The Beautiful People: A Writer's Journey

Guest Blog Post by Mel Comley!

2012-03-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

This week, I have one of my indie sisters' talking about her journey from rags to riches and from England to France. Can I just say I envy her? Without further ado, here is Mel!

No wonder she has such a huge smile -- she lives in France!

In the Summer 2011, I was approached by another writer Cheryl Shireman who wanted to pull a group of women writers together to create a unique book. The object of the book would be to inform readers about our personal struggles to become established authors. Every story is an inspiration, some sad, some happy and some tell of great obstacles these 25 women have had to overcome to get where they are today. The proceeds of the book are being donated to a Breast Cancer Charity. We called it The Indie Chicks.

French Fancies!

In 1993 I walked out on my sad and abusive marriage, one that I had stuck with for seven years. At the time I jointly owned a shop with my ex-husband and my Mother, so we had to sell the business when the marriage broke down.

If I thought that was hard it was nothing to what I had to endure the following six years. To make ends meet, I had to work two jobs for 70-80 hours a week over 6½ days. Take my word when I say it wasn’t fun.

But onwards and upwards, when Mum retired we made a spur of the moment decision to leave England and move to France. We’d never set foot in the country before we came out here to house hunt, I know, we’re either brave or stupid. I like to think we’re the former, but I sometimes wonder if that’s the case!

We bought a farmhouse and barns that needed total renovation. In 6 months I decorated 22 rooms while a local builder created a gîte (a holiday home) out of a couple of the barns. After the renovations were completed I grew bored with my ‘early retirement’ and enrolled in a creative writing course. I threw myself into it and over the next 4-5 years I sat down and wrote three romances and two thrillers.

In October 2009, I discovered the writing site run by Harper Collins called Authonomy where I uploaded the first 10,000 words of my thriller Impeding Justice. It took me 8 months to reach the editor’s desk where I received a favourable review from a Harper Collins editor. The trouble was they weren’t taking on any thriller writers at that time, they were only interested in printing Celebrity Autobiographies!

Therefore, in October 2010 I decided to upload Impeding Justice as an ebook. It took a while to take off but in January 2011 sales really started gathering momentum, but it wasn’t until I released the second book in the series, Final Justice that sales really took off.

After selling over 30,000 books in April, I was in the fortunate position of having several agents knocking on my virtual door. I finally agreed terms and signed a contract with top New York agent, Richard Curtis. I sent him Cruel Justice the third book in the thriller series and he tried for 4 months to get me a traditional publishing contract, but at the moment he admits he’s finding it difficult to place any books with publishers because of the Indie revolution, which I’m extremely proud to be part of.

During last Summer, I edited the romances I wrote at the beginning of my journey. I uploaded A Time To Heal towards the end of August and immediately received a couple of 5 star reviews (no they weren’t from my family, they don’t know I write!) some of them were from my thriller fans who were equally impressed by my romance endeavours.

At the beginning of September I uploaded A Time For Change, another romance which is actually a TRUE story of how my dear friends met and fell in love. Obviously they’re names have been changed, the story has a mystery element to it too.

In October 2011, I uploaded the third book in my thriller series, Cruel Justice, which is actually the prequel to my best-seller Impeding Justice. It’s been very well received and has even reached #2 in the Police Procedural chart on Amazon.

I’m very fortunate to be able to write full-time (it’s addictive, don’t you know!) and have several more projects outlined that I intend tackling over the coming winter months.

This is how my day pans out, first thing, providing it isn’t raining, I take my two dogs for a walk, actually they tend to drag me round our small village. Then I sit down to answer any emails and facebook messages I’ve received overnight from fans (yes I do have them) I then set out to write a minimum of 2-3000 words per day, before I dip into hours of necessary promoting. That’s the hardest part of being an Indie writer, the fact that we have to promote ourselves long and hard. I used to be quite a shy person, but I’ve had to overcome that quickly. I think deep down, every writer would love to be a recluse and be able to focus full-time on their creations, unfortunately that’s unrealistic in an Indie world.

Do I ever think about my life back in England? No, never, but my ex features heavily in my books. When I need to think up a baddie character it’s his image I picture in my mind. As for my murder scenes, I find them VERY easy to write. LOL

You can find out about me and my books at the following blogs.

http://melcomley.blogspot.com/

http://melcomleyromances.blogspot.com/

You can purchase my books in ebook format or paperback from my website. http://www.melcomleybooks.com/

Or follow me on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mel-Comley/264745836884860

My twitter id is @melcom1

You can find out about me and my books at the following blogs. http://melcomley.blogspot.com/ http://melcomleyromances.blogspot.com/

Post Script by Moi: Mel is super talented and her police procedural are great for anyone who is a fan of the Jack Daniels' series by J.A. Konrath or the cozy mystery, Ice Blue. Her romance novels aren't bad either. ;-)

Save 50% on Death Lair & The Catalyst!

2012-03-05T12:27:00.000-08:00

Smashwords is having a site-wide sale to celebrate e-books. I have listed two of my newest books in the sale.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/127798

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/137020

Enjoy everyone and happy reading!

Guest Blog Post by Barbara Silkstone

2012-03-05T12:06:00.000-08:00

I love this woman because seriously, what is not to love? She makes very entertaining novels and she doesn't take herself too seriously. She is also laughing all the way to the bank and her story is a wonderful inspiration to all authors and would-be authors out there. Without further ado, I give you Ms. Silkstone.

Someone who has such a lovely smile has to be a great human being!

HAVE YOU EVER LOST A HAT?

By Barbara Silkstone

I lost everything including my home, my car, and even my retirement accounts. I was physically attacked inside and outside a court building. My daughter and baby granddaughter were threatened. I came at the bad guys like a mother tiger.

A few years earlier I had agreed to testify against a real estate developer in a civil racketeering case. He was obscenely rich and could afford a hanger full of Lear jets, four sneering lawyers, and a greedy judge. In an effort to discredit my testimony in his upcoming trial and to frighten me out of appearing against him, his team of legal manipulators pasted together a bogus suit against me designed to keep me tied up in court and unable to function. They underestimated my sense of justice.

I’d been sitting on the witness stand for the better part of a day… one of many in my five-year “trial.” The judge, forgetting her microphone was on, had just proclaimed me “a pretty tough cookie.” I’d given up expecting justice. It was much too late for fairness. I was in an out-of-body state observing my own funeral and laughing about it.

When the four-hundred pound lawyer asked me if I’d ever lost a hat, I thought one of us had lost our minds. I was pretty sure it wasn’t me. He blinked as if he realized the absurdity of what he asked and dropped the line of inquiry. The question struck my funny bone and sent me into giggle-fits. And that was the moment when The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters was born.

Within a few months the lawyers I hired to help me sucked up every penny I could muster. When I was broke, they walked off the case. Unlike in criminal cases, defendants in civil litigation must pay for their own attorneys. No money – no lawyers. I was on my own. I needed to defend myself. But how when the case was nonsense? How do you fight silly? The lost hat question was a perfect example of the charges brought against me. But the more ridiculous their charges, the stronger and feistier I grew. For each thing they threw at me, I came back that much harder, roaring and taking notes for my someday book.

Since I was a child my driving passion has been to write. In Catholic grade school I started an underground newspaper. When our nun forbade me to continue, I carried the paper further underground. While I continued to write as an adult, life eventually got in the way of living and my writing took a backseat. But now as I sat in the courtroom I was inspired and chomping at the bit to get this real-life fairytale on paper.

Anger boiled in me as I saw the precious time I had carved out for writing being eaten up as I defended myself in bizarre proceedings. I was spending all my time in the law library studying the Rules of Civil Procedure in order to write Motions and Pleadings and filing them against the court in such rapid fire I would have made Rambo back off.

Earning a living on commission sales is impossible when you are spending 14 hours a day fighting a pack of legal sharks. I had to take the creepiest part-time jobs… things that still give me nightmares. Things like working for a gold broker who brought us the teeth from dead people. We were expected to separate the gold from the molars – not unlike the lawyers I was dealing with. I needed the money but not that badly. I ran to the nearest exit.

Locked in a deadly struggle with the notorious real estate developer, I chose that time to become romantically involved with a Brit who, it turned out was not what he seemed to be. I stepped into the perfect storm. The Brit’s upper-class accent and polished manners hid a not-too-clever conman, but clever enough to fool my starry eyes. The developer and the conman clashed in a rage of wicked deeds. I was sandwiched between them.

Is The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters true? Would Lewis Carroll say Alice in Wonderland was true? The emotions are real and still raw, but the journey was worth the results. Would I do it again? You bet your tushie. My sense of justice would not permit otherwise. But I would not be quite so naïve. I would expect slimy tricks and dirty pool. Merely because someone wears a robe and speaks of the law does not mean they abide by the law.

“The Hail Mary Pass” refers to any very long forward pass made in desperation with only a small chance of success. It’s used in football and occasionally courtrooms.

My Hail Mary Pass knocked the bad guys on their butts. I filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, which is a request to the United States Supreme Court asking that Court to review the decision of a lower court. I cast a spotlight on their dark shenanigans.

And as my Petition worked its way along the queue in the United States Supreme Court, making it almost to the finish line, the judge on my case went strangely silent, the notorious developer disappeared, and the Brit wandered off. I had become a writer but not in the way I had envisioned. I was a self-taught legal guerrilla who had managed to land her petition to be heard by the highest court in the United States… right through the goal post. Unfortunately, in the end corruption won and I barely escaped with a toothbrush and a change of clothes.

Were those five years tough? Yes. But I fought because I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I rolled into a ball. I fought with the wit and sarcasm of Alice in the original Alice in Wonderland. Standing on the outside watching the Jabberwocky operate on the inside. I knew that someday my story, fictionalized with absolutely no resemblance to anyone living or dead and the names changed to protect the corrupt, would make a darn good yarn. And each step of the way, like Lewis Carroll and my out-of-body ordeal, I would allow the action to the skate on the edge of logic.

In The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters, a few murders have been thrown in for comic relief, and the characters have been shaken and stirred, then presented in a Pythonesque light. Any similarities to the jerks I dealt with are purely coincidental.

Have I ever lost a hat? Probably.

But did I retain my passion for writing, and even kick it up a notch? Absolutely.

Every adventure contains a novel.

Sometime you have to pay dearly for it.

Quoting the Cheshire Cat:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" (Alice)

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where---" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"---So long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all the stories buy your copy today. All proceeds go to fund breast cancer research.

About the Author

Barbara Silkstone is the best-selling author of The Fractured Fairy Tales series that currently includes: The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters; Wendy and the Lost Boys; and London Broil.

Silkstone’s writing has been described as “perfectly paced and pitched – shades of Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiaasen – without seeming remotely derivative. Fast moving action that shoots from the hip with bullet-proof characterization.”

Wendy and the Lost Boys topped the charts in comedy, climbing over Tina Fey, Sophie Kinsella, and Ellen DeGeneres. The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters has been a consistent best seller in comedy. Both Wendy and Alice have been in the top 20 Amazon comedies at the same time. Silkstone has been fortunate enough to take part in writing workshops with Stephen King, Robert B. Parker, and James Michener. She lives in South Florida but has no time to visit the beach.

Barbara Silkstone loves to hear from her readers. You can write to her at: barbara_silkstone@yahoo.com

Or visit her at: Barb’s Wire eBooks & More http://barbswire-ebooksandmore.blogspot.com

Twitter @barbsilkstone http://twitter.com/#!/barbsilkstone

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/people/Barbara-Silkstone/100000778601230

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/barbsilkstone/

Fractured Fairy Tales by Silkstone

Criminally Funny Fables

The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters

This author has a unique narrative voice, and reading the story is like taking a smooth slide into Alice’s surreal world. The premise is outstanding – a classic we all love, with a contemporary, intelligent twist. ~ Elizabeth Lindberg, author Upper West Side Stories

Purchase for your Kindle at: Amazon

Purchase for your Nook at: Barnes & Noble

Wendy and the Lost Boys

Be aware, this is not the Peter Pan story you want your kids reading. It is clearly intended for adult readers. Yet it appeals to the childlike part of us that loved the classic original stories. Combine that childlike love with modern politics and technology, and you get this smart, snarky, hilarious mystery. The story is richly developed and leaves you guessing until the very end. I am liking this grown-up version of Peter Pan even more than the original. ~ Tiffany Harkleroad for Tiffany’s Bookshelf

Purchase for your Kindle at: Amazon

Purchase for your Nook at: Barnes & Noble

London Broil — the sequel to Wendy and the Lost Boys

The snarky Python sequel to Wendy and the Lost Boys. A murderous rollercoaster ride through London during a killer heat wave. ~ Ravan Reviews

Purchase for your Kindle at: Amazon

Purchase for your Nook at: Barnes and Noble

Zo White – coming Summer 2012

Guest Blog Post By Sibel Hodge

2012-02-27T09:57:00.001-08:00

Here is another inspiring story from another indie chick. Ms. Hodge is absolutely fascinating and inspirational so without further ado, I welcome this week's guest.

This is a woman I definitely want to emulate!

From 200 rejections to Amazon top 200!

Sibel Hodge

Ever since I was old enough to scrawl my first word, which was Halibaaaaa, I knew I wanted to write books. OK, so the word didn’t actually make sense, and it might take a little longer for me to actually string a whole sentence together, but that didn’t put me off. I was going to write books and no one would stop me…

From when I was really young, my mum encouraged me to read. “If you can read books, you’ll never be bored,” I remember her telling me. I secretly think it was a ploy to keep me out of her hair and quiet for a while. I was always a loud kid with lots of energy, and always getting into some sort of trouble with the boys down our street. (Yep, even then I was a sucker for boys!). After discovering the wonderful world of books, I thought I’d have a go myself, and remember scribbling down stories whenever I had a spare moment. Shame I was only six, and there was no way anyone would publish a book with I Want Big Girls’ Knickers in the title.

When I was in secondary school my favourite subject was English language. I’d lose myself for hours. And even though I hadn’t thought about my forthcoming career before I left (apart from being Wonder Woman or an astronaut), I knew, even then, I had a love of creating. I also loved to make people laugh from an early age. In the beginning, it wasn’t intentional. I was always saying ridiculous things that I thought were quite serious. Like the time I went to the butchers shop with my nan, and the lady behind the counter asked where I was from. “South America,” I said. (I know, where the hell did that come from? I must’ve had an overactive imagination from the start.) So when people started laughing at me, I thought, hey, this is pretty fun! We live in such a hectic world and laughter is a perfect way to de-stress. Because my personality is quirky, fun-loving, and slightly nuts, it was probably a given that I would eventually write chick lit, although I have recently delved into the dark side of my brain (which is a pretty scary place to be sometimes!) and written a psychological thriller.

But when I left school no one mentioned writing as a career. It was all boring things like secretarial jobs, travel agents, office work. I didn’t even know about creative writing courses until about ten years ago! I think they considered that writing wasn’t a “proper career.” No one suggested journalism or further education in writing. So what was a girl to do? Although my mum wanted me to go to University and study to be something like a doctor or lawyer (eeek!), I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do for a career, so I flitted from one job to the next, trying to find something that interested me, and eventually ended up working for the police for ten years. So there I was, too busy paying the mortgage, working shifts, and living in the rat race of life to have the proper time or opportunity to write a novel. It didn’t stop me trying, though.

It was drastic things like splitting up with a boyfriend that made me start my first novel when I was about seventeen. I never got further than the first three chapters, though, because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, other than using a typewriter! Then I started another one (I got dumped again – can you see a pattern here?) when I was about twenty-three, and ditto (I’d hate for those to ever see the light of day). I just knew that I loved writing and therefore it stood to reason that one day I’d do it, didn’t it? And although I look back now and think I wish I’d started writing earlier, actually, I have to say, that it would’ve been bad timing. Back then I wouldn’t have had anything to really write about. A lot of the things that go into my books now are based on my experience of life. People I’ve met, places I’ve been, books I’ve read, things I’ve done, struggles I’ve achieved. At twenty-three, what did I really know about any of that?

And then five years ago, hubby and I had had enough of the

. We got fed up with the constant grey weather, bills that seemed to increase as you looked at them, working constantly to pay them, and never having quality time for ourselves or our family. Right, it was time to make my childhood dream come true and move somewhere exotic, where the cost of living was lower, and we would actually have time to enjoy each other and life again. Then I would finally have the time and opportunity to dedicate to writing. Yes, we’d have to sacrifice a lot of things to achieve it, but it would be worth it in the end. So we moved to North Cyprus, and it was like my brain suddenly said, Hallellujah! Now we divide our time between Cyprus and the UK.

I didn’t actively think about what I was going to write, but a year after we’d moved there I had an exciting idea for a story, using my unique Turkish Cypriot/British cultural heritage, and my debut romantic comedy Fourteen Days Later was born. Then I actually became the guinea pig for the sequel, My Perfect Wedding! But it was all very well completing my dream of writing a book, but until it was published, no one would get to read it.

So I started querying hundreds of agents and publishers. I got too many rejections to even count! OK, small white lie, a while ago I did count them out of morbid curiosity, and it was a whopping two hundred!

I did come close a couple of times to being traditionally published, but it never quite worked out. It was either, “one group of editors liked it but another didn’t”, or “the chick lit market is saturated”, or “we love it but…”

When I first looked into publishing independently, platforms like Amazon Kindle didn’t support international authors. So the way I saw it, I had two choices. Either I could write another book, hone my writing skills and learn all I could about my craft, and wait for an opportunity to come up, or I could let all the rejection letters get me down, think my writing career was over before it had begun, and stick my head in the oven! Since heat tends to turn my curls into a ball of frizz, it was no contest, really. I wrote my next novel, a chick lit mystery called The Fashion Police, and waited. Because I knew, I just knew, that I COULD do this. I could write novels that people wanted to read. If only I could get the chance.

In the meantime, I also entered several writing competitions. And while I was still getting the dreaded rejections, Fourteen Days Later was shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Prize 2008 and received a Highly Commended by The Yeovil Literary Prize 2009. And The Fashion Police was a runner up in the Chapter One Promotions Novel Competition 2010 (and later nominated for the Best Novel with Romantic Elements 2010 by The Romance Reviews). Surely I was doing something right, wasn’t I? But I STILL couldn’t get a publisher!

Then last year, when Amazon opened up their doors to non-US authors, I uploaded Fourteen Days Later and The Fashion Police onto their Kindle store. I couldn’t believe it when I finally saw my books on sale. It was scary, rewarding, exciting, amazing – so many experiences rolled into one.

But what if no one liked my novels? What if I had all bad reviews? What if all the two hundred rejections were right? What if, what if…?

Time for a deep breath, Sibel. If you want to be an author, you have to repeat this mantra everyday… “I can do this. I can do this. I CAN do this.”

So I did.

And boy am I glad I did! The first month with Fourteen Days Later and The Fashion Police, I sold 44 books (another eeek!). Then I released my third novel, a romantic comedy called My Perfect Wedding, and later released my second chick lit mystery Be Careful What You Wish For. In the last 6 months alone I’ve sold over 40,000 ebooks, and all my novels are consistently in the Amazon top 100 genre categories for humor, contemporary romance, comedy, and romantic suspense. My highest overall sales ranking to date is 136, just missing out on the Amazon top 100 bestseller charts. Considering there are over 900,000 Kindle books on Amazon, that’s not bad!

And this is one lesson I’ve learned in the last couple of years…You can do anything you want to in life. It may mean you have to go a different route than you originally planned, but if you’re determined enough and believe in yourself, you can overcome any obstacles.

So I’m toasting all you women out there with my glass of wine. Cheers to dreams and making them come true! Looks like I got my big girls’ knickers after all!

You can find Sibel’s books in paperback and all ebook formats. For more info, please check out her website

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble . To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.

For reviews and purchases of my latest novels: http://www.sibelhodge.com/

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sibelhodge

Post Script by Yours Truly: Sibel is uber talented and not only has she ventured beyond chick flick, if you think she's all fluff, try this novella on for size. I love Sibel and she is very talented but this is by far one of the best works she has ever written. I have extensively researched human trafficking and this is by far one of the most realistic works of fiction I have read on the subject.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Trafficked-Diary-Sex-Slave-ebook/dp/B005GAC5VQ

Guest Blog Post by Christine DeMaio-Rice

2012-02-20T11:45:00.000-08:00

First of all, this isn't the first time I have had this wonderful author and cover design artist on my blog. She is not only a fellow indie chick but my dear friend. She designed most of the covers on my books which weren't designed by Jack Wallen, including my covers for The Vamp Saga (Death Wish and Better Off Dead) plus the cover for Beginnings: Book I (The Plague). The DeGeneration cover for Love Voodoo was also designed by her. She will be designing many more so you will see a lot of her work here on my blog but this is her time to shine as an author and this is her story. Without further ado, here is Mrs. DeMaio-Rice!

Doesn't she look so damn serious? But seriously, this woman has a heart of gold!

HOW A BIG YELLOW TRUCK CHANGED MY LIFE

(for the better)

An orange peel grapple is a big machine. Excavator on the bottom. Long arm in the middle. And a metal grapple on the end that looks like a horror movie claw. The base spins. The arm moves up and down. The grapple grabs stuff like SUVs and big piles of metal.

You may come across one while driving, and if you have a little boy in the car, you may have to pull over to watch the thing move cars into a tractor trailer. Otherwise, nothing about this machine will rock your world.

But an orange peel grapple changed my life.

My life was a complete disaster at the time. Though I had a beautiful baby boy and a good husband, I had a job in an industry I swore I would never return to, at a company that wanted nothing more than to suck the blood directly from my heart with a curly straw. This, after I had already sold all the blood in my heart to the film industry, which after a few meetings and screenwriting awards, looked like it might want to take a sip from that straw.

A sip, because as good as things were looking, I saw a long road in front of me. My work was not “commercial enough,” and my manager had made it clear that years would pass before I would be able to convince anyone that this lack of commerciality was a quality that was, well, commercial.

But no. My husband lost his job, and I found work in the fashion industry soon after. What I rapidly discovered was that, though out-of-towners could schedule meetings back-to-back all over town, Angelenos were expected to take a meeting at the last minute, or blithely accept a rescheduling. My boss, on the other hand, had no interest in moving around my personal days, and my sick days dwindled in my first three months on the job. It took only a few months for the meetings to dry up and for me to start writing a Santa Claus script out of desperation.

So, the blood-sucking fashion job with the inflexible hours was right next to a scrap yard, which apparently opened at the crack of dawn because when I got there at seven thirty every morning, the orange peel grapple was already grabbing away. If I had a minute, I watched it go up and down as I clutched my coffee, and I thought, one day I should get a video camera and film this because my son would love it. Really love it.

My son was about eighteen months old and just learning to talk. I missed him while I was at work, adored him when he was awake and with me, and the rest of the time, I found room to resent him for taking me away from writing. He was then, and has remained, a fireball of energy. His teacher alternated between calling him a Jack Russell terrier and a buzz saw. He is also obsessive. Right now, he has a room full of Legos. Before that, it was Thomas the Tank Engine, and before that, it was trucks. Big yellow trucks. He wouldn’t fall asleep unless he gripped a toy truck in each fist. When he received a Tonka loader for Christmas, it was love at first sight. He called it “lolo.”

One morning, with the vision of that big ‘lolo’ that I would later know as an orange peel grapple dancing in my head, I dialed a friend’s number. I’d known this man from Brooklyn, and he’d come to Los Angeles a few years earlier to attend the American Film Institute. Most importantly, he had a camera. When I got his answering machine, instead of asking him for the camera, I said something else entirely, something like, “Hey, wanna produce a kid’s video together? Here’s the pitch. Trucks. Okay, bye.”

That moment may not seem pivotal, but most turning points don’t when they happen. That moment, I took control of my creative life. My friend called me back the minute he got up, and we began the journey toward becoming business owners. We did not pitch the idea around town, and we did not ask permission to bring the work to the public. We put the DVDs on Createspace, and eventually had to hold inventory to meet the demand.

Lolo Productions and the Totally Trucks series have had ups and downs, but the process taught me two things. One, my concepts need to be simple. If I can’t pitch it in five words, it’s not a concept I should develop. My second lesson is that I can be in control of my product and my creative life. If I think something is worthwhile, I can bring it to my customers. Becoming the producer and publisher of my work means I understand now what agents and studio executives meant when they said “commercial.”

Without my son, I never would have taken the life-sucking job. And without that job, there would have been no orange peel grapple. And without that scrapyard, there would have been no Totally Trucks. No eye for the commercial and no control of self-publishing. Who knows what I would have made without all the things that pissed me off for interrupting my work.

Just 99 cents!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Missing-Blahnik-Fashion-Avenue-ebook/dp/B00785QLNU

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Fashion-Avenue-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B005MEG38C

This one is FREE!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Valley-World-Fantasy-Elementals-ebook/dp/B004QWZBMK

PostScript by Moi: Christine's contact info can be found under Hire My Cover Artist to the left top of the page. There, you will be lead right to her cover artist website. She also has a Facebook author page: http://www.facebook.com/christine.demaiorice.author and she also has a terrific blog about fashion too: http://www.fashionismurder.com/. Buy some of her books and enjoy!

Feel the (zombie) love!

2012-02-17T11:39:00.000-08:00

Well, it isn't often I get to talk about doing promotion extravaganzas but I had two very cool shoutouts by two amazing authors this week on their blog and I thought I would share it with you all.

If you have never explored Lizzy Ford's Guerrilla Wordfare blog then perhaps now is the time to do it. I did a guest post for her on February 15th talking about how women need a little zombie love too. Check it out here: http://www.guerrillawordfare.com/2012/02/guest-post-can-women-enjoy-zombies-too-by-danielle-blanchard/.

Then, if that wasn't awesome enough, my friend, Shea MacLeod, mentioned my book on her Fantastical Friday post along with Betty White and PJ Jones's Driving me Nuts. That post can be found here: http://sheamacleod.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/fantastical-friday-betty-white-garth-vader-and-still-more-zombies/.

I don't brag too often but that was actually quite awesome as it happened all in one week. Plus, those who are looking for great author blogs ought to really sign up and join these blogs (if you don't belong to them already) because they are awesome.

Thanks again and happy Friday! Remember what my motto is: life is too short to spend your time reading bad books! ;-)

Guest Blog Post by Cheryl Bradshaw

2012-02-13T10:31:00.000-08:00

Up this week is one of my favorite indie writers and also the founder of the public Facebook for indie writers the world over titled IWU, or Indie Writers Unite. She is such a warm and caring person and she always has tons of irons in the fire. I sometimes wonder how she does it all. She makes me dizzy with everything she has going on at a given time.

Now if this isn't the gorgeous face of a determined author, I don't know what is!

Just Me and James Dean… by Cheryl Bradshaw

When I was a little girl I used to make up stories at bedtime for my younger sister, Michelle. The most vivid centered on a boy and a girl who received a piece of gum for Halloween in their trick-or-treat bag, and when they chewed it, they were transported to a magical land where they were granted unlimited wishes. Even at such a young age, the process of concocting stories was effortless. My mind revolved like the reel of a movie spinning inside my head.

I spent many hours daydreaming as a child. Back then everything was as beautiful and white as a freshly painted fence. I fantasized about the day I would get married, the children I would have, the house I would own, and the life I would live when I was all grown up.

When I was a teenager, my mind still swirled with girlish hopes and dreams. I remember lying on my bed in my room staring at a poster on my wall of James Dean. He was hunkered down on the seat of a motorcycle, and Marilyn Monroe was perched behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist, and her head resting on his shoulder. I wanted to jump into the poster like the girl in A-Ha’s Take on Me video and ride off into life’s highway, just me and James. Together, forever.

When I became an adult and moved out on my own to attend college at the tender age of eighteen, I thought I had my whole world figured out. I’d developed a slight obsession with Agatha Christie and knew mysteries and thrillers were the perfect genre for me as a writer. All kinds of ideas flowed for the first novel, and I thought I was on my way. There was just one problem: I never started writing.

Why?

I wasn’t prepared for the events that were about to take place in my life or how they would affect my journey. Life didn’t turn out to be the dream I thought it would be, and I struggled—a lot, and faced challenges and trials that at times seemed more than I could bear. My relationships didn’t always work out, and all the babies I hoped to have didn’t come like I’d planned. There were times when I felt like my life was like a shattered mirror, and I was on my hands and knees desperately searching for all the pieces of myself so I could glue them back together and feel whole again. During those times I wondered how many other women out there in the world felt the same exact way.

Time went on and I struggled, but eventually I picked myself back up and I healed. With a new lease on life and a positive attitude about what I’d overcome, I thought about writing again. In 2009 I wrote Black Diamond Death, the first novel in my Sloane Monroe series. Sinnerman followed six months later and now I’m hard at work on the third, I Have a Secret.

As I sit here and write this, I’m shocked that I am being so candid. Normally, I safeguard my feelings. To say I’m a private person is an understatement, but I feel compelled to get this out. My message in all of this is to never lose sight of your hopes and dreams. Never forget who you are, where you came from, and what you are capable of accomplishing in your life. And if you have a passion, foster it with everything you have inside you. Let it shine. Let it breathe. Let it be.

When I pondered about the dedication I would use for Sinnerman, my direction was clear and I wrote the following:

This book is dedicated to anyone who’s ever had a dream. We have but one life, and one opportunity to live it. Make it last, make it count, and make it the best it can be. Live your dreams, I know I am.

Today, I’m no longer waiting for James Dean to ride up on his shiny black motorcycle. I’ve fallen for a different kind of boy now, one who dreams of wide open spaces and a simple life. One who wants to be a cowboy when he grows up. Now the poster I see in my visions is one of man hoisting me up on the back of his trusty steed while we ride away together into the Wyoming sunset.

If you asked me ten years ago if this was the life I thought I wanted, my answer might have been no, but if you asked me today I would say I’m right where I’m supposed to be. My life isn’t perfect, the challenges are still there, and I still have a lot to learn about myself. But no matter what the future holds for me, I know one thing for sure: I’ll never stop writing.

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.
*******

Cheryl’s book’s on Amazon:

Black Diamond Death (Sloane Monroe Series—Book One)

Sinnerman (Sloane Monroe Series—Book Two)

Whispers of Murder (A Novella)

To learn more about Cheryl, visit her here:

Post Script from yours truly: Cheryl has an excellent mystery and murder series along with her newest novella so do the woman a favor and grab a copy if you don't have them already. I have all three!

To Be or Not To Be... a schizophrenic writer that is...

2012-02-08T12:56:00.000-08:00

The past seems to have caught up with me and not in a good way.

I have had so many plans for this year but there has been one huge monkey wrench thrown into everything I have wanted to do.

If anyone has bothered to look at the novel chronologies in the back of my books, they look pretty schizo so this post is to try to make everything as simple as possible. The list of books I plan to release this year are as follows:

1) The Catalyst: Book One (The Pop Stars) - Released January, 2012
2) Beginnings: Book I (The Plague) - Released February, 2012
3) Re-Release of The Beautiful People: Part One & The Beautiful People: Part Two [all serial versions of the novel will be discontinued and each part will be sold for $5.49 due to length, which are well over 130k or 500+ pages each] - To Be Released Spring, 2012
4) Love Voodoo: Book I (DeGeneration) - Spring, 2012
5) Better Off Dead: Book II (The Vamp Saga) - April, 2012
6) Apocalypse 2012: Book II (The Plague) - Summer, 2012
7) Queen of the Undead: Book III (The Vamp Saga) - Autumn, 2012
8) The Making of a Star: Book Two (The Pop Stars) - late Autumn/Winter, 2012

So, as you can see, I plan to release at least six original works this year beside the re-releases. I would like to get both The Beautiful People series' books out on the first year anniversary of when I released The Proposal: Book One of The Beautiful People but I can't promise this for sure.

What happens to Summerlin and its prequel you ask? Well, they will probably be released next year some time along with the second and final book of the DeGeneration series, the fourth book in The Vamp Saga and the "supposedly" final book of The Plague series. I say supposedly because I really like the characters and I am not sure I want it to remain a trilogy but it just might.

Beginnings: Book I (The Plague) has already sold twelve copies in three days and although I won't be pushing J.A. Konrath out of the way any time soon, this is amazing, especially when I quietly uploaded it to Amazon and Smashwords Superbowl Sunday without telling a soul. On the first day it was available on Amazon, it sold six copies! So, I am extremely excited about the possibilities and I just hope everyone who has bought a copy enjoys it and continues to do so.

So, there you have it: that's my list and I am sticking to it because it's where my muses are at the moment. They want to continue writing The Vamp Saga and The Plague series. I can't get myself away from these two series' if I tried so I am going to stay with them and ride them out.

If you were really looking forward to my romance novel(s), I apologize for any disappointment caused, but my head is so not in a romantic place at the moment and I am having too much fun with vampires, Day Walkers, zombies and super soldiers. Sorry!

All the best and happy reading, everyone! ;-)

Guest Blog Post by Dani Amore!

2012-02-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

Dani Amore is not only multi-talented but she can do various genres without breaking a sweat. It gives me great pleasure to welcome this wonderful, talented and beautiful woman to my website.

Always the mysterious one, our woman.

WRITING FROM A FLOUR SACK

Dani Amore

Fact: I was born on a bathroom floor. Literally. My arrival into this world was followed seconds later by an unceremonious drop onto the cold tile of St. John’s Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.

You see, I was the fifth out of six children. My mother knew my delivery would be fast, but the nurse at the hospital insisted she go to the bathroom before the doctor arrived.

Later, after the drama and I was pronounced healthy, my mother told the doctor that the nurse should have listened to her, that she had warned the nurse that the baby (me) was going to arrive any second. That, having already delivered four children, she knew her body pretty well.

The doctor said, “Five kids, huh? Maybe you should tell your husband to keep it in his pants.”

True story.

***

Both of my parents were born in Italy. They emigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s. My father always said the biggest difference between Italy and America at that time was that you could work your ass off in Italy and have nothing to show for it. If you worked hard in America, you could eventually become wealthy. He started a construction company and worked 6 days a week, from dawn to dusk. Eventually, he was successful.

My mother raised six children.

She is a strong woman.

Both she and my father share a love of aphorisms.

The one I remember most? “A well-made flour sack stands on its own.”

It was almost like a mantra with her.

At a key point in my writing life, that phrase came in handy.

***

So there I am. I’ve got a full-time job in advertising. I’m writing about products that suck, working for people I can’t stand, and with two good friends, drinking every night after work. At a little bar not far from the office. I’m averaging about five or six drinks a night. Every weeknight. More on the weekends.

But on those weekend mornings, I’m writing fiction. Just short stories that I try to picture in The Paris Review.

Everything gets rejected with remarkable efficiency.

One night, probably half in the bag, I come across THE DAY OF THE JACKAL on television. The original movie is pretty campy and the remake with Bruce Willis is a pure load of crap. But the book. The novel by Frederick Forsyth is one of my all-time favorites.

The scene on television is the best part of the movie: It’s where the Jackal is sighting in his rifle. He paints a little face on a small melon, then blows it apart from 500 yards away.

There’s no epiphany. I go to bed. But as I toss and turn, vodka fumes in a cloud around my pillow, I think about the narrative structure of the story. I’ve read the book several times. Even have a collector’s edition. The chase. The tension. The violence.

When I wake up the next morning, I make an especially strong pot of coffee. I push aside my short literary fiction, and start a new story.

It’s about a hitman and a female escort.

Later that day, during some interminable meeting where everyone is throwing out insidious phrases like “let’s get on the same page,” and “think outside the box,” I realized what I was doing.

I was writing to please others, instead of focusing on the kind of stories and books I like.

Crime fiction. Thrillers. Suspense.

I had forgotten one of my mother’s cardinal rules.

A well-made flour sack stands on its own.

***

I know it sounds melodramatic. But the truth is, everything changed after that night. I still despised the advertising industry, but I no longer let it bother me so much. I begged off going to the bar with my friends, instead choosing to work out and then get some writing done in the evenings.

Eventually, I finished several crime novels. Even landed a big New York literary agent.

But a funny thing happened. My agent, and publishers, seemed to have endless debates about how to market me. Should I be a hardboiled crime novelist? A thriller writer? A traditional mystery author?

There were suggestions to change this book and change that one. Then change it back. Then change it to something else.

But now I had learned. I was smarter.

I told them thanks, but no thanks.

It was time to stand up and be the writer I wanted to be.

So I became an indie author.

And when my first book became a Top 10 Mystery on Amazon, I knew I had made the right decision.

Never underestimate the power of an Italian mother armed with an aphorism.

Dani’s Books on Amazon:

To learn more about Dani, visit her at http://www.daniamore.com

PostScript by yours truly: Dani is not only a talented writer but I have all her novels on my Kindle. She is extremely talented and not only is she one of the best independent writers out there, she is one of the best writers out there, period.

The Catalyst: Book One from The Pop Stars is now available!

2012-01-30T07:45:00.000-08:00

Well, despite being sick for the past two weeks, I managed to get my book out in time before the end of January.

If you were a fan of The Beautiful People series, The Pop Stars series is just what you need to cure those withdrawal symptoms. Right now, I will be offering it on Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes & Noble for the rest of the month.

It might end up going in the KDP selection program but I haven't quite made my mind of. Happy reading and have a wonderful Monday morning.

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/127798

Guest Blog Post By Anne R. Allen

2012-01-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

This week, I host the very talented Anne R. Allen as she shares her story from the Indie Chicks Anthology. Seems we have more in common than just writing. We have both lived in the UK and we both share a love of the English language. Her story is brilliant and the woman is too. Without further ado, I give you, Ms. Allen!

I love this photo because it is the face of courage and the "never give up attitude" I adore completely!

A KINKY ADVENTURE IN ANGLOPHILIA

By Anne R. Allen

When I started writing funny women’s fiction fifteen years ago, if anybody had given me a realistic idea of my chances for publication, I’d have chosen a less stressful hobby, like do-it-yourself brain surgery, professional frog herding, or maybe staging an all-Ayatollah drag revue in downtown Tehran.

As a California actress with years of experience of cattle-drive auditions, greenroom catfights and vitriolic reviewers, I thought I had built up enough soul-calluses to go the distance. But nothing had prepared me for the glacial waiting periods; the bogus, indifferent and/or suddenly-out-of-business agents; and the heartbreaking, close-but-no-cigar reads from big-time editors—all the rejection horrors that make the American publishing industry the impenetrable fortress it has become.

But some of us are too writing-crazed to stop ourselves. I was then, as now, sick in love with the English language.

I had three novels completed. A fourth had run as a serial in a California entertainment weekly. One of my stories had been short-listed for an international prize, and a play had been produced to good reviews. I was bringing in a few bucks—mostly with short pieces for local magazines and freelance editing.

But meantime, my savings had evaporated along with my abandoned acting career; my boyfriend had ridden his Harley into the Big Sur sunset; my agent was hammering me to write formula romance; and I was contemplating a move to one of the less fashionable neighborhoods of the rust belt.

Even acceptances turned into rejections: a UK zine that had accepted one of my stories folded. But when the editor sent the bad news, he mentioned he’d taken a job with a small UK book publisher—and did I have any novels?

I sent him one my agent had rejected as “too over the top.” Within weeks, I was offered a contract by my new editor—a former BBC comedy writer—for FOOD OF LOVE. Included was an invitation to come over the pond to do some promotion.

So I rented out my beach house, packed my bags and bought a ticket to Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where my new publishers had recently moved into a 19th century former textile mill on the banks of the river Trent—the river George Eliot fictionalized as “the Floss.”

George Eliot. I was going to be working and living only a few hundred yards from the ruins of the house where she wrote her classic novel about the 19th century folk who lived and died by the power of Lincolnshire’s great tidal river. Maybe some of that greatness would rub off on me.

At the age of… well, I’m not telling…I was about to have the adventure of my life.

I knew the company published mostly erotica, but was branching into mainstream and literary fiction. They had already published the first novel of a distinguished poet, and a famous Chicago newspaper columnist was in residence, awaiting the launch of his new book.

But when I arrived, I found the great Chicagoan had left in a mysterious fit of pique, the “erotica” was seriously hard core kink, and the old building on the Trent was more of the William Blake Dark Satanic variety than George Elliot’s bucolic “Mill on the Floss.”

Some of my fears subsided when I was greeted by a friendly group of unwashed, fiercely intellectual young men who presented me with generous quantities of warm beer, cold meat pies and galleys to proof. After a beer or two, I found myself almost comprehending their northern accents.

I held it together until I saw my new digs: a grimy futon and an old metal desk, hidden behind stacks of book pallets in the corner of an unheated warehouse, about a half a block from the nearest loo. My only modern convenience was an ancient radio abandoned by a long-ago factory girl.

I have to admit to admit to some tears of despair.

Until, from the radio, Big Ben chimed six o’clock.

That’s six pm, GMT.

Greenwich Mean Time. The words hit me with all the sonorous power of Big Ben itself. I had arrived at the mean, the middle, the center that still holds—no matter what rough beasts might slouch through the cultural deserts of the former empire. This was where my language, my instrument, was born.

I clutched my galley-proof to my heart. I might still be a rejected nobody in the land of my birth—but I’d landed on the home planet: England. And there, I was a published novelist. Just like George Eliot.

Three years later, I returned to California, older, fatter (the English may not have the best food, but their BEER is another story) and a lot wiser. That Chicagoan’s fit of pique turned out to be more than justified. The company was swamped in debt. They never managed to get me US distribution. Shortly before my second book THE BEST REVENGE was to launch, the managing partner withdrew his capital, sailed away and mysteriously disappeared off his yacht—his body never found. The company sputtered and died.

And I was back in the slush pile again.

But I had a great plot for my next novel.

Unfortunately, nobody wanted it. I was now tainted with the “published-to-low-sales-numbers” label and my chances were even worse than before.

So I wrote two more novels. Nobody wanted them either.

Then I started a blog. I figured I could at least let other writers benefit from my mistakes. My blog followers grew. And grew. The blog won some awards. My Alexa and Klout ratings got better and better. Finally, publishers started approaching ME. (There’s a moral for writers here—social networking works.)

And finally, six years later, another publisher, Popcorn Press, fell in love with FOOD OF LOVE and sent me a contract. Soon after, they contracted to publish THE BEST REVENGE, too.

And this September, a brand new indie ebook publisher called Mark Williams International Digital Publishing asked if I had anything else ready to publish.

Just happen to have a few unpubbed titles handy, said I.

He liked them.

So in October and November of 2011, those three new comic mysteries will appear as ebooks: THE GATSBY GAME, GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY, and SHERWOOD, LTD (that’s the novel inspired by my English adventures.) Popcorn Press will publish paper versions in 2012. THE BEST REVENGE debuted as an ebook in December, with the paper book to follow in February.

A fifteen-year journey finally seems to be paying off.

Did I make some mistakes? Oh yeah—a full set of them. But would I wish away my English adventures?

Not a chance.

Links:

Blog http://annerallen.blogspot.com

Twitter @annerallen

Authorpages: At Amazon.com , at amazon.co.uk , on Facebook

SHERWOOD, LTD

(Romantic comedy/mystery: MWiDP) A penniless socialite becomes a 21^st century Maid Marian, but is “Robin” planning to kill her? Buy at amazon.co.uk , amazon.com, or Barnes and Noble

Post Script by yours truly: Anne's books are all available at the usual places online. She is my hero because she believes in the golden rule when it comes to us indie writers and something we have on the trad pubbed peeps: ABW: Always Be Writing. No matter what comes and goes out of your life, always have something in the works because nothing beats selling like more books to sell!

Post Post Script: I interrupt this wonderful blog piece to let all you know I finished Better Off Dead: Book II of The Vamp Saga. This one is yet again another full length novel (clocking in at around 89k but it will probably be more than 90k as a finished product). It's the first draft so it should be ready for publishing around April of this year. For those of you who bought and love it, you won't have to wait much longer to find out what is happening with Manon and Co. Happy reading and pick up a few of Anne's books to tide you over in the meantime! ;-)

Guest Blog Post by Sarah Woodbury!

2012-01-24T13:20:00.000-08:00

This week, we have the talented and unbeatable Sarah Woodbury who is selling quite well with her tales of medieval Wales. She is also one of the sweetest and down to earth people I have ever met. Without further ado, I give you our guest blog post of the week.

The gorgeous and talented Ms. Woodbury!

Turning Medieval by Sarah Woodbury

Sometimes it’s easy to pinpoint those moments in your life where everything is suddenly changed. When you look across the room and say to yourself, I’m going to marry him. Or stare down at those two pink lines on the pregnancy test, when you’re only twenty-two and been married for a month and a half and are living on only $800 a month because you’re both still in school and my God how is this going to work?

And sometimes it’s a bit harder to remember.

Until I was eleven, my parents tell me they thought I was going to be a ‘hippy’. I wandered through the trees, swamp, and fields of our 2 ½ acre lot, making up poetry and songs and singing them to myself. I’m not sure what happened by the time I’d turned twelve, whether family pressures or the realities of school changed me, but it was like I put all that creativity and whimsicalness into a box on a high shelf in my mind. By the time I was in my late-teens, I routinely told people: ‘I haven’t a creative bone in my body.’ It makes me sad to think of all those years where I thought the creative side of me didn’t exist.

When I was in my twenties and a full-time mother of two, my husband and I took our family to a picnic with his graduate school department. I was pleased at how friendly and accepting everyone seemed.

And then one of the other graduate students turned to me out of the blue and said, ‘do you really think you can jump back into a job after staying home with your kids for five or ten years?’

I remember staring at him, not knowing what to say. It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about it, but that it didn’t matter—it couldn’t matter—because I had this job to do and the consequences of staying home with my kids were something I’d just have to face when the time came.

Fast forward ten years and it was clear that this friend had been right in his incredulity. I was earning $15/hr. as a contract anthropologist, trying to supplement our income while at the same time holding down the fort at home. I remember the day it became clear that this wasn’t working. I was simultaneously folding laundry, cooking dinner, and slogging through a report I didn’t want to write, trying to get it all in before the baby (number four, by now) woke up. I put my head down, right there on the dryer, and cried.

It was time to seek another path. Time to follow my heart and do what I’d wanted to do for a long time, but hadn’t had the courage, or the belief in myself to make it happen.

At the age of thirty-seven, I started my first novel, just to see if I could. I wrote it in six weeks and it was bad in a way that all first books are bad. It was about elves and magic stones and will never see the light of day. But it taught me, I can do this!

My husband told me, ‘give it five years,’ and in the five years that followed, I experienced rejection along my newfound path. A lot of it. Over seventy agents, and then dozens and dozens of editors (once I found an agent), read my books and passed them over. Again and again.

Meanwhile, I just wrote. A whole series. Then more books, for a total of eight, seven of which I published in 2011.

And I’m happy to report that, even though I still think of myself as staid, my extended family apparently has already decided that those years where I showed little creativity were just a phase. The other day, my husband told me of several conversations he had, either with them or overheard, in which it became clear they thought I was so alternative and creative—so far off the map—that I didn’t even remember there was a map.

I’m almost more pleased about that than anything else. Almost. Through writing, I’ve found a community of other writers, support and friendship from people I hadn’t known existed a few years ago, and best of all, thousands of readers have found my books in the last year. Here’s to thousands more in the years to come . . .

Links:

My web page: http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/

My Twitter code is: http://twitter.com/#!/SarahWoodbury

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahwoodburybooks

Links to my books: Amazon and Amazon UK

Smashwords BarnesandNoble Apple

Guest Blog Post by Suzanne Tyrpak

2012-01-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

Suzanne is such a talented and skillful writer, I am so proud to feature her on my blog this week. I won't prattle on at the mouth because Suzanne wrote a fantastic opener to her already lovely anthology piece.

Not only gorgeous but talented as well!

Sometimes life changes in a day. I work for an airline, and this past summer a gigantic jet-stair ran over my toes. That got my attention. I’d been asking for a break, and boy did I get one! My story has a happy ending: the accident gave me time to finish my recently released novel, Hetaera—Suspense in Ancient Athens. It also gave me time to connect with the Indie Chicks; what a fantastic group of women! We wrote an anthology together and all the proceeds go to fighting breast cancer—the disease that took my mother. I hope you enjoy, Holes, my contribution to the Indie Chicks Anthology. Sometimes discovering our holes, our weakness, allows us to become more compassionate and ultimately more whole.

Holes

I used to think I had to be perfect. Of course, I fell short of perfection on a regular basis so I frequently felt like a failure.

The only way to prevent failure is to hide. If we don’t put ourselves out there, we can’t fail.

To prevent myself from failing, I hid in a fantasy world. As a young child, I longed to be a ballerina. I loved to dance, but more than that, I wanted to escape into the fantasy world of the ballet. I wanted to live inside a fairytale, and in my mind, I did. I invented worlds I could escape to, perfect worlds that seemed more real to me than life. Meanwhile, I ate, and ate, and ate. Not ideal, if you want to be a ballerina. My reality never matched my inner world.

I created this pattern, this external and internal disparity, throughout my life. I brought it into my marriage, convincing myself that my marriage was perfect, while in reality it was a mess. Instead of leaving, I found escape in writing. I lost myself other times: ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome—worlds as far away from my reality as possible. In my writing, I disappeared for hours, days, years. I got a job working at an airline so I could travel and do research. I got an agent. I felt sure I would be published.

Then my world fell apart. After nineteen years of marriage, my husband wanted a divorce. I fought it. Divorce didn’t fit my idea of perfection, my fairytale. I viewed this loss as a disaster, but in truth it was an opening, a hole leading me to greater understanding and compassion for myself and others.

I was broke, trying to live on what I made at the airline. I was lonely. I had no time to write. Worst of all, I had to admit my life wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect. Forced to accept myself with all my imperfections, I discovered that the more I could accept myself, the more I could accept others. Even my ex-husband. To this day, we remain friends.

Because I no longer had time to sit down and write for hours, the kind of time it takes to write a novel, I wrote short stories. I wrote about my experience, about my struggles as a woman of fifty going through divorce and entering the dating world. Initially, I wrote the stories for myself as therapy. Then I began to share the stories with my writing group. They encouraged me to submit the stories to magazines, and several were published. I read a couple of stories at our local library and people laughed. Then my good friend, Blake Crouch, convinced me to publish the stories on Kindle. A frightening prospect. What if my stories weren’t good enough? What if they weren’t perfect?

At first I resisted. I’d had two literary agents, and a longtime dream of being traditionally published. Self-publishing didn’t fit my idea of perfection. But, in reality, I no longer had an agent, and I hadn’t worked on a novel for several years. What did I have to lose? Nothing. So I published Dating My Vibrator (and other true fiction).

My world changed, not because I was finally published, but because I changed. I finally found the confidence to pursue my dream despite my imperfections. I found the courage to stop hiding and put myself out into the world. This freed me.

I rewrote my novel, Vestal Virgin—suspense in ancient Rome. Originally, my characters were a bit flat. Why? Because they were too perfect! I hadn’t looked at the manuscript for two years, and a lot had changed for me in that time. I rewrote the book with a cold eye: cutting, digging deeper. My characters became multifaceted, real people with flaws.

I became busier and busier, caught in a whirlwind, trying to hold down a full-time job, write, promote my books and have a life. Trying, once again, to be perfect.

And then the universe stepped in.

I had an accident at work. While moving a jet stair (which weighed over 1,000 pounds) away from the aircraft, my right foot got crushed. I fell, screaming, onto the tarmac while passengers onboard the plane watched. A coworker rushed me to the hospital for the first of three emergency surgeries. I suffered intense pain due to nerve damage, broken and dislocated toes and, ultimately, amputation of a toe. As I write this, I’m still recovering.

I spent five weeks at a nursing home, a good place for me (even though most of the patients were over eighty years old), because it would have been close to impossible for me to take care of myself at home. While there, I had a chance to meet a lot of the patients and residents. All of us had obvious holes.

I learned a lot from the other patients. And I was forced to face my own mortality. Aging offers us the gift of acceptance. In order to age gracefully, we must the release the idea of perfection. We learn there are some things we can change, and some things we must accept. And, when we accept what is, we may find the good in even the most difficult situations. We learn to accept the holes in ourselves and others. We even welcome imperfection.

Since the accident, I’ve been thinking about holes a lot. I've been thinking about being whole, in relation to loss. How can loss make a person whole? I’ve learned that loss can make a person strong, more self-reliant. Loss can make us more compassionate to ourselves and others.

Where I had a toe, there’s now a hole, and that hole reminds me that I’m not perfect. But, despite my imperfection, I am whole. I am me. It would be ridiculous to think that I am any less of a person, because I’m missing a toe, because I have a hole. Just as it’s ridiculous for any of us to think we must be perfect.

Physical wounds can’t be hidden as easily as emotional and psychological wounds. And that’s a gift. Physical wounds make us confront our mortality, our humanity. Physical wounds can’t be denied. They are tangible and force us to accept ourselves, with all our imperfections.

It's impossible to get through life without being wounded. Some wounds are obvious. Others are internal, even spiritual: the loss of the ability to trust, to connect deeply, to hold a friend and know that you are loved.

We run away from wounds. Try not to look at them. We think they're signs of weakness, but our wounds—the holes in us—provide a doorway, a soft spot in our armor. We walk around armored, protecting ourselves with platitudes and false smiles, never touching our own vulnerabilities, afraid to share our tender rawness with another or even with ourselves.

If we can touch the tender spots, allow ourselves to feel fear, sorrow, loss, we become closer to wholeness. The more we accept our holes, the more compassion we can have for others. When we feel compassion we are able to connect. We are able to expose our soft underbelly to another human being and share the salt of our tears, the sweetness of our joy. That’s what I want to write about, that’s what I want to share, because salt makes all the difference between a bland, protected life, and a true life: pulsing, bloody, messy, passionate and truly whole.

Flaws, or holes, are what make a character seem real—in life and in fiction. Perfection is impermanent, an illusion. A person who seems too perfect is repulsive. We don’t trust him. We know that person can’t be real. Holes speak of truth. Holes allow us to connect, to ourselves and to each other. Our holes make us human, make us beautiful. Holes allow the light to shine through.

If someone had asked me last spring, “Would you give up a toe in order to learn, in order to have time to write your next novel?” I might have said, “Yes.”

Funny, how life works.

Links:

My blog: Who's Imagining All This?

Suzanne Tyrpak on Facebook

Twitter: @SuzanneTyrpak

Vestal Virgin—Suspense in Ancient Rome

Currently available on Amazon Amazon UK

Hetaera—Suspense in Ancient Athens

Currently available on Amazon Amazon UK

Guest Blog Post by Prue Batten

2012-01-09T10:39:00.000-08:00

It gives me great pleasure to host this week's indie chick. She's an Aussie so don't mess with her and she is a fine writer too. Without further ado, I give you Prue Batten!

Prue is a fabulous as her books!

Mrs. So Got It Wrong Agent

After writing forever, I decided to finally go down the independent road in 2008. At that time, it was called self-publishing and the track I decided to take was POD. Part of my reason for the move was that my books had been declared commercially viable by the

literary consultancy that assessed them, but in every instance they were declined by the Big Six.

The only time I had any sort of meaningful comment prior to POD publication was from a highly regarded English agent who said she loved the novels and knew she would kick herself for declining but felt I lived too far away to engage with. I know I reside in the southern hemisphere, in a place called

Australia

, but this is a new world in which we exist. Amazingly there is a thing called email, something else called Skype and even video-conferencing, so I was rather gobsmacked at her antiquated approach. This, I felt, was the time to take my destiny in my own hands!

You see, I was getting older and with age comes a degree of intransigence and that was when I took up the POD offer… basically in a fit of disgust at the ‘old ways’.

I did everything right: good covers, great PR, super website and then a blog with which to engage with the reading public, even radio and print media interviews… you name it, I did it. Book Two came out and I continued to sell to a niche market online and in stores. At one point, my first novel took the prime display position in bricks and mortar stores, selling more than any other unknown first release for that chain.

Then, whilst working on A Thousand Glass Flowers, I had the misguided idea that it would be nice to secure an agent who could handle all this PR and marketing stuff and maybe help me push the barrow further. With the success of the first two novels under my belt, with stats of web and blog hits as well, I contacted the first Australian agent on my list.

Imagine my surprise when two days later, on a Friday afternoon, she rang me to talk business.

Her first comment after a loud monologue on her credentials was ‘Why in the hell did you POD your first two books?’ Ironic snicker followed this acid question.

‘Because I was tired of submitting the old way and getting nowhere in a very long time.

‘But you’ve signed your own death warrant.’

‘Then why are you talking to me?’

‘I am intrigued that you managed to get the web hits and the book-sales you have.’ Her tone was sarcasm incarnate. Something about good books and hard work was on the tip of my tongue.

I was so flummoxed at this point that I allowed her to ram-raid me and roast me. Heaven help me, I agreed to send her mss of the first two novels (even though they had been published!) Perhaps I am a masochist. Who knows?

She read them and sent them back slashed to pieces. These were fantasy novels about love, loss, grief and revenge, novels that have secured 5 star reviews. She had deleted every conceivable piece of emotion from the manuscripts so that they expressed nothing. If she read them right through, I’d have been surprised as she asked elementary questions about the plot resolution… questions that were answered in the denouement of each of the novels. Her editing was unbelievable, her spelling appalling and she got my name and address wrong for the return of the mss. Now remember… this is supposedly one of the top agents in my country, top obviously not equating with manners and sensibility.

When I rang her to say politely, thanks but no thanks, she lambasted me and said, ‘You are a self-fulfilling prophecy. Small-time.’

My reply was that if she had taken me on, what a good talking point she would have had about her exciting new author. As it was, I continued, I was declining any further involvement with her as my books were out there and selling.

‘You have committed professional suicide.’

***

In the last three years, this agent is the only negative in my writing career and far from depressing me, it proved to be the biggest shot of tenacity in the arm! Reverse psychology at its very best!

So guess what, Mrs. So Got it Wrong Agent, I’m having a ball. The books are now in e-form and selling well. My third novel consistently took a place in the Top 100 of Kindle novels in its category not long after publication. I’ve sold across the globe, I have a niche following, I’ve made the friends of a lifetime and I am master of my own destiny. There are two further books to be published in The Chronicles of Eirie and in a step sideways, my first ever historical fiction will be published in February.

And at this point in my life, I don’t regret not having an agent one bit!

***

Addendum: Whilst writing this piece for the anthology, I nursed my little muse, the dog who would jump up behind me on my chair and sit whilst I typed. He had terminal cancer and in the intervening time between publication of the anthology and the posting of my piece on these blogs, he has gone quietly to his rest… a brave, funny companion who was my inspiration. I dedicate the above tale to him… to Milo.

Brief bio to help with an intro if you need one!

The best way to describe myself would be to use a quote written about me by Mark Williams on a recent blog (http://markwilliamsinternational.com/)

Here it is: ‘She lives in Tasmania, has a pet Tasmanian Devil called Gisborne, eats kangaroos’ testicles, has the most ridiculous one-star ever awarded on Amazon, and wrote a novel on Twitter…’

Believe it or not, most of it is true. My husband and I own a farm so we do have lots of kangaroos around, but the testicles? Ugh! As to the Tasmanian Devil? I wish I did have one for a pet, but as recently reported in the Huffington Post, http://huff.to/f3zxSd the poor little things are suffering the ravaging effects of a disease that is bringing them to the edge of extinction. Better the scientists and conservation zoos look after them than me. And I do have a one star rating on Amazon… a woman bought my first book thinking it was an embroidery book despite the blurb and then gave ME a one star despite HER mistake. And yes, myself and 50 others wrote a Jane Austen style novel on Twitter, [(#A4T) http://www.austenproject.com] which was mentioned by The Times (UK) no less as it took off earlier in the year.

Me in a nutshell!

Website: http://www.pruebatten.com

Blog: http://www.mesmered.wordpress.com

Facebook: Prue Batten

Twitter: pruebatten

Books may be purchased at: Amazon.co.uk http://amzn.to/v2mosZ

And at Amazon.com http://amzn.to/rHBVoy

Post Script by Moi: Most of Ms. Batten's books have links to the left on my website so they can be perused and bought. Happy reading, everyone!

Guest Blog Post by Cheryl Shireman!

2012-01-03T14:03:00.000-08:00

So, this is the big enchilada. The woman who started us all on this indie chicks' anthology and she will always have a piece of my heart. Without further ado, I present my idol, my friend, and my indie sister, Cheryl Shireman.

Talk about one hot grandma!

I Burned My Bra For This? One Woman's Fantasy

By Cheryl Shireman

I’m a Baby Boomer. Which means that I remember bell-bottoms, Happy Days, and having only three channels on the television. I played Donny Osmond albums on a record player. My parents watched Gunsmoke, and on Sunday nights we all watched The Wonderful World of Disney. In the living room. Together. On the only television we owned. Imagine that! I remember the first time I saw Bonanza in color. I remember the first time I heard about remote controls for televisions. The whole idea seemed ridiculous. With three channels, really, how often would it be needed? I remember the Watergate hearings playing on the television when I came home from school.

I also remember watching feminists (does anyone use that word anymore?) burn their bras and march for equal rights. I grew up believing that a woman deserves equal pay for equal work and that a woman is not defined by the man she marries or by the children she gives birth to. In fact, we were told that both men and children were optional. The idea seemed revolutionary at the time. It still does. Women were mad as hell and they weren’t taking it anymore. We called it Women’s Liberation, and though it was never said, it was certainly implied (and believed in most circles) that a woman who did not work was a bit inferior to a career woman. That was when such women were called housewives and not “stay at home” moms. Women were divided into two groups – those who worked and those who didn’t. Back then, no one thought that staying home and taking care of a family and home was work. The women of my generation wanted more, demanded more, and believed we were entitled to just that – more. We sometimes looked at our own mothers, most of whom did not have real jobs, as women who simply did not understand that there was more to life than being a mother. If truth be told, we thought they were a bit simple-minded and we secretly vowed to do more with our lives.

And yet…as this Baby Boomer looks at her life, I realize nothing I have ever done, or will ever do, is as important as being a mother. Not career, volunteer work, graduate school, or any creative pursuit. Nothing else even comes close to being a mother. Period.

One of my children lives half an hour away, another is one state away, and the third is on the other side of the world in Denmark. Yesterday, my husband and I spent the entire day with our two-year-old granddaughter. She then spent the night. As I write this, I hear her gentle breathing in the baby monitor positioned atop the table close to where I sit.

To say that my children, and now my granddaughter, have filled my life with love and joy is an understatement. As children, they expanded my heart in ways I could never have imagined. For the first time in my life, I not only understood, but received unconditional love. As adults, they are three people that I know I can always count on. They will always be there for me. Just as I will always be there for them. Can you say the same about your career?

There used to be a television show called Fantasy Island. People visited the island and lived out their fantasies – no matter how wild (okay, not that wild – this was primetime family tv in the seventies). Not too long ago, my husband and I had a discussion about that old tv show and asked each other – What would your fantasy be? Mine was easy. If I could have a Fantasy Island day, I would relive one day with my children. My son would be 10, which would make my daughters 4 and 2. We would spend the day doing whatever they wanted. Going to the park, going to the movies, playing games, baking cookies, or just sitting on the floor playing with Legos and Barbies. I would hug them a lot. And kiss the tops of their heads. And take tons of pictures. I wouldn’t cook. I wouldn’t clean. And I wouldn’t worry about my career.

I would watch my son show his younger sisters how to do things, like he always did in his older brother sort of way. I would watch my 2 year-old daughter follow her older 4 year-old sister around the room, shadowing her every move. Just as she did, even through their college years when they shared an apartment near Indiana University. I would watch the older sister taking care of her younger sister, as if she were her baby. Which is what she called her when she was born – my baby.

Bedtime would be later than usual on that fantasy night. I would tuck them into their beds, fresh from baths and smelling of shampoo. The girls smelling like baby lotion. My son would hug me goodnight with his long skinny arms and tell me he loves me. And I would feel the truth in that. I would tuck in my girls and tell them it is time to go to sleep. I would take extra care in covering the older girl’s feet, because she always kicked her blankets off during the night. I would kiss the baby and hold her a little longer, because I would know that, as I type this she is in Denmark which makes visiting tough.

And, as I walk down the hall and turn out the lights, I would call out to all of them, as I always did… “Goodnight. Love you. Sweet dreams. See you in the morning.”

And that would be my fantasy day. Oddly enough, it has nothing to do with my career as a writer. Even though being a writer has always been my dream. My first novel, Life is But a Dream: On the Lake, was published earlier this year. The main character, Grace Adams, is a woman facing an empty nest and the possible demise of her marriage. Grace withdraws to a secluded lake cabin to redefine her life and try to find a reason to continue living. While at the lake, Grace not only finds renewed purpose and hope, but when things take a turn for the worse at the lake, she finds a strength she never knew she possessed. The novel is thought-provoking, sometimes frightening, and often funny (just like life). It is also, very definitely, fiction.

I'm not Grace. Even though my “nest” is empty, I am enjoying this time and this new focus on my career. I am not suicidal or lacking in purpose. My husband and I both work from home (he designs websites), we live on a lake, and our schedule is our own. It is truly a wonderful time in our lives. Sometimes I have popcorn for dinner. Enough said.

But, would my current life be as wonderful if I had not pursued career and graduate school and developed the skills I am using now? Probably not. I managed to combine work and school and motherhood. I believed I could have it all, and do it all, but to be honest – the kids always came first. And being a mother is the strongest and best part of my identity. It is the thing I am most proud of. My greatest achievement. And, once in a while, I miss those days when toys where scattered across the floor, the washer was always running, and we bought eight gallons of milk a week.

If you have children at home, cherish those simple every-day moments with them. They really will be gone in the blink of an eye – sooner than you can possibly imagine. Put this book down. Now. Go sit on the floor and play a game. Pop some popcorn, put on one of their favorite movies, and cuddle up on the couch. Live that “fantasy” right now. You will never be able to recapture these moments. Enjoy them now. There is no greater gift than the love of your children. Spend the rest of your day letting it pour over you. And pour your love right back over them. You can come back to this book tonight, after they are asleep.

As I type this, I can hear my granddaughter waking up. I am shutting my computer off. Right now, I am going to go upstairs and scoop her up from her crib. She will probably wrap her little arms around my neck and ask, “Play blocks, Bomb Bomb?”

And we will play blocks.

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today. All proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer.

Also included are sneak peeks into 25 novels! My novel, Life Is But a Dream: On The Lake, is one of the novel excerpts featured. It is available at most online retailers in trade paperback as well as e-book formats.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

PostScript by moi: I have plenty more of Cheryl's books available along the left side of my wall so check them out!

And the winners are...

2011-12-26T11:06:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to the following:

Tawn is Talking

Cherry Blossom

Linda Henderson

Special Mention goes to the following:

Sonia (MamaElk)

Sonia bought Death Wish: Book I (The Vamp Saga) so I am gifting her the other novels in the Paranormal Gift Basket.

All winners will receive an email from me with the Smashwords links and codes for the books they have won. Smashwords has e-books in ALL formats so whether you have a Kindle or a Sony or a Nook, they have your e-book format of choice!

Thank you everyone to entered and all winners will be enrolled for the grand prize of the Kindle Fire in the Holiday Hop Blog.

If there are any questions or concerns, please leave a comment. I am so grateful for all the new readers I have acquired and I hope you continue to follow my crazy sexy cool journey no matter where it leads me.

Danielle

PostScript: The winner with the email address for the following need to provide *working* email addresses to redeem their prizes:
mammaelk1113@gmail.com

Please provide them before the end of the day or you will forfeit your prizes and new winners will be chosen on Tuesday, December 27, 2011. Thank you!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T11:14:00.000-08:00

My New Cover!

To celebrate Christmas for my very dedicated fans, the first five people who comment on this blog post will be gifted a free copy of Death Wish: Book I (The Vamp Saga) on Amazon! The only caveat is I need you to accept your e-book gift today if possible on your Kindle Fire, or other device! Thanks again for supporting me and here is to a terrific 2012!

NOTE: Thank you for everyone who participated. This offer is now closed. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all who stopped by. Have a wonderful day with your friends and family!

Festival of Books! December 20 - December 28th

2011-12-20T11:36:00.000-08:00

Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights

I've always been fascinated by the menorah. According to Jewish tradition, the yearly lighting of candles commemorates the miracle when a single night's portion of ritual oil kept the Temple lit for eight full nights. (The ninth, central candle is used to light the others.) I love the idea of lighting the candles not just to provide household light -- personal appreciation -- but to share the miracle with the whole world.

Of course, there have been times and places in Jewish history when lighting the menorah could be dangerous, even deadly. Even the dreidel, that seemingly innocuous spinning top, comes from a time when studying the Torah (the Hebrew Bible) had to be hidden. When the Greeks outlawed such study, young men gathered secretly to learn the tenets of their faith. If observed by Greek soldiers, the scholars would take out their dreidels -- spinning tops -- and play with them. The soldiers would assume the men were gambling and move along.

Festival of Books

For the next eight nights, I've joined with several other indie authors to bring you a selection of great indie offerings. I'm also offering a Paranormal Gift Basket and gift card to Amazon or Barnes & Noble. All you have to do is either purchase a copy of Death Wish: Book I (The Vamp Saga) OR tell me what holiday lights -- the menorah, the Christmas tree, or something else -- means to you personally. Each comment will give you an entry into the drawing, which will take place on 12/29. The winner will be chosen by random.org.

You can also check out several great indie authors:

Jonathan Gould
Stephanie Abbott
Justin Dennis
Lisa Grace
Craig Hansen
Larry Kahn
Emily Ward

Last but not least, fill out the form to be eligible for the Grand Prize Drawing (Click on the Festival of Lights symbol right across from this blog post to do that)!

Guest Blog Post by Katherine Owen

2011-12-19T13:35:00.000-08:00

Here is yet another terrific indie chick who wants to tell her story. It is one of the most poignant and definitely a favorite of mine because Katherine is just so damned honest and in these unforgiving times, it's hard to find people who still tell it like it is. Without further ado, here is another indie sister. ;-)

I'm so jealous of that view!

One Fictionista’s Literary Bliss

By: Katherine Owen

I was anointed a female fictionista by an overzealous Georgia Bulldog fan on Twitter. I immediately took it for my job description. So, here’s what you should know. I write. I write a lot. And, when I'm not writing, I think about writing a lot. You may think we're having a conversation, but invariably I'm stealing your name, asking how to spell it, and secretly describing the look on your face in five words or less in my mind. My writing tends to be dark, moody, and sometimes funny. Sometimes, it can be a bit lyrical or even literary. It’s often edgy, so be forewarned. My readers complain they can't put my books down. Or, just when they think they've figured the story out, it changes and becomes something else. My stories tend to be dark and comprised of broken heroines; even the heroes in my books have a few flaws that cause trouble. It’s true; my characters may disappoint you or surprise you or piss you off, but I think you’ll understand why they do what they do because of the way I write them. I strive to reveal the deepest underpinnings about life, about love, and about human nature, but it’s not for the faint of heart. I’ll take you through a proverbial emotional ringer before reaching resolution and it’s never as predictable as you might think. Do I sound like your kind of fictionista? Come along, darling. This way.

Something else you should know about me is that I’m a huge George Clooney fan. Maybe, Up In The Air wasn’t one of his usual gigs, but I loved that movie. And, let’s be frank, I watched ER without him for years, but it was never the same. Never. Anyway, I digress. There’s a scene in Up In The Air where he’s telling this guy to follow his dream after George has told him he’s been laid off. When I saw that scene, it was as if George was practically speaking to me because I was there, two years ago, when I was laid off from a high tech sales job, had always harbored a dream to write full-time, and went for it after that. Is it a coincidence that Up In The Air came out about the same time? I think not.

So now, this is what I do. Write. Write all the time. I’ll admit it was hard at first. It still is—hard, harrowing, humbling. Believe me, it would be easier to go out and get another high paying sales job than write for a living because writing causes me to question my mental toughness so much of the time. Can I do this? Am I good enough?

Yet, here’s what I’ve learned: you just have to turn off that voice in your head off or ignore what is being said. Sometimes, all you need to do is stand up for yourself, stop depending upon the opinions of others, and just go after what you really want.

For me, that’s writing. For you, it might be anything else, but just pursue your passion whatever it is.

With this anthology, my debut novel, Seeing Julia is featured. Seeing Julia is a labor of love and represents a lot of hard work. Truly, this book has caused me as much grief as it has joy. After I first wrote this novel, I entered it into a literary contest and promptly forgot about it. I was busy. I was taking classes at The Writer’s Studio, becoming literary savvy, and writing another novel called Not To Us.

I remember it was a Monday morning in early June of 2010 when I received a call from the president of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association telling me I was a finalist in the romance category with my entry of Seeing Julia. “What?” She asked me if I planned on attending the conference. “Well, I guess so.” Lucky for me, I attended the summer conference, bought a new outfit, and won the Zola Award and first place with Seeing Julia the night of the awards dinner. It was a surreal moment, when I had to go up to the front of the room with those seven hundred people watching and accept my award. But, truly? I was more concerned about navigating all those tables and chairs on my way up to the podium than actually seizing the moment. As word spread about my writing award win, self-doubt had already set in. It was a fluke. It was dumb luck. As high as my emotions soared about winning; they fell just as fast when literary agents still rejected my work. Yes, the win opened a number of literary agent doors for me, but I wrote several different versions of that novel when a number of them took greater interest, but then wanted to change everything about the story. One agent called me up and lectured me for forty-five minutes about the book and then promised to take a look if I made more changes. I sent her the revised manuscript, but she never called again.

This was a year ago. I was at a crossroads with my writing and myself. I kept thinking if I did what they said and changed it, yet again, I would get to the next step—literary bliss. But I wasn’t getting anywhere.

Discouraged, but still determined, I reviewed what the critiques and feedback about Seeing Julia had been. Based on those, I sifted through what I thought would need to be changed and began rewriting the story, working day and night through most of November. With just getting a few hours of sleep each night, I kept up the intense pace and by the time the novel was finished; I knew it was. I’m extremely proud of Seeing Julia. During the process of rewriting it for the last time, I reached an important pinnacle with my writing: I trusted myself. Confidence entered into the realm. And, along with it, swift understanding: I had to make my own literary bliss.

Two additional things became clear. First, it was essential for me to have complete control over the publishing of my work; and second, the publishing industry was in the midst of a perfect storm because of e-books and I needed to take full advantage. And, so I did.

In late April and early May of this year, I released two novels: Seeing Julia and Not To Us. These books are available as e-books as well as print trade paperbacks.

Many wonderful readers have responded to my work. They often reach out to me and let me know how they love my novels. I love and cherish their enthusiasm for my work.

This is literary bliss.

Of course, my family’s number one complaint is that I write too much and all the time. Now, add to that the twittering and the facebooking and the wordpressing and now google plus-ing, and checking Amazon, and taking writing classes; it's a full-time gig. But, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The good news is that with the encouragement of my readers and confidence in my writing, I’m working on my third novel, When I See You, and hope to release this book before the end of this year. And, I already have drafts for two other novels, Saving Valentines and Finding Amy.

Oh yes, there are occasions, rare ones, when I'm not writing. That’s when I like to drink a fine wine, check in with my family, and look at my awesome view which I can see when I look up long enough from my computer screen in my writing refuge.

And so, welcome. Welcome to my little piece of the universe.

I’ll leave you with this—a philosophy I now live by, borrowed from one of the greatest women tennis players of all time: “You’ve got to take the initiative and play your game. In a decisive set, confidence is the difference.” Chris Evert

Oh, Chrissy, you are so right!

***

Also included are sneak peeks into 25 novels! My novel, Seeing Julia, is one of the novel excerpts featured. It is available at most online retailers in trade paperback as well as e-book formats.

Seeing Julia

Amazon

Amazon UK

Barnes and Noble

Apple/iTunes http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/seeing-julia/id446055623?mt=11

Smashwords (various e-book formats for Sony e-book, Kobo, Apple iBooks and Diesel)

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Not-To-Us-ebook/dp/B004YWMO4A
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/not-to-us-katherine-owen/1100170258
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/57241

Coming Soon!

For more information about Katherine Owen, visit these links:

Website: http://www.katherineowen.net

Blog: http://www.katherineclareowen.com

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Owen/e/B004Z3BG3I/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/KatherineOwen01

Connect on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KatherineOwenauthor

I'm on Tumblr, here: http://katherineowen.tumblr.com/

Holiday Hop!!! Contest Instructions! RE-VAMPED!

2011-12-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

Please click on the Holiday Hop link (the big blue one) and it will take you to the main blog spot where other contests are being hosted too. Buy a copy of Death Wish: Book I (The Vamp Saga), and you will be reimbursed with an Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift certificate. Please let me know which retailer you purchased Death Wish from and when you plan to read it. Then, follow me on Twitter @deeblanchard007. All participants who respond to this blog post will be entered into the paranormal gift basket contest!

Three lucky winners will win the paranormal gift basket and will have a chance to win the grand prize of a Kindle Fire! Good luck & thank you everyone! ;-)

Note: Only the three winners of the contest will receive reimbursement for their purchase of Death Wish. If you don't like the novel or it isn't your cup of tea then feel free to ask for a refund within seven days at Amazon. ;-)

Guest Blog Post by Donna Fasano!

2011-12-12T19:58:00.000-08:00

This next indie chick is something else because get this, she left legacy to come to the other side. Who would do something that wild and crazy? Another inspiring story by another gorgeous and intelligent author from the Indie Chicks' Anthology. Without further ado, I give you our next courageous woman on the list!

Doesn't she look too wholesome to ever write romance?

Stepping Into The Light by Donna Fasano

I sit in the back row, shoulders rounded, knees jumping, my left thumb rubbing a raw spot in the center of my right palm. The sad and lonely sufferings being expressed in the dank, dimly-lit basement are all too real and much too close for comfort. I glance at the door and contemplate escape, but it's too late. All eyes are upon me. I hesitate only a moment before standing on quaking legs, clearing my throat softly and confessing, "My name is Donna. I'm a writer. And I need to come out of the closet because it's dark in here."

Twenty years ago, had there been a group called Writers Anonymous, I would have attended faithfully, pouring out my heart at the weekly meetings. You see, for the couple of years that I spent writing my first novel, I told almost no one what I was doing. My husband knew; in fact, he's the reason I even attempted what felt like the insurmountable task of plotting out and finishing that first book. He's also the reason I ended up in this glorious, chaotic, roller-coaster life I've lived as an author; however, that's a story for another day. But when I first started scratching words on a yellow legal pad with a no. 2 pencil (there's nothing else that stirs my creativity more than the feel of graphite gliding against paper), I didn't tell a single family member or friend.

Why would I keep my dreams and aspirations such a tightly guarded secret?

I would hazard to guess the answer is the same reason anyone else hides things that could have life-altering potential: fear.

What if I failed? What if I had no talent? What if I didn't possess the perseverance to finish that first manuscript?

The mere thought of the snide remarks, tittering laughter and looks of skepticism and ridicule I might receive were enough to keep me silent. My imagination has always been strong, and I easily saw the scenes play out in my head.

So you think you're going to write a book, huh?

But you didn't go to college.

A romance novel? Really?

If you're going to try to write, why not write a real book? You know, like a mystery or a thriller; something someone is going to want to read.

My ability to conjure fantasy has always been a blessing and a bane. When reading a book or listening to someone tell a story or imagining repercussions of actions, visions will take shape in my head. Situations feel real, characters become corporal, while my stirred emotions brim and often overflow. Needless to say, Hallmark commercials make me cry. While powerful creativity is a great and necessary trait for a writer who is intent on concocting a compelling tale, it can become crippling if that writer is too focused on the opinions of others.

However, I also have to confess that keeping that first novel-writing dream all to myself charged me with a vibrant energy. I was excited to get my story down on paper. Seeing my plot unfold was absolutely thrilling! Creating my characters was fun. And the fact that no one knew about my clandestine efforts gave me a huge amount of freedom. No one told me I was doing it all wrong; no one suggested I could never reach my goal.

In defense of all the people I kept in the dark all those years ago, I have to admit that most of them were delighted and supportive when I finally divulged that my first manuscript had been purchased by a bona fide publisher. Oh, there was a scoffer or two, and I continue to meet them; you know the type, people who can't be happy for others or who feel another's success somehow diminishes his or her own self-worth, but I've learned to deal with those people (working with New York City editors forces a writer to grow a thick skin pretty quickly). I merely smile and think about the slew of books I've sold and the fan mail I've received from all over the world.

Those scoffers seem to have come out of the woodwork now that I've reinvented myself as an Indie Author. But venturing into this new arena couldn't have happened at a better point in my life. I'm confident in my ability to tell a good story. I'm more than satisfied with the career I've had, and have no trouble imagining even more success in the future. I saw tangible proof when two of my books made it onto Kindle's Top 100 List. I'm happy with who I've become as a writer and as a person. If my work receives less-than-flattering feedback from a reader, I might not like it, but I also realize it's not the end of the world; I've learned that I can't please all readers all the time. I love the creative freedom I have as an independent author. I can allow my muse to take me wherever it will. I'm terrifically grateful that there are readers out there who are willing to buy my novels. Every time I read a good review of one of my books I want to (and do!) kiss my husband for suggesting I take a stab at this profession (it's a habit that's been very good for my marriage).

So… what's my point? Well, don't let the negative opinions of others keep you from dreaming, for one thing. Most of the scary thoughts that run through your head will never happen, and the few that do materialize can be dealt with. You're stronger than you think. Don't allow fear to paralyze you. Aspire to be and do whatever it is you want to be and do. Be kind to yourself; you deserve the same compassion and concern that you offer others. And most importantly, know that your dreams matter. Indulge them. Reach for the stars! I did, and I'm still astounded that I snagged a few.

~ ~ ~

Donna Fasano wrote for Harlequin Books for 20 years before becoming a proud Independent Author. She's the written over 30 romance and women's fiction novels that have sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide. Her books have won awards and made best-seller lists. Below is the story she contributed to the anthology Indie Chicks: 25 Independent Women, 25 Inspiring Stories.

Donna loves to hear from readers! Ways to connect with Donna:

Her blog, Author Donna Fasano, In All Directions

On Facebook, Donna Fasano

On Twitter, DonnaFaz

A few of Donna's available titles:

The Merry-Go-Round in paperback or for your Kindle.

His Wife for a While for your Kindle

An Accidental Family for your Kindle, for your Nook, or on Smashwords.

Look for other available titles on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

Post Script by Moi: Please look for all of Donna's titles as she is an extremely talented writer and her books are some of the most heartfelt and inspiring I have read in a while. I am so proud to call her my sister and my friend.

Never Too Late! An Indie Chicks Anthology Guest Post...

2011-12-05T11:56:00.000-08:00

Usually, I do a snappy lead in but my guest blog post this week by the fabulous Linda Welch has already been done for me. This is an amazing story by my indie chick heroine. She is a very gorgeous, talented and determined woman. That is where I want to see myself when I get of age because if anything, Linda reiterates age is nothing but a damn number! ;-)

My gorgeous English Rose indie sister, Lin. Love you!

When I published the first two Whisperings paranormal mystery novels, I created an icon to use on Facebook and Twitter. The picture is of Whisperings lead character, Tiff Banks. It seemed a good way to advertise my product at the time. But no matter how often I say she is not me, I am not a tall, slim, blond young woman, many obviously don’t believe me. Response to the avatar has amused me over the years. You wouldn’t believe the comments, compliments, and odd comments I think were meant as compliments. Many of them were a hoot. I knew I’d eventually have to come out of the identity closet and say, hey, look here, this is me, not the long-haired cutie.

Then Cheryl Shireman asked me to contribute to the Indie Chicks anthology and also asked for a photo. This is the perfect opportunity to set the record straight. If you want to know who Linda Welch really is, read on. . . .

NEVER TOO LATE by Linda Welch

I’m going to tell you something I don’t think you know.

I haven’t been a “chick” for many a year. I’m a couple of months shy of 61. I have been married to the same man for 39 years. We have two sons and four grandchildren. And you thought I was a tall, slim young thing, didn’t you. I am what is called a late bloomer and I’m writing this for other old biddies who had a dream and let it pass them by, or think they are too busy, or it’s too late to fulfill their dream. I don’t mean just writing, but any dreamed-of achievement you hide in your heart.

I was born in a country cottage in

England

. My father was a restless man, so we often moved and never had much money. I remember days when only Dad had meat on his plate at dinner, but we never went hungry. We had vegetables and fruit from the garden, eggs from the chickens. Times were hard, but we children never knew that. We were loved. When Mum and Dad met during World War II, Mum was a privately educated “well-bred” lady. I doubt I will ever meet anyone as smart as my mother. At 88 years, she is still as sharp as a tack. Dad was a countryman to the bone. He had many artistic talents he didn’t pursue until later in life. When he did, he excelled at them. I like to think some of their intelligence and talent rubbed off on me.

So much has changed, in my life, in the world. I hold memories of my childhood close. I won’t let them fade. One day, I will write about them.

I had a good basic education, first at a village school, then an all-girls school, but I left at 15 (at that time the legal age in

England

) and worked first as a telephone operator before I went into office occupations. I did not see authorship in my future.

But I have always daydreamed. Often, I recreated the same daydream multiple times, constantly elaborating. I did not realize I wrote books in my head.

I began writing words on paper in my mid-forties, but it was a hobby. Somewhere along the way, I thought, Could I publish this? and then I’d like to publish. But I talked myself out of it. Authors were young men and women who decided they wanted to write at a young age and worked to improve their skill their entire life. They went to college and university, they had degrees in writing, creative writing or journalism. I was inexperienced; I didn’t have their dedication or education. Anyway, I had a husband to support, children to raise and part-time jobs to supplement the family income. I didn’t have time to write and send queries, synopsis or sample chapters to agents.

In 2008 I discovered the Lulu publishing platform and took the plunge. I published the space opera Mindbender and science fiction Galen’s Gate. I subsequently unpublished them, with every intention of revising and republishing. Some copies are still floating around out there somewhere. However, Tiff Banks, who had been swimming around in this murky thing I call a brain for several years, chose to come out and play. She took over my life. She became my second skin.

When I think back to why I did not publish until in my fifties, I realize it had nothing to do with inexperience or lack of education. I was not ready. I had to marry a dashing young American airman, leave my homeland, raise two sons, spoil four grandchildren, live and work with Americans and become entrenched in the way of life. I was not ready to write Along Came a Demon until I came to the mountains of Utah, stood looking over my mountain valley, and knew, “this is it. This is where Tiff lives. She knows the bitter cold and snow of winter, the harsh heat of summer. She knows her city and the people inside-out. This is Tiff’s world, and now, I know who she is.”

Then the hard work began. My education was strictly “King’s English.” I wrote formal letters, contracts and legal documents at work. I had to take the starch out of my writing. Research didn’t help. It seemed that each time I read an article or blog about word usage, in particular overuse and what to avoid, the next book I read was a best-selling novel by a best-selling author who broke those rules. And having decided to barge into my life, Tiff was very positive about how she talks. She’s a born and bred American, a slightly snarky, slang-wielding gal who speaks to the reader on a personal level, individual to individual. I had to use a style that practically screamed “you can’t do that!” in my ear every other sentence.

I published the first Whisperings novel for another reason: Nobody seemed to believe in my writing. Not friends, relatives, friendly acquaintances. I think they supposed a 58-year-old with no education in the literary field, who suddenly came out of the woodwork and decided to publish, must be a “vanity publisher” who wanted to force poorly-written books on readers. When I said I wrote fiction, I got blank looks, followed by, “that’s nice. Now, as I was saying. . .” Nobody wanted to read my work, not even my sweet husband. But he enjoyed urban fantasy and I thought he’d like Tiff Banks. So in a way, I also published for him.

I published Along Came a Demon in November 2008. It was supposed to be a stand-alone novella, but readers wanted more and Tiff obliged. Along Came a Demon became book one of the Whisperings series of paranormal mysteries. I published the sequel, The Demon Hunters, in November 2009. In 2010 I added material to Along Came a Demon to make it a full-length book and at the same time made small changes to The Demon Hunters to reflect those in Along Came a Demon. I published book three, Dead Demon Walking, in March 2011. Being a wordsmith, I should be able to express my joy each time a reader tells me they love my books, but it truly is beyond my powers of description. Now, when someone asks me what I do for a living, instead of telling them I am a part-time administrative assistant and adding (hesitantly) “I also write fiction,” I say I am an author. When I fill out a form that asks for my occupation, I proudly write “author” in the little box.

Mary Wesley published Jumping the Queue at age 70 and went on to write ten best sellers until she died twenty years later.

Harriett Doerr was 74 when she published The Stones of Ibarra.

Laura Ingalls Wilder published her Little House on the Prairie series when she was in her 50s.

Mary Lawson was 55 when Crow Lake was published.

Flora Thompson is famous for her semi-autobiography Lark Rise to Candleford, published when she was 63.

Age is irrelevant. You are never too old. For anything.

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.
Also included are sneak peeks into 25 novels!
My novel, Along Came a Demon, book one of the Whisperings paranormal mystery series, is one of the novels featured.
All proceeds go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Linda on Amazon USA for Kindle and paperback.

Linda on Amazon UK

Linda on Barnes and Noble

Linda's Website

Linda on Smashwords

Whisperings on Facebook

Whispering books are also available in e-book formats from Apple, Diesel, Kobo and Sony.

Guest Blog Post By Ty Hutchinson

2011-12-03T16:08:00.000-08:00

Try The Stroganov. I Hear It’s Good.

Did you know Stroganov is a Russian dish? I didn’t. Some say it got its name from the powerful Stroganov family but no one can be sure. The first known recipe appeared in a cookbook in 1861. The dish was simple. It required lightly floured cubes of meat sautéed with mustard and bouillon and then topped with sour cream. Over the years the recipe would eventually evolve to include rice or pasta, with add-ons like onions and mushrooms.

After the fall of Imperial Russia, the recipe began to spread beyond the motherland. It first gained popularity in China prior to the Second World War. From there, the dish moved quickly across the world. In Brazil, they called it fricassee. In Portugal and China, it was called estrogonofe. Up in the land of the Nordic countries, the Swedes called it korv-stroganoff, while the Fins called it makkarastroganoff. Most of the world stuck with the stroganoff variation, except for Greek fraternities, who still refer to it as strokin’ off.

The title of my new Darby Stansfield thriller is Stroganov. I opted for the Russian spelling as opposed to the much-preferred double “F” ending because I’m difficult and because there are Russians in the book.

If you read the first DS thriller, Chop Suey, you’ll know that Darby thinks up these wonderful ideas that he brands as Darbytastic. His most successful to date involves doing business with organized crime, such as the Chinese Triads. As a salesman with Teleco Wireless, he figured if they could sell wireless business solutions to organizations like Apple, IBM and McDonalds, why not sell them to organizations like the Mafia, the Yakuza and the Triads. Brilliant right?

If Chop Suey tells the story of Darby Stansfield getting his consulting gig up and running and the trouble it brings, then Stroganov tells the story of how someone in this business can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, all of the time.

In Stroganov, a smarter, a more confident Darby Stansfield continues his life as the telecommunication consultant to the criminal underworld. This time he’s in bed with the Russians and everything is peachy, so far.

With his career back on track, Darby focuses his efforts on improving his love life. The result, he finds himself in the middle of a war between the Ukrainian government and a dangerous sex trafficking ring. Yes, just like that.

Anxious to get out of the situation, he reluctantly offers his help to the authorities in hopes of a clean break. What he gets instead is the attention of Russia’s most feared criminal.

Stroganov will be out the first week of December. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Smashwords and more. Learn more about the Ty Hutchinson by visiting his blog or Facebook page.

Postcript by moi: In the meantime, why don't you check out Chop Suey listed to the left on my blog list from my indie sisters' and brothers'. It is on sale for 99 cents for a limited time so do hurry!

The Phoenix & The Darkness

2011-11-28T10:14:00.000-08:00

This week, the fabulous Lizzy Ford is featured for the Indie Chicks' Anthology post. Her story is so moving and powerful, I would rather just post it rather than trying to come up with something witty beforehand. I am sure you all agree it speaks for itself. Without further ado, the beautiful and brave Lizzy Ford!

She's even beautiful while freezing her ass off!

The Phoenix and the Darkness

I've been running from The Darkness since I left home at the age of 17. I escaped a broken family to the military, found it unwelcoming to creative non-conformists but fulfilled my commitment. The first man I dated was a drunkard who suffered from post traumatic stress disorder; the second raped me. The rest of my time in the military was a blur of men, the different places I lived and The Darkness stalking me. At the end of my tour, I set my world on fire to keep the Darkness away, abandoned everything and everyone, and emerged from the flames like the mythical Phoenix. I ran home to Ohio. I didn’t stay long and continued onward to New York, where I reinvented myself for a very brief period of contentedness.

It didn’t last. Darkness, fire, rebirth, and a few years, men and states later, I ended up in the arms of yet another unworthy man. I followed him to DC, bore the mental abuse, and tried to tell myself this was the best life would ever get.

I took a job in a field I didn't care for and ended up running from job-to-job-to-job, unable to find a place where I was happy. I was hit by a drunk driver at 26, leaving me with a long lifetime of constant pain. I had a miscarriage, gave all my money to the unworthy man and couldn't pay my bills despite the good job. I moved from Virginia to Maryland and back to Virginia, unable to shake the pursuing Darkness. Finally, I put all my belongings in storage, ready to set my word afire and flee once again.

I worked up the nerve to ditch the dysfunctional man, but before I could run far, I met the man who would become my first husband. He wanted normal things: stability, house, family. I convinced myself if I had these things, the Darkness would be gone. He needed a mother, not a wife, but I married him anyway and prayed it was enough.

It wasn't. I set my world afire once more, and I fled him, too. I put everything I valued in my truck, grabbed the dog, and left. Away from DC, the east coast, everything I owned, my first husband. I ran to Texas to a new job and divorced the first husband. Yet again, I was reborn. Soon after, I met my soul mate. Some part of me knew I couldn’t keep running if I wanted to keep him. I turned around to see if The Darkness still chased me. After fifteen years of running, The Darkness was closer than ever.

I told the man who would become my second husband to stay away from me – I was dangerous. He saw The Darkness, and he saw me.

You’re brilliant and beautiful. I love you, Darkness and all, he said. But if you don’t deal with it and accept the fate for which you were put on this earth, you’ll be consumed by it.

I couldn’t yet face the Darkness even with his support, but I could see how wrong my path was. My path wasn't a career I loathed, and it wasn't ignoring my true gift: writing. So I worked full time and wrote full time. I found true joy for the first time in my life, but The Darkness got too close. I ran away from that job - the only job I'd ever remotely enjoyed. This time, I kept my only ally in life - my guardian angel and partner.

I took a new job in a new state. With my husband and my writing, I saw The Darkness recede, and I grew happy. Instead of looking over my shoulder, I started looking into the future. I vowed to run towards something instead of away from something. I wasn’t just reborn – I was alive for the first time in my life.

And then, this past summer, I tripped. The Darkness swallowed me. As in one of my upcoming novels, The Darkness turned me inside out. I couldn't go to work and could barely leave the house. It pinned me beneath it, and the more I tried to run, the heavier it got. Everything I'd run from in life was there: my near-poverty upbringing; the breaking apart of my family when I was a kid; my struggle with my weight and social anxiety issues; with finding acceptance at any job; with men and dysfunctional relationships; the pending financial disaster I'd been building; fear of failure and ending up as miserable as my parents. I thought I'd suffocate, until the Darkness spoke to me.

You can run again and risk losing the man you love, or you can face me and be happy, it said.

I want to be happy, I replied.

Then do what you must.

It's not that easy. I'm scared.

Sometimes life only gives us difficult choices, but you still must choose. I am a part of you. You must accept me and deal with me before you can move on, it said.

I thought hard as I looked at all the things I'd accumulated that were bankrupting me financially and emotionally. I looked at what made me happy in life: my husband and my writing. I saw how I'd hurt my most precious treasures - and myself - by setting my world on fire whenever The Darkness got too close.

This is gonna hurt, I told The Darkness.

Not for long, it said. You only have to do this once.

In that moment, I made my choice. I would face The Darkness within me, no matter how hard it was. I loved my husband too much to hurt him more, and I was sick of being a coward. I took a leave of absence in early September to deal with my past as well as the depression and anxiety that have haunted me my whole life. Writing has always been my solace and my passion. Through it, I'll heal the world I broke and my own soul, and become the partner my husband deserves.

The Phoenix will be reborn once more, not of fire, but of Darkness, and will emerge stronger than ever.

Description of the "War of Gods" series

The "War of Gods" series by Lizzy Ford is a paranormal romance series depicting the ongoing struggle between good and evil - and the immortals and their human mates who are caught in the middle. The first book, "Damian's Oracle" (released October 2011) is the story of the White God and his Oracle, the cool beauty, Sofia. The second book, "Damian's Assassin," (released November 2011) is about the White God's assassin and the woman who heals his heart and body. The third book will be released 02 Dec and tells the tale of the White God's chief immortal and the mysterious, beautiful Magician he risks his life to protect.

Lizzy's info:

Website: http://www.guerrillawordfare.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LizzyFordBooks

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/LizzyFord2010

Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/106728579413949863215/pages/getstarted#106728579413949863215/posts

GR: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4558309.Lizzy_Ford

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lizzy-Ford/e/B004XTTYOC/

Damian’s Oracle (currently free on Amazon)

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Damians-Oracle-War-Gods-ebook/dp/B004JN0KHM/

BN: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/damians-oracle-lizzy-ford/1029664032

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/damians-oracle/id416014301?mt=11

Click on the link to the Right to Buy Now!

Guest Post by Christine DeMaio-Rice

2011-11-26T10:07:00.000-08:00

For all those authors and would-be authors, we all know how important it is to advertise. If people don't know about your book then how are they supposed to buy it? Pixel of Ink and Kindle Nation Daily are two of the most popular ways independent authors advertise. Below is the story from one of my Indie Chicks, Christine DeMaio-Rice and her journey with her new book, Dead is the New Black.

My Pixel of Ink (POI) Story

On November 21st I got my first ever Pixels of Ink ad.

12pm

Ok so, I've been up for half an hour and haven't gotten a sale. And I'm wondering, am I going to be the only person in the history of POI ads that won't make a sale? Will I be the freak that no one wants to emulate? Will people throw eggs and if they do, can I catch 179 dollars worth of them before they break?

I am going to lunch now. When I come back I am going to check. I fully expect not one sale, because it's just the way things go. If everyone else has a fun, easy way to do something, I will try it and fail.

1:09pm

Back from lunch.

I have sold 5 copies after an hour and a half. So I guess I can count on another five or six hours of fun? No one was ever very clear about how many hours this whole bonanza lasts. But let's say six hours. So, at this rate I'll have sold 20 copies. That's not disgusting. It's not a complete waste of time. It's something else entirely that I can't put a name on right now.

This "I know the word but can't put my finger on it" thing happens a lot. I blame a massive vocabulary, but the confusion is probably attributed to age and honestly, the inability to use the right word in the right place is probably why I only sold 5 books in 90 minutes. I'll make a note to work on that.

In the time it took me to write this email I haven't sold any books.

Let me check again.

Nope. Nada.

2 pm

I've been up for 2 1/2 hours and I've sold 18 books.

The odd thing is my ranking was about 48,000 at 11am, and it's 54,000 now. Does that mean that everyone above me is selling more? How can my ranking go DOWN.

2:45pm

Dead Is the New Black is still the top post on page one of POI. That's three hours and change.

Things are happening. Now, I do my job for a little -- measure an armhole or complain about a seam or whatever -- then check KDP. The number of sales has been rising each time I check. I've sold 32 copies today. Not bad. Just the pleasure of seeing the sales happen is enough for me right now, after the disappointment of hours one and two. Ranking hasn't changed, but I hear that takes a few hours.

I'm wondering if the number of reviews has anything to do with the success of the ad. I only have 7, most of which are quite detailed. I will do this again, someday, and I'm wondering if I'll do better with more reviews. (my status as a “Red Adept Select” means I don’t need to meet the 10 review requirement).

I'm chalking that up and in the meantime, I've come up with a motto to remember -- "It ain't over until you're off page 1"

I made another sale in the time it took to write this email. Things are looking up.

5:30pm

Ad still on top of first page. SIX HOURS! What wonderful thing did I do in a past life to deserve such a showing?

And I've sold 68 books today. My ranking changed at about 3:30 to 6,010, which is like wow. Four digits. Not shabby. We'll see how that progresses over the next few hours, but I'm pretty sure people aren't going to throw eggs at me.

9pm

So, I've put the children to bed and I am now sitting down to write my NaNoWriMo word balance. And I am almost passing out, one from exhaustion and second, from my POI results.

I've sold 95 copies so far. I only needed 90 to make my money back from the ad. And here's my ranking....

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #709 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #19 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Comic
- #23 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor
- #25 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Women Sleuths

I think the one I'm most excited about is "Woman Sleuths". Competition is fierce in that genre, and I hope I can stick some of the ranking there. Because that's what it was about for me. Just getting that little bump to increase visibility, and hanging on to some of the ranking so I search better.

This was an incredibly exciting day. Beats looking at my sales and seeing the same sad number day after day.

Was it worth it? Well, it paid for itself, so there's certainly no downside for me. Right now I'd do it again. We'll see if my KND ad on the 26th of December pans out.

10:30pm

#684 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #18 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Comic
- #21 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor
- #24 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Women Sleuths

I think there comes a point where the progress on rankings becomes exponentially slower. Like I'm going to have to sell twice as many to break the top 500. It's like how rich you have to get to be in the top 30% richest people as opposed to how rich you have to get to break into the top 10%.

Conclusion:

By the time the ad went down the next morning, I’d sold 120 copies or so. At $2.99 each, that put me at paying for the ad, plus another sixty bucks for my trouble.

A week later, my ranking is down in the 7000’s. We’ll see if it dips much more, but this is so much better than the 60K I started with. I’m selling a couple a day. This is superfantastic, and give me a good starting point for not only Christmas, but any other promotion I try.

Post Script by yours truly: If you would like to read this riveting story about the fashion industry and a murder, look to your right! Click on the photo and buy it!

It's support Small Business Owners' Saturday and you can't get much smaller than us independent authors!

Gobble, gobble! Black Friday sale

2011-11-24T19:17:00.000-08:00

So, if you are one of those procrastinators (or know one who is) and you have been surreptitiously eyeing my latest novel, just know that it is on sale for $1.99 this weekend only (until Sunday) at all the major retailers (Amazon, B&N and Smashwords). On Monday, the 28th, it goes back up to $4.79 where it will stay unless I feel like having an after-Christmas sale and that's highly doubtful. So spread the word as this is the last bit of self-promotion I am going to do about this e-book! Go get it!

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Wish-Book-Vamp-ebook/dp/B00631HMHY
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/death-wish-danielle-blanchard-benson/1107067214
Smashwords (Non U.S./outside Amazon Kindle zone): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/101440

The Holidays are approaching... ;-)

2011-11-21T09:57:00.000-08:00

Okay, so you know me. I am not one to gloat on myself for very long before moving on so I wanted to let all my wonderful blog followers know I am participating in The Holiday Blog Hop which will take place from December 15th through December 25th. I am excited to announce that during this time, I will be hosting a contest and two lucky winners will receive an extra special holiday treat... a Paranormal e-Book Gift Basket with three yummy novels.

You know this one is included, right?

Who are the authors involved as I wouldn't do this by myself? Shea MacLeod and Norah Wilson! That's right, the two winners will not only get my latest novel, Death Wish, but they will also receive Nightfall by the talented Norah Wilson and Kissed By Darkness, Shea MacLeod's treat about a bad ass vampire hunter and the two men in her life. Yeah, I know, y'all wanna see thew covers, here goes!

I've been drooling for this one myself...

Yeah, this one is in the basket, too!

Can I just say the two novels above look like some great reading? Along with Death Wish, you're set. So, remember to start commenting, definitely during the blog hop as that is how the winners will be decided or I just might throw all your shiny, happy faces (the 60+ who follow this blog) into a hat and choose two winners (that'll be fun)!!!

That's it for now, folks. Until next time, happy reading and don't forget to check out the two authors above as they have other titles out as well which are just dying to be bought... ;-)

Write or Die

2011-11-20T13:59:00.000-08:00

Oh wow, so now it is my week and it is always a bit nerve wracking to have yourself on your own blog. I am so not good with self-promo so please forgive me everyone. As part of the Indie Chick Anthology, it is now my turn to showcase my own story and although it isn't anything like Shea or Heather's, it is quite satisfying to share in its own way.

When I first started on this journey and Cheryl Shireman told us we would have to share personal stories, I was absolutely frightened to the core. Share a personal story? With strangers? About my life where it will always exist in cyberspace? And then I truly thought about it and realized why not? When you decide to become an author, your life, as you know it is no longer your own. Better to "pull an Oprah" and put everything out there than to try to hide so here is my story in my own words. Enjoy! ;-)

Isn't that the face of an angel? Not!

“Write or Die”

2010 was the worst year of my life.

After a very successful career in the banking industry, I suddenly found myself unemployed, my marriage falling apart and to add insult to injury my father dying. I had a 10 month old daughter and suddenly, I was back living with my unmarried, child-free sister with two children. Life was bleak and the most terrifying part about the whole situation was I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do.

I was attending university for a degree in International Business but who was I kidding? I’d always hated business; I was good at banking but should I base my career on something I was simply good at or should I be doing something I love? This was my dilemma and I had no one to blame for my predicament but myself.

Plenty of women had overcome more tremendous obstacles so why was I feeling sorry for myself? I steeled my spine and decided to make some real decisions. In the middle of the detritus which was now my life, I found a wonderful and caring man I fell hopelessly in love with but the problem was he didn’t live in this country and he was a successful and driven attorney. What would he want with someone like me? Unemployed, two children, divorced and somewhat shaky ambitions at an age where most women had it made, were married and excelling towards middle age. My life was a mess and I needed a man like a fish needs a bicycle (thanks, U2!).

I took a long hard look at my life and realized I had failed to plan and therefore I had planned to fail.

When I stood at that podium and looked at the few family and friends who had bothered to show up at my dad’s funeral, my life became so clear. My father had had so many chances; so much lost opportunities and had blew all of them due to fear and inertia. I was my father’s daughter; I was falling into that same black hole of despondency with no way out.

It took another fourteen months before I had the actual courage to see out my dream and make it a reality. Isabelle Solal had written a book, In The Past Imperfect, and her good friend, Sion Dayson, had promoted it on her blog. She was tired of waiting for the agent who would never accept the publisher who could never take a chance and had decided to self-publish her fictional book on Amazon. Was this possible? Could I self-publish? Could I take my book which I had tried to find an agent for the past eight years or so and do it myself? Say it isn’t so!

I was so excited about the possibility of publishing, I dug it out of the place it’d warmed my different hard drives and laptops over the years, decided at over one thousand hard back pages, it was much too long to publish as a full length novel, chopped it up into eight parts and hit publish on the first part.

I was ecstatic as I had done my own cover (a beautiful statue which captivated me while I was on my European vacation) and it was just so perfect. Unfortunately, no one else knew I existed and that is when I realized publishing was more than just about hitting a button. I had to make sure my novel was edited, the right cover was used to attract attention and there was a whole list of indie writers I didn’t know about but they were there and ready to be at my service.

In the beginning, I only used Kindle’s Direct Publishing board because that was the only one I knew about. Another writer, Athanasios, who wrote a thrilling book titled Mad Gods, told everyone on the KDP boards about a new Facebook board group called Indie Writers’ Unite. I joined, Cheryl Bradshaw, the creator of IWU accepted me, and the rest is history.

I wish I could say I am selling thousands of copies and I got the guy but that isn’t life and nothing happens without time. I am selling and many people have discovered my work; I have met some of the bravest men and women on the planet at IWU and I feel like a million bucks even if my life still isn’t a bed of roses. The guy, like everything good in life, will take some time and I am willing to put it in and make the effort; nothing worth anything is easy to accomplish for the matter.

I love to write so that is what I’m doing. I enjoy writing whatever moves me, thus I have work in several different genres including Women’s Literature, Contemporary Romance, Paranormal, Science Fiction and Fantasy. I also plan to do a novel I have had in the works for a while that is firmly Mystery with a Thriller twist.

For the first time, I stayed true to myself, my ambitions and what I want my life to be and represent. I know it will get better and all my dreams will come true—many of them already have. My life is still changing, still revolving but I have come out ahead, stronger and more positive than I ever thought possible. I learned the hard way either I write or I can simply subsist and die.

Life is like writing; it isn’t about perfection but it is about the possibilities we are given every day, the decisions we make and what we want to do with them. It is about forks in the road and deciding which direction to take and making the best with whatever is thrown at us once we make our decisions. It is the way it should be and that is simply imperfect.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Wish-Book-Vamp-ebook/dp/B00631HMHY
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/death-wish-danielle-blanchard-benson/1107067214
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/101440
CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/3719572

Smashwords (Available FREE): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/88853
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Forever-27-Novelette-Club-ebook/dp/B005N04MFQ
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forever-27-danielle-blanchard/1105648222

Latchkey Kid

2011-11-13T09:28:00.000-08:00

Heather Marie Adkins has to be one of the youngest "write or die" indie chicks but her story is powerful. It is about love, loss and the ability to grow and overcome heartache. It is an honor and a pleasure for me to share her story. Without further ado, here it is:

The talented and gorgeous Heather Marie Adkins

Latchkey Kid

By Heather Marie Adkins

It isn’t easy being the daughter of a police officer, but it’s even more difficult to be the daughter of a female police officer. I would come to understand this early, and often, in my life.

My mom’s career has always been the whirling force of my existence.

She was sworn into the Louisville Police Department on September 10, 1990. I was five years old. For the majority of my developmental years, I bounced through a succession of caretakers—my grandmother, my father and stepmother, and a kind woman I called ‘Mama Lo’—while my mom was forging her way through her early years as a rookie officer.

I remember late nights—my mom in her uniform, her gun belt digging into my side as she bundled me into a blanket to carry me to the car. I remember mornings getting on the school bus, knowing Mom would be coming home from work just in time for me to leave. But when I remember these things, they are snippets: Only bits and pieces of the woman who is my mother. Her job was demanding and sometimes, you just have to sacrifice to make your dreams come true.

When I was ten, Mom aced the Detective test and was granted her first promotion. Suddenly, we were buying a new house in a nice neighborhood. I was in middle school, which was awkward enough, and Mom began working 4 pm to midnight.

Thus began my time as a Latchkey Kid.

I rode the bus home from school and let myself into the house around 4:30 every afternoon. Under Mom’s strict instructions, I would check to make sure all three doors of the house were locked and then I would set the alarm.

Until bedtime, I was on lockdown. No going outside—not even to the backyard. No answering the door, no looking out the windows. Just me and the dog: A tiny Shih-Tzu named Cinnamon.

I was kind of an odd child. I didn’t care much for television, though I did love to play Nintendo. I could rock on some Mario Bros. I also absolutely loved to read, particularly R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps and Ann M. Martin’s The Babysitter’s Club.

There is really only so much video gaming and reading a girl can do before she wishes she had another hobby. At least, that’s how it was for me. I was lonely. Monday through Friday, every evening alone…it sucked.

It was around this time that my daddy shared with me a novel he was writing. Daddy is a computer guru who does freelance work, but he writes for fun on the side. “Demigod” was one of the most amazing things I had ever read. Not only was I astounded that my dad had such talent, but for the first time I realized there were people behind the books I liked to read.

Armed with nothing more than spiral-bound notebooks and pencils, I began writing.

Between 10 and 16, I wrote seven full-length novels. Today, I suppose they would be considered Young Adult. Some of them were murder mysteries with strong heroines. Many of them had elements of what today is considered Paranormal Romance. Most of my early influences were from authors I enjoyed: Stine, as well as Richie Tankersley Cusick and Christopher Pike. Somewhere in the midst of all this, my mom bought me a laptop and I transferred everything to digital.

I continued to write during high school, though significantly less once I got my driver’s license. I focused mainly on short stories and built up a vast collection that I ended up losing to the nightmare of an erased floppy disk. I majored in English in high school. Earned a couple college credits. And was told multiple times by various English teachers that I had talent.

After graduation, I went away to college at Western Kentucky University. My mother had married a great man who was also a police officer. Between the two of them, I was able to go away to school and thus started several years of BAD DECISIONS. I kicked it off right, as most first-time college teens do. I drank too much and partied too hard, not making it to class, much less spending my time writing. Two years later, I came home to Louisville with my tail between my legs, no smarter than I was before.

Back at my mother and stepfather’s home, I found the situation to be stifling for the girl who had done what she wanted, when she wanted for so long. I was already rebelling—not phoning, disappearing all night—when a chance encounter on the banks of the Ohio River brought a man into my life who was not right for me in more ways than one.

Jason was an ex-con and felon. I was the daughter of two police officers. Cue ominous music.

Let’s skip the dirty parts and go to the section where I pack my things and flee into the night like a bat out of Hades. My parents change the locks, I cut off all contact, and hole up in a hovel on 3rd Street with my friend, Brent. Oh, and in the meantime, my convict boyfriend ends up back in the Slammer.

I bounced around for some time. To an apartment with my cousin, Ryan. Then to a big, fancy house outside of Nashville, Tennessee with Jason’s family. After severing ties with them, I rented a tiny studio apartment downtown. I moved a couple more times, losing money (and myself) in the process.

Not once in the years I spent chasing something, anything in Tennessee did I sit down to write.

In January 2008, I was in debt and barely hanging on to the apartment I was renting. My good-for-nothing, pot-smoking boyfriend-of-the-moment wasn’t helping with the bills because he couldn’t hold a job. My car was on the verge of repossession. I was going nowhere; the only positive thing I did have was that I was talking with my parents again.

Then the life-shattering, earth-moving event. In North Carolina, January 31st, my cousin Cory—a Marine, a firefighter, one of my best friends—was killed in a car accident. He was 25 years old.

My mom drove from Louisville to Nashville the minute she heard. She told me it was because she didn’t want me to be alone, nor did she want to tell me something so sensitive over the phone. That’s just how she is; no matter how terrible a daughter I could be, she always put me first.

Later that same night after she left, I was alone. My deadhead boyfriend wasn’t home, neither was our equally stoned roommate. I was sitting on our single mattress on the floor, looking around our bare room with its one dresser and a floor strewn with clothes. It hit me.

What are you doing? Really?

Was I just trying to prove I could do it on my own? Because I couldn’t. Obviously.

In a flash of grief and pain, I realized my life had spiraled out of control simply because I was too stubborn to admit my parents were right.

I packed my things. My dog and I climbed in the old Jeep. And we came home to Louisville.

During the upheaval of moving back, I also found something I hadn’t yet realized I had lost—my writing. Whether it was my grief over Cory or simply returning home, I don’t know—but I started writing again.

Even better…I finished the novels I had started years before and I have started (and finished) even more in the time since.

I’ve been through a lot in my life. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as some, maybe it wasn’t as rough…but it shows that a girl can make bad decisions, life-changing mistakes, and still bounce back.

My mom is a Major with the Louisville Metro Police force—the third highest ranking female on the department. She just celebrated her 21st anniversary this month. I am in a stable, committed relationship with a man who will one day be my husband. We live in a small but nice home—I’m a police dispatcher. He’s a police officer.

I was a latchkey kid and because of it, I am now a writer. I am the daughter of a female police officer, and because of that, I’m a stronger, better woman.

***

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.

Also included are sneak peeks into 25 novels!

My paranormal romance novel, Abigail , is one of the novels featured.

All proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer.

Abigail

Check out these other gems by this talented author!

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Holiday-Collection-ebook/dp/B0063ULCL2
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/102497

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Temple-ebook/dp/B0057XOQ1E
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69094

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Underneath-ebook/dp/B0055COI9M
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65758

In case you don't realize this, both Shea and Heather are part of the Indie Eclective group. Hey y'all, if you need anymore indie writers, give me a shout or send me an email, okay? ;-)