Blog Archives

Another Field Trip Day - The Birth of Your Book

1/21/2015

Hey, everyone! I'm taking a break from editing DANIEL THE DRAWER's sequel to post on the YA~NA Sisterhood Blog. The YA~NA Sisterhood is a blog designed for readers and writers of Young Adult and New Adult fiction. I'm a contributor there, and today was my very first published post.

In The Birth of Your Book, I mash up my two professions, writing and birth work, with some amusing results. Check it out, doula's orders.

While you're there, join our Book Club. February's pick is WHITE SPACE by Ilsa J. Bick, sure to be a creepy good time. The more book nerds, the merrier!

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Can You Find the Treasure?

1/16/2015

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URQ Poster3

What do pirates, explorers and children have in common? They all love treasure hunts!

THE ULTIMATE READING QUEST will end on Monday, January 19th, at midnight. This is your last chance to explore new books and authors, and to take home free prizes and books. Plus, one lucky winner, will get a

MYSTERY BONUS TREASURE!

To enter your name for this SPECIAL TREASURE you must prove yourself worthy by collecting the 49 letters of a secret message! Just by reading this post you already have two of the letters (A and B).

Find the rest within the Quest, writing them down as you go. When you have all 49, unscramble them to decode the secret message. Enter the exact words of the message in the Mystery Prize Rafflecopter right here: a Rafflecopter giveawayAs you're searching for the letters, be sure to leave a comment for each and every author. Not only will you get to chat with the amazing Quest authors, but each comment will earn you extra entries in the general Quest prize giveaway that includes an astonishing XX free prizes and gifts! a Rafflecopter giveaway

What are you waiting for? Click this button to start collecting the rest of the letters. Then return here and enter to

TAKE THE TREASURE!

CLICK ON THE BUTTON TO START THE QUEST

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Q&A with THE LAST STORED's Sonia Poynter

1/14/2015

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Today I'm super-excited to be hosting Sonia Poynter, my friend and newly-published author (eeeeeeeeeeee!). To celebrate the release of her Young Adult Fantasy novel, THE LAST STORED, Sonia agreed to let me ask her some grown-up questions. Grown-up questions aren't usually my style, but I was going for something new to start out 2015. Ahem! Stop laughing.

Let's continue, shall we?

Q&A Time!

Sonia: First of all, I would like to thank S. J. for hosting me on your blog today. I met S. J. on a Facebook group, and her kindness has overwhelmed me. Every day I’m amazed by writers support and help. I’m truly blessed.

1.     What do you do when you’re not writing? As of late, all I do is write, but when I’m not writing I read, binge on Netflix, eat extraordinary large amounts of sweets, and spend time with my family who, I’m sure are very familiar with the back of my head. (Because all I do is sit at my desk.)

2.     Are you a full-time writer, or do you also have a “day job”? I let go of my small business this past summer and now devote my time to writing. My husband gave me the green light and I pushed on the gas. I love doing what I do. What other job allows you to dream all day, watch squirrels out my office window, and connect with other awesome writers.

3.     If you experience writer’s block, what do you do to break through it? I let my mind wander, go for a walk, look out the window, call up a friend and laugh, watch people, but after all of that I write. For me, nothing beats writer’s block like sitting your butt in a chair and putting words on paper, one after another. I find that merely the act of writing gets your brain in gear. Is what I write sometimes bunk during a block? Sure, but writing gets me over the hump.

4.     What book have you read more than once? That’s an easy one for me, The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I still remember my brother, telling me and my cousins all about this fabulous book he read. We sat captivated as he threw his baseball against our brick house. Once I read it, I was hooked. I knew I wanted to write fantasy, and I knew there had to be some sort of element of magic in it.

5.     Thinking about your book, THE LAST STORED: Any part of it based on your own experiences, or completely from your own imagination? Tell us more! The idea for THE LAST STORED came to me after the loss of my own father. I wanted to explore a daughter’s love for her parents, and the pain of losing a loved one. How do you get through the day when you are stuck in routine and grief? Then, like many writers I asked myself a bunch of what ifs. What if another world apart from our own existed? What if we forgot of this world? What if that world stored something here, a girl?

6.     Favorite character from your book? Why? My two main characters Amber and Cree are of course my favorite, but I do have a special fondness for Chaney, a Marj. He isn’t introduced until the middle of the novel. It felt like Chaney created himself. Before I knew what was happening, he was on the page. Why do I like Chaney? Almost immediately I liked him. Think if you had a soft-spoken Viking for a big brother, and that would be Chaney. He and Lin act as a comic relief with the swirl of emotion which always surrounds Amber and Cree. I even thought about writing a prequel with his point of view exclusively. I still might do it!

7.     So you’ve published a book, which is totally awesome. What’s next for you? Currently I’m working on a speculative fiction novel, called A LITTLE MURMMUR OF NOTHING. It takes place in a dying town called Wanda. The only thing this town is known for is a hanging tree. Abbot Haggard wants to put Wanda on the map and he plans to hold a celebration for the Tree, after all people do love the macabre. It follows several characters, little Oswald Crofter – orphaned because of the Tree, Heavy Hannah – She received her name because of the way she did business not because she’s at all heavy, Tammy Tuttle – Abbot’s secretary, and of course Abbot Haggard.

8.     What has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author? The worst came from a high school English teacher. I wasn’t an A+ student and she questioned my work. I remember her handing me my short story back, it was an A, but she had written across the top, “Did you really write this?” In my teenage mind this devastated me. She had thought I’d cheated and copied someone else’s work. Looking back, I question if that was what she really meant, but at the time it hurt.   What has been the best compliment? Best compliment came from someone who really helped me to get The Last Stored polished. She told me that my writing was very lyrical. I of course had to look it up and when I did I was pleasantly surprised.

9.     What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Read lots, write lots, keep a childlike sense of wonder, and develop super thick skin.

10. Is there anything that you would like to say to your readers and fans? God has given us a great gift with books, I can’t imagine what my childhood would have been like without hobbits, dragons, and fairies. Never lose your curiosity. And the most important thing I can share with readers is to live in the Light! Then spoke Jesus again to them, saying, I am the light of the world; he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. (John 8:12)

Great advice, Sonia! And I really enjoyed learning more about you and your writing.

The Last Stored

After the sudden death of her parents, making it through the day is a struggle for Amber Megan Peel. In the midst of her grief, an exquisite bird perches on her garden fence and shows her visions of a vivid landscape and a dark lord slouching upon a throne. She thinks the visions are tied to her sorrow. But when a boy flies through her kitchen window to tell her she’s the Last Stored, she wonders if she’s just lost her mind.

Cree of Din is tasked with one job: Bring Amber home. For seven years, Cree has trained as her protector and it is the ultimate responsibility. Failure means Amber’s certain death, and that’s not an option for Cree – especially since he’s falling in love with her.

The Returning has begun. Now all Amber and Cree have to do is enter Tali, a world of unimaginable splendor and equally unimaginable horror, and defeat Lorthis. If they can’t, not only will Tali plunge into darkness, but so will Earth.

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Mean Girls: Authors Edition

1/10/2015

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Things have changed for me since becoming a writer, and now an indie author. And, no, this has nothing to do with my entourage, my gigantic royalty checks, or my newfound addiction to hipster glasses, infinity scarves, and the word "existential". The changes I'm talking about have to do with my reviewing.

There was a time long before S. J. Henderson, where I read books just for fun, never giving a second thought to writing technique or typos. Once upon a time I could put a book down if I didn't like it without the need to know why I didn't like it. There was no insane drive to finish this thing I'd started if I didn't absolutely luuuurve it.

And I could leave a brutally honest review without batting an eyelash. When I say "brutally honest", I don't mean leaving death threats or banishing the authors to You Should Be Ashamed To Call Yourself a Writer Land. I merely pointed out what I did and didn't like, with a definite emphasis on the did not like because I hoped to enlighten other readers.

Thinking back on it, I wrote three such reviews near the very beginning of my own writing journey. These few reviews slipped through the cracks of a brain struggling with the switchover of reading as 100% hobby to reading as professional enrichment. It's hard to explain the frustration of your writer brain analyzing sentences and making mental (and sometimes physical) notes of typos or plot holes. The overload with not being able to fully escape into a book cost me at least one writer relationship.

A friend of a friend of a friend wrote a book, traditionally published and, it seems, popular. When I read this book, my overactive brain could only pick up negatives. I just didn't get it. It wasn't a matter of jealousy or anything like that, I just wasn't the right reader for the book. Instead of smacking my fingers in attempt to keep myself from plunking out that review and posting it on a site where the author would surely see it, I wrote the darn thing. It wasn't mean, it just wasn't particularly encouraging, either. And then I wondered why she wanted nothing to do with me.

I've never claimed to be a genius, guys. Not one of my most brilliant or kumbaya moments. Obviously.

I have since taken down every review where building up a writer or a book, even when pointing out its flaws, isn't evident. Why? Because those reviews weren't helping writers or readers, they just watered the seeds of negativity already spreading like weeds on review-based websites. Writing isn't the easy, dreamy job society believes it to be. It's equally difficult and passionate work, whether a book turns out to be a bestseller or not. Even with skin thick skin, it's heartbreaking to read the review equivalent of "You Suck!".

Does that mean I need to adore and shower every book I read with glowing praise? Of course not. But if I can't share my thoughts publicly without destroying a fellow writer, then maybe I should hold my tongue or my Times New Roman altogether. Just a crazy little thought.

To the friend of a friend of a friend who will probably never read this, I'm sorry if I offended you. I'm sorry if I changed anyone's mind about your book. If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things a lot differently. While I can't change the impact it had upon you or even upon any sort of friendship we might have had, I can do better from here on.

I will do better.

Let's all do better.

No, Ryan. It's gonna take more than an apology for me to forgive you...

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Author Beware - Virtual Book Fair Scam

1/9/2015

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Well, the Interwebs have reminded me once again of the predators lurking in the shadows of even the friendliest places. The good news is that I already needed to deactivate my check card and start using a newer one, so at least there's that.

I figured I would post a beware for other authors out there since this opportunity is popping up literally everywhere, and will probably start again in a couple of months.

Indie authors like moi are literally starving for exposure, with bleeding hearts beating to reach and inspire all the doe-eyed children of the world. Think of the children!

A member of a Facebook group I'm in used my bleeding heart (and my frustration with book promotion) against me. This person's idea sounded great, and the pitch looked a bit (okay, a lot) like this:

Showcase your books at our January Virtual Book Fair!!! Elementary students will attend the morning session and part of the evening. College students will attend the evening and night session. Registration fee: $25.00. You will receive a webcam and 100 promotional flyers through the mail.

I won't bore you with all of the details, but there were details. And grand promises of connecting with ALLLLLL the doe-eyed children and their sweet little sponge-like brains. If we registered for the event by a certain date, our early registration fee was only $25. A bargain, since the registration fee doubled after that.

Once we registered, we received a questionnaire to set up our profile page. I'm not sure about the other authors, but I certainly wrote the most epic answers ever and then whisked that baby back in record time (okay, not record time. But the organizer said, "Sure, send it in," when I asked her if I was too late to participate. Hahaha. Oh, so ironic!). Then we waited with butterflies in our stomachs for the arrival of the doe-eyed children.

Except now it's January 9th and there are no doe-eyed children and no profile pages, webcams, or flyers. The organizer has abandoned our Facebook group and people have begun disputing credit card charges.

In other words, good times.

The moral of this story, doe-eyed authors, is this:

Research any opportunity requiring the forking over of dollar bills or precious contact info.

Research would have revealed this as a scam, at worst, or a very unorganized endeavor, at best. And not because there was evidence of such on the Googlebox. On the contrary, there was nothing where there should have been something (a prior Virtual Book Fair).

But I'm here to provide one piece of evidence where before there before there was none. If you learn nothing else from me--and I highly doubt you will--learn this:

Look before you leap.

*I've taken special care not share names and links above, even though I lost money and smarts. Karma, friend.

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Join The Ultimate Reading Quest

1/4/2015

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CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO START YOUR QUEST!

WATCH THE VIDEO TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE READING QUEST.

Happy New Year from all the Authors in the Ultimate Reading Quest! This year myself, and all the Quest authors, want you to enjoy your reading experiences more than ever! So in 2015, the Ultimate Reading Quest has more, more, more! More authors and more books, means more mystery, more danger, more intrigue and more edge-of-your-seat adventure awaits you! We want you, our readers, to be able to fill that Kindle, tablet or E-reader you got for Christmas, with fabulous reads to take you through 2015. The Quest is so much fun! Who doesn't love searching for treasure? The ULTIMATE READING QUEST is about finding books that are “perfectly” suited to your reading taste by clicking on choices. To thank you for participating, the authors have decided to give away oodles of prizes for free! Enter your name to win Amazon cards and free books from authors! Plus a whole store of treasured books are just waiting to be discovered by you!

Enjoy your journey as you travel through the QUEST! Don't forget to enter the raffle on the first page of the Quest. And please leave comments or questions for the authors of the Quest. We would love to hear from you. What are you waiting for? Click on the button above or below to get started on your QUEST for the next ULTIMATE READ!

CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO START YOUR QUEST!

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Another Field Trip Day - The Birth of Your Book

Can You Find the Treasure?

Q&A with THE LAST STORED's Sonia Poynter

Q&A Time!

The Last Stored

Mean Girls: Authors Edition

Author Beware - Virtual ﻿Book Fair Scam

Join The Ultimate Reading Quest

S. J.

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Author Beware - Virtual Book Fair Scam