Post-weekend Poetry 054: On Summer by Phillip A Ellis

Happy New Year’s Eve and welcome to Post-weekend Poetry and the fifty-fourth poem in this series. This week’s piece is by freelance critic, poet and scholar Phillip A Ellis.

On Summer

Summer is a time for the year to end,
and for me a time for recollection
of the friends I have made and the friends I’ve lost,
of the names once familiar, and now a ghost.

Some years I would not dream summer if I could,
my heart had been so lonely, and so alone
that it never seemed to feel the risen sun
and the heat of the sunlight, it was that cold.

But there is a time for memory’s song,
and there is a time to rise and to sing
of the people who matter and who mattered most,
of the people you knew and who knew you best.

I asked Phillip what prompted this piece and he said…
Because summer, in Australia, falls over the change from one year to the next, it has assumed an importance for me as a time to reflect on the preceding year, and on the friends and friendships of previous years. This is why I wrote “On Summer”, and why (in part) it would be a good, seasonal fit for New Year’s Eve.

Absolutely!

Phillip added that it would also allow my readers in the Northern hemisphere the defamiliarisation inherent in that idea, of summer in Australia as the time for Christmas and New Year, and for the shift from the old year to the new.

Thank you, Phillip, I loved that, and it was great to have you back.

Phillip A. Ellis is a freelance critic, poet and scholar, and his poetry collection, The Flayed Man, has been published by Gothic Press; Gothic Press will also edit a collection of essays on Ramsey Campbell, that he is editing with Gary William Crawford. He is working on another collection, to appear through Diminuendo Press. Another collection has been accepted by Hippocampus Press, which has also published his concordance to the poetry of Donald Wandrei. He is the editor of Melaleuca. He has recently had Symptoms Positive and Negative, a chapbook of poetry about his experiences with schizophrenia, published by Picaro Press.

Phillip can be found at The Cruellest Month: http://the-cruellest-month.blogspot.com, and

Symptoms Positive and Negative: https://sites.google.com/site/symptomspositiveandnegative.

***

If you’d like to submit your poem (40 lines max) for consideration for Post-weekend Poetry take a look here.

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with horror-turned-crime writer Andrew Barrett – the five hundred and ninety-ninth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, biographers, agents, publishers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Author interview no.598 with paranormal, erotica, romance writer Jodie Pierce

Welcome to the five hundred and ninety-eighth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with paranormal, erotica, romance author Jodie Pierce. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Jodie. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Jodie: Hello, Morgen. Well, let’s see. I live in Cleveland, Ohio with my wonderful hubby, John and four step-children. I’ve been a writer for over 20 years, starting early in high school but it wasn’t until the last 8 years that I’ve been trying to get published. It was approximately 1995 that I got my direction and genre for writing which made things much easier.

Morgen: I went to my first creative writing workshop 8 years ago (next month) and was hooked – fiction does that, doesn’t it. What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Jodie: I typically write in paranormal / erotica / romance. I’ve tried other things but they just seem to come out boring to me halfway through so I scrap them.

Morgen: If they’re boring to a writer they’re likely to be boring to the reader so that a wise thing to do. What have you had published to-date?

Jodie: I currently have seven published novels. I have four short novellas published with Eternal Press, I was part of an Anthology with Melange Books and I have two self-published books through createspace, all of which are available on Amazon.com.

Morgen: With your self-published works, what lead to you going your own way?

Jodie: I wasn’t getting the royalties I felt were appropriate and the company didn’t seem to be doing much marketing for me. I decided I could do it on my own and make more money.

Morgen: Very few publishers have the budgets to do much marketing for their authors. I’ve only had one author say her (mainstream) publisher does all her marketing and she’s very active online. It’s a necessary evil these days, although we get to ‘meet’ our potential readers which I love. Are all your books available as eBooks? How involved were you in that process? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Jodie: My books are available in paperback and kindle versions. The publishing company offered those options but when I self-published I made sure to create both options. I have read a little on my Kindle but I most certainly prefer paperbacks.

Morgen: Most people do, although it’s great to have the options. Do you have a favourite of your books or characters? If any of your books were made into films, who would you have as the leading actor/s?

Jodie: I have a “Vampire Queen” trilogy where it is the same character in all three books and she is my first published and favourite out of all that I’ve written.  A movie huh? The actress would be Charlize Theron. My “Queen” is a very strong character and I think Ms. Theron would be able to pull it off well.

Morgen: She’s a great actress and played Queen Ravena in Snow White & The Huntsman. Did you choose the titles / covers of your books? How important do you think they are?

Jodie: Covers are THE most important part of your book. People will browse through books mostly by covers. If the cover looks boring, they move on and don’t even read the synopsis. For the publishing companies, they provided the covers based off my description of my characters and synopsis of the book. They made such good ones the first time that I accepted them right away.

Morgen: They are great, so I don’t blame you. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Jodie: I’m actually working on two books right now, both vampire of course… he he he! One is a lesbian vampire novel and the other is a more adult vampire novel.

Morgen: Fun. Do you manage to write every day, or ever suffer from writer’s block?

Jodie: Between the two stories, I write every day. When I get writer’s block, I got back to the other story and write that one for a while until more comes to me about the first one.

Morgen: That’s a good idea. If I ever get stuck on something I have a break and move on to something else – it’s the best way, refreshes the brain. Do you plot your stories or do you just get an idea and run with it?

Jodie: Many of my ideas come to me in pieces in my dreams (usually the concept). I then take the concept and make it up as I go. I do a lot of researching for my stories so sometimes I will research it to death before I start the story.

Morgen: Do you have a method for creating your characters, their names and what do you think makes them believable?

 

Red pen session 012 – critique of ‘Shooting Stars’, a short story by Graham Smith

I run a fortnightly critique group as well as critiquing other authors’ writing which I really enjoy, so I started creating podcast episodes doing this. Because this was not only time-consuming but also restrictive being audio-only, I decided to switch from audio to text and will now be running future ones on the blog. The earlier episodes have already been blogged (and are listed on the http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/red-pen-critique  page) with new episodes being run here every Sunday evening (UK times) until July when it switches to Saturday night as the Author Spotlights move to weekday mornings (because I’ll only then be running two interviews a week ).

Please remember that it’s only one person’s (my) opinion and you, and the author concerned, are welcome to disagree with my interpretation – I will never be mean for the sake of it, but hope you find that I’m firm but fair. I type my comments as I read through the story as a reader would think as they read, although they would most likely be reading, not analysing, unless they’re writers too!

Regardless of what genre you write I hope that this helps you think about the way fiction is constructed and that you have enjoyed reading another author’s work, the copyright of which remains with them.

***

The story featured in this post was kindly emailed to me by crime novelist, short story author and interviewee Graham Smith. 976-worder Shooting Stars first featured on ThrillersKillersnChillers eZine, but is also available at http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.com/2011/11/shooting-stars-by-graham-smith.html?zx=fde569de31e41252 and http://www.thedock.info/submissions/fiction/shooting-stars-by-graham-smith.

If you have any feedback on this or aspects of my website or blog, I’m always delighted to hear from you – my email address is morgen@morgenbailey.com.

And if you’re feeling brave enough to send me a short story or novel extract (with a brief synopsis please) – 3,000-words maximum – for these red pen blog sessions (or without critique for Short Story Saturdays) then feel free.

So without further ado, the story / synopsis and extract, then my feedback…

Shooting Stars

I nestled the butt of my Parker Hale M-85 against my shoulder and checked my range once more. I was perhaps half a degree off, so I adjusted the sights and peered once more through the telescopic sights.

Street artists were plying their public trade with gusto and aplomb. I could see jugglers, human statues and street dancers. A mime artist came into view pretending he was stuck behind a glass wall. God this guy was original! I’d never cared for mime artists. All that being stuck in a box or descending imaginary stairs bored me rigid and the stupid expressions on their faces were more nauseating than comical.

I lifted my aim to spot the flag blowing on the cinema’s roof to gauge the correction necessary for windage.

Some snipers modified their rifles. I had never been in favour of changing something so carefully crafted, so lovingly designed. The only concession I had made to my beloved rifle was the fitting of a sound suppressor which would also reduce muzzle flash.

I wasn’t concerned about the noise as the world would soon hear all about my intended victim’s death. My concern was with the telltale muzzle flash which would betray my position to all the bodyguards and security people at tonight’s premiere.

To further conceal my position I had retreated to the back of the room and was shooting from a prone stance on top of a sturdy kitchen table. The open window I’d be shooting through would afford me two seconds to shoot the Hollywood starlet who’d mocked me all those years ago.

Two seconds was all I’d get and would be all I’d need. Second one would be spent identifying the target and drawing a bead on her temple. Second two was when I’d put the extra ounce on the trigger and send my bullet on its murderous way.

My rifle was as always loaded with just one bullet. I’d never needed a second shot and as the distance was only one hundred metres I knew I would not miss. Having just one bullet was my secret trademark. If they escaped my single bullet, I let them live.

I’d crafted a special bullet for this one. This was an area where I did modify. I trusted no one to make the alterations but myself. I had taken the round apart and had weighed out the powder to my own exact specifications. I wanted the bullet to mushroom on impact with her skull, to do the maximum amount of damage to her brain without coming out of the other side and hurting an innocent bystander.

I was always stringent with my preparations and the one rule I had in my career as an assassin was that I would never incur innocent casualties. This trait had nearly got me caught once or twice during high speed getaways but I held my stance rigidly.

*

I checked my watch. Seeing that she was due to arrive in a further five minutes I went into my pre-shoot routine. Stretching first legs and then arms into suppleness, I then flexed my fingers in the manner of a classical pianist preparing for a virtuoso performance.

My breathing was already under control but I used the routine as a way of relaxing my nerves and slowing my heartbeat so that breaths could be taken as shallowly as possible.

My apprentice looked across from the other window where he stood. His job was to act as my spotter and give me notice as to what my target was wearing and what colour her hair was today.

By the time my days work was done, I could guarantee her hair would be blood red in at least one place.

‘She’s here.’ There was an excited shrillness in his tone. I would have to work on that.

‘She’s wearing a luminous green dress. Three bodyguards who are all muscle and no skill. Christ, she looks good in that dress.’

I brought my eye slowly to the scope, willing him to concentrate and took in the view. Other celebs were making their way towards the red carpet. Waving, laughing and flashing some of the most expensive teeth known to man. The street artists were performing in the background but were largely being ignored by the stars who were more concerned with the paparazzi below me.

‘She’ll be in your sights in five, four, three, two, one.’ As the apprentice hit one, I saw Jessica in the flesh for the first time since she had publicly berated me for my impotence.

I centred the cross hairs on her head as she moved from left to right and then she stopped dead in her tracks. She waved to the mime artist and beckoned him over. I’d forgotten how she loved those silent freaks.

I re-acquired my target as her sudden stop had thrown off my tracking movement. Her bouncers had peeled away and I had a clear view of her. My finger tightened on the trigger and just before the bullet left my gun, her co-star who was also her latest beau leaned towards her so they could kiss for the amassed cameras. My bullet went so close to her that she must have felt its passage.

The mime artist was not so lucky. I saw the bullet hit him bang in the sternum. He clutched his chest, blood oozing between his fingers. His knees wobbled, eyes went blank and he fell theatrically. First to his knees and then face first onto the recently swept pavement.

And as for Jessica? Well she just laughed at the man dying in front of her, thinking it was all part of his act.

The irony was not lost on me. I’d just shot a mime artist with a silenced bullet and he got a round of applause as he died.

© Graham Smith 2011

***

My comments (NB. I type this as I read the story not knowing all the ‘facts’):

Titles are important and usually have to summarise the story. I took Graham’s one of two ways: the romantic setting of a star gliding across the sky, but then my crime head took over and I imagined a hitman aiming at a red carpet celebrity. From the first sentence, I could tell that great minds think alike, but then knowing that Graham’s a crime writer, I should have guessed that option first.

Repetition in writing is best when the second (or third) instance of a word or phase is used to enhance or conflict with the former, and in the first paragraph we have two ‘once more’s. Story openings should be a hook and short first sentences work especially well. Although the opening is gripping because it’s drama and we want to know more, if Graham deleted the first ‘once more’ it would be snappier. If it later transpires that the character does need to have checked the range a few times then I’d suggest changing the first ‘once more’ to ‘again’.

Every word counts in short stories so I would lose ‘public’ from ‘public trade’ because by being ‘street artists’ they’re in public.

I wondered whether gusto and aplomb were close enough but then thesaurused aplomb to make sure (Word’s gives me alternatives of self-confidence, style, ease, assurance etc) so different enough great choices. Aplomb’s a great word and not used enough (clearly, as I had to thesaurusise it).

Sets of three aren’t called ‘the power of three’ for nothing and here we have ‘jugglers, human statues and street dancers’, so that gets a tick.

I like Graham’s sarcasm when referring to the mime artist and the whole scene is very visual (I’d have put a comma after ‘God’ though). That dual statement: ‘God this guy was original! I’d never cared for mime artists’ is a good example of show and tell. We already know from the sarcasm and the references to ‘bored, stupid, and nauseating’ of his feelings so ‘I’d never cared…’ could go. If you’re in any doubt about a section, if the piece is fine without it then leave it out.

The attention to detail (I lifted my aim…) is great – not only does it show the reader that the hitman knows his craft but that the writer does too.

I love it when inanimate objects are almost additional characters and the narrator’s gun feels like one to me.

Not being an expert on ‘muzzle flash’, I would have liked a description of it the second time rather than a repetition, even just ‘light’, ‘spark’ or suchlike keeps it cleaner.

‘prone stance on top of a sturdy kitchen table’ made me picture him (I’m assuming it’s a him, we’ve not been told yet) standing on the table so perhaps more description there would help. Note: Soon after this post aired, regular visitor Janet Bailey pointed out to me (ever so politely in an email) that prone means lying face down. Of course, she’s absolutely right (Wikipedia agrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prone). See, this is why we need second (third) opinions. Thank you, Janet.

I know I go on about repetition and most readers probably wouldn’t notice but if there’s a change of them losing a connection with your story it’s worth looking at. In ‘The open window I’d be shooting through…’ paragraph we have two shooting and one shoot (two of them in one sentence).  I would remove the ‘I’d be shooting through’ because we’ve already had description of him at the kitchen table so we don’t need it.

All stories, regardless of length, should avoid an info. dump at the beginning and slowly unravel as we read. It’s not until paragraph six that the intended target is revealed and I like having got to know our hitman first. It also indicates here that the killing is personal and therefore potentially not a ‘hired hit’ as we may well have considered.

I mentioned earlier that repetitions should enhance or conflict and both ‘all I’d’ does this well. I also love the subsequent breakdown of the two seconds, although I’m not so keen on ‘murderous’ because as we know bullets can kill and are aware of the hitman’s intentions behind firing his rifle.

Commas are usually used when a narrator pauses for breath so I would use them before / after ‘as always’.

Having just one bullet in his rifle shows us he’s a pro, as we’ve seen earlier from his knowledge of his rifle and positioning. ‘My single’ jarred with me and I’d use something simpler like ‘that’.

I’m no Lynne Truss when it comes to grammar but ‘I trusted no one to make the alterations but myself’ felt like the equivalent of a split infinitive so would recommend ‘I trusted no one but myself to make the alterations’.

Losing a single word in a sentence can make a difference and losing the second ‘had’ from ‘I had taken the round apart and had weighed out’ would be neater. I’d also delete ‘from her brain’ because we know the bullet’s intended for her head.

With the repetition (sorry, I know, I keep harping about them) of ‘innocent’, I’d be inclined to remove the first innocent and just have ‘a bystander’ as it would then make ‘innocent casualty’ more impacting.

Stephen King is famous for his dislike of adverbs (___ly words) and they’re more obvious when at the end of sentences (a reader remembers the end of a sentence more than the first so the second half of a sentence should always have more power) so ‘…I held my stance’ would be sufficient.

You won’t be able to see it from the blog post but Graham’s submission was in the correct format with a flush (to the left) first paragraph opening then the other paragraphs indented a few spaces. After ‘I held my stance rigidly’ he then has a break (as I’ve indicated by the single asterisk) but then starts the new paragraph (blank lines usually indicating a small passage in time) indented. Whenever there is a new section of text it shouldn’t have an indent. Of course I could have just told Graham this when I emailed him but many of the submissions I receive (for the blog and the H.E. Bates Short Story Competition I help to judge) have incorrect indenting so I thought it worth saying here.

‘She was due to arrive in a further five minutes…’ implies that there have been other five-minute chunks. Because there haven’t been any mentioned I would lose ‘a further’.

‘Stretching first legs…’ – again this is probably me but I wondered if he had second or third pairs of legs? Of course he doesn’t but again I slipped out of the story so changing it to something like ‘Stretching first my legs…’ would avoid this. Also lose the ‘then’ before arms as there’s a subsequent ‘then flexed my fingers’. I know I’m being really picky but you want to make your manuscript as tight as possible. I liked the comparison between the hitman and the pianist, especially as they both love their instruments, which are usually black. Not sure about ‘into suppleness’. I know you want to find new ways of saying this but I didn’t love it.

The great thing about first person viewpoint is that we get into the mind of our narrator, and especially enjoyable when it’s a profession we can’t (hopefully in this instance) have experienced ourselves (although my first-written novel’s main character was a hitman!).

Intriguingly we’re then told that our character isn’t working alone, and I love that he’s an apprentice (especially as my hitman is too). Although up to now has only been a very short time, I wonder if a reference to a walkie-talkie would spoil this. Do they crackle? Hum?

When writing, you should always think of the five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste), and we certainly have vivid sight (inside and outside the room), sound (the street artists etc), touch (him and his rifle). Smell and taste are usually the ones left behind. Whilst we’re unlikely to get taste unless a character is eating something but everything has a smell. If he’s renting a room it would likely be a hotel so if classy would smell nice or if dodgy (less likely if opposite a theatre showing premieres) would be an unpleasant smell. Just a thought.

‘my days work’ should read ‘my day’s work’ because it’s the work belonging to the day.

In one of my college creative writing classes my story was picked out because it was the only one that contained a colour. It’s funny that everything has a colour yet we often forget to mention them and here Graham gives us a great picture of what our hitman envisages the woman’s hair to become, contrasting with the red carpet no doubt.

We don’t get much in wordage from his assistant but just the tone of his voice provides a great deal, and I love the hitman’s reaction to it.

Again we have a great description of what’s happening and the contrast between the celebrities and street artists (although I’d tweak ‘The street artists were performing in the background but were largely being ignored by the stars who were more concerned with the paparazzi below me’ to ‘The street artists performed in the background but were largely ignored by the stars who were more concerned with the paparazzi’.

Graham and I clear shop at the same fiction factory as the main character in the novel I’m currently editing is called Jessica.

I’d not heard the term ‘cross hairs’ so Googled it, taking the phrase to be ‘cross hairs on her head’ until Google told me it referred to the rifle (thank you, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticle which actually lists cross hairs as one word). It’s funny how just the placing of words can have two different meanings so again we need a little more here.

Clichés are always best avoided so I’d recommend an alternative to ‘stopped dead in her tracks’ – just ‘stopped dead’ would be fine, and especially poignant given the circumstances.

The irony of the hitman’s feelings towards the mime artist and what happens to him wasn’t lost on me. ‘recently swept’, I’d say should have a – hyphen (as explained in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen).

Graham and I are clearly twins as having just mentioned irony, what do I then go on to read? Yes, irony. A superb ending.

Despite being less than 1,000 words, this story packs a punch (or it would if it weren’t a cliché). Apart from it being my genre (crime), I loved it. It may sound as if I pulled it to pieces but really these are very little picks and Graham should be very proud of his story.

Thank you, Graham, for offering up ‘Shooting Stars’ to me. I hope my feedback has been helpful to you (and the readers of this blog post ).

***

Graham Smith is married with a young son. A time served joiner he has built bridges, houses, dug drains and slated roofs to make ends meet. For the last eleven years he has been manager of a busy hotel and wedding venue near Gretna Green, Scotland (which is running a fantastic crime writing weekend – see below.

An avid fan of crime fiction since being given one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books at the age of eight, he has also been a regular reviewer for the well respected review site Crimesquad.com for over two years. You can read my interview with Crime Squad’s Chris Simmons here.

When not working, Graham’s time is spent reading, writing and playing games with his son. He enjoys socialising and spending time with friends and family.

Graham will be hosting a crime-writing weekend on 8-10 March 2013 – see http://www.themill.co.uk/crime-writing-courses for details (I’m going!).

***

If you have any feedback on this or aspects of my website or blog, I’m always delighted to hear from you – my email address is morgen@morgenbailey.com.

And if you’re feeling brave enough to send me a short story or novel extract (with a brief synopsis please) – 3,000-words maximum – for these red pen blog sessions then feel free.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Bailey’s Writing Tips podcast – short stories episode no.19

Bailey’s Writing Tips podcast ‘short stories’ episode number 19 went live today and contained three flash fiction pieces that have appeared on my blog as Flash Fiction Fridays. Do email me should you like to submit your own. This episode contained:

• The Moon (410 words) by comic fantasy (“and a little horror”) author Will Macmillan-Jones;
• Gabriele (831 words) by non-fiction author Marlene Caroselli; and
• Homespun Cryonics (133 words) by erotica and horror author Angie Sargenti.

See the links above to read the stories… or hear my dulcet tones on the podcast which is available via iTunes, Google’s Feedburner, Podbean (when it catches up), Podcasters (which takes even longer) or Podcast Alley (which doesn’t list the episodes but will let you subscribe).

Will is a fifty-something lover of blues, rock and jazz. He presently lives in South Wales, and has just fulfilled a lifetime ambition by extending his bookcases to fill one entire wall of his home office. Working as a professional tax consultant, he writes to escape the stultifying boredom of his job. He has an irregular blog, www.willmacmillanjones.wordpress.com where he “rambles incoherently about writing”. His publisher’s website is www.safkhetpublishing.com.

***

Dr. Marlene Caroselli (www.saatchionline.com/LainaCelano), is an author, keynoter, and corporate trainer.

She has published over 60 books, including Jesus, Jonas, and Janus: The Leadership Triumvirate, and Principled Persuasion, named a Director’s Choice by Doubleday Book Club.

***

Angela is the author of the zombie blog, After Old Joe, and is hard at work on her latest novel.

She has penned dozens of erotica stories for sites such as For The Girls, Oysters & Chocolate, and Every Night Erotica, and has recently served as guest-editor for a month-long issue of Leo DeGraunce.

Her main focus is on erotica, but she also admits to a fondness for horror—especially the zombie genre, as evidenced by her recent story, “Man Meat”, which was featured on Thrillers, Killers and Chillers.

Her story “My Special Day” appears in the recently-published anthology, My First Threesome. 

Her two sexy e-books, Working Out the Kinks and Start Me Up: A Collection of Erotic Love Stories are now available at Amazon.

Be sure to check out her zombie blog After Old Joe and her erotica blog Friday I’m In Love.

You can find out more about Angela and her writing at http://www.angiesargenti.blogspot.com, http://www.amazon.com/author/angelasargenti, http://pinterest.com/angiesargenti, and @angiesargenti on Twitter.

***

Thank you for downloading / listening to this short story episode – I hope you enjoyed it. The next episode will be a hints & tips episode in a fortnight, then short stories return a fortnight thereafter.

All the details of these episodes are listed on this blog’s Podcast Short Stories page and my email address to submit a short story for critique (or review for the Short Story Saturdays) is morgen@morgenbailey.com.

The podcast is available via iTunes, Google’s Feedburner, Podbean (when it catches up), Podcasters (which takes even longer) or Podcast Alley (which doesn’t list the episodes but will let you subscribe).

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Author interview no.597 with suspense mystery novelist Debra R Borys

Welcome to the five hundred and ninety-seventh of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with suspense mystery novelist and spotlightee Deb Borys. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. You can read Debra’s author spotlight at http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/author-spotlight-no-61-debra-borys.

Morgen: Hello again, Deb. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Debra: I currently live in Seattle and have been here for about ten years.  Before that I lived in Chicago, but most of my life was spent in small town Illinois. I’ve been writing since I was a kid.  I remember even binding a small book using cardboard, construction paper and a typewriter when I was in junior high.  I chose not to go to college because I knew I wanted to be a writer and what did a writer need with a college degree?  I know better now, but to my 17-year-old mind it made sense at the time.  I wrote all through my marriage and that was when I started submitting things.  I concentrated on novels at first, but nothing worked until I started writing and submitting a few short stories.  Getting a few of those accepted–for pay even!–gave me the confidence I needed to keep working on my novels. As an inspiration for Painted Black, I spent four years living in Chicago and volunteering with Chicago’s homeless, youth in particular.  I got to know a few on a personal level that made me want to become a voice for them.

Morgen: I’m always in awe of authors who said that they always knew they wanted to be a writer. I didn’t know until I went to evening classes in my late thirties and then it took me another four years to consider it as a profession (I’m still working on that actually). What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Debra: While I have written spec fic and literary stories, suspense and mystery seem to be my niche. Painted Black is a suspense novel, but because it’s so character driven, it doesn’t fit neatly into a genre.  Straight whodunits were never as interesting to me as something that got me into the mind of the character as much or more than the actual plotline.  If you care about the main characters, the puzzle they are solving seems less important than what might happen to them while they are following the clues.

If there is one unifying theme to my work now, it is an attempt to see the real world for what it really is, the good and the bad, and keep going no matter what.  Like the character in one of my short stories says, “It’s how you deal with the darkness that counts.”

I read a wide variety of books myself (my favorite all time author is historical novelist Dorothy Dunnett) but mystery / suspense has always been my favorite.  It started with the Bobbsey Twins and Hardy Boy books when I was a kid and continues through Stephen King and Dean Koontz, et al.  My favorite authors always have a certain something that makes them rise above the genre, however.

Morgen: I’ve never read Dean Koontz but I was a big Stephen King fan in my teens and read everything as it came out, until somewhere after Misery (which I loved) when I lost interest and switched to softer reads (like Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected ). What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Debra: Painted Black is my first published novel, but I have had several short stories published in print and online publications.  One of them, Red Light, Green Light, is actually a story that arose out of one of the main characters of Painted Black.  I also had three short mysteries published.  I did use a pseudonym for my Evelyn A. Archer P.I. stories which I call my cynical bitch mini-mysteries.  The only reason for the pseudonym was because the books are told from a first person narrative and I thought it would be fun to make it look like Evelyn was a real person writing about her detective agency.  The second book in the series, Bend Me, Shape Me, is due to be released next spring, also by New Libri Press.

Here’s a list of my publications so far:

• Painted Black – a suspense novel, New Libri Press
• Heaven Can B Hell – mini-mystery, The Fringe Magazine
• Peeling the Onion – literary short story, City Slab
• Red Light, Green Light – literary short story, Downstate Story
• Love Takes a Licking – mini-mystery, Red Herring Mystery Magazine
• Blackout Blues – mini-mystery, Pirate Writings
• The Nest – literary short story, Iowa Woman

Morgen: Evelyn sounds fun. Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Debra: Standard rejections are easy to take.  I’ve created a database of markets and manuscripts that I’m always adding new markets to.  When a rejection comes in, I just send the story off to the next appropriate market in the database.  The hard rejections are the ones that take the time to tell you how good they thought this or that was, but they aren’t interested in the piece because of some other thing.  There have been times when I have revaluated and even changed a piece based on those kinds of letters, but opinions are always so subjective, it’s risky to take any of them to heart unless they say something you secretly already knew.

Morgen: It’s a good idea to submit elsewhere when something’s rejected. It is just a case of finding the right person for the right story. Have you won or been shortlisted in any competitions?

 

5am flash: Oak Tree Press Australia’s eBooks just 99c until Dec 31st

Ready to fill your new Kindle or IPad? Here’s a bounty of Oak Tree Press books available for AS$0.99 (US$1.25 / £0.77) until New Year’s Eve. Start 2013 off right with a good read! The green highlighting links to my interviews with those authors.

DADDY’S CHRISTMAS ANGEL by Mary Montague Sikes
NICE WORK by Denise Weeks
AN AXE TO GRIND by Marilyn Meredith
NO BELLS by Marilyn Meredith
NO SANCTUARY by Marilyn Meredith

GHOST WRITER by Lorna Collins

A FAIR TO DIE FOR an Arkansas mystery by Radine Trees Nehring
COMING FLU by J.L. Greger
BOGEY’S ACE by Marja McGraw
BOGEY NIGHTS by Marja McGraw
THE BAFFLED BEATLEMANIAC CAPER by Sally Carpenter
EVA PENNINGTON—TROUBLE IN GEORGIA by Walter Luce
VERMONT BOUND by Walter Luce
FALLEN FROM GRACE, a Western by John Lindermuth

DUMPSTER DYING, a Florida mystery by Lesley Diehl

TWO FEET BELOW, a Northwest mystery by Carol Crigger
UNLEAVENED DEAD by Rabbi Ilene Schneider

A CASE OF INFATUATION by W.S. Gager

JAMBALAYA JUSTICE by Holli Castillo

GUMBO JUSTICE by Holli Castillo

WHO’S GOT THE MONEY? by Morgan St. James and Meredith Holland

Thank you, Sally, for letting me know.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Author Spotlight no.149 – Carla Herrera

Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the one hundred and forty-ninth, is of Carla Herrera.

Carla began writing non-fiction for weeklies and alternative news publications in the mid-1980s. She tried her hand at writing fiction, but found non-fiction an easier market to break into. Since then, she has worked as a bindery person, typesetter, graphic artist and desktop publisher in the printing and publishing industries.

Over the past few years she began writing primarily speculative fiction and has published independently through Smashwords and Amazon: Pink Eye, a horror novel, Day Gazing: Weird Shorts, a compilation of weird short stories and Blue Tent, a dystopian novelette. Her latest novella, Two, came out in September 2012.

And now from the author herself:

Most of my stories are in the realm of dystopian or speculative fiction with the exception of Pink Eye. That was a straight horror story generated from a dream.

I’ve had a few people ask where my stories come from and most of the time my stories come from life, but over the years I have kept a dream journal and mine it for gems. I think that space between sleep and waking somehow holds a wealth of inspiration for us. There is a whole world in that space and I glean from it whenever I can.

On the other side of that, Blue Tent was inspired from the current depression sweeping the country. I read an article several months ago about a tent city springing up in Lakewood, New Jersey and combined with some of the lobbying by Monsanto the kernal of my story was formed.

Inspiration is a strange thing. Being a writer can be a strange thing, because we are forced to look at life through a magnifying glass much of the time. Many of us need to not only see a thing work, but we need to know why it works that way. We are scientists in some regard, because we’re constantly experimenting in the world of ideas.

That world under the magnifying glass becomes our playground. I think that’s what inspiration is; consciously and subconsciously, we manipulate that world and in return it gives us a few stories.

All of that said, inspiration is only about five percent of the story. The rest is work. The need to roll up our sleeves, keep our butts in the chair and just write is mandatory for that creation to take place.

Regardless of the work and frustration that goes into my stories, I think the job of a writer, especially that of a fiction writer is one of the best jobs in the world. Where else can we bring characters to life and create worlds?

You can find more about Carla and her writing via…

• her blog http://Broke-artist.com
• email: starvingartist0@yahoo.com
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BrokeWriter and
• her Smashwords profile: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/starvingartist

***

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with suspense mystery novelist and spotlightee Deb Borys – the five hundred and ninety-seventh of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Short Story Saturday Review 019: Near Death Experience by Tracey Alley

Welcome to the Short Story Saturday review slot and the nineteenth review in this series. This week’s review is of short story ‘Near Death Experience’ by fantasy / thriller writer and recent interviewee Tracey Alley. The story is available to read on http://traceyalley.weebly.com/near-death-experience.html.

Review

A title should represent the story so from this one we have an idea what to expect, or do we?

A story should invariably start with action, introduce our character (in this case a first-person, I) and at least hint at the dilemma, and this story has all three.

It’s very easy to start sentences with a pronoun (I, He, She, The woman etc – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoun). Have too many and they stick out, and whilst there are quite a few in this piece they are interspersed with alternately-structured sentences so unless you look for them, the pronouned sentences blend in.

I’m not usually a fan of repetition and in the first paragraph we have two ‘draining’ close together but in this case Tracey has used them to compare to one another and it works well, although there’s a later reference to it which I would have left out, ditto two ‘perhaps’ which did jar with me, but then as I said, I’m a repetition nut.

Clichés are best avoided and the protagonist describes the woman he/she is looking as ‘a shadow of her former self’ and whilst you can get away with it in dialogue, slightly less so in first person narrative (because you’re being narrated to) – I would try and pick an alternative.

About half-way through we get an insight into the woman’s history and the comparison between then and now, a great tactic for pulling at a reader’s emotions. It’s intriguing how the narrator knows the woman yet remains detached from her for most of the piece. My brain went into vampire mode slightly with ‘the blood entered her veins and disappeared as though it had never been’ but when I realised she wasn’t, it made it all the more realistic; a reader should be able to imagine themselves as either character.

The description is strong; I especially liked the woman’s dark circles. I’m usually a fan of dialogue and here we have just six words of it but I enjoyed the story mainly being from one person’s point of view as it was a very intimate setting.

This is a very short piece (590 words) but is all the more powerful for it, especially given it’s twist near the end.

Thank you Tracey for inviting me to read your story.

Tracey Alley was born and raised in QLD, Australia but caught the travel bug quite early and lived in Melbourne and Christchurch, New Zealand for a while. She considers herself a Christian, albeit a slightly esoteric, left of centre one who also has a great amount of respect for Buddhist tradition and philosophy.

She’s infinitely curious about the world and her friends describe her as an intellectual butterfly as she flits from one topic to the next. She’s a pacifist, a little bit left of centre and can, like most people, be very complex. She’s passionate about the things she believes in and believes firmly that you have to keep learning as you grow. So far she has two degrees and will likely do more study.

She believes she was born to be a writer and feels blessed that circumstances allow her to write full-time and still survive [although not on royalties yet ] She fell in love with words at a very young age and is a voracious reader, often with two or three books on the go at the same time.

One little known but rather interesting fact about Tracey is that on the paternal side her great-grandfather owned a circus. He was a lion tamer and worked with all the big cats and her great-grandmother was a trapeze artist and of Romany Gypsy blood. On her mother’s side of the family she was born into Scottish aristocracy.

Her website is http://traceyalley.weebly.com and her novels and short story collection The Kaynos History Tales are available on Amazon.

***

Next up is the one hundred and forty-ninth author spotlight, of Carla Herrera, then the blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with suspense mystery novelist and spotlightee Deb Borys – the five hundred and ninety-seventh of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Author interview no.596 with multi-genre writer Lorna Collins

Welcome to the five hundred and ninety-sixth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with multi-genre author Lorna Collins. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Lorna. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Lorna: Thank you for having me. I am a native Californian, born in Hollywood and raised in Alhambra. I now live with my husband, Larry, in Dana Point. However, I have lived and traveled throughout the United States and the world. During my career, I have worked in Document Control and as a Technical Writer, so I’ve been writing most of my life. However, it wasn’t until after we’d spent thirty-one months living and working in Japan that I considered writing anything publishable. During that adventure, I sent home random essays every couple of weeks. Larry added his own observations occasionally. When we returned, friends suggested we turn those notes into a book. The result was 31 Months in Japan: the Building of a Theme Park, published in 2005. It was a finalist for the 2006 EPPIE and was named one of Rebeccas Reads best nonfiction books of 2005.

Morgen: Congratulations. I’ve introduced you as a ‘multi-genre’ writer, what genre do you generally write?

Lorna: We started with memoir, but have now written in several other genres. After attending a writing conference, we got the idea for a mystery. The result was Murder… They Wrote, published in 2009. We enjoyed the protagonist so much that we had to take him out of retirement for Murder in Paradise, which was a finalist for the 2012 EPIC eBookAward.

I’ve also written several romance anthologies with friends Sherry Derr-Wille, Christie Shary, and Luanna Rugh. Snowflake Secrets, the first one, was a finalist for the Dream Realm and Eric Hoffer awards. We followed it with Seasons of Love and Directions of Love which won the 2011 EPIC eBook Award. For our Christmas anthology, An Aspen Grove Christmas, we added new author Cheryl Gardarian.

My latest book, Ghost Writer, is a fantasy / mystery / romance set in and around Laguna Beach, California.

And, in addition to others in those genres, Larry and I are currently working on a historical novel set in San Juan Capistrano, California between 1820 and 1890. I guess I’m just easily bored!

Morgen: I love bringing back earlier characters, especially if they’ve gone from minor to major. I also write a variety of genres, although most tend to be ‘dark’ and for this year’s NaNoWriMo I started a crime series. Do you write under a pseudonym?

Lorna: Larry writes as “Larry K. Collins” to avoid confusion with the other Larry Collins, but I use my own name. I always thought it was a perfect pen name, so why should I change it?

Morgen: It’s easily remembered, which is half the battle when marketing. You’ve self-published, what lead to you going your own way?

 

Flash Fiction Friday 067: Time to Change by Jessica Grace Coleman

Welcome to Flash Fiction Friday and the sixty-seventh piece in this series. This week’s is a 998-worder by horror novelist and short story author Jessica Grace Coleman.

Time to Change

Vincent looked up at the bare beams of the attic ceiling and shook his head in amazement. He was still holding his great-grandfather’s watch, a shiny gold disc in the darkness, the ticking of the timepiece matching the palpitations of his heart. If he’d looked in the elegant silver mirror at the other end of the long, narrow room, he would have seen his shocked face staring back at him, blank and white and round.

He’d come up into the attic to dump his old typewriter, something which until recently had been the bane of his life. Writer’s block had enveloped him a few months ago, and he’d never quite got his mojo back. The book had been left unfinished, and like everything else in his life, Vincent had completely given up on the thought of being a writer. It was just easier to quit.

The watch had been hiding in the corner of the attic, in a tiny brass jewellery box that Vincent hadn’t seen for a good twenty years or so. He’d opened the delicate clasp with trembling fingers and had let out a cry of surprise when his hand closed around the ornate pocket watch.

It was amazing. Not only was its gold chain still completely intact, but the watch looked brand new. It contained no chips, held no scrapes, it didn’t even have a single fleck of dust on it. But the most amazing thing? It still worked. He had held the ticking disc up to his ear, listening to its steady beat; a sound that must have been going on up here for almost a hundred years. It was an incredible thought.

Seconds passed as he gazed at the face of the timepiece, watching the hands tick slowly round and round. He’d noted that the clock was an hour out (it had showed the time as a little before one in the morning), but now it suddenly occurred to him that it would have been the right time up until a few days ago. British Summer Time had recently ended and Vincent had spent quite a while changing all of the clocks in the old house.

Grasping the timepiece lightly, Vincent had gently wound it back one hour, taking care not to damage any of its delicate parts. He’d watched as the hour hand glided smoothly over the watch’s surface, and frowned when it seemed to get slower and slower as it headed nearer to the number 12. It was as if the watch didn’t want to be touched, didn’t want to be handled, didn’t want to be changed.

The hand had eventually reached the number 12 at the exact minute that his modern, digital watch had announced it was midnight, and a second later, Vincent had blacked out.

It felt like a lot of time had passed when he finally came to, hours at least, but one glance at the pocket watch, which was still in his hand, told him that less than a minute had gone by. Alarm bells started going off in Vincent’s head. The attic had changed. Oh, it was still the same room, still the same dimensions, but that was about the extent of the similarity between this attic and the attic he’d blacked out in, seemingly less than a minute ago.

None of his stuff was here. His childhood toys, his school reports, the empty boxes that inevitably accumulated over the years… it was all gone. The ceiling, which Vincent had plastered with hundreds of rock band posters, was back to its bare wooden beams. All the rubbish was gone. Instead, the room was filled with ornate wooden furniture, stylish mirrors, exotic rugs. He vaguely recognised the items as things in his own attic, things that had now been covered in decades of dust and grime. It was clear that someone used this room, and not just for dumping junk.

Vincent’s gaze flickered to the pocket watch as his thoughts jumped back to a conversation he’d had with his grandfather, years and years ago. He’d told Vincent all about the house, and how his father, Vincent’s great-grandfather, had commandeered the attic as his own private study. He’d pretty much lived in there as he’d written the many classic novels he was now famous for.

He stared around the room again, this time taking in the writing desk, the paper, the quill. It couldn’t be, could it?

As soon as he had that thought, a creaking sound reached his ears: someone was ascending the small wooden ladder, someone who was going to find him up here, hiding in the corner like a burglar who’d been caught in the act.

Step, step, step. Tick, tick, tick.

 

Author interview no.595 with fantasy and thriller writer Tracey Alley

Welcome to the five hundred and ninety-fifth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with fantasy and thriller writer Tracey Alley. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Tracey. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Tracey: Hi, I’m Tracey Alley, working out of south Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, where I live with my husband, two dogs and our cat.  I believe I was almost destined to be a writer because for as long as I can remember I’ve been making up stories and writing them down, some I would just tell but most I would actually put to paper.  It took a long time for me to find my ‘voice’ as a writer and feel, not only comfortable with what I write, but also that what I’m writing is of high quality and publishable.  The Witchcraft Wars series was the first piece of work I felt truly proud of, even though I had received positive feedback for other pieces of work I am certain that only now can I truly call myself a writer.

Morgen: Novelist Bob Frey wrote an interesting piece for me on being an author vs a writer (http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/guest-post-when-is-a-writer-an-author-by-bob-frey). I think that anyone who writes is a writer. I felt like an author when I’d first published something. What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Tracey: My main genre is fantasy and I’ve also dabbled in thrillers but I haven’t yet been able to achieve the necessary level of tension and proper pacing in my thrillers.  With fantasy I think I’ve got the pacing nailed down and I write fantasy very well.  I’ve been told, by readers and reviewers, that I write a good fantasy tale so I think I’ll stick with that genre but I’ll always be experimenting with other genres at the same time.  It took me a long time to write a really good fantasy tale maybe it will take me equally as long to learn how to write a really good, publishable and polished thriller.

Morgen: I think it’s all practice. I don’t write fantasy because I don’t read it (ditto sci-fi / historical) and although I write crime, I’m not sure it has the pace needed for thrillers either. What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Tracey: To-date I’ve had my fantasy trilogy The Witchcraft Wars published, along with three short stories that relate to characters from the novels and I also have an anthology of poetry published called ‘Reflections: A Modern Anthology’.  I don’t write under a pseudonym but I did change the spelling of my surname from Ali to Alley – Ali is Italian but many people associate it with Middle Eastern countries and there’s a lot of negative feeling about the Arabic world so I felt it would be best to spell it the way it’s pronounced.

Morgen: I didn’t realise it was Italian, although many names do end in ‘i’ so it makes sense. You’ve self-published, what lead to you going your own way?

 

5am Flash: Indie Author Books – Short Stories & Flash Fiction

Having seen one of my interviewees Rosanne Dingli say on a LinkedIn thread: “someone should write a blog soon about all the wonderful indie books available by very capable writers”, I challenged them to give me a <15-word synopsis for their book(s)… they are accepting the challenge and their books are appearing here. What I’m after is your name (listed within each section alphabetically by first name), your website / blog address, book title, book link (where we can buy it), genre and summary in no more than 15 words (a test of your editing skills ). You can email me these details for up to 5 of your books (please don’t paste them into this page’s comments section). My free and $0.99-$2.99 eBooks are detailed on the Books – mine page.

Fiction – prose (short stories & flash fiction)

• you could have your short stories listed here
• Alan Place: Chronicles of Mark Johnson (fantasy/horror) – the story of a photographer-turned-demon hunter trying to fight his demons. This book can be read as individual short stories or novel chapters.  :)
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Alana Woods: Tapestries and short stories (romance, crime, humour, travel) – a collection of published, award-winning, and previously unpublished short fiction to occupy an hour.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Anne R. Allen and 24 other Women Writers: Indie Chicks (anthology) – a collection of personal stories and a sneak peak into each of their featured novels.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Bob Frey: Catawampus Tales (eclectic short stories) – runs the gambit from sci-fi to satire, horror, and everything in between.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Cris Freddi: Pork (short stories / fiction) – a powerful – and unusual – collection of animal stories for adults.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• D Reeder: End of Times, The Court Marshall of Kiddo Slacks, The Gift, The Leper’s Bible, The Night of the Mothers, The Night Watchman. All @ $0.99 on Smashwords.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Ethan Jones: Carved in Memory (suspense short story) – when Justin Hall, a Canadian Intelligence Service agent, is captured by terrorists in Libya during a rescue operation, he is left with only his mind games to escape certain death.
• The Last Confession (crime short story) – Justice comes for a bedridden New York mobster during his last confession.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Graham Smith: Eleven the Hardest Way (crime fiction short stories) – Eleven hard boiled crime stories which will shock and entertain.
• Gutshots: Ten Blows to the Abdomen (crime fiction short stories) – Ten new stories and five bonus tales in this eclectic hard-boiled collection.
• Harry Charters Chronicles (crime fiction short stories) – Join a gumshoe detective as he drunkenly dispenses his own idea of justice.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Jeannie van Rompaey: free and $0.99 short pieces on Smashwords.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Jenny Worstall: Lemon and Lace (short stories) – a bittersweet collection of three short stories about love and choice. Available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
• Infant Barbarian (short stories) – pair of short stories dealing with everyday family situations and their sometimes surprising resolutions. Available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
• Jubilee Violin (short stories) – be careful what you wish for; a sweet song, a balanced life, or murder. Available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Joy V Smith: Hot Yellow Planet (science-fiction ebook short) – in this Pretty Pink Planet sequel, Lori and Chiing continue their adventures.
• Pretty Pink Planet (science-fiction ebook short) – Lori, an agent of SOESFOL, visits Prism to track down planet pirates and rescue aliens.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Julia Kavan: Dreaming, Not Sleeping (erotic horror short story) – some nightmares are too good to resist.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Katherine L. Holmes: Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories (short stories) – past solutions tempt Midwestern characters as they consider contemporary choices in these short story dilemmas.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• K. S. Brooks: Odd and Odder (humour / suspense / general fiction / poetry) – a collection of sensuality, satire and suspense.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Lauren Grimley: Unforeseen (urban fantasy) – returning to teaching, Alex never expected a student to teach her who her enemies really are. Available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Marc Nash: 52FF (flash fiction) – anthology of flash fiction stories, one for each week of the year.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Morgen Bailey: Story A Day May 2011 (31 stories) – an author’s challenge to write 31 stories.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Nancy Adams: Saint Nick and the Fir Tree (Christmas short story) – Saint Nick takes his new Tree friend on a magical post-Christmas holiday.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Neal James: Short Stories – Volume One (various genres) – a perfectly balanced anthology of romance, horror, science fiction, crime and humour. Suitable for everyone.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Rosanne Dingli: The Astronomer’s Pig (short stories – Createspace / Kindle) – seven succulent stories set in Europe, each accompanied by a recipe.
• Counting Churches – The Malta Stories (short stories – Createspace / Kindle) – family anecdotes, folkloric tales, and pure figments of the author’s imagination. Which is which?
• Over and Above (short stories – Createspace / Kindle) – a journey; less travelogue than enthralling ride – into different landscapes peopled by intriguing characters.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Salvatore Buttaci: 200 Shorts (flash fiction) – flash fiction from adventurous to zany and everything in between! p-book & e-book.
• A Family of Sicilians (fiction/non-fiction/poetry) – reviewed as the most authentic book about Sicily and Sicilians.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Sarah England: Mosaic (short stories – Bridge House / Amazon, paperback) – includes Sarah’s stories ’Adele’ and ‘Different Colours’.
• Global Shorts (short stories – globalshortstories.com / Amazon, paperback) – a collection by prize-winning authors, including Sarah’s comedy story ‘She wanted to complain’.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Steven Miscandlon: Into the Shadows (dark fiction / short stories)  dark shadows and darker deeds. Ten short stories ranging from crime and horror to sci-fi.
• you could have your short stories listed here
• Vincent Miskell: Time Travel Times 5 (science fiction anthology) – stories about Tom Paine, Beatles music, dogs, and the hypnotist-psychiatrist, Milton Erickson.
• you could have your short stories listed here

Click here for Fiction – children’s / Y.A.

Click here for Fiction – novels & novellas

Click here for Fiction – poetry

Click here for Fiction – script

Click here for Non-fiction

So what I’m after is your name (listed above alphabetically by first name), your website / blog address, book title, book link (where we can buy it), genre and summary in no more than 15 words (a test of your editing skills ). You can email me these details for up to 5 of your books (please don’t paste them into this page’s comments section). My books and free short stories are detailed on the Books – mine page. Please note: the chances are that I’ve not read the books listed on this page (much as I would like to have done) so these are therefore not personal recommendations but are, in the main, by authors who I have chatted to, interviewed or got to know… even just a little bit.  Kindle Fiction recommends a variety of eBooks and if you’ve read any eBooks you’d like to recommend then you can email suggestions to kindlesrp@gmail.com.

 

Guest post: Festivities And Frost by Lorna Fergusson

Tonight’s festive guest blog post is brought to you by novelist, short story author and tutor Lorna Fergusson.

Festivities And Frost

‘Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.’ (Mary Ellen Chase). By the time you read this post, you may well be vowing never to eat turkey again; the children will have broken at least one toy; you’ll be wondering just how many repeats of old shows the BBC can get away with and you’ll be uneasily aware that you need to get on with those accounts for the tax man by the end of January…

At the start of this month I ran a Fictionfire Focus Workshop on ‘Festivities and Frost’, where we examined how writers make use of winter scenes and festive scenes in their fiction, so in this post I want to share what we discovered about writing about Christmas. We started by listing adjectives for Christmas and our feelings about it – and those pretty soon demonstrated a certain ambivalence of attitude!

Everybody feels the pressure of the Christmas ideal. We love the thought that it’s a cosy traditional time, imbued with rituals and bonhomie, full of unquestioning beliefs and a sense of safety. This is why, if you ask anyone to name a Christmas story, they’ll immediately come up with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We think of rich food, games, carols, candles, parcels, Christmas trees, nativity plays, family gatherings – the whole ‘God bless us, every one’ package of it. If you want to write a story which evokes the atmosphere of Christmas you absolutely must go into sensory overdrive, so that your readers can smell the spices, hear the flute-like voices, feel the crunch of snow underfoot and be warmed by the crackling logs on the fire (central heating not so festive!) …

In the workshop we considered T. H. White’s marvellous description of a medieval Christmas in The Sword in the Stone: in it he evokes a snowy castle on which snow lies ‘like extremely thick icing on a very good cake’, where there are skaters ‘on the moat, which roared all day with the gliding steel, while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry’ and where out in the cold, comic-book wolves wander about ‘slavering in an appropriate manner, or sometimes peeping in with their blood-red eyes’. White is deliberately tongue-in-cheek, creating a fantasy of Christmas as we would most like to think of it. At the end of the chapter the Castle of the Forest Sauvage sleeps ‘peacefully and lightless, in the strange silence of the holy snow.’

This brings us to the second aspect of Christmas a writer can explore: its spiritual and moral force. You can choose to highlight the magical atmosphere and the opportunities the season presents for your characters to grow and change. You can write stories to warm the cockles of your readers’ hearts, where characters come together, rediscover each other and are reconciled to one another. The bonds of family and friendship can be strengthened and renewed, or characters can be tested and pass those tests, because Christmas is a time of transformation where the meaning of life is heightened. Think of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which opens with a test: the girls have to give up their Christmas to help others – their individual attitudes to the idea of sacrifice help to show us the differences in their characters. Or George Eliot’s Silas Marner, where a tiny lost child wanders into the house of a lonely embittered man – a child who will bring him love and redemption. Or the Grinch, in the story by Doctor Suess, whose shrivelled heart grows and blooms once he realises Christmas isn’t delivered from a shop. The central paradox of Christmas is that a life-affirming mystery takes place in the depths of winter. This provides huge potential for drama, emotion and spiritual significance in your writing.

Finally, there’s the negative side of Christmas, which you can use to counterbalance all that cheery bonhomie! You can focus on the practical problems of travelling to family reunions your character doesn’t even want to attend, or the split loyalties of broken families. You could write about the tacky commercial excess of it all: the pressure to conform to the traditional image, the need to buy presents nobody actually wants, the envy, the racking-up of debts. You could describe the loneliness of those excluded such as the recently-bereaved or the down-and-outs: those people looking in on the Christmas and New Year scene but shut out from it like Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl.

Christmas offers the writer a great range of storylines which all pack an emotional punch. It gives you the chance to use evocative detail and pull at your readers’ heartstrings. It’s at the turning point of the year and triggers memory and anticipation. Ultimately, it’s hard to resist the positivity and the schmaltz, so whether you’re a ‘God bless us, everyone!’ type or your default state is ‘Bah, humbug!’, go on – have a wallow!

I will. Thank you, Lorna!

Lorna Fergusson is a novelist and award-winning short story writer who has taught creative writing for Oxford University and the University of Winchester. She runs a literary consultancy, Fictionfire, offering workshops, day courses, editing, critiquing and mentoring to writers. Her novel, The Chase, first published by Bloomsbury, will soon be re-released on Kindle and she is currently writing a historical novel. She blogs about books and the writing life at http://literascribe.blogspot.com and her website is at www.fictionfire.co.uk. You can follow her on Twitter at @LornaFergusson and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lorna.fergusson. Contact her at info@fictionfire.co.uk.

And a little more about her book ‘The Chase’…

Le Sanglier: a house buried in the woods in the heart of the Dordogne, a region steeped in dark history.

Gerald Feldwick buys Le Sanglier as a refuge. He tells his wife Netty that in France they can start afresh – they can escape the unbearable pain of an event which is fracturing their marriage. He tells her they can put the past behind them.

Netty is not so sure.

Netty is right.

‘This is a haunting book, skilfully written and tantalisingly unravelled. Lorna Fergusson weaves a vivid but dark tale set in the beautiful Dordogne, where past and present fuse in a page-turning mystery.’ Alison Weir, novelist and historian

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If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.

The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with fantasy and thriller writer Tracey Alley – the five hundred and ninety-fifth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Author interview no.594 with paranormal / historical romance writer Catherine Greenfeder

Welcome to the five hundred and ninety-fourth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with paranormal / historical romance author Catherine Greenfeder. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. See below for a giveaway…

Morgen: Hello, Catherine. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Catherine: I am married, the mother of a young adult son, and a teacher. I live and work in New Jersey. I’ve published three novels in the last six years, and I am working on three more and a novella. I belong to the New York City chapter of Romance Writers of America and the Liberty State Fiction Writers organization in New Jersey.

I began to write early in life, and my first love was poetry. I had a few poems published. I also worked as a retail copywriter, a publicity writer, a technical editor, and am currently a language arts teacher in a middle school.

I began writing romance stories about twenty years ago after reading a lot of them. I took writing workshops and attended many writing conferences which enriched my writing. I also belong to a writing critique group.

Morgen: Being a ‘language arts teacher’ sounds interesting. I love languages (German is my second best followed by French / Spanish). I run or belong to four writing groups and find them invaluable. What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Catherine: I write paranormal romance and historical romance. I am currently finishing a young adult paranormal romance and a time travel romance. I wrote a mainstream women’s fiction novel some time ago, and I hope to return to edit and submit it.

Morgen: That’s a good idea because you’ll have had the practice since then to see where you need to edit. What have you had published to-date?

Catherine: I published Sacred Fires, a paranormal romance, with Secret Cravings Publishing in February 2012. My western historical romance, Wildflowers, a story set on the Oregon Trail in the 1840s, is an e-book published with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. My paranormal romance Angels Among Us had been published in February 2006 by Wings ePress.

Morgen: You mentioned self-publishing with Amazon and Barnes & Noble, what lead to you going your own way?

Catherine: My historical western romance novel Wildflowers had been published in 2007, and I decided to self-publish it in 2011. The book received excellent reviews, but it did not do as well as I had hoped with the original publisher and I decided to self publish.

Morgen: It’s the marketing that’s key and the hardest part of writing. Are all your books available as eBooks? How involved were you in that process? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Catherine: Yes, my books Sacred Fires and Wildflowers are available as eBooks. I chose to submit to Secret Cravings, a new e book publisher, for Sacred Fires, and I plan to submit other work to them in the future. I found them very author-friendly and open to a variety of stories. I read both eBooks and print books. I like the convenience of having many books on the eBook reader as well as the availability of books. I also like holding a book in my hands.

Morgen: Me too, and most of the authors I’ve spoken to have said the same thing. Do you have a favourite of your books or characters? If any of your books were made into films, who would you have as the leading actor/s?

 

5a.m. Flash 271212 – Free thriller eBook by Andrew Barrett 26-30 December

You can download (for free) Andrew Barrett’s new thriller, The Third Rule – Part One: Atrocities, from Amazon until the 30th December. Details below…

Ever wanted a justice system that puts the victim first, takes away the criminal’s rights, makes him pay for the damage he’s caused? How about he’s given three chances, and then the justice system takes his life?

Sounds great. But what happens if the justice system isn’t as perfect as they said it would be? What happens when things go wrong? CSI Eddie Collins takes on England’s new justice system.

Andrew Barrett is a crime and thriller writer based in Wakefield (England). He has been writing since the early 1990s, and has completed several novels and co-written a number of television scripts. A selection of Andrew’s books is currently available from Amazon Kindle Store and Smashwords.

Andrew’s work crosses a number of subject areas and genres moving from horror to thriller via crime and mystery, but his main focus is on the world of Scenes of Crime Officers (SOCOs or CSIs). He offers a unique insight into this often dark landscape, making good use of his sixteen years’ professional expertise as a crime scene examiner to envelop the reader in exciting yet realistic stories. His website is http://andrew-barrett.co.uk.

The book links are:

• http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Third-Rule-Atrocities-ebook/dp/B009ZIU0IU
• http://www.amazon.com/The-Third-Rule-Atrocities-ebook/dp/B009ZIU0IU

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

5a.m. Flash 271212 – Free eBook by Saskia Akyil 27-29 December

The synopsis of Saskia’s debut novel Secrets of a Summer Village reads…

When she doesn’t get a place in a Mexican study abroad program, Rachel anticipates another summer behind the counter of a coffee shop until an unexpected opportunity to spend a month with a family in Turkey drastically changes the course of her summer.  This intercultural coming-of-age novel is full of exotic tastes, summer heat, promises, and love. In a summer village on the western coast of Turkey, you’ll meet Rachel, who doesn’t know what she wants; Aylin, who doesn’t know if she wants the one who wants her; and Leyla, who knows who she wants, but doesn’t know if she’ll get him. Love and romance are secret pleasures in the summer village, which only make them more exciting.

Can coffee grounds tell your future? Will fate bring you to your soul mate thousands of miles from home? Would the evil eye dare stop two souls on their paths to each other? Travel with Rachel on her journey far from the comforts of home, to a place that will captivate her and leave her changed forever.

Secrets of a Summer Village is a novel in which modern, middle-class Turkish culture is seen through the eyes of an American teenager. In the 91,075-word novel, Rachel learns that many aspects of Turkish culture are different than her own, but that family, friendship, and love are universal.

Saskia E. Akyil lives in southern Germany with her husband and two young children. She enjoys cooking, writing, reading, tennis, listening to public radio, spending time with family and friends, and gardening. She wishes she could say she liked to exercise and clean the house. Saskia speaks five languages relatively well, none of them perfectly, and once upon a time spoke two more, which she’s mostly forgotten. She used to be an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, but is taking a break from that while her children are small and intense.

Her book is available for the Kindle free from 27th until 29th December from:

• http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Summer-Village-ebook/dp/B005FNGHBI
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Summer-Village-ebook/dp/B005FNGHBI

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

5a.m. Flash 271212 – Free Thriller eBook by G.T. Rigdon 27-29 December

What is the line that separates good and evil, coincidence and providence, delusion and reality? This question is confronted by G.T. Rigdon, author of morally engaged fiction, provocative stories for curious minds. His book High Striker will be available for FREE on Kindle during 27th to 29th December 2012.

High Striker synopsis:

In 2018, Dr. Amos Konklin, a renowned neurosurgeon dubbed “Doctor Golden Hands,” is arrested for a grisly double-homicide at the Old Wilderness Campground. During a mesmerizing interview with reporter Peter Wild, Dr. Konklin reveals a shocking secret. For decades he’s wrapped those golden hands around a twelve pound sledge-hammer, his instrument of choice in numerous executions. As the reporter probes deeper, he is lead into a world where a brain surgeon who spent his childhood running the “High Striker” carnival sideshow game is connected to Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, The Bible, and tormenting visions. High Striker is an unparalleled Old Testament / Carnivale thriller whose central character could be described as a God-obsessed fusion of Hannibal Lecter, Dexter Morgan, and a carny. It’s a remarkable journey through time and place, a saga of the Konklin family spanning generations, exploring religious, intellectual, and philosophical perspectives of the human condition. Ultimately, it dares to confront the challenging question: What is the line that separates good and evil, coincidence and providence, delusion and reality?

Available from Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/High-Striker-ebook/dp/B008YPL8AO and Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Striker-ebook/dp/B008YPL8AO

For more information visit www.gtrigdon.com

G.T. Rigdon is an engineer, an ex-minister, and a writer of morally engaged fiction, provocative stories for curious minds.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

 

Author Spotlight no.148 – Chris Angus

Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the one hundred and forty-eighth, is of historical suspense thriller / mystery novelist Chris Angus.

Chris Angus specializes in writing suspense thrillers / mysteries within a historical context, with subject matter ranging from mysteries surrounding the Titanic, World War II, new DNA discoveries, the threat of mutating pandemics and the debate between the world views of creationism and basic science.

Chris is also the award-winning author of several works of non-fiction, including Oswegatchie: A North Country River (North Country Books–2006), The Extraordinary Adirondack Journey of Clarence Petty: Wilderness Guide, Pilot and Conservationist (Syracuse University Press—2002), Images of America: St. Lawrence County (Arcadia Press—2001), and Reflections From Canoe Country (Syracuse University Press—1997).

While London Underground is a work of fiction, much of Chris’ precise writing style he showcases with his nonfiction comes through. Chris released earlier this year his first fiction novel, The Last Titanic Story, also available from Iguana Books, followed by his second thriller Flypaper, from Cool Well Press. London Underground is Chris’ third novel for 2012.

London Underground and The Last Titanic Story are available from Iguana Books.com, Amazon and Barnes and Noble on-line bookstores. Flypaper is available from Cool Well Press.

And now from the author himself:

When you come right down to it, the way I write is sort of by feel. I feel my way into a story. No outlines, no plots micromanaged to the last syllable. I spend months gathering notes and clipping articles about things that have interested me. Or perhaps some researched item from a past book strikes a note and I think I might expand it into a story that will resonate.

I set my books in parts of the world I would like to visit. If enough people buy them, I may get the chance. Readers sometimes ask how I can write about places I’ve never been. Sure, it is more of a challenge and requires more research. But I take pride in being as accurate as I can. I’ve also never been a woman. Does that mean I can’t write about them? I’ve never been an alcoholic. Does that make it impossible to get inside their heads? I’ve never killed anyone. Does that mean I can’t write about what a killer feels?

I tend to like cold, desolate places. So I have books set in Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Africa and the Taklamakan desert of China. I enjoy varying time periods as well. Books or parts of books have taken place 10,000 years in the past, in Victorian England, during the pre-WW II colonial era in Africa, in the age of Henry VIII and in an ancient Buddhist monastery in the year 75 A.D.

One place I have visited a lot is London. I’m an Anglophile who finds British history about the most interesting there is. That this small country could have such an overwhelming impact on human history is mind boggling. Scenes in many of my books have been set in London. With London Underground, I decided it was time to devote an entire thriller to the great city. Still, I needed an angle. Everyone, even those who have never been to London, knows a lot about the city. So I wanted to find something that most would not have come across. That led me to the world below ground. Subterranean Rivers, Roman ruins, ancient bones and the war cabinet rooms of Winston Churchill all provided a new perspective on the city.

Ever notice how many adventure movies take place in underground tunnels? Whether vampires, Nazis, mad scientists or aliens, somehow they all end up underground chasing or being chased down long, dark corridors. I’m especially fond of all those police and medical procedurals where some lone woman is being pursued down endless corridors in a big city hospital that is, miraculously, deserted. When have you ever seen a deserted hospital, even in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve?

I write to tell a great story and to connect that story to events in history, which brings it alive to the reader. At the same time, I try to keep myself interested by injecting fascinating events or science or places. If I can’t put the book down, I hope you won’t be able to either.

You can find more about Chris via…

• http://chrisangus.iguanabooks.com
• http://www.facebook.com/chrisangusauthor

LONDON UNDERGROUND by Chris Angus

Beneath the streets of London lie many secrets. Subterranean rivers carve channels through darkened caverns. Hidden laboratories and government offices from WW II offer a maze of corridors and abandoned medical experiments. Lost also in the depths are the contents of a looted Spanish galleon from the days of Henry VIII. And deep within lies a Nazi V-2 rocket that contains the most horrible secret of all.

Carmen Kingsley, in charge of London projects for the British Museum, and Scotland Yard Inspector Sherwood Peets race to unravel the mysteries before the great city succumbs to a frightening disease from the age of the Henrys called the English Sweat.

Unknown to them, their partners in tracing the disease began their own efforts more than sixty years earlier during WW II. A top-secret British mission is sent to the far northern regions of Norway to stop the Nazis from developing a biological weapon that will be airmailed to London via the V-2 rocket.

It all comes to a climax beneath London with the discovery of a horrifying species of genetically altered “super rats” that threaten to invade London and the British Isles in a manner more horrifying than anything ever envisioned by the Germans.

London Underground is available for purchase at Iguana Books.com (http://iguanabooks.com/books/london-underground-print-edition), Amazon (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk) and Barnes & Noble (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/chris-angus) on-line bookstores.

***

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with paranormal / historical romance author Catherine Greenfeder – the five hundred and fourth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Boxing Day interview no.593 with literary novelist Jane Davis

Happy Boxing Day and welcome to the five hundred and ninety-third of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, directors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. Today’s welcomes the return of novelist Jane Davis to talk about her second and third novels (see http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jane-Davis/e/B0034P156Q). A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello again Jane, lovely to have you back. We covered a lot of ground in our podcast interview and our earlier blog interview, but mainly talked about the one book you had out at the time, so I’d like to concentrate on your latest two books. Firstly, please tell us how ‘I Stopped Time’ came about.

Jane: Reading a biography of Lee Miller, one of my heroines. I knew her photography but, as it turned out, very little of her life. She was an extraordinary, extraordinary person. One of the most sought-after fashion models of her day, who became a muse to surrealist photographers and artists such as Man Ray and Picasso. But she had always yearned to be on the other side of the lens and, in time, she became highly respected for her own work. At the outbreak of World War II she became dissatisfied with her fashion work and documented the Blitz for Vogue, then underwent yet another transformation to become the only woman in combat photo journalism in Europe, taking incredible personal risks. Lee also recorded the first use of napalm at the battle of St. Malo, the liberation of Paris, and she was there when the victims of Nazi concentration camps were liberated. Her personal relationships were never straightforward, but it a huge testament to the strength of her personality that all of her ex-lovers became friends. She eventually settled down in Sussex with the artist and curator, Roland Penrose, with whom she had a son, Anthony. He knew Lee as an embarrassing mother and had no idea of her history until, after she died, he discovered her collection of work. I found his comment that he was cheated out of knowing someone really very extraordinary extremely poignant, and it set me on the road to discovering one of my main characters, Sir James Hastings.

Other things, I stumbled upon along the way. One of the things that happened while I was writing a book that spans the period of the First World War was the death of Harry Patch. I had been deeply moved watching and reading about the histories of the last of the Veterans, and admired him greatly for his decision to speak out after so many years’ silence. After all that time had passed, you could still see how raw his emotions were.

Morgen: You mentioned in our earlier interview about your love for photography and you’ve incorporated it here.

Jane: Absolutely. That’s one of the things that made I Stopped Time such a joy to write. Jacques Henri Lartique, a self-taught photographer whose collection spans over seven decades, kept intricate notes of his experimentation with what was still a new medium when he was given his first camera as a boy. They became my sourcebook. In fact, I was able to pull several of my passions together: photography, a relatively new-found interest in history. The book is dotted with some of the incredible people I found along the way, whose paths would have crossed with my main character’s. I’ve already mentioned Harry Patch. There’s also Florence Mills, the first black female international superstar, and Edith Hawkes who became better known as Sylvia Ashley, a real rags to riches story. Graveyards also feature.

 

5a.m. Flash 261212 – Free Sci-Fi eBook by Kenna McKinnon 26-28 December

There’s a buzz in the air—and it’s deadly…

Kenna Mary McKinnon’s novel ‘SpaceHive’ is free on Kindle from 26th to 28th December. Here’s more about Kenna’s book…

After getting kidnapped by giant alien bees, twelve-year-old Jason Anderson is transported to a spaceship called SpaceHive. There, he learns of a horrifying plot to annihilate Earth’s human population so that extraterrestrial bees and wasps can migrate to a new world.

As a swarm of spaceships make a beeline toward Earth, Jason must convince three friendly worker bees to help him escape his space prison and find other humans to aid in his mission to stop the invasion. But General Vard, wasp commander of the Black Watch, has other plans.

Can Jason unite the nations of Earth in their common fight to destroy these alien invaders? Or will Earth be lost to the sting of conspiracy and a worldwide massacre?

Amazon.com link: http://www.amazon.com/SpaceHive-ebook/dp/B008SYCHFG

Amazon.co.uk link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/SpaceHive-ebook/dp/B008SYCHFG

Book trailer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFSCTRLTlL0

***

Kenna McKinnon is a freelance writer/photographer and self-employed medical transcriptionist who lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Although her degree is in Anthropology (with a minor in Psychology), Kenna has spent her life writing.

She enjoys exploring the psychology of the human condition, especially when the accompanying human is dropped into complex and unusual circumstances. Kenna has lived successfully with schizophrenia for many years.

She has three wonderful children and three grandsons. Her website is http://kennamckinnon.blogspot.ca.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Christmas Day interview no.592 with women’s commercial novelist Julie Cohen

Welcome to the five hundred and ninety-second of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with women’s commercial novelist Julie Cohen. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Julie. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Julie: I’m a novelist and a creative writing tutor, and I write women’s commercial fiction. I’m from the US, but I’ve lived in the UK for quite a while now. I’ve always wanted to be a published writer, but I never really knew how to become one. In 2001, I decided just to go for it and start writing a novel. I got addicted and I’ve never stopped.

Morgen: I was the same (in 2005), although I’ve worked my way up to novels via short stories. Your website http://www.julie-cohen.com/about says your first novel (aged 11) was “about a sorceress who had to defeat a devilishly good-looking evil wizard, and it was pretty much a copy of Ursula LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, with added romance”, has romance always been part of your writing?

Julie: Not always, but I find myself coming back to it again and again. I love writing about relationships. Although I will say that age 11 my knowledge of romance was pretty rudimentary. As I recall, the evil wizard threatened the sorceress a bit and then he kissed her and she cast a spell on him.

Morgen: That sounds like fun. You have had eight stand-alone novels published to-date, do you have any favourites or your books / stories or characters? If any of them were made into a film, which actors would you choose?

Julie: The current book I’m writing is always my favourite. But of my backlist, I have to say it’s a toss-up between Girl from Mars and The Summer of Living Dangerously—both of which, coincidentally, are about women escaping into fantasy worlds, although for quite different reasons and with quite different results.

I almost always cast my heroes as actors or musicians, but I rarely cast my heroines, who are usually quite clear in my head without needing a real-life stand-in. Recent heroes have been played in my head by Robert Downey Jr, Joseph Fiennes, Paul Bettany, and Mark Ruffalo. Right now I’m crushing on Ben Whishaw, who’s the hero of my book-in-progress.

Morgen: I’d be happy with any of those (especially Robert and Joseph). You’ve also written six Mills & Boon novels (http://www.julie-cohen.com/books/mills-boon-books). Mills & Boon are seen by some writers, especially when starting out, as an easy option, do you have any suggestions for writing for them?

Julie: Writing for Mills & Boon is most definitely NOT an easy option! They are such a specialised sort of novel that many people find it extremely difficult to write something that is acceptable. The books’ short word count (c.50,000) requires strict discipline in pacing, focus and structure, and their emphasis on emotion means that you absolutely cannot write these books without being a wholehearted fan of the genre. Once you’re a Mills & Boon author, the publisher expects you to write several books a year, the combined word count of which can easily exceed the length of two mainstream novels. And the deadlines come thick and fast. All of this is on top of the unthinking prejudice you encounter as a Mills & Boon fan and author from people who have never read the novels and assume they are formulaic trash.

Some tips? I think someone who wants to write for Mills & Boon should truly enjoy the genre. If you look down your nose on the genre, readers will know. They will. You should read a lot of the publisher’s output and target your story quite carefully at the line you’ve chosen. You should also spend a lot of time learning the craft of creating character quickly, of pacing, of structure, and of evoking conflict and emotion. Writing for Mills & Boon taught me valuable lessons in all of these things and it was a great start to my career.

Morgen: Some authors say they don’t read the same genre of book whilst they’re writing it but I agree, that you should certainly know your genre before writing it. That said, one of my Monday night writing group is an 80-something science-fiction novelist and I found out fairly recently that she’s never read sci-fi. Nor have I so I don’t write it, but she (Anna) said it’s just what came out. You were previously published by Headline, but your next book, ‘Dear Thing’, is going to be published by Bantam Press (part of Transworld / Random House). Do you think the name of the publisher on the cover makes a difference?

Julie: To the reader? Not at all. I don’t think most readers even look at who published a book. Though the publisher produces the cover, the blurb, the marketing, and influences the book’s international status and its ability to get into bookshops and supermarkets, so they do make a very large difference overall.

Morgen: You have a free short story on Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JulieCohen), which I really enjoyed, by the way – I love naughty characters. Have you ever been tempted to self-publish a longer work you’ve written that’s not yet been traditionally published?

Julie: No, but that’s only because the longer books I’ve written that haven’t been published, have not been published for a reason. They’re awful. I never want anyone to see them, ever.

Morgen: <laughs> Are all your books available as eBooks? Are you involved in that process at all? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Julie: Most of my books are available as eBooks, except for one or two of my backlist. The process is entirely handled by my publishers. I have an e-reader and I probably read about a third of the books I read on it—mostly new releases which I want to download immediately, or books that have only been published as eBooks. It’s great for instant gratification (and for taking up less shelf space). But for the most part, I prefer to use my local library and my local bookshop, both of which I think deserve my support.

Morgen: I can probably count on one hand the number of interviewees who’ve said they only prefer eBooks; most say it’s great having the choice. We met at the 2012 Chipping Norton Literature Festival (where you taught one of the most popular workshops – writing sex scenes!). How important are live events to you as an author?

Julie: I love them! I spend so much time alone in my writing room and in my head that it’s a huge treat to meet readers and authors in real life. I don’t know if they help to sell many books, but they help my sanity a lot.

Morgen: I bought your ‘One Night Stand’ (still in my to be read pile, sorry about that). You’re a member of the UK-based Romantic Novelists’ Association. How has the organisation helped you with your journey as a writer?

Julie: It’s been fantastically useful. I’ve met some amazing writers and learned a lot. The RNA has the New Writers’ Scheme for unpublished writers where you can get a full manuscript read and critiqued by an experienced writer. I’m proud to be a graduate of the New Writers’ Scheme and I now read and critique for the scheme, to pay forward what I learned.

Morgen: What a great idea. I’ve recently set up a http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/feedback page based on the same idea (though inspired by a panel I was attending at the Festival of Romance last month). Did you choose the titles / covers of your books? How important do you think they are?

Julie: I’ve chosen the titles of about half my books myself (my personal favourite is Nina Jones and the Temple of Gloom, though I’m also quite proud of my next book, Dear Thing). I think a title is important to the reader, but probably more to the author—I feel more connected to the titles I’ve thought up myself. Covers are extremely important—it’s the first thing a reader sees about your book—which is why I leave it up to the professionals, though I’ll admit I like some of them better than others. My cover for Dear Thing is gorgeous, and it’s such a treat when the publisher and designer really get what you were trying to do with the book.

Morgen: It often doesn’t happen, so a relief for sure. Your website’s biography also mentions that you drew a weekly cartoon for the ‘Brown Daily Herald’, have you ever been tempted to illustrate your own cover?

Julie: Dear God no. The only things I really draw well are squids. It wouldn’t be attractive.

Morgen: <laughs> In the video on http://www.julie-cohen.com/extras your research for ‘Getting Away With It’ took you to Wiltshire (and eat lots of ice cream, watch Top Gear and drool at Aston Martins), do you always have such a tough time doing research?

Julie: I love doing research! I will admit that I choose things I’m interested in for the subjects of my books so that I have an excuse to learn more about them. I’ve researched bats, comic books, fake psychics, roller coasters, and Regency dancing among other things, for various books.

Morgen: I know of some authors who have picked exotic locations so they can visit them for research, and claim expenses. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Julie: I’m working on my follow-up book to Dear Thing, which I hope will be another emotional, page-turning read, though I don’t want to say too much about it just yet!

Morgen: No problem. Do you plot your stories or do you just get an idea and go with it?

Julie: Sometimes I plot, and sometimes I just go with it. Different things work for different points in the story, and for different books. With Dear Thing I had to write a full synopsis for the publisher in order to sell the story and that was quite difficult, though it did help me write the book faster.

Morgen: That’s a good idea, then you only need to make tweaks to it when you’ve written the book (note to self: write the synopsis first). Do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Julie: Although these days I think I find the structural part a bit easier, I still have to do a lot of editing. I like to write quite a rough first draft and then work on improving it.

Morgen: I do the same; I write whatever’s in my head then worry about the attention to detail afterwards. Have you had any rejections? If so, how do you deal with them?

Julie: I have had a lot of rejections—mostly at the beginning of my career, before I was published, but there have been a few since then too. Mostly I turn to the wine and chocolate, and then write something else.

Morgen: Teresa Chris is your agent (who also represents Jane Wenham-Jones). Do you think having an agent is vital to an author’s success?

Julie: No, but it’s certainly been vital to my success. My agent gives me invaluable advice and she knows the market inside out. My dream has been to write standalone novels for a major publishing house, and she has made that happen. Many authors have dreams that don’t require an agent to achieve them—for example there are many successful self-published authors or authors publishing with houses that don’t require agents—but having an agent was definitely the right path for me.

Morgen: I don’t have an agent and plan to self-publish my novels but I’d never say never; I’d love to see my books handled by a top traditional publisher. You have your website and you’re active on Twitter (https://twitter.com/julie_cohen) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/julie.cohen.author) – do you have to do much of the marketing for your published works or indeed for yourself as a ‘brand’?

Julie: My publisher handles the proper marketing, but I do find it important to engage actively with readers. I love doing library talks and festivals and things like that and I am quite alarmingly addicted to Twitter.

Morgen: Twitter’s great. I remember spending the day on Twitter when William married Kate (April 2011) and especially loved it when they went on the balcony with my fellow Twitteratis asking if they kissed, then William & Kate half-kissed and caused uproar, then they kissed properly. You can imagine what happened then. You have some great tips for writers on your http://www.julie-cohen.com/extras/#for-writers page, the ‘prepare to do mighty battle with the crows of doubt’ is particularly funny. If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

Julie: Write. Just write. Write what you want to and as much as you can. While you’re writing a first draft, treat yourself to unbounded confidence. You should definitely be as critical of your own writing as possible, but save that till the editing stage. Above all, write and enjoy yourself while you’re writing. This business is difficult enough; you might as well have as much fun as you can.

Morgen: Absolutely, and I do. Are you involved in anything else writing-related other than actual writing or marketing of your writing?

Julie: I teach creative writing courses for beginning and advanced novelists. My courses for 2013 are up here: http://www.julie-cohen.com/events.

Morgen: I love that you invite people to bring cakes. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Julie: Lately I seem to be baking a lot of cakes. I have also taken up running (which is probably related to the cake-making and subsequent cake-eating).

Morgen: And will give you plenty of time to plan your books. Thank you very much, Julie.

I then invited Julie to provide a synopsis of ‘The Summer Of Living Dangerously’…

An ordinary woman. An extraordinary adventure.

Alice Woodstock has been running away.

Well, not literally. She spends most of her time glued to her desk, writing about grommets and model aeroplanes. No, Alice is avoiding the real world because there’s something—someone—in her past that she’s desperate to forget. So when she’s commissioned to write about life in stately home Eversley Hall, she jumps at the chance to escape into Regency England, even if it does mean swapping her comfy T-shirt for an itchy corset. Perhaps she’ll meet her own Mr Darcy…

But when her past resurfaces in the shape of Leo Allingham, Alice is brought down to earth with a bump. Reckless, unpredictable Leo reminds Alice of the painful price of following her heart. And the new Alice doesn’t live dangerously.

Or does she?

***

If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.

If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.

Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:

Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group

• http://nonfictionwritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/335526669896374

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group

• http://novelwritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/508696639153189

Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group

• http://poetrywritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/388850977875934

Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group

• http://scriptwritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/319941328108017

Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group

• http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/544072635605445

We look forward to reading your comments.

 

5a.m. Flash 251212 – Free eBooks by Ethan Jones 25-29 December

I know how much you love free eBooks so I put out the call for authors with special offers for me to shout about them in these 5am flashes. Here is a campaign from Ethan Jones (for Amazon.co.uk just swap the .com for .co.uk and the links should work):

I’m preparing a promotional campaign during December 18 to January 15. It’s called “29 Days of $2.99” and all my works will be priced at $2.99 during this time. I will appreciate any help you can give me to spread the word about this deal.

I’ve also scheduled a number of days in December when my works will be free on Amazon as follows:

Burying the Truth – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009DSPRI0

The Last Confession and Other Short Stories – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A0DL9PM

Carved in Memory – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0084R0196

The Last Confession – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0084R021S – free on December 25-29, and

Tripoli’s Target – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009M8W5ZY – free on December 25-29.

I hope you’ll have a chance to download and read these books. Feel free to share these days with anyone on your social media or circle of friends. And if you enjoy them, please leave a review on Amazon. This is very important as it helps other readers and allows my books to be listed on more websites during these free days.

Ethan

You can follow Ethan on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EthanJonesBooks. See the 5am flash on 121212 for details of Ethan’s books.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Post-weekend Poetry 053: Snow Drift by Ruth Holroyd

Happy Christmas Eve and welcome to Post-weekend Poetry and the fifty-third poem in this series. This week’s piece is by poet and short story author Ruth Holroyd.

Snow drift (c) Ruth Holroyd, Jan 2010

I must go out in the snow again, to the lonely snow and the sky

And all I ask is a clear day and the moon to steer her by

And the rope’s kick and wind’s song and the white branches shaking

And the pale mist on the white face and the grey dawn breaking

I must go out in the snow again, for the call of the dogs and sleigh

Is a wild call and clear call and has to be obeyed;

And all I ask is a bright day with the white clouds pouring,

And the whipped flakes and the blown drifts and the red kits soaring

I must go out in the snow again, to the frigid icy life

To the fox’s way and the bear’s way – the sleet cuts like a sharpened knife

And all I ask is a greeted call and cheerful soul when meeting

And a deep sleep and a sweet dream when my heart has slowed its beating

***

I asked Ruth what prompted this piece and he/she said that it was inspired by Sea Fever by John Masefield

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by

And the wheel’s kick and wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And the grey mist on the sea’s face and the grey dawn breaking

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

and the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and whale’s way where the wind’s life a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over

***

Thank you, Ruth. It was delightful.

Ruth works as a freelance copywriter and marketing communications professional in Buckinghamshire.  She writes company case studies and copy edits brochures and websites.  She also writes regular articles and features about living with allergies and food intolerances. Her allergy blog, www.whatallergy.com, was voted in the top 5 allergy blogs in the UK in 2011 and she is one of the guest judges at the Free From Food Awards 2012.  You can read some more of her writing here.

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays.

 

Christmas Eve interview no.591 with detective and humour writer Andrew Peters

Merry Christmas Eve and welcome to the five hundred and ninety-first of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with short story author Andrew Peters. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Andrew. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Andrew: I currently live in a little village in Spain with my 2 cats. My arty needs were taken care of by singing and guitar playing, until June 26th 2012 when a story appeared in my head & I typed it out. Two months later I had 40 of them. Not sure I count as a writer… more of a bad typist!

Morgen: A writer writes, and you’re selling your stories so you’re not only a writer but an author. You predominantly write short stories (yay!), did you pick them or did they pick you?

Andrew: They picked me, every story that appeared in my head ended up taking 1500- 4000 words to tell.

Morgen: Is there a genre that you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Andrew: I have 20 detective stories which are humorous parody type things, featuring Otis King, the Blues Detective. The rest vary, but are mostly humorous, often with a vague crime or satire feel.

Morgen: I say I write dark and light but it’s generally crime and humour. Is there a particular market you aim for when writing stories for publication?

Andrew: People who find me funny, I suppose.

Morgen: We’re friends on Facebook and you certainly chirp in there. Are there any publications you can recommend for short stories (submissions and reading)?

Andrew: I have never tried any. I think my stuff is a little too quirky for most of the crime sites and I’d rather publish it myself rather than ask other people’s permission. I was able to publish 20 to Amazon after a month… if I’d sent them to crowded sites, I’d probably still be waiting for number one to appear. I had no wish to spend years collecting rejection slips, though I know some authors claim this is a character building part of the writing process. I just arranged a cover for each collection and they were published to Amazon as soon as they were finished. I doubt any publisher would be interested as I’m rather difficult to classify.

Morgen: I’ve self-published more than not so I know how you feel, although I am going to start to submit again, I’m older and wiser now. Why do think short stories are so hard done by (with most readers going for novels)?

Andrew: There seems to be much more kudos attached to being a novelist, struggling with ideas, characters, plot development. And, when it comes to selling books, it’s easier to sell 300 pages than 6.

Morgen: It would appear so. I was going to say that it’s a shame but I’m a novelist now too, so I’m happy with either. Do you write flash fiction? Can you remember the word count of shortest story you’ve ever written?

Andrew: 1500 words is the shortest.

Morgen: What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Andrew: I have 2 collections of stories “The Blues Detective” and “Solos”…a follow up to each is nearly ready. I use my own name so my mother can see it on the cover.

Morgen: I don’t, and my mother’s not very happy about that, although I have had articles published under my real name which pleased her. I know she’s proud really. Are your stories available as eBooks? How involved were you in that process? Do you read eBooks (novels or short stories?) or is it paper all the way?

Andrew: Yes, they are.  I pretty much only read ebooks now… cheaper and saves on storage. And there’s an awful lot of good ebooks out there… some real dross too, mind you…. but don’t get me started on a rant!

Morgen: There are both, and some I know is poor quality because the writer didn’t get a second opinion (they’ve said so on LinkedIn – although not admitting to it being dross but saying they’ve just finished, are going to edit it and put it online). Needless to say no-one agreed with them. Do you have a favourite of your stories or characters? If any of your stories were made into films (Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain originated as a short story), who would you have as the leading actor/s?

Andrew: Otis King the Blues Detective is my favourite character… I think I’d have to play him myself. I am available to all offers from Hollywood.

Morgen: Is there an authors that you would compare your writing to?

Andrew: Not really, though The Blues detective style owes something to Damon Runyon.

Morgen: I’ve not read him but you had me at ‘detective’. Did you choose your titles / covers? How important do you think they are?

Andrew: I have total artistic control, though my covers are done to my ideas by Joe Lumley, who gets a great feel. Lots of people comment on the covers, I love Joe’s stuff. They definitely have their own style.

Morgen: They’re great covers. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Andrew: “A Case For The Blues Detective” and “Monophonics”… two new collections… nearly done.

Morgen: Ooh, how exciting. Do you manage to write every day, or ever suffer from writer’s block?

Andrew: Most days, but it depends whether the voices in my head are talking to me. I don’t get writers block, there’s either an idea to be typed out or there isn’t.

Morgen: There usually is with me. I’m very lucky that I have more ideas than I have time for… luckier would be to have time but I’m dropping these interviews to weekend-mornings-only from July (where I’m currently booked up to) and having more author spotlights instead (weekday-mornings instead of the existing Sat / Wed evenings) so I should have more time to dedicate to my writing. Do you plot your stories or do you just get an idea and run with it?

Andrew: Definitely run with the idea, though the story is usually 95% complete in my head before I hit the keys.

Morgen: You mentioned Otis King earlier. Do you have a method for creating your characters, their names and what do you think makes them believable?

Andrew: I don’t have that many characters, they don’t generally need to be all that believable, as they are often caricatures. Names come from combinations of people I’ve met, or are just ones that I feel suit the people. Apologies to Wendys, Arthurs and Normans everywhere.

Morgen: I don’t think I’ve written any Wendys but I’m sure I have had Arthurs and definitely Normans. Do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Andrew: I generally only edit for mistakes… mostly commas or repetition of the same word in consecutive lines. The voices in my head dictate the story very well, but I’m a lousy tyyyypisstt.

Morgen: <laughs> Do you have to do much research?

Andrew: Virtually none. I just twist reality to suit the story. I am told Memphis does not have docks, a Welsh Embassy or a Venusian quarter, which I find quite surprising.

Morgen: And there was I thinking that every town had a Welsh embassy. Just as well I’m English (from Buckinghamshire originally). What point of view do you find most to your liking: first person or third person? Have you ever tried second person?

Andrew: First person, it’s more immediate. Never quite sure how you can describe someone’s thoughts in the third person. I have read stories in the second person, I’m not sure it works outside a limited conversational approach… but I’m prepared to be proved wrong.

Morgen: I’ve written a lot of it, mainly for my Tuesday Tales page and at least once a week for 5PM Fiction. I also have a second-person eShort ‘The Dark Side‘ (available free on Smashwords) and it’s my favourite pov to write but only for short pieces; I don’t think I’d consider a novel in that pov (although never say never). It’s said everyone has a novel inside them, do you write novels (and/or poetry or non-fiction)?

Andrew: I write songs, but not stand alone poetry. I see no signs of having a novel in me. I think I would end up writing it as a parody.

Morgen: No bad thing. Do you have pieces of work that you think will never see light of day?

Andrew: Yes. “The Little Book Of Scorn: A Guide For The Middle-Aged Misanthropist”

Morgen: I’d say that’s a bestseller. I can guess the answer to this; do you have an agent?

Andrew: No I don’t. I am achieving my own kind of success by amusing people with my stories. At the moment the publishing industry doesn’t bother me and I don’t bother them.

Morgen: What’s your favourite / least favourite aspect of your writing life?

Andrew: I like writing the stories and getting positive responses to them. I’m not a fan of marketing.

Morgen: I’m the same, although marketing is a necessary ‘evil’. I’d love to spend my whole days just writing but I do enjoy this blog too so it’s finding that balance. If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, whom would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Andrew: Elvis, BB King and Raquel Welch. Chilli.

Morgen: Nice. Is there a word, phrase or quote you like?

Andrew: ”If you have to explain it to people, you’re wasting your time!”

Morgen: If you ‘show’ it well enough (in your writing) you won’t have to ‘tell’. Are you involved in anything else writing-related other than actual writing or marketing of your writing?

Andrew: I did offer to write reviews, but I got sent awful stuff… all of which had lots of exclusively 5 star reviews on Amazon…. (hmmmm!)… and I didn’t want to upset people, so I gave up!

Morgen: That’s a shame, I could have added you to my http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/reviews page. What do you do when you’re not writing? Any hobbies or party tricks?

Andrew: Cycle, play guitar, play with the cats, walk round the lake. Nobody ever invites me to parties… maybe I need to learn some tricks.

Morgen: And there was I thinking that life in Spain was one long party. Are there any writing-related websites and / or books that you find useful?

Andrew: Not really, I don’t seem to write like normal people.

Morgen: I like to think I don’t. Normal is… well, too normal. Are you on any forums or networking sites? If so, how valuable do you find them?

Andrew: Not really, don’t have time. Facebook of course… I do have a twitter account, but I acquired 1200 followers on the first day, most of whom seemed weird…. or Justin Bieber fans… or both. I don’t really understand Twitter.

Morgen: I find it very useful but keep my page on ‘connect’ so I see when I’m being involved in conversations. Leaving it on the home page eats time; I can take the dog out and come page to hundreds of tweets about what people had for their tea. Oh to have the time to be so trivial (not that I would anyway). What do you think the future holds for a writer?

Andrew: These are exciting times for anyone who wants to be a writer… you can just do it and get your work out there.

Morgen: You can, we can, I love it. Where can we find out about you and your writing?

Andrew: My Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6454072.Andrew_Peters), and my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/andynpeters).

Morgen: Is there anything you’d like to ask me?

Andrew: Why do you devote so much of your time to a blog? Must be a lot of hard work.

Morgen: It is. It’s a full-time job (I gave up my job in March) and then some, but I do enjoy it. Why I do it is easy, because I live and breathe writing and really I’m in the same boat as every other writer (so want to help them), I just want my writing to be read. Thank you, Andrew.

I then invited Andrew to include a synopsis of one of his books…

Meet Otis King,… or that’s the name on his office door. Maybe his original name sounded a little more Welsh, but didn’t sit too well on a Blues guitarist in the city of Memphis. By day, Otis works as The Blues Detective. Pretty much every Blues related case in Memphis drifts his way sooner or later. Enjoy Otis’ adventures in bite-sized chunks with your coffee, or better yet, a beer with a bourbon chaser. Otis is a fun guy, who does his best to avoid trouble and attract blondes. Some days he succeeds more than others. Join him as he deals with Hijacked Harmonicas, Missing Musicians, Wayward Wives and Precious Packages.

***

If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free.

If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.

Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:

Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group

• http://nonfictionwritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/335526669896374

Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group

• http://novelwritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/508696639153189

Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group

• http://poetrywritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/388850977875934

Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group

• http://scriptwritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/319941328108017

Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group

• http://shortstorywritinggroup.wordpress.com
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/544072635605445

We look forward to reading your comments.

 

Guest post: Writing Quality Content by children’s / YA author and poet Tracy Kauffman

Tonight’s guest blog post is brought to you by children’s / YA author and poet Tracy Kauffman.

Writing Quality Content

Writing a book is more than putting down a few words on paper.  It takes time, energy and a motivated individual to write a story. A story whether fiction or nonfiction should capture the interest of the reader or audience by having a balance of interesting characters, appealing storyline, and the essentials elements of a story.

These include:

Ÿ  Setting – the time and location of where the story takes place.

Ÿ  Plot – planned series of events that take place in the story.

Ÿ  Point of View – the point of view of how the story is told.

Ÿ  Theme – the central idea or meaning the author is trying to convey.

Ÿ  Conflict-the opposition of forces that the main character has to face.

Writing a quality book must come from an author who takes the time to research their topic to some degree. (Some genres such as fairy tales takes less research than others.)

An author has to overcome obstacles such as writers block and earning credibility.  Even in fiction books, the readers want to be able to believe in the story.  If you have ridiculous things that don’t make any sense, the reader will lose interest and the author will lose their credibility.

Writers block can be detrimental to authors but can be overcome with patience and practice.  Tips for overcoming writers block could be:

Ÿ  Brainstorming – writing down words or phrases of things that you want to talk about.

Ÿ  Writing about things you know

Ÿ  Writing about things that inspire you

Last of all, think about your readers when you write.  Make sure you edit your work because the reader will lose interest if they do not understand what they are reading.  Misplaced commas, quotations can lead the reader off track.  Editing your work should come after a brief period away from your writing.  If you try to edit something as you write, it takes twice as long to catch all of the errors, because your brain knows what you meant to say even though the paper says something different.  Consider your writing from your readers point of view.

Ÿ  Is the content appropriate to the story line.

Ÿ  Is the reader going to understand what you are trying to say.

Ÿ  Is the reader going to believe in your credibility to tell the story.

That was great. Thank you, Tracy.

Tracy Kauffman is a Christian fiction author of Young Adult and Children Stories.  She has an associates degree in Nursing.  She is a registered nurse and works part time in a local nursing home.  The rest of the time she spends her time writing books and marketing them.  Her titles include: Gwendolyn’s Wish, Southern Adventures, Richard the Lionheart, My Boyfriend the Squire and Captain Honey Bear Saves Goldie Locks. Tracy started writing poetry at a small age and won the title of editor in her school newspaper, when she was in second grade.  She had her first poem published in a online writing contest called, The Cosmetology Student.  She decided to write her first book, Southern Adventures, when her son left home for the Air Force. She hopes to be able to inspire her readers into living a happy healthier life.  She feels like her own life experiences have made her a better writer.

Synopsis of Southern Adventures:

Kay remembered times when she had prayed and asked God for certain things in her life. She suddenly felt comforted. She was glad that he left some prayers unanswered. Oh, what kind of life would she have had, if she received everything she wanted?

Kay Harrison sat in her living room, slowly flipping through the pages of a photo album filled with photographs from her past. She recalled her life as a child who was brave and mischievous. Living in the south brought a life of adventures and mishaps for Kay. She searched hard for the meaning of her life. Follow Kay as she discovers this meaning as God’s plan for her unfolds through the good times and rough times that she endured on her Southern Adventures.

You can find out more about Tracy and her writing from…

• Her website: http://tracykauffman.yolasite.com
• Her blog: http://tracykauffman.blogspot.com
• Her books are available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon in soft cover or E book.
• Buy links: http://www.amazon.com/Southern-Adventures-Tracy-Kauffman/dp/1621476790
• And http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/southern-adventures-tracy-kauffman/1113389151?ean=9781621476795

***

If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Red pen no.011 – critique of novel extract by Lianne Simon

I run a fortnightly critique group as well as critiquing other authors’ writing which I really enjoy, so I started creating podcast episodes doing this. Because this was not only time-consuming but also restrictive being audio-only, I decided to switch from audio to text and will now be running future ones on the blog. The earlier episodes have already been blogged (and are listed on the http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/red-pen-critique  page) with new episodes being run here every Sunday evening (UK times).

Please remember that it’s only one person’s (my) opinion and you, and the author concerned, are welcome to disagree with my interpretation – I will never be mean for the sake of it, but hope you find that I’m firm but fair. I type my comments as I read through the story as a reader would think as they read, although they would most likely be reading, not analysing, unless they’re writers too!

Regardless of what genre you write I hope that this helps you think about the way fiction is constructed and that you have enjoyed reading another author’s work, the copyright of which remains with them.

***

The piece in this post was kindly emailed to me by Lianne Simon and is from her book ‘Confessions of a Teenage Hermaphrodite’.

If you have any feedback on this or aspects of my blog, I’m always delighted to hear from you – my email address is morgen@morgenbailey.com. And if you’re feeling brave enough to send me a short story or novel extract (with a brief synopsis please) – 3,000-words maximum – for these red pen blog sessions then feel free. So without further ado, the story / synopsis and extract, then my feedback…

Synopsis

Jamie was born with a testis, an ovary, and a pixie face. He can be a boy after minor surgery and a few years on testosterone. Well, that’s what his parents always say, but he sees an elfin princess in the mirror. To become the man his parents expect, Jamie must leave behind a little girl’s hopes and dreams.

At sixteen, the four-foot-eleven soprano leaves home school for a boys’ dorm at college. The elfin princess can live in the books Jameson reads and nobody has to find out he isn’t like other boys.

When a medical student tells Jamie that he should have been raised female, suppressed childhood memories stir. The elfin princess can thrive, but will she risk losing her family and her education for a boy who may desert her, or a toddler she may never be allowed to adopt?

Excerpt from Confessions of a Teenage Hermaphrodite by Lianne Simon

The first chapter is at www.liannesimon.com/confessions. Lianne told me: This scene was a last-minute experiment, to see what it would be like to write part of my manuscript in first person. It flowed out in about ten minutes. When I sent my manuscript to an editor for an evaluation, he said that, based on this scene, I should rewrite the rest of my novel in first person and share more from the heart. I did that and got my contract. In the release version of the book, the scene is almost identical to the original. The scene is a flashback, and the earliest even in the book.

***

I didn’t have any clothes fit for an elfin princess, so my cousin Kaylah let me borrow some hand-me-downs one of the Fair Folk had given her. She shook her head as she held a white velvet skirt up in front of me. “I don’t care if that old book says the Kirkpatricks are faie. Your face is bean shìdh, but the rest of you is brùnaidh.”

At five I was only a little taller than my two-year-old sister Alicia, so the clothes were way too big for me. “Please, Kaylah. The brownies are elves too. They’re just not as tall.”

“All right, then.” Kaylah safety-pinned the white velvet skirt to my slip, so the waist stayed up under my arms and the hem brushed the floor. The satin sleeves of the woodland green blouse hung down past my fingertips. She wrapped a silver lace belt around my waist twice and made a bow in the back. A spider-silk flower went on my shoulder. I sat down so she could tie the ribbons of starlight ballet slippers around my ankles. “There you are!” She clapped her hands together. “Princess Grace herself doesn’t dress any finer than that.”

Fancy clothes weren’t all an elfin princess needed to be dressed for a party, so I sat facing my reflection and waited for my maidservant to finish. She stood behind me in the wall mirror, intense concentration twisting her face. I grinned as she pulled the soft foam rollers out of my locks and fluffed, brushed, teased, and sprayed until my hair was perfect. It wasn’t very long, but the color was pretty, somewhere between ripe pumpkin and the gold of the earrings she clipped on my ears.

Face full of wonder, Kaylah held a glass vial before my eyes. “There’s a river so high in the Mountains of the Moon that the water turns silvery-blue.” She pulled the stopper out of the shiny bottle and dipped a small brush into it. “I’m going to paint your nails with moonlight. Sit still until it dries.”

In the mirror sat a beautiful elfin princess—golden hair aglow, large emerald eyes, small red mouth, and rosy cheeks sprinkled with freckles. She was the happiest elf-maiden of the realm. I stood, grabbed a handful of white velvet on each side, curtseyed to the lady in the mirror, and spun around so my skirt would fly.

“Pretty!” shouted Alicia, one finger in her mouth.

“Both my girls are beautiful.” Kaylah bent down and kissed my little sister on the cheek.

“Are you ready, birthday girl?” She grabbed my hand and held it high. “Your court awaits you, my lady.” I spun around on tiptoes, a lovely ballerina, my shoes sparkling like stardust in the night sky.

Jimmy the Pirate swaggered into the kitchen, wooden saber at his side and a black patch over one eye. Alicia danced in her little pink tutu and a pair of angel wings made from coat hanger wire and crinoline. Gladys was dressed like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, red shoes and all. She had even brought Toto, a stuffed toy animal that might once have resembled a dog. Kaylah wore a tattered pair of bib overalls, a gingham blouse, and an old straw hat.

They had all chipped in and bought me a present. Kaylah must have wrapped the package because the edges and folds were all straight. I pulled the tape off, careful not to rip the paper. Inside was a new Raggedy Ann. A squeal of delight burst from my lips, and I hugged the doll to my breast. “Sofie! I’ll name her Princess Sofie!” I scooted over on my throne, set her on the seat beside me, and straightened her dress.

Kaylah winked at me, set my birthday cake on the kitchen table, and lit the candles. I blew out all five with one breath and grinned at Jimmy. They say you shouldn’t tell anybody your wish, but he already knew I wanted to be his wife.

The pirate grinned at me, eyes flashing, and waved a saber over his head. “Yar! Cut the cake!”

Kaylah was the one who baked my birthday cake. I think she got the recipe off a Hershey’s Cocoa tin. Anyway, she made the yummiest chocolate cakes. I cut Jimmy a ragged chunk and passed him his plate.

“Princess, you’re making a mess.” My cousin, gentle as always, cleaned the frosting off my sleeve and cut slices for the rest of us.

I was halfway through eating mine when I heard the front door open. Ooh! Dad was home early. Seeing the little princess would make him sad. My fork hit my lap, chocolate cake and all, and bounced to the floor. Arms trembling, I sprang up, thinking to run away.

“No, Jamie. It’s okay. Today’s your birthday.” Kaylah grabbed my arm and gently pushed me back down into my seat. “He should see how pretty you look.”

Kaylah was only twelve, but she’d pretended to be my mom ever since she was seven. My real mom home schooled Kaylah, and me, and my brother Scott every morning. In the afternoon, while our moms worked, my cousin, and Alicia, and I played together. Scott didn’t hang around with girls, so he went to his pal Joey’s or played kick-the-can outside the old schoolhouse on Polk Street.

I didn’t have a magic ring to make me invisible, so Dad found me as soon as he strode into the kitchen. His eyes, deep wells of disappointment, locked on the elfin princess and sucked the life out of her. “What’s going on?”

Kaylah stepped between me and Dad, saving me from certain doom. “It’s Jamie’s birthday, remember? The kids are all wearing costumes for his party. We were reading Old Scottish Fairy Tales and he wanted to dress like an elfin princess.”

I peeked around Kaylah’s waist, hiding Sofie behind my back. The air around my father seemed to crackle with lightning, but he only nodded and smiled at me. “I got you a new softball. After your party, let’s play catch. Okay, sport?”

So my dad played catch with the elfin princess, tossing her the ball underhand from a few feet away. I missed the first one; it went right between my outstretched arms. The second rolled off my fingertips. The third bounced off my hands and hit me in the face. Boys seemed to learn right away, but I didn’t think I’d ever be able to catch a ball. I shut my eyes to hide my frustration, but the tears were too many.

“I’m sorry, Jameson. Are you okay?” Dad knelt down and hugged his little princess tight, but the disappointment in his eyes hurt her worse than the ball had. Scott said I threw like a girl, but all the ones I knew played catch better than me. I got hurt when I played boy games. Every time. That’s one reason I preferred playing with Kaylah and Alicia.

Dad led me back inside. While he searched for the ice pack, I sympathized with the princess in the mirror. Her face resembled a raccoon’s now, with a dark half-moon under one eye. Poor girl. Another black eye. Won’t you ever learn?

***

My comments:

Stories should always start with a hook and it’s great that we have one within the synopsis. We should also get to know who our lead character is early and we have our protagonist’s name in the first word. It’s interesting that the name Lianne has chosen could be a male or female and this ties in perfectly with the title of the story. Pixie face implies the fantasy genre but needn’t be.

In the second and third sentences we have our dilemma; the parents want a boy but Jamie wants to be a girl. There are actually two conflicts going on there; Jamie with her parents and with how she is built. We don’t know initially how old she is but she’s clearly made up her mind who she is. At Jamie’s height (4’11” = 1.5m) it would be easier for her to be a girl. Had she been 6’4 (1.94m) it would have been more difficult (there’s an interesting video about height here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7bdIFJUpvk). I had a female colleague who was 6’1 and she loved being tall – as do I, I’m 5’10). When we learn that Jamie is going to fulfil his parents’ wishes and that the ‘princess can live in the books’ it tugs at our heart strings, as a story should.

We then have the ray of hope with the student’s news but again Jamie has obstacles to overcome (losing her education and possibly a child). It’s a great three-act structure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure).

It’s interesting to see what Lianne says about point of view. I’ve heard many authors say that a story just wasn’t working until the changed the point of view and whilst it can take a lot of reworking it was clearly worth it in Lianne’s case, and first person is more suited at getting inside our protagonist’s head. Now on to the writing…

The opening paragraph provides us with another character, another protagonist because she is helping Jamie. I don’t speak Gaelic but we do get an idea of the words from the actions. Then we find she has a sibling, also a girl, and the age differences by Kaylah being the older, or certainly the larger of the three of them. The description of Kaylah’s dressing Jamie is excellent, especially with phrases such as ‘brushing the floor’.

By mentioning Princess Grace is dates the piece and by mentioning someone we know (I assume Lianne means Princess Grace of Monaco) sets it in reality even if it’s not. Jamie pretending she was a princess and calling her her ‘maidservant’ made me smile, and the interaction between the two characters is fantastic. Lianne’s also avoided standard colours by referring to Jamie’s hair to that of a ripe pumpkin rather than a shade of orange, and to ‘paint your nails with moonlight’ is exquisite.

This excerpt is such a contrast to the harsh realities of the synopsis that it’s hard to think that there’s a dilemma at all, and Jamie is clearly so comfortable in her female skin that the reader can only feel sympathy for the choice she has to make.

I would have liked to have known who Jimmy the Pirate (a brother? Father?) and Gladys were (presumably not a relative or she would have said do).

Split infinitives often catch us out and ‘I pulled the tape off’ should read ‘I pulled off the tape’ and the verb is to pull off, but it’s so easily done. Likewise indirect action such as ‘A squeal of delight burst from my lips’ because it’s the squeal doing the action and not Jamie’s lips but following it up with Jamie doing the hugging balances it so I’d say it doesn’t need to be changed.

We then get by Jimmy knowing that Jamie wanted to be his wife that he’s a similar age. This leads me nicely to my next point; Jimmy / Jamie… a little too similar, I feel. Although they’re not used together within the text I would suggest Lianne changes Jimmy’s name. Again he’s a great character and it all makes a wonderful scene.

I thought that by using the word ‘Ooh!’ that Jamie was pleased her father was home early but this clearly wasn’t the case and I loved the fact that Kaylah was sticking up for her.

I began to wonder then whether Jimmy and Gladys were toys so re-read the earlier section but by them having chipped in for the present I assumed they were real, and were then told that there were other children at the party so that made sense.

It’s easy to imagine Jamie’s father’s reaction when he enters the kitchen and ‘deep wells of disappointment’ is a great metaphor. He’s clearly trying everything he can to make her a boy; by buying a softball and calling her by her full name.

It’s interesting how Jamie describes herself in the third person for a moment; ‘hugged his little princess / hurt her worse’ and it’s like she sees herself as two people.

The ending is superb. We know she’s tried to fit in, and has previously suffered black eyes because of it and leaving the section with a question is a winner because the reader will certainly want to know more.

As you can tell there was very little I’d change about this section. If we’re introduced to Jimmy and Gladys before this section that there will be no confusion as to who they are. The characters are delightful, the dialogue authentic and the conflict we need in buckets. Great writing, thank you for asking me to dissect it, Lianne.

***

Lianne’s father was a dairy farmer and an engineer, her mother a nurse.

She grew up in a home filled with love and good books.

Lianne’s book is available in paperback and for the Kindle from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

***

If you have any feedback on this or aspects of my website or blog, I’m always delighted to hear from you – my email address is morgen@morgenbailey.com.

And if you’re feeling brave enough to send me a short story or novel extract (with a brief synopsis please) – 3,000-words maximum – for these red pen blog sessions then feel free.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Author interview no.590 with young adult novelist Rory Freckleton

Welcome to the five hundred and ninetieth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with young adult novelist Rory Freckleton. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Rory. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Rory: I live in Shropshire and teach science, chemistry mainly; I have been doing this in various parts of the West Midlands for thirty years. It is only in recent times that I’ve even considered the possibility of writing. My first book was very much an experiment in how far I could push things before people said I was wasting my time. Much to my surprise, admittedly with some bumps along the way, it got to the stage of being published. I was always struck by the power that books had to influence young people and was keen to try a novel aimed at the older teenager / young adult market. Having suffered myself from the isolation of being a gay teenager in a straight world, I was keen to write an adventure story where the principal protagonists were gay, were strong and had positive outcomes. The boy gets the boy rather than the girl for a change. I did feel there was a potential niche market here that was not being well served by the standard fare in most bookshops.

Morgen: They say to write what you know and I’m sure a reader can tell that a book is richer for it. What genre do you generally write?

Rory:  I have written adventure fiction aimed at young adults so far.

Morgen: What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Rory: I was advised not to use a pseudonym and have published as ‘R S Freckleton’. My one book to date is called ‘The Guardians of the Rainbow’ and it is published by Mirador Books.

Morgen: Great title. Have you self-published?

Rory: No I have not self-published. Mirador is an interesting publishing partnership enterprise which is definitely geared up to modern trends of cheap paperbacks and e-books. I can’t see that it would have been of any benefit to me personally to self-publish once I’d been offered a deal by Mirador.

Morgen: Being happy is the most important thing. You mentioned eBooks so your book is available as an eBook, presumably, how involved were you in that process? Do you read eBooks or is it paper all the way?

Rory: I’m still very traditional in the way I read. I will get a Kindle soon, but I’m waiting for the price to come down just a little more first! My book is available as an e-book. Mirador sorted all of that out, for which I am most grateful.

Morgen: Do you have a favourite of your characters? If your book was made into a film, whom would you have as the leading actor/s?

 

5a.m. Flash 231212 – Free short story/poetry eBook by William Bortz 23-29 December

William’s eBook ‘These Ties’ is free from 23rd to 29th December inclusive.

‘These Ties’ is a book of short stories and poems by William Bortz, a 20-year-old first-time author from the Midwest. ‘These Ties’ was inspired by his travels, the people involved, and the discovery of real love. Below is an example of William’s poetry…

…We find that this earth,
continuously turns.
And the fires that power it,
continuously burn.
The sounds that we hear,
are nothing to fear.
But the creation of us,
and everything that we love.
We find that we are all a part,
of the same beating heart.
And right where we end up,
is right where we start.

William Bortz had an upbringing different than most folks, but he never skipped a step trying to figure out what he wanted from life. Using his past as a tool to carve the future, he lets his heart see for him. William loves to write about his adventures, including the special people he meets along the way and their everlasting impression left on him. Using a smooth almost lyrical flow for his writings, he will tell you stories that will stick with you forever.

William’s website is http://afreshnewview.blogspot.com and his eBook is available free from the 23rd to 29th December from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/these-ties-william-bortz/1108568695?ean=2940033171491&itm=1&usri=these+ties (short link: http://bit.ly/T1cBO7).

***

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

5am Flash: Indie Author Books – Poetry

Having seen one of my interviewees Rosanne Dingli say on a LinkedIn thread: “someone should write a blog soon about all the wonderful indie books available by very capable writers”, I challenged them to give me a <15-word synopsis for their book(s)… they are accepting the challenge and their books are appearing here. What I’m after is your name (listed within each section alphabetically by first name), your website / blog address, book title, book link (where we can buy it), genre and summary in no more than 15 words (a test of your editing skills). You can email me these details for up to 5 of your books (please don’t paste them into this page’s comments section). My free and $0.99-$2.99 eBooks are detailed on the Books – mine page.

Fiction – poetry

• you could have your poetry listed here
• Bonnie Gail Carter: That’s Life Poetry (poetry) – filled with pain and difficult relationships while also reflecting buoyancy and a positive approach to life.
• you could have your poetry listed here
• Cendrine Marrouat: Five Years and Counting. A Journey into the Mind of Soul Poetry (poetry) – life has four universal stages. Do you know what they are?
• Rizen (spoken word CD) – written and spoken words have met in a loving embrace.
• you could have your poetry listed here
• John C Bird: Something Understood – a collection of accessible poems to make you smile, fret and ponder.
• you could have your poetry listed here
• John Lavan: Familial: Selected Poems – many poems are inspired by family relationships, especially the bond he has with his first son Andrew, who has Down’s syndrome.
• you could have your poetry listed here
• Kenna Mary McKinnon: Discovery – An Anthology of Poetry (poetry) – poetry by Kenna McKinnon contains a variety of perspectives into her loves, life and times.
• you could have your poetry listed here
• K. S. Brooks: Odd and Odder (humour/suspense/general fiction/poetry) – a collection of sensuality, satire and suspense.
• you could have your poetry listed here
• Lesley Fletcher: 5 Pillars of the Gypsy (eBook/paperback) – a collection of poetry and art that will awaken your spirituality and heighten your senses.
• you could have your poetry listed here
• Vincent Miskell: Humorous Poetry Parodies & Even Verse (humour/verse) – parodies of Poe, Dante, Coleridge, Frost, and others with additional funny verse.
• you could have your poetry listed here
• Wayne Howard: Seasons of the Mind, 2nd Edition (poetry) – life, love, death and Christian mysticism against a backdrop of the seasons of the year.
• you could have your poetry listed here

Click here for Fiction – children’s / Y.A.

Click here for Fiction – novels & novellas

Click here for Fiction – script

Click here for Fiction – short stories (includes flash fiction)

Click here for Non-fiction

So what I’m after is your name (listed above alphabetically by first name), your website / blog address, book title, book link (where we can buy it), genre and summary in no more than 15 words (a test of your editing skills). You can email me these details for up to 5 of your books (please don’t paste them into this page’s comments section). My books and free short stories are detailed on the Books – mine page. Please note: the chances are that I’ve not read the books listed on this page (much as I would like to have done) so these are therefore not personal recommendations but are, in the main, by authors who I have chatted to, interviewed or got to know… even just a little bit. Kindle Fiction recommends a variety of eBooks and if you’ve read any eBooks you’d like to recommend then you can email suggestions to kindlesrp@gmail.com.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Author Spotlight no.147 – Kelly Marshall

Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the one hundred and forty-seventh, is of murder mystery author Kelly Marshall.

Kelly Marshall spent thirty years as a radio announcer. She now devotes herself to her two great passions, raising her grandson, Dawson and writing. Kelly Marshall lives in the Pacific Northwest and is working on her next novel, Millstone, a sequel to her recently published book, The Love Songs Murders.

And now from the author herself:

I always thought I would communicate in the world as a writer. As a child I was a voracious reader, and knew someday I would pen a great novel. It was my calling. But life sometimes takes left turns and I went to broadcasting school instead of a four-year college. The technical college was much cheaper. Besides, I wanted to be the next Barbara Walters and make a million a year. Well that didn’t happen, not yet, anyway. But I did spend thirty years having fun, spinning records, interviewing people, doing love song dedications. I had a ball until…

Congress passed a law in 1996 allowing broadcast corporations to own multiple radio stations in one market. Well, the gobbling began and soon behemoths like Clear Channel ate up radio stations like locusts in a wheat field. And radio announcers like me were axed on bloody Fridays with surgical precision. Well, pooh. Here I was over fifty and working for a small radio station for chump change. Something had to give. I left radio, went to work for the US Federal Government, and in my private hours, began doing what I really loved doing. Writing.

My first book, Other Victims, was a cathartic tale that killed off an ex-husband. It was an initial effort and is molding somewhere in my garage, where it belongs.

My second book, Phoenix is a story of one woman’s survival after Iran rains nuclear terror down on the United States. Written over twelve years ago, the book is relevant now more than ever.

My third book, The Love Songs Murders, is a delicious, sexy murder mystery. Two cops, one male, one female, fall in love with Jasmine James, a sultry, self-absorbed radio star who hosts a love songs dedication show. The bi-sexual announcer captivates both homicide detectives. It’s their job to find out who is murdering Jasmine’s listeners. The big question is, who gets the girl?  Here’s a YouTube trailer about The Love Songs Murders: http://youtu.be/rkLjcPpMEjo.

You can find more about Kelly and her writing via…

• Her website: http://kellymarshallbooks.com (which includes links to order her books).
• You can contact Kelly at kellymarshall@kellymarshallbooks.com.

***

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with young adult novelist Rory Freckleton – the five hundred and ninetieth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!

See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0

or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.

For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.

As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do, and a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words (and post stories of up to 3,000 words). Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me posting it online in my new Red Pen Critique Sunday night posts, then do email me. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.