line." Another instructor’s favourite line was, "Show me; don’t tell me!" Both teachers wanted more left to the imagination as well as fully developed and clarified storylines but not essay style tales. In the beginning, my job was to take my endless diaries of a Cry Baby and convert them to inspirational tales if I could. If not, with a bit more embellishing or clever weaving of unrelated tales, Sydney writes fictions and fantasy for adults. By the way, I publish my children’s books under my real name, Cynthia or Cindy. Most of my novels take place in Florida but I tend to describe the places more like Hemingway would. I don’t mean I cuss; I mean I use fewer adjectives than most fiction authors. I tend to write less frilly than those who start out to be a novelist. In fact, my first few books and half of them to date are non-fiction. Meanwhile, I’ll lead the reader to my idea but never force them to accept my thoughts. Plus, I love to leave people second guessing what just happened until they solve the problem themselves. Thus, as I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, the question that haunts me and my work is, "Am I leaving too much to my audience’s imagination?" Speaking of questioning literature, my novels tend to focus on real life issues and questions such as, "What if a similar murder occurred more than one time in a family? Is there a serial killer after them? If so, who or what is plaguing the main character as she searches for resolution to deaths?" This story is not just about this generational issue; it follows a true love story or two as the plot unwinds pointing to the true killer. When you figure out Helen’s stalker, you’ll see why I call this novel Surreal- The Hell in the Family. That narrative was revised so many times over four years that it became three separate manuscripts - at one point. In the end, I merged two back into that novel; it follows a love story triangle and consequences of the first murder through a second or third generation. The third piece is in a book entitled, The Vision, a much more upbeat saga by the end. My books from non-fiction to novels take varying amounts of time to compose from years to months. The Choice only took three months to write and is a fun, light hearted, love story with a heavy theme. The plaguing issue is, "What if you fooled around then fell in love but had HIV?" This book gives one set of answers to that question as well as asking "How would you or would you suffer your unrequited love? Would you take the chance of killing your best friend and best partner otherwise known as the love of your life?" The storyline borrows from true love stories that I heard in the past fifty plus years merging them with the potential realities of AIDS. You’ll never see the end of this story coming - unless you read that book backwards. It was my favourite one to combine into romance literature or "chick lit." I did so while listening to upbeat music and travelling from my childhood in Miami to my current location in Florida; most of my fiction unfold in tropical or subtropical settings because it’s what I know. I share it all with my reader leaving some things to the imagination, which is why this novel could be PG-13 rated. Helen is the lead character in Surreal- The hell in the Family, The Choice, and The Vision, which are three of my four novels and Sydney’s trilogy. The main lady in all of them is definitely strong-willed but very aware of others around her. The three books have been interwoven to distract people from trying to discover who Helen or the other characters may be in ‘real life! In other words, even though I drew from my experiences, the three literary pieces are NOT a bit related in reality; the storylines are gross exaggerations as well as COMPLETE fabrications! Any similarities to my family, friends, or anyone’s life are purely a coincidence. Meanwhile, these novels grew to be a bit of a soap opera as I doled out ‘presumed gossip’ with poetic license and embellishments! By the way, I have a friend that went from casual reader to helping me with my work; she edits my books for free just to be able to be the first to know what becomes of Helen; she wants to see how the soap opera unravels, turns out, and ends. If something sparks my interest, I’ll write about it. Recently, I tried my hand at children’s books coming up with three very unique and happy books. I’m doing the artwork myself. In fact, I do my own covers for all my books; my goal is to owe no one for my success or failure - except maybe my friends and family. Because - I write based on inspiration, when I do, I’m extremely focused. Usually, the words drop into my text readily and a book completes without any outline, planning, or forethought. My only exception is the cutting and pasting I did to tear The Vision from Surreal- The Hell in the Family’s pages. My style and writing developed from my first book by Cynthia Meyers-Hanson entitled: Mom’s on the Roof and I Can’t Get Her Down. I wrote furiously trying to capture the nuances of each miracle within that story as well as my mother’s predictions before I forgot them. Tweaking came later but plopping all the text into a manuscript before editing, organizing, or cleaning up my thoughts became my style. It’s important to mention why I became a writer here. I compiled mom’s book due to popular demand. Many miracles, predictions, and renditions of her Christian based NDE filtered into my community via Hospice; I wanted people to get the story right. This book led to two more non-fictions before I did my first co-authored piece with a new friend. In my fourth book, Wavie and I wrote about her accident induced coma during a pregnancy as well as her daughter’s and her miraculous recovery from that car wreck. It’s another Christian based NDE as well as real life drama. That book is entitled Through the Storms HE Performs. After that production, ghostwriting, co-authoring, and mentoring followed resulting in seventeen published stories that I’ve touched in some way, shape, or form in the past twenty years. I keep no rejection letters or negativity around me; it weighs you down in life - not just in your writing. It hasn’t been an easy road that I’ve travelled! I’ve fallen prey to cheats! A publisher took advantage of me with my first book never paying me a dime of royalties. Instead of suing and wasting time, after mastering the school of hard knocks, I went indie. Unfortunately, to date, that theft has been the most memorable experience for me; I read my contracts better now. The incident launched me into self-sufficiency. I rely on advice from other writers more than from the counterpart world of book writing or publishing groups. That experience explains why I’m on my own not even trying to establish my books on the traditional route; I’m leery and suspicious of people’s true intentions. Instead of query letters to editors and agents, I’m focused on book deals in the arena of made for TV movies, big screen scripts, and, other similar media ventures. My area for improvement has got to be establishing more and better PR. That’s why I volunteer to answer blogger’s questions. It’s why I freely donate fiction and non-fiction stories to good causes such as the With Love Project, which aids Japan after their tsunami and earthquake damage. It explains why I quickly composed an essay featured as the first one in You Don’t Know My Story. My thoughts from that book inspired The Vision, which was my last adult level fiction. As long as a link back to my work for sale gets mentioned in the anthology, blog, or any media based story; I’m as happy as a clam on the beach in Florida where I live and my fodder for my books comes from. I hope that all my writing will one day see the light of day! I think that my books and novels reveal how I’ve grown as an author. The book I’m most proud of when it comes to non-fiction is my first saga entitled Mom’s on the Roof and I Can’t Get Her Down. That one has many afterlife experiences in it as well as predictions about future events. It now has a companion book. As my last non-fiction, the counterpart to my mother’s tale, or My ArmOr unfolds - its text proves that my mom’s predictions’ source was God. Her prophesy is coming true years after that book’s copyright date. Meanwhile, MyArmOr is also about my life changing trip that made me a bionic woman and writer. In spite of my many tragedies and losses, you see the triumph and candor in that book. While in the emergency room, I say things to my doctor and his staff such as, "I lost my Humerus bone but not my funny bone AKA the humorous one!" After reading that non-fiction, you’ll know that I’m no longer a Cry Baby. I’m Just ME - Cynthia Meyers-Hanson AKA Sydney S. Song. Additional links: Paperbacks; Smashwords; LARGE TYPE Excepts; Blog. |
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