J B McCauley Talks About Creating a Great Work Area for Inspiration @MccauleyJay #WriteTip

How to Create a Great Work Area for Inspiration

For me, I don’t hold much sway with that Feng Shui stuff. For me writing must be done in your space. Your place. Don’t compromise. Don’t let anyone encroach on your empire. This is after all where you do your work after all. It is not an area for people to decorate with their bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam. When it comes to how you work that is very personal thing. Because I am also a DJ and like dabbling with audio production my desk is vast and rambling however I set aside a little corner of that world purely for writing. So amongst the clutter and the cables, I have a little bit of peace.

Most importantly for me though it must be comfortable. I sometimes write up to six hours a day so my chair just has to be ergonomically designed. It has to hug my back and support my neck but not be so luxurious that I fall asleep. Secondly I need to be able to shut the door. There is nothing worse than being interrupted when you are mid-flow. Some people don’t understand this and think you are being rude. I go one step further sometimes and stick a do not disturb sign on the door.

Thirdly, despite being so in touch with my social media responsibilities, I turn them all off. The cell phone too. Don’t expect irreverent Facebook or Twitter comments whilst I am thumping the keys. It just doesn’t happen. If I am concentrating on other things then it shows in my writing.

Really this extends to nearly everything associated with the writing process. Don’t get distracted. I can procrastinate with the best of them. I think every writer is capable of that. I think I have attempted chores never previously started by man whilst in the midst of a deadline. All because I had something to challenge me other than a paragraph.

Lastly I write with a musical accompaniment but I try to match the music to the piece I am writing. Music can really affect the words that flutter onto the page. There is no point listening to some hapless pop tune whilst writing a piece that is dark and foreboding. It just doesn’t help. To accomplish this I try to plain out what I am writing that day and match the music accordingly.
Because music plays such an important part in my writing process I have to have the sound system to match. Consequently my music can be heard in the next town as clear as a bell. People know when I am writing because the music is cranking!

At the end of the day though everyone writes differently but I would say feeling comfortable in that writing space is essential. If you feel that you write at your best whilst on top of Mount Everest being stalked by a Yeti, I say climb that peak. Just remember to take some batteries for the lap top.

The King of Sunday Morning is a geezer. Not in the traditional sense of the word as in old man. This geezer is a face, a wannabe, a top notch bloke. He is the greatest DJ that never was. He should have been. Could have been. Would have been. Now becoming a has-been.

Tray McCarthy was born into privilege but with the genetic coding of London’s violent East End. Having broken the underworld’s sacred honour code, it is only his family’s gangland connections that save him. But in return for his life, he must deny that which he has ever known or ever will be and runs to Australia where he is forced to live an inconsequential life.

But trouble never strays far from Tray McCarthy and eventually his past and present collide to put everyone he has ever loved in danger. He must now make a stand and fight against those that are set to destroy him and play their game according to his rules.

Set against the subterfuge and violence of the international drugs trade, The King of Sunday Morning is the tale of what can go wrong when you make bad decisions. Tray McCarthy has made some of the worst. He must now save those he holds dear but in the process gets trapped deeper and deeper into a world where he doesn’t belong.

“I want three pump-action shotguns, about twelve sticks of dynamite and a blowtorch”

THIS BOOK CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE, FREQUENT DRUG USE AND SEX SCENES – NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PEOPLE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE

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Genre – Thriller, Action, Suspense, Gangster, Crime, Music

Rating – PG-18

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Rayne Hall Shares Her Inspiration from Places @RayneHall #WriteTip #AmWriting #Horror

Inspiration from Places
by Rayne Hall 

“Where do you find your ideas?” people often ask me.

The truth is, I don’t find ideas. Ideas find me.

Like ghosts, they seek me out, haunt me, and don’t let go until the story is written.

My mind is like a revolving drum filled with hundreds of jigsaw pieces, each representing a story idea. Sometimes two or more pieces click together, and that’s when a story takes shape.

The location is often among the first jigsaw pieces to click. The setting lends atmosphere and determines the flavour of the story. Some of the places in my stories are real, others exist only in my imagination, while yet others are a blend of the real and the imagined.

Many of the stories in Thirty Scary Tales are inspired by the places where I have lived and travelled in Britain. I live in a small dilapidated town of former Victorian grandeur on the south coast of England, and if you know the region, you may recognise the landscapes that inspired some of the tales.

The southeast of England has many village churches from the Norman period and the Middle Ages, many of them in isolated locations, often surrounded by tilting, lichen-encrusted gravestones. To research Take Me To St. Roch’s I spent a night in one of those old cemeteries, taking notes about every flickering shadow and every creepy noise. I jotted down how the wooden gate creaked on unoiled hinges, how the gravel crunched under my steps, and how the twigs of the trees beckoned like skeleton fingers, withered and pale.

Locals know what a menace herring gulls can be, but well-meaning tourists always feed them leftovers from their fish&chips takeaway, and this encourages the birds to even more aggression. Like daring highwaymen, they swoop and rob anyone holding food. I live in a top floor flat near the seafront. Every morning, seagulls hammer their beaks on my windows as if trying to break the glass. Watching them gave me the idea for the Seagulls story.

Never Leave Me was the first horror story I ever wrote, a long time ago. Inspiration came from reading about the archaeological discovery of the mummified “Druid Prince” and from a visit to the wind-swept Yorkshire Moors.

When the tide is out, it’s possible to walk on the seabed below the chalk cliffs, across black boulders and rust-coloured shingle. The air smells of salt and seaweed. Waves swish and slurp across the shingle, and in the distance, seagulls squawk. On one side, the sea glints like a diamond-studded sheet, on the other, the steep cliffs tower like unassailable fortress walls, a sublime sight. But woe when the tide comes rolling in while you’re still on the seabed! With no accessible path for miles, you’ll be trapped between the rock face and the smashing waves. In Double Rainbows, I imagined this scenario. What happens if you realise you got the time wrong?

The ferocious force of wind and waves sometimes erodes the cliffs and breaks off whole sections. The first time I walked below Fairlight Cliffs, the sight made my throat constrict. A large chunk of the cliff had recently fallen, leaving houses half destroyed, half standing. From below, I could see the inside of living rooms and kitchens, still furnished, as if any moment the inhabitants would enter. For years, the sight haunted me, but I could not come up with a story. Then St Leonards Writers decided to write stories about a local area, the so-called America Ground. Around the same time, I revisited Hastings Castle, which was partially destroyed during a violent storm 1287 when part of the cliff on which it stood fell. The three places – Fairlight, Hastings Castle, America Ground – clicked together, and I placed my story Scruples during the 1287 storm.

I had long mulled over a ghost story idea, but could not bring it to life until the plot clicked with several places from my memory. I recalled the railway tunnel next to the station where I used to wait after school for the train home, its entrance gaping like a black, hungry mouth. This combined with memories of travels in Wales, of steep slopes, grey slate houses, and drizzling rain. The story Through the Tunnel is the result.

The Devil You Know started with the memory of a night I spent as a young woman on a platform at Richmond station, waiting for the morning train to take me home, trying to sleep while the cold from the metal bench seeped through my thin dress. I kept the bench but moved it to an imaginary railway station on the Kent-Sussex border. Many of the small railway stations these days are unstaffed most of the time, with the waiting rooms and toilets locked, and the help points are often out of order.
Many years ago, I joined a group of divers for a holiday in Dorset. I couldn’t dive – I still can’t – but I listened to them as they talked about their plans for the day, and discussed the adventures at the evening campfire. I wondered if a wreck could be haunted, and what would be the worst thing that could go wrong on a dive. The divers were eager to help me with their know-how. The resulting story was I Dived the Pandora, which has been published in several versions. The current version is set in Sussex.

The main idea for Four Bony Hands haunted me for many years. What if the events in a certain fairytale didn’t happen quite the way everyone believes? After several abandoned attempts, another jigsaw piece clicked: the place was a cosy interior, heated by a big oven, providing shelter from the cold weather, refuge from persecution, and sanctuary from evil. Although the story takes place indoors, you can imagine the pine and oak woods surrounding the cottage, snow-laden like the Scottish forests in winter.

Beltane was my entry for a contest where each writer has twenty-four hours to create a complete story about a given topic. The theme was something about a blind fruit vendor and a young female customer. It was the first of May – the date of the traditional Celtic Beltane festival – and fresh green leaves and white blooms covered the trees, so I decided to set the story in ancient England in Celtic times. What did the blind vendor know that the girl did not? The story didn’t win, but I liked it, and a year later I wrote a more polished version.

Stone circles hold a deep fascination for me, and there are many of them in Britain. I’ve visited many stone circles, from the big ones like Avebury and Stonehenge to the ones which are so small they’re hard to spot among the bracken, from the major tourist attractions to the unknown ones, accessible only after a long hike, climbing across stiles and squeezing through thorny brambles. My favourites are the stone circles of Cornwall: Tregeseal, Merry Maidens, Boscawen-Un and all the others. Sometimes I would reach an out-of-the way place and discover that a previous visitor had left an offering, such as a posy of wildflowers, which always delighted me. On one occasion, though, I was disconcerted to find the offering was the flattened, fire-parched body of a frog. Readers familiar with Cornwall will recognise the landscape in the story Druid Stones and may even guess which circle was the fictional inspiration for the Dredhek Stones.

Burning was one of the most difficult stories I’ve ever written, and I believe it’s one of my best. Several places combined in my mind to form the inspiration. The first was a house on fire in the neighbourhood. My father forced me to watch it burn, even though at the age of seven I was upset and terrified. The second was also a house that burned out. This time, I did not witness the inferno, but I heard afterwards that the Turkish family who lived there had not been able to get out. Their charred skeletons told how they had cowered in the corner as the flames devoured them, and the father had shielded his daughters with his own body for as long as he could. This moved me deeply, and then I heard someone say “They were only Turks. Good riddance to the vermin.”

Later, I learnt about the atrocities committed against Jews during the Nazi period. In the town of my birth, locals burnt the synagogue and then built a church on that spot. In a nearby town, the eager citizens went even further: they locked the Jewish population into the synagogue before they set it on fire. The fire brigade, instead of putting out the flames, fanned and fed them, and made sure none of the Jews could escape. Much later, after the al-Qaeda bombings in London, a wave of burning hatred against Arabs swept through England, and it frightened me. Burning houses, churches, racial hatred, hypocrisy, a scared child witnessing events she cannot understand… these elements clicked together into a disturbing tale of human evil.

The story Only a Fool started with a real incident. As a young woman, I lived in London. One night I walked home from the Tube station when a drunken man attacked me, and I was saved by my wits and vivid imagination. For the story, I added memories of the many places where I had been nervous to walk alone, the kind of alley where shattered windows wink in the sparse light and footsteps echo as loud as your thudding heart.

I enjoy evoking the atmosphere of a place with the senses of sound, touch and smell.

My stories involve little violence. They are horror, but not of the slash-and-gore type with chainsaw massacres and lakes of blood. My brand of horror is of the suspenseful, creepy kind. Where other horror writers shock their readers with graphically mangled corpses, I tantalise mine with with places that ooze creepy atmosphere.

Thirty creepy, atmospheric stories by Rayne Hall.

The horror in these stories is spooky, creepy, unsettling and sometimes disturbing. It is not very violent or gory; however, the stories may not be suitable for young readers without parental guidance. PG 13.

This book is a compilation of volumes 1-5 of the Six Scary Tales books. It includes the acclaimed stories Burning and The Bridge Chamber.

All stories have been previously published in magazines, ezines, collections and anthologies. British English.

Stories in collection include:
The Devil You Know, Greywalker, Prophetess, Each Stone A Life, By Your Own Free Will, The Bridge Chamber, Only A Fool, Four Bony Hands, The Black Boar, Double Rainbows, Druid Stones, Burning, Scruples, Seagulls, Night Train, Through the Tunnel, Black Karma, Take Me To St. Roch’s, Turkish Night, Never Leave Me, The Colour of Dishonour, Beltane, The Painted Staircase, I Dived The Pandora, Terre Vert and Payne’s Grey, They Say, Tuppence Special, Disturbed Sleep, Normal Considering the Weather, Arete.

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Genre – Horror

Rating – PG-13

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Booksigning & Convention Tips from James Shipman @jshipman_author #AmReading #WriteTip

Booksigning& Convention Tips

Booksigning at an author convention/comicon, etc. can be a tough assignment for an unknown author.  I’ve attended five or six conventions in the past two years.  I have a little bit of an audience at this point so I have the periodic fan that just wants to run up and have their book signed or buy a book to sign. That is a gratifying, ego boosting event.  However most of the time the sales are hard work.

The first thing I would suggest is having quality presentation materials.  You don’t have to go overboard but at a minimum have a good sized poster board printed of your cover and display that on an easel behind your chair.  Also have a small easel to display a book (or books) on the table itself.  I also would suggest having quality business cards prepared that not only list your book but reference all of your various social media and an email address.

When you are sitting at the table you are going to have to cold sell to customers who know absolutely nothing about you.  I recommend you practice a fifteen second blurb about your book.  Ask people if they are interested in your genre first, and if there is a well known writer that you feel would have a similar audience, you may want to ask them if they like “so and so.”  Then hit them with your pitch of the book.  Also hand them a book to look through.  Once it’s in their hands you have a better chance that they will actually buy the book.  I also like to include any statistic you have about your book.  If you’ve hit the top 100 on Amazon even for thirty seconds for your genre, tell them about that.  You can often get your book into the top 100 on Amazon for free books if you’ve run a promotion, even if that is all you have to hold on to, tell them about it.  People react very well to the concept that your book is a bestseller or has sold well.  If they decide not to buy tell them about your less expensive kindle version and give them a card.

Every single sale is a victory.  If you are a new writer, when you make a sale, you are getting to sign a book and give it to a reader.  That is an amazing thing.  I’ve sold a few hundred books at a convention and also 25, the total number doesn’t matter.  Get out there and enjoy yourself.

In 1453 Constantinople is the impregnable jewel of the East. It has stood as the greatest Christian city for a millennium as hordes have crashed fruitlessly against its walls.

But Mehmet II, the youthful Sultan of the Ottoman Turks, has besieged the city. His opponent is Constantine XI, the wise and capable ruler of the crumbling Eastern Roman Empire. Mehmet, distrusted by his people and hated by his Grand Vizer, must accomplish what all those before him have failed to do: capture Constantinople. To prove that he deserves the throne that his father once took from him, Mehmet, against all advice, storms the city. If he fails, he will not only have failed himself and his people, but he will surely lose his life.

On the other side of the city walls, the emperor Constantine must find a way to stop the greatest army in the medieval world. To finance his defenses, he becomes a beggar to the Pope, the Italian city-states, and the Hungarians. But the price for aid is high: The Pope demands the Greeks reunite the Eastern and Western churches and accept the Latin faith. If Constantine wants aid for his people he must choose between their lives and their souls.

Two leaders, two peoples, two faiths battle for their future before the mighty walls of Constantinople.

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Genre – Historical Fiction

Rating – PG

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Website http://james-shipman.com

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J.L. Myers' on What Inspired Her to Write Her Book @BloodBoundJLM #Paranormal #Romance

What Inspired Me to Write My Book

Many people, situations and circumstances brought me to where I am today, and created the person I have become. All these things now drive my need to write.

In the beginning my decision to write a novel, although lighthearted, came from darker and much more desperate place. It was in the months following the birth of my son, the angel of my life and the one thing that makes me continue on each day. Apart from having an emergency C-section, followed by many other issues after his birth, postpartum depression set in.

With a family history of depression, postpartum wasn’t unexpected, especially given my prior history and longstanding struggle with anxiety. But this was monumentally different. Many things made me feel like an inadequate mother, wife, and even human being. I was sinking fast.

Reading became my escape from reality. The only problem was that the stories I was reading didn’t speak to the pain I was feeling. So I had an idea, a last stitch effort to reach out for something to hold on to.

This was my light bulb moment.

I would write my own story, the story I wanted and needed to read, and a story where the turmoil of my current and previous struggles were the driving force.

That day the first words to What Lies Inside were written, and something amazing was started. More than an escape, the determination to write this story gave me a purpose. It became a channel to take everything I was feeling—the anger, the regret, the despair, the betrayal, the disappointment and the loneliness—and turn it into an outlet that helped me through one of the darkest periods of my life.
That pain is behind me now, for the most part, but my need to write has remained. There is a life of experiences that drive my pen to scrawl across paper or my fingers to dance over the computer’s keyboard. So with many years of life left, I don’t see that slowing down any time soon.

This is my story, one of many, and this is where it all began…

Amelia Lamont never asked to unleash her inner vampire

 

Amelia’s normal teen world is shattered when a terrifying nightmare awakens the monster inside her. A newfound, insatiable thirst for blood that leads her to drain the school quarterback is only the beginning; she’s horrified to discover that her family and best friend Kendrick have been harboring the secret all along. And is the strangely alluring boy who seems hell-bent on curbing her murderous, blood-filled desires a friend, or foe? 

To escape detection Amelia and her twin brother Dorian are forced to move to a new town, and the challenge of a new, exclusive high school where nearly every classmate smells like prey. Including the irresistible Ty, who seems hauntingly familiar, yet darkly menacing … 

Amelia’s disturbing dreams and entanglement in a web of forbidden romance render her increasingly powerless against the chilling lies and secrets of vampire power struggles. And, as she soon discovers, vampire politics mixed with outlawed love can be a lethal cocktail. 

Falling in love may just cost Amelia everything: her friends, her family…even her life

 

Move over Twilight, True Blood and Underworld! J.L. Myers’ first book in the Blood Bound series will have you swooning for more! 

Warning – This book contains some language and sexual situations. 

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Genre – YA Paranormal Romance

Rating – PG-13+

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Website http://bloodboundnovels.com

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Jennifer Cornet – What to look for in a Critique Buddy @J_Cornet

What to look for in a Critique Buddy
If you are a writer, one of the first things you will discover is that it is easy to find people willing to tell you your writing is awesome. You pass your work out to friends and family and all you receive back are glowing reviews and pats on the back. Now tell me, how helpful is that really? If everything is great, how can you improve? The hard truth is although nice things are great to hear, they don’t help you in the long run.
What you need is someone who can be open and honest with you about both the good and the bad in your work. You need a critique buddy. You can find a buddy almost anywhere. You can enlist someone you already know, perhaps a friend you feel you work well with. Or you can find a fellow writer in a writer’s group. Both options work as long as the person has a few important attributes. They must be honest, constructive, and unattached.
For a person, whether a friend or someone you’ve met at a writers group, to make a good critique buddy they have to be willing to dish out bad news. Ask yourself this: Would they let you walk out of the house looking like a hot mess because they are too nice to say anything, or would they tell you that you can’t pull off that outfit and need to change? I relate it to appearance because it is something just a personal to us as our writing. It’s hard to tell people you don’t like something they’ve done because it is a sensitive subject.
But you need to go beyond finding someone who will be honest. You need someone who is also constructive. If they tell you that your outfit is terrible, do they give you suggestions on a better option or leave you hanging not knowing which direction to go in. A good critique buddy will not only tell you when they don’t like something but will point out specifics and offer a different suggestion. For example instead of saying “I don’t like the main character,” a good buddy would say “I don’t like the way the main character talks down to her best friend. Why would they be friends if they didn’t get along? Maybe you can change some of the dialog.” Do you see the difference?
The last trait I think a good critique buddy needs is one most people don’t think of: they need to be unattached. I don’t mean they shouldn’t care. What I do mean is that they should realize this project is not theirs and be okay with that. No matter how much input they give you, in the end it is up to you as to what you incorporate or change. If you think the person might be offended when you don’t take their suggestions or be upset that the project didn’t turn out the way they envisioned it, that person might not be the best critique buddy.
It is a delicate balance to find just the right person to help you through your writing process. But the right critique buddy can really elevate your work in a way you couldn’t have on your own. So choose wisely!

For Onyx Bay, what started as a cathartic ink session takes an unexpected turn when a specialized blood test at the tattoo parlor reveals her true identity, which threatens to turn her entire world upside down.

When Onyx learns that she is the descendant of a fantastical race of creatures who control the global elements, she discovers that her own blood makes her a valuable prize for competing forces, known as the Orders. As the truth about her bloodline spreads, she finds herself at the center of a supernatural bounty hunt pursued by both human and creature members of the Orders willing to do anything to claim her as their own. The hunt intensifies when a prophet foresees she will tip the balance of power and upset the peace among the Orders. As she attempts to evade capture and survive, Onyx is forced to choose between her humanistic past and a supernatural destiny in order to take control of her own future.

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Genre - Urban Fantasy

Rating – PG - 13

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Website http://www.jennifercornet.com/

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

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Boys, Books & #Author Ben Woodard @benswoodard #YA #Mystery

Boys and Books
 
I grew up almost living in the local library. Reading was my escape and the library was my portal. I loved boy’s adventure stories and have been amazed at the reports that say boys don’t read. Some articles have said that they do read, but not many novels. They like magazines, comic books, and some nonfiction, especially if it’s gross or violent. But why not novels? Everybody loves a good story. Maybe the type of story is the reason for so many reluctant readers. We do know boys gravitate toward some books. The Wimpy Kid series, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson are favorites. There are others, but the numbers are limited, especially for teens and young adult boys.

Today, most books for older kids are girl oriented, a complete reversal of what publishing was like when I was a young reader. Then, most writers were male, and agents and editors were male. There were girl books, but books for boys prevailed. I believe that the change to having women editors in the publishing industry is good. Girls now have tons of books to read about strong girl characters written for them by women, and that’s a shift in the right direction. The problem is that boys now have less books that are specifically for them, and there are fewer male writers. The boys also have fewer adult males as role models for reading. Single moms are raising many of our boys, and the traditional female jobs of teachers and librarians are still mostly women.

However, to me, the main problem is story. There aren’t enough fiction stories in the marketplace that appeal to boys. The publishers seemed to think that a boy book is one that deals with bodily functions, and so we get “fart” books. And while some of those are well written and funny, I think we underestimate boys. As the Harry Potter books demonstrated, boys will read great stories. But many of the popular boy books are paranormal. What about realistic fiction like I read as a kid? There are some adventure books similar to that, but there needs to be more.

So I decided to write the kind of stories I remembered. The result is The Shakertown Adventure Series. More edgy than what I read, maybe The Hardy Boys on steroids. They’re probably PG with some mild cursing and violence. Nothing too terrible, but there are guns and dead bodies. But the whole purpose was to offer boys books with nonstop action and, what I hope, is the authentic interaction between boys. While there is teenage angst, it is limited to one of the boys and is based on something that happened in his past. The stories don’t dwell on the boys feelings, and many of the descriptions are minimal. The book is mostly about the story.

My model for the books was my favorite series as a boy, the Rick Brant Science Adventure Books. The first book was written right after World War II and continued until the late sixties. The stories were exciting with great villains, but the key was the interplay between the two boys. I remember laughing at their antics and running to one of my parents to tell them about it. I loved the way they kidded each other, and yet, when they were in trouble (in every book, of course), they worked together, each using their skills to defeat the bad guys. Male bonding at it’s best.

I still have the books and still enjoy reading them, but now I see the sexism and racism that was prevalent at the time they were written. Something my stories won’t have, although they will deal with the situation of women and African Americans in 1923.

I hope all parents will encourage their children to read—both girls and boys, but especially boys who are reluctant readers. Start them with whatever they will read, comic books, “fart” books or magazines. Then, ease them into novels. Don’t forget the classics, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and The Count of Monte Cristo.  Many of these are free as ebooks. And please have them check out my books. I’d love to know what they think.

Explosions, sabotage, caves, deadly warnings and a dangerous red-haired man.

Imagine The Hardy Boys meet Tom Sawyer. Add a layer of teen angst and excitement plus a mysterious group trying to stop a new dam while stirring up racial tensions.

That’s STEPS INTO DARKNESS, the next book in the Shakertown Adventure Series by Ben Woodard.

Fourteen-year-old Tom Wallace again makes plans to escape the small town in the 1923 Kentucky countryside. The town that won’t let him forget his past, when a horrific event changes his mind. He teams with his cousin Will and young FBI agent Rick Sweeney to try to solve a perplexing mystery. Attempts on the boys’ lives and a bewildering list of suspects keep them on edge and confused. An old man gives them a clue that leads to a false accusation and embarrassment until they discover the real villain, and then wish they hadn’t.

STEPS INTO DARKNESS is a fun, page-turning thriller with a hint of romance that delivers adventure and mystery while exploring the fears of a teen living with a frightful memory.

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Genre - YA/Mystery

Rating – PG – 13

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Website http://BooksByBen.com

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#Author Peter Clenott Shares Some Cover Love @PeterClenott #YA #AmReading

Cover Love

Back in the old days when I started to write, there were no computers (at least no workable ones for writers). There was no social media, there was no Amazon, no eBooks, no Create Space. The books I enjoyed you could actually hold in your hand, turn the pages, and when you were done you could find the proper place on your book shelf. By author. In alphabetical order. By genre. Whatever. It was always there, my growing collection. My personal treasure chest. I hate Kindle.

Selecting books from a book store, never on-line, was a pleasure. I rarely went in knowing exactly what I wanted to buy. I wasn’t a trend setter, and I didn’t just shop for whatever happened to be on the New York Times best seller list at the moment. Oprah didn’t exist back in the day either, at least not the book-marketing guru we now know. Part of the thrill of going to the book store was the hunt, finding that hidden gem. If I enjoyed a particular author, I might check her out first. Otherwise, I got out my detective gear and began the hunt. (There were no cafes in book stores in those days either, so even if I entered hungry, I always came away fulfilled with the book of my choice.)

Titles can matter. A title might draw me to select a book, particularly among the novels whose spines were all I could see crammed into a tight shelf. But the cover art was also important. It didn’t make or break a sale, but quality cover art did draw my attention. At the very least the cover art made me pick up the book and read the novel details or blurbs.

When you first enter a book store, there are always displays right up front, usually from the major publishing houses who purchase the right to have the finest display. Their covers stare you right in the face. When my debut novel HUNTING THE KING was published in 2008, I could just imagine customers entering the book store and being startled by the gaunt face of Jesus the king outlined by a constellation of stars in the pattern of a Star of David. I figured who could pass that by without picking it up for a browse? (The issue of which books get placed where in a book store is the matter for another blog)

These days if you self-publish, you can help design the cover of your book as I did with my iUniverse novel THE HUNTED. Overall, the product was well done with one minor complaint. Certain on-line photographs aren’t copyrighted and so are available for selection in the design of your cover. If you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for, you make do with second best. With DEVOLUTION, my latest novel, the publisher, Imajin Books, made the design with my input. The cover shows the face of a creature, half girl, half chimpanzee a reflection of the drama about a girl who can communicate with chimpanzees using sign language.

In my office taped to the wall behind my desk is a big poster of my cover. It captures the attention of everyone who comes in, stirs conversation, and often leads to a sale. That alone validates a well-done cover enhanced by reviews from well-known authors. Besides that, whenever I feel alone and needing a little self-love, I can pick up my novel and gaze at the stunning cover art and feel just a modicum of pride in my accomplishment. Clicking on my lap top or i-thing-a-majig and seeing the cover on a mechanized screen just doesn’t have the same effect.

What does it truly mean to be ‘Human’?

Chiku Flynn wasn’t raised to be human. Born in the Congolese rainforest, she spends her first eleven years as part of an experiment. For her, the aboriginal—the primitive—is ‘normal.’ 

Just after her eleventh birthday, Chiku witnesses the horrifying death of her mother, and her father sends her ‘home’ to the United States, to a normal teenager’s life. But she can’t adapt. She is the proverbial wild child—obstinate and defiant. 

When her father disappears, sixteen-year-old Chiku heads back to the primordial jungle, where she uncovers her own dark past and puts to use her greatest skill: she can communicate via sign language with the wild chimpanzees of Chimp Island. 

But there is turmoil in the rainforest—civil war, environmental upheaval…and murder. The lives of the chimps and the safety of the people she loves depend upon one teenaged girl who refuses to be messed with—Chiku Flynn. 

Editorial reviews:

“Peter Clenott’s story of a troubled teen searching for her father in the African jungle skillfully combines the breakneck pace of a thriller with the emotional tug of a coming of age novel while providing a fascinating glimpse into the relationship between people and chimpanzees that will leave readers questioning which species is more humane. A thought-provoking read.” —Tasha Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of Behind the Shattered Glass 

“Devolution is an enthralling, action-packed and fast-paced jungle thriller from beginning to end. The story is set in modern day Africa and is centered on the book’s heroine, Chiku, a firecracker of a girl full of energy and spirit. She can also talk to chimpanzees! The backdrops to the story are as old as time itself—war, racism, hunger and greed. Can a strong-willed sixteen-year-old girl and a band of chimpanzees survive in war-torn Africa? Or will death find its way into this strange yet wonderful family! This book is an interesting coming of age tale full of intrigue, wonder, romance and danger. A truly exciting and original read! This is not your grandparent’s Tarzan tale!” —Christopher P. Obert, founder of the New England Authors Expo 

“If it takes a bipolar teenager and some chimpanzees to save their piece of the Congo, then Chiku and her primate friends are the ones to do it. Label them superheroes. Peter Clenott has captured diverse characters in a vibrant setting and added snappy dialogue for this unique and interesting novel.” —Shirley Ann Howard, author of the Tales series

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre - Young Adult

Rating – PG

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Connect with Peter Clenott on Facebook & Twitter

Website www.peterclenott.net

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Jade Kerrion – Vampires through the ages @JadeKerrion

Vampires through the ages

When asked to name the first vampire novel, many people immediately cite Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897.) The first known vampire novel, however, was The Vampyre, written by John Polidori in 1819.

Early vampires were creatures straight out of nightmares—pale and gaunt with sharp fingernails and long incisors. They could adopt more human appearances when they chose, but their essence remained unchanged. They were monsters, remorseless predators of the humans they had once been.

Nobody wanted to be a vampire.

And then, Anne Rice came along.

Others before her may have painted vampires in more sympathetic terms, but Anne Rice created empathy for vampires where none had existed before. Lestat de Lioncourt wasn’t just gorgeous, his hair the color of the sunlight he was denied, but he was the sun—eternally dazzling and brilliant—in the lives of those around him. One could certainly make the point that he was as destructive as the sun as well.

His fledgling, dark-haired, green-eyed Louis de Pointe du Lac, was as beautiful and subtle as moonlight, and as soulful and melancholic as a Shakespeare tragedy. The love that drew Louis and Lestat together, and the hate that drove them apart, formed the core of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.

Anne Rice humanized vampires and endowed them with both strengths and foibles. More importantly, she romanticized them. Vampires still preyed on humans, but it was hard to feel sorry for the humans when death appeared to be more seduction than murder, and Louis wept over every kill.

A paradigm shift had taken place. It was suddenly okay to feel sorry for vampires. More importantly, it was okay to want to be one.

Vampires would evolve at least once more in fiction. After Anne Rice, vampires continued to morph ever closer to the humans who were once their prey. By the time Stephenie Meyer got to her version of vampires in the popular Twilight series, the vampires were no longer susceptible to sunlight and no longer drank human blood. In other words, vampires were no longer the bad guys. More importantly, it was a given that a vampire boyfriend was a far bigger catch (and ironically a better mate—eternal consequences notwithstanding) than a human boyfriend.

What’s the next evolution for vampires? Vampirism is already here. In my Double Helix series, the alpha empath, Danyael Sabre, was a victim of a live blood transfusion, wherein the circulatory systems of two people were joined. The brain activity in the young person decreased whereas the brain activity in the older person increased. It’s not entirely science fiction. The premise is based on a 2011 study conducted in Stanford University on mice.

I took a different tactic in my fantasy novel, Eternal Night. Yes, there are vampires, but the story isn’t really about vampires. It is instead about the icrathari, the vampires’ demonic overlord. In Eternal Night, humans are trapped in Aeternae Noctis, the domed city of eternal night, and preyed upon by the vampires and the icrathari.

But what if the situation isn’t what it appears to be? Jaden’s only goal is to protect his younger sister, Khiarra, from being taken by the vampires, but his chance encounter with Ashra, the icrathari queen, challenges him to step beyond his trained fear of vampires to uncover the truth behind the city of eternal night.

I hope you enjoy this new perspective of vampires and the night terrors in Eternal Night.

E-books available at Amazon / Amazon UK / Apple / Barnes & Noble / Kobo / Smashwords

Paperbacks available at Amazon / Amazon UK / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jade Kerrion developed a loyal reader base with her fan fiction series based on the MMORPG Guild Wars. She was accused of keeping her readers up at night, distracting them from work, housework, homework, and (far worse), from actually playing Guild Wars. And then she wondered why just screw up the time management skills of gamers? Why not aspire to screw everyone else up too?

So here she is, writing books that aspire to keep you from doing anything else useful with your time.

Her debut novel, Perfection Unleashed, spawned the Double Helix series which has won a total of seven science fiction awards, including first place in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2012 and the gold medal in Readers Favorites Awards 2013. She is also the author of Earth-Sim and When the Silence Ends, which placed first and second respectively in the 2013 Royal Palm Literary Awards, Young Adults category.

She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with her wonderfully supportive husband and her two young sons, Saint and Angel, (no, those aren’t their real names, but they are like saints and angels, except when they’re not.)

Connect with Jade: Website / Facebook / Twitter

Alone for a millennium, since a human murdered her beloved consort, Ashra, the immortal icrathari queen, rules over Aeternae Noctis, the domed city of eternal night. Her loneliness appears to be at an end when her consort’s soul is reborn in a human, Jaden Hunter, but their reunion will not be easy.

Icrathari are born, not made. If Ashra infuses Jaden with her immortal blood, he will be a vampire, a lesser creature of the night, a blood-drinker rather than a soul-drinker.

Furthermore, Jaden is sworn to protect his half-sister, five-year-old Khiarra. She is the child of prophecy, destined to end the eternal night and the dominion of the Night Terrors—the icrathari and the vampires.

As Ashra struggles to sustain her crumbling kingdom in the face of enemies without and treachery within, Jaden fights to defend his sister and unravel a greater mystery: what is the city of eternal night, and how did it come to be?

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Genre - Fantasy, Paranormal

Rating – PG-13

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Connect with Jade Kerrion on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.jadekerrion.com

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Michelle Rabe – How to Write by the Seat of Your Pants: Outline or No? @michrabe

How to Write by the Seat of Your Pants: Outline or No?
There are writers I know who do a lot of planning before they start working on their novels. They have character biographies, notes about setting and have every scene planned out. When I first started writing I thought that this was what you had to do. Sure, I’d gotten the idea and started working on the first draft but where was I going to go with it? So, I picked up some books on writing and started reading them, all while I kept working on this directionless thing I had. Almost every book, I don’t remember which ones, said that the writer should start with research and an outline. So, I started researching, focusing on vampire folklore for the most part.
This whole time I was reading and researching I was also writing still with no plan no clue who was in my story or what they were doing there until they showed up on scene and tell me. When I did sit down to come up with my outline I’d written about half of my first draft. It was still an excellent feeling to sit down, see what I had done and had an idea where I was going.
But a strange thing happened once I had this grand plan, I couldn’t write. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten how to or life had taken over it was that every time I sat down to work on the scenes, nothing happened. The characters who were so vibrant and vocal before I made the outline clammed up. I was stuck with about half a book, and a plan for what I thought needed to happen but, I couldn’t finish it. I tried to write the scenes I thought were needed and a lot of them I wrote but deleted and started over because they were, to be honest, crap. After about a week of floundering around trying to make the story fit my idea of how it should go, I tossed the outline out the window and went back to just writing. I finished the draft and was happy with the results. Ever since then I’ve always written by the seat of my pants as it were.
Do I think that every writer should ‘pants it’? Not at all. I think every writer is different and they should find what works for them. I have a writing group made up of about 6-7 members and I think if I took a poll I’d get 6-7 different ways to write.  If it works for you don’t knock it. There’s more than one way to write, find what works and stick with it. If you find yourself blocked, try something different, shake things up. But most important, have fun.

To the outside world, Morgan Blackstone is an eccentric business woman. But, in her chest beats the undead heart of a 21st century vampire. Behind the doors of her nightclub, The Dracul, Morgan rules with an iron fist in a velvet glove.

After a long night of wrangling unruly supernatural customers, she is looking forward to some peace… but unbeknownst to her, there are other vampires who are conspiring against her. Just before dawn, in the deserted parking lot, she comes face-to-face with two old adversaries, one of which she had last seen being sealed in a tomb, 400 years before.

Overpowered by her attackers, Morgan wakes inside the lab of an unscrupulous doctor. Held against her will, subjected to experiments, she soon realizes that something has begun to burn within her veins…

Something that she knows will kill her.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre - Paranormal Urban Fantasy

Rating – PG-13

More details about the author and the book

Connect with Michelle Rabe on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://paperbackvamp.tumblr.com/

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#Author Rik Stone & How His Story Evolved @stone_rik #Thriller #Crime

How my Story Evolved

Nearly all stories have a general platform from which to launch into exclusivity. I wanted to write something that I felt hadn’t been done or at least something different to what I’ve read. Of course, there’s no such thing as a tale that hasn’t been told. All you can hope for is that you might create a unique twist. Mine was a simple enough idea. I would present a set of non-western characters. How is that different? Well, in the novels I’ve trawled my way through over the years I’ve found that even in the most exotic of settings there is an American or European hero to sort out the mess. If you read Birth of an Assassin you’ll see that needn’t be the case.

But what stage could I use for my story and what genre? Being a thriller addict the genre went without saying, but what about setting? Well, I have an uncle by marriage whose parents fled anti-Semitism under late 19^th century czarism. My uncle passed on little odds and ends relating to the hardships Jewish people had at that time and I thought there might be a story waiting to be told.

I researched the period and there were lots of events that could easily be weaved into a single fictitious account. I’ll give a couple of examples to explain what I mean:

In the second half of the 19^th century, a Jewish boy was conscripted into the army to fight on one of the many battlefronts against The Ottoman Empire. The boy was killed and tsarist police operating in The Pale, a barren stretch of land where the Jewish population was forced to live, came to the house of the boy. They didn’t tell the parents he’d been killed in action. No, they said he was a deserter, and that the family was left responsible for his crime. The parents were fined several hundred roubles. Their belongings were sold for 40 roubles, leaving the family with a debt of, yes several hundred roubles. This became ritual; they rebuilt and their belongings were taken and sold as payment towards the fine.

In the early 1900’s a Russian child was murdered. The Jewish population was blamed and a series of state supported pogroms followed, ending in Kishinev in 1903 where the worst of the persecutions took place. Later, it turned out the child’s family had been responsible for the murder – and police had covered it up.

I could go on, there were a multitude of travesty’s over many years. Enough to say, I collected the makings of a story, but looking into that period, I saw no believable way that anyone Jewish could possibly come out on top, so I worked my way through Russian history looking for a home for my plot. It wasn’t until reaching post war Soviet Russia that I found a window. That isn’t to say my hero wins out in Birth of an Assassin, but I needed a place where he at least had a chance. Unfortunately I had to take my protagonist’s religion away, but his burning ambition to be a part of the Red Army wouldn’t have worked with it.

So, I had someone to represent the Jewish population. Now, I needed a core of anti-Semitism: along came Otto to provide the conduit for my story.

If you read Birth of an Assassin you can be forgiven for not seeing my analogy. When all’s said and done it’s simply an adventure thriller with goodies and baddies. And if I were to itemise now what happens in the book against its past equivalent I would be giving you a series of spoilers.

Set against the backdrop of Soviet, post-war Russia, Birth of an Assassin follows the transformation of Jez Kornfeld from wide-eyed recruit to avenging outlaw. Amidst a murky underworld of flesh-trafficking, prostitution and institutionalized corruption, the elite Jewish soldier is thrown into a world where nothing is what it seems, nobody can be trusted, and everything can be violently torn from him.

Buy Now @ Amazon, B&N, Kobo & Waterstones

Genre - Thriller, Crime, Suspense

Rating – R

More details about the author

Connect with Rik Stone on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://rik-stone.simdif.com

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#Author Kim Cresswell Share Her Top Ten Favourite Novels @kimcresswell #AmReading

My Top Ten Favourite Novels

by Kim Cresswell

1. Master of the Game by Sidney Sheldon
“She is the symbol of success, the beautiful woman who parlayed her inheritance into an international conglomerate. Winner of a unique position among the wealthy and world-renowned. And she’s a survivor, indomitable as her father, the man who returned from the edge of death to wrench a fortune in diamonds from the bleak South African earth.” Mr. Sheldon was one of the master “story-tellers” of all times.

2. The Immortals by Michael Korda
“Jack Kennedy – the American hero. Marilyn Monroe – the love goddess. Their affair has been whispered about for thirty years. Now, at last, the story we have only been able to imagine is brought to vibrant, stunning life – a passionate, tragic romance played out against a background of deadly intrigue, power politics, and Hollywood glamour on a grand scale.” A fantastic historical and fictional read!

3. Waiting Wives: The Story of Schilling Manor, Home Front to the Vietnam War by Donna Moreau
“In 1964, as the first B-52s took flight in what would become America’s longest combat mission, an old Air Force base on the plains of Kansas became Schilling Manor — the only base ever to be set aside for the wives and children of soldiers assigned to Vietnam.” An incredible read about strength and love!

4. Lucky by Jackie Collins
“With the sensual grace of a panther, Lucky Santangelo prowled her Las Vegas casino, restless, ready, eager for action. That night began a dazzling odyssey, filled with dangerous passion and sun-drenched sex, sadistic vengeance and breathless suspense.” Epic and sexy. A great beach read!

5. This Charming Man by Marian Keyes
“Paddy de Courcy is Ireland’s debonair politician, the “John F. Kennedy Jr. of Dublin.” His charm and charisma have taken hold of the country and the tabloids, not to mention our four heroines: Lola, Grace, Marnie, and Alicia. But though Paddy’s winning smile is fooling Irish minds, the broken hearts he’s left in his past offer a far more truthful look into his character.” One of the most charming and emotional books I have ever read!

6. Black Ice by Anne Stuart
“Living paycheck to paycheck in Paris, American book translator Chloe Underwood would give anything for some excitement and passion–even a little danger. So when she’s offered a lucrative weekend gig translating at a business conference in a remote chateau, she jumps at the chance to shake things up.” Bastien Toussaint from Black Ice is my #1 pick for best hero/anti-hero!

7. Die For Me by Karen Rose
“The first victim is found in a snow-covered Philadelphia field. Detective Vito Ciccotelli enlists the aid of archaeologist Sophie Johannsen to determine exactly what lies beneath the frozen ground.” Suspense at its finest!

8. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
“It was a case guaranteed to spark a media feeding frenzy–a young mother, blond and pretty, disappears without a trace from her South Boston home, leaving behind her four-year-old daughter as the only witness and her handsome, secretive husband as the prime suspect.” A scary thrill-ride!

9. Bonnie by Iris Johansen – Eve Ducan Series
“When Eve Duncan gave birth to her daughter, she experienced a love she never knew existed. Nothing would stand in the way of giving Bonnie a wonderful life – until the unthinkable happened and the seven-year-old vanished into thin air. Eve found herself in the throes of a nightmare from which there was no escape.” Must read suspense series!

10. Victims by Jonathan Kellerman
“Unraveling the madness behind L.A.’s most baffling and brutal homicides is what sleuthing psychologist Alex Delaware does best.” Kellerman’s books are like a bad habit. I’m a addict and I’m not giving them up!

A killer lurks in the shadows of Hyde Park, New York…waiting.

Manhattan District Attorney, Lauren Taylor, is about to take on the most important case of her career, prosecuting Gino Valdina, acting mob boss of New York’s most influential crime syndicate.

For three decades, Gino Valdina has led New York’s Valdina crime family. Since his recent indictment for murder, the leadership of the family is in turmoil, appalled by the death of one of their own, Gino’s wife, Madelina. Without the support of the family behind him, Valdina will do anything to save himself.

But Lauren soon discovers, things aren’t always as they seem when she’s tossed into a mystery, a deadly conspiracy that reaches far beyond the criminal underworld and a journey into the past makes her a target…and anyone she’s ever loved.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Thriller

Rating – PG-18

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Connect with Kim Cresswell on Facebook and Twitter

Website http://kimberleycresswell.wordpress.com/

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How to Make Your Characters Believable – Shanna Hatfield @ShannaHatfield #thechristmascowboy

How to Make Your Characters Believable

My mother gave me a love of reading at an early age when she’d sit on my bed and read books to me. I’ve always been drawn to the characters in stories more than anything else. It’s the way people think and feel, the things they say and do that fascinate me. When I began writing, I knew if I did nothing else right I wanted to develop characters that seem real, have depth and dimension.

One of the best ways to make characters believable is to make them realistic. Create a character that could be a friend or someone you pass on the street.

For me, the process begins by visualizing my characters. I’m a very visual person and I need to “see” my characters before I really get into developing them. I search online until I find a face I can put with my ideas for a character. Sometimes the inspiration comes from an actor or someone in the news. A few family members have even served as unsuspecting character models.

Once I’ve got a clear picture of my character’s appearance, I begin fleshing them out. How tall are they, what is their build? What do they smell like? How do they speak? What does their voice sound like? What does their laugh sound like? What mannerisms are uniquely theirs (cracking knuckles, drumming fingers, humming). Detail everything about their physical presence you can.

After their outward appearance is complete, delve into their inner workings. What makes them tick? Are they insecure? Confident? Happy? Haunted? Are they emotional? Are they friendly or aloof? What makes them smile? What brings them to tears?

Pretend you’ve just met an interesting person you want to get to know and he is willing to answer any question you ask. Then ask those questions of your character.

Another thing I’ve found helpful is studying the profession of my characters. I research whatever work my main characters pursue so I can write about it from a more realistic standpoint.

In my latest contemporary romance, The Christmas Cowboy, the hero is a saddle bronc rider. I grew up going to rodeos and around cowboys, but I spent hours watching YouTube videos of saddle bronc riders because it helped me capture the little details that make my character authentic.

Dialogue is also so important and can be a deal-breaker if you don’t get it right. A rodeo cowboy isn’t going to speak with stiff formality. Someone in 1893 isn’t going to say, “hey, dude, you nailed it.” Think about your character, where they are both in their life and in a physical sense, and construct their thoughts and words accordingly.

As you tell the character’s story, let them creep into your mind, seep into your soul, and take up residence there while you write. Both you and your characters will be better for the experience.

***

For more details about The Christmas Cowboy, visit The Christmas Cowboy page on Shanna’s website. From December 1-24, Shanna will donate 10% of her net proceeds from all her book sales to the Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund.

Find The Christmas Cowboy, and her other books at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords

Follow Shanna online: ShannaHatfield | Facebook | Pinterest | Goodreads | You Tube

Author Bio: Shanna Hatfield is a hopeless romantic with a bit of sarcasm thrown in for good measure. In addition to blogging, eating too much chocolate, and being smitten with Captain Cavedweller, she writes clean romantic fiction with a healthy dose of humor. She is a member of Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and Romance Writers of America.

"10% of the net proceeds from all my book sales December 1-24 will be donated to the Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund®"

Flying from city to city in her job as a busy corporate trainer for a successful direct sales company, Kenzie Beckett doesn’t have time for a man. And most certainly not for the handsome cowboy she keeps running into at the airport. Burned twice, she doesn’t trust anyone wearing boots and Wranglers, especially someone as charming and handsome as Tate Morgan.

Among the top saddle bronc riders in the rodeo circuit, easy-going Tate Morgan can handle the toughest horse out there, but trying to deal with the beautiful Kenzie Beckett is a completely different story.

As the holiday season approaches, this Christmas Cowboy is going to need to pull out all the stops if he wants a chance at winning her heart.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Romance (contemporary western)

Rating – PG

More details about the author

Connect with Shanna Hatfield on Facebook and Twitter

Website http://shannahatfield.com

Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

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AFN Clarke – Things They Never Tell You @AFNClarke

Things They Never Tell You About Becoming A Published Author
by AFN Clarke
When someone asks “what do you do?” and I say “I’m an author”, invariably the response is “wow, it must be great to just sit and write all day”.  And of course I nod, but I secretly think “if only you really knew!”
Am I happy to be a writer?  Of course I am.  Am I bursting with creative energy that’s ready to flow onto the page effortlessly giving life to what is sure be the next best seller every day? In my dreams!  So I got to thinking, what are the 10 things that I didn’t know about becoming a published author that I’ve learned the hard way?
1.    Published authors have the privilege of developing really thick skulls.
Who else would work long hours with little sleep, no money, get rejected a million times and drag loved ones through hell and back to just hear that one precious word “yes”.  Our bubble of denial and refusal to see reason actually cultivates miracles – how cool is that?
2.    When people like what you write, they’ll only sometimes tell you so.
We are insecure, sensitive creatures who though we staunchly deny it, measure our own self-worth through someone else’s eyes.  Positive feedback is like life support – so if you like my work put me out of my misery and tell me, so I don’t end up a blabbering mess of insecurity.
3.    When people don’t like what you write, there’s no stopping them telling you so.
My big “aha” is that the moment a writer commits words to paper he/she becomes public property – a target to be criticized, loved, praised, or condemned a hundred times over. Live with it! I wrote my thriller An Unquiet American with a very politically provocative premise that dramatically escalates tension in the book  - and also some people’s blood pressure!  So be it, at least it’s generating heated discussions for them as much with those who love it – isn’t that the point?  It’s all a matter of attitude.
4.    Fame and success erase your battle scars but also common sense.
My first book CONTACT was a best seller. I was on TV, in the newspaper, and felt invincible. When the limelight faded my publisher asked “where’s your next book?” “What book?” Oops, wrong answer!  That rookie mistake took years to correct – so while the fans are still cheering take a bow, stick your ego in a box and quietly get back to work.
5.    You will take your partner to the brink of madness.
After all these years, my wife deserves a medal. As with most authors I can be a self-indulgent hermit who’s rarely truly “present”.  When writing I live in a parallel universe that only intersects hers at mealtimes at best. When I’m not writing I’m grumpy, as I’m upset I’m not writing. So authors – if anyone puts up with you, cherish adore and love them, because they’re a rare species.
6.    Those pesky 140 characters will take you to the brink of madness.
Here’s the deal Twitter – my latest thriller The Orange Moon Affair has 479,180 characters and you want me to do what?  Be meaningful in 140?  You’ve got to be kidding right?
And of course I’m running out of characters already – so here are learnings 7, 8, 9, and 10:
7.    You’ll become best friends with loads of people that you never even get to meet.
8.    You’ll learn to see the silly side of everything life throws at you.
9.    You’ll get to face your greatest fears, reveal the inner depths of your soul, open your heart and mind, become totally vulnerable, learn about things you never heard of and chase your wildest dreams.
10.  And if you learn to get over yourself, you’ll live through it all to celebrate the most wonderfully satisfying and richly rewarding times of your life.
Being an author rocks!
AFN CLARKE is the son of a British MI6 operative, pilot, sailor, screenwriter, father of four who’s lived all over the world, served in the British Army and recovered from the physical/emotional traumas of war.  His bestselling memoir CONTACT was serialized in a British newspaper and made into an award winning BBCTV film.  He’s insatiably curious, loves heated discussions and has a rascally sense of humor. He now writes fiction of various genres – thrillers (The Orange Moon Affair and An Unquiet American); human drama (Dry Tortugas), humor/satire (Dreams from the Death Age; Armageddon), horror (Collisions) with more coming soon.  For more information visit http://www.afnclarke.com, connect on Facebook or Twitter (@AFN Clarke).

The Jonas Trust Deception, another Thomas Gunn thriller by bestselling author AFN Clarke, follows The Orange Moon Affair, a “hard to put down”, “5-star novel by a 5-star author”. Thomas (ex-Special Forces) goes on high alert after a desperate message from his journalist friend, Morgan. She’s in danger. But where? And why? Rushing to her ranch he finds it being torn apart by a highly-trained female assassin of East European descent, with a mysterious butterfly tattoo on her neck. An image that sends his mind reeling. Dread seeping into his soul.

In her ongoing investigations, Morgan may have uncovered something even more explosive and far-reaching than the Orange Moon conspiracy.  If so, her enemies will want both her and her information destroyed. Racing to follow tangled leads, Thomas and his girlfriend Julie are thrust into the deadly path of Mexican drug cartels, corrupt politicians, unscrupulous financial brokers like Jonas T Purdue, the FBI, the UK intelligence services and their arch nemesis Marika Keskküla. What deception binds these unlikely “players” together? What’s their power struggle really about? And even more personally disturbing, why the constant links back to a secret mission in Afghanistan, that Thomas has tried so hard to forget?

Outraged by the feeling of constantly being “played”, Thomas decides to turn the tables on the faceless “puppeteers” by taking an action so bold, so dangerous, and so unexpected, that even his team fear he’s lost his mind. Has he? Or can he expose the “vermin” at the top and finally eliminate them forever?

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Thriller

Rating – PG-13

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Cerece Rennie Murphy – 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Order of the Seers Trilogy @CereceRMurphy

10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Order of the Seers Trilogy

10. The Order of the Seers Trilogy is about a group of people who can see the future and are enslaved for that ability.  The first book is about how the Seers escape the organization that is trying to exploit their gift, reclaim their power and start fighting back.  Without giving too much away, the second book in the trilogy picks up right where the first one leaves off, has even more action than the first and is a bit darker because you get to know your villains a LOT better. J

9. The biggest influences for the Trilogy are The Star Wars Saga by George Lucas, Dune by Frank Herbert, Wild Seed by Octavia Butler and Chronicles of Riddick for philosophy and mythology, and The Bourne Series by Robert Ludlum for pacing and action.

8. I am a HUGE fan of the FRINGE TV series.  Lilli and Liam Knights last name is a tribute to Peter and Walter Bishop from the series.  I wanted to name Lilli and Liam’s father Walter, but I thought that would have been too much.  In the 2^nd book in the trilogy, Liam wears a peacoat in honor of Peter Bishop’s now legendary and beloved peacoat on the series.

7. Order of the Seers and its sequel, The Red Order, take place in San Francisco, Chicago, rural Tanzania, Iowa and Salem, Oregon, London, Prague, Geneva, Berlin and Cuba.  I have been to all of these places except, Iowa and Salem, Oregon.  Having a personal connection to the locations really helped me visualize the mood and feel for each book.

6.My perfect Alessandra Pino is a younger Monica Bellucci.  My perfect Liam Knight is Wes Bentley. And my perfect Marcus Akida, is Lance Reddick from FRINGE.

5. The my playlist for Order of the Seers includes Crawl by Linkin Park, Scratch Your Name by The Noisettes, Closer by Kings of Leon and Breathe Me by Sia.

4. I love languages and accents so I tried to use as many of them as I could cram into both books in the series.  In the first book alone, you will find Chinese, Portuguese, Swahili, Italian and Japanese.  The second book adds some Russian, Spanish and French to the mix. I am hoping to get Farsi and Hindi, and maybe some Hebrew into the 3^rd book.

3. The idea for Order of the Seers came to me about 3 years ago, while I was washing the dishes.

2.  If you asked me to describe Order of the Seers in three words, I would say Intense.Action.Suspense

1.  I am working on the final book in the Trilogy now, which I hope to release by Summer 2014.    The working title for the 3^rd book is The Last Seer.

What would you do if you held infinite power in the palm of your hand? Part One of the thrilling Order of the Seers trilogy poses this question within a story that fuses action, mystery, romance, and adventure in a science fiction novel that keeps you at the edge of your seat. Captured and enslaved for their extraordinary gift, a group of individuals, known as Seers, are forced to serve a ruthless world organization that uses the power of the Seers to exploit the ultimate advantage: knowing the future. While a brother and his Seer sister fight to evade the group that hunts them, an unlikely captured Seer, plots his escape from within the organization and sets off a chain of events that will change the world.

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Genre – Science Fiction

Rating – NC-17

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Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

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