Monday, September 26, 2011

This Week's Reader Interview with Patricia Carrigan

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I am seventeen years old, a Senior in high school and I'm graduating June 2012.  I love to write.  I have a large family with 4 other siblings, all of which include, a twin sister, an older sister, and two older brothers. I grew up listening to all sorts of music but I'm a country girl at heart and if I had to chose a country singer that I like the most, it would have to be Toby Kieth or Tim McGraw. Anyways, my favorite class in school is glass class, I've taken the beginning and the advanced class and now I've just been a teacher's assistant for the past two years and helping out with some of the new students that come into the class. I'm usually known for being bubbly and I enjoy trying to cheer people up or just helping them have a good time... but mainly, just being random. :)

When and how did you discover that you love reading fiction?
I discovered that I loved reading fiction when I was fairly young, in fact, I was already reading at a ninth grade level in third grade. My teachers in elementary school didn't like that very much when we took trips to the school library because everyone else would be checking out stuff like Goosebumps and Animal Ark (even though I had tons of them at home) but I would be checking books out like National Velvet. But my mom always got me new books to read and she quickly got me into teen fiction and then the classics!

What are some of your favorite books and who are some of your favorite authors?
Some of my favorite books now are The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, The House of Night novels by P.C. and Kristen Cast, as well as some teen fiction novels by Sara Zarr like Story of a Girl and Sweethearts.

What is your favorite thing about reading fiction?
My favorite thing about reading fiction is that the story can go anywhere and take the wildest dips and turns. I also find that fiction can really grab the reader's attention easier than a non-fiction story can, but that's just my personal opinion.

Do you have any “pet peeves” about authors, something they do that really annoys you?
I don't really think I have any pet peeves when it comes to something authors do, I'm fairly tolerable. :)

Do you write fiction yourself?
Yes, in fact, I prefer writing fiction than non-fiction because it allows me to give my own personal flare and supernatural twists to my story. I wrote and published, Antiserum during my Junior year in High School.  It has been a real experience!  Antiserum is a unique version of a vampire story.  I'm currently almost through Antiserum Part II, The Rising.  Hard work, but so fun!

What do you think about ebooks vs. paper books?
Personally, I prefer reading an actual book than I would an ebook mainly because books don't die from a low battery and I love to be able to turn an actual page. I don't really know :) I just love having an actual book to add to my bookshelf, too.

What is your favorite Mike Wells book and why?
The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer!   It is a terrific book.  I fell right in with the characters like they were my friends from school! So Mike, you must be doing something right.  Wonderful storyline... I found myself thoroughly engrossed in the tale.  I will continue to be a big Mike Wells fan.

Thanks so much for taking the time give the interview, Patricia!
I love to connect!  http://www.patriciacarrigan.com, @pcarrigan1, author@patriciacarrigan.com
My website is located at http://www.patriciacarrigan.com/  I don't give my book away free because I support the Burn Institute with half my profit.  http://www.rabmad.com/  is a page for a group of authors that donate to charity.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

What's a Good Title for a Book? Ask a Tabloid Journalist

I’ll never forget the night I took my wife-to-be out to dinner and subtly asked about her parents.  When you get serious about someone, you naturally want to find out who your future in-laws are going to be.

“So what does your mom do?” I casually asked. 

“She writes a gossip column for a...well, some people might call it a 'yellow' newspaper.”

I searched the restaurant for the nearest exit—we hadn’t actually ordered any food yet.

“Come on, Mike.  She’s really sweet, I promise.”

Yeah.  So is a Bengal tiger, when its belly is packed full of fresh meat.

My fiancée dug around in her purse and pulled out a photograph.  "Just look at that face..."

The woman was grinning at me, a pencil behind her ear, one eyebrow raised.

This didn’t help.  Talk about “walking the line!”  One wrong move and she could destroy me with a single stroke of that pencil.

Well, love overcomes fear, and I got married anyway.

It turns out that, as a novelist, having a gossip columnist for a mother-in-law is one of the best things that ever happened to me.  And not for the reasons you may think—Luba has never written one word about any of my books (not that it would do any good—she lives and works in Latvia, which is not exact the center of my geographic market!)

What Luba is a genius at is titling books.  Having worked for so many years as a “yellow journalist”, she knows exactly what hits readers’ hot buttons.

When I finished my international thriller about currency counterfeiting, I titled it In God We Trust.

It hardly sold a single copy.  One day Luba overheard me complaining about it.

“Is it a religious book?” she asked.

“No, it’s an international thriller.”

“Sounds like a religious book.”

Exasperated, I said, “It’s not a religious book, Luba.”

“What kind of book is it, then?”

“Well...it’s about lust...it’s about money...it’s about murder—”

“There’s your title,” she said, pointing at me.

“Where’s my title?”

 “Lust, Money & Murder.”

I was skeptical, but I decided to try it.  As soon as I changed the name of the book, people started buying it.

Not long after that, I was finishing up another novel, a paranormal thriller.

“What’s it called?” Luba asked.

Hesitating, I said, “A Gift from the Stars.”

She lolled her head to one side, closed her eyes, and made a snoring sound.

“Luba!”

“Well, it sounds boring.  What’s it about?”

“It’s about this guy who mysteriously disappears when his family is on vacation in—”

“A mysterious disappearance, then.”

“Yes.”

“What’s the guy’s name?”

“Kurt Kramer.”

She pointed at me.  “The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer.”

I changed the title. 

The book started selling. 

Now, I no longer resist Luba’s suggestions.  I recently published a novel that I was calling Cosmic Casanova, and it wasn’t selling at all.

“Sounds like science fiction,” she muttered.

Even though I don’t resist her suggestions, she still makes me mad.  “It’s not science fiction, Luba.  It’s a romance novel.”

She raised an eyebrow.  “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.  It’s about this guy who’s dating several women at the same time, and he wants to keep them secret from each other—”

“So it’s about secrets.”

“Yes.”

“Lover’s secrets.”

“Yes.  The guy in the story is kind of dodgy, is hard-to-get.  You know, elusive—”

She pointed at me.  “Secrets of the Elusive Lover.”

Monday, September 19, 2011

This Week's Reader Interview with Emma Hunneyball

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
First of all, I'm super excited to be here, I've been going on about it for weeks and driving my family nuts. I'm 29 years old, I love to read and review books and I write, with varied results. I have a delicious two year old son, and I've been married for three weeks. I'm a bank manager, gardener and daydreamer. In the evenings I write book reviews which I post to my blog and following a few requests I've launched an editorial service for Indie Authors. People sometimes ask me how I find the time to fit it all in, but I've found you can accomplish amazing things when you do without extraneous frippery. Such as sleep.

When and how did you discover that you love reading fiction?
I have no idea. Reading is just a fact about me, like the fact that I have a liver, but much less icky. My Mum made sure I could read and write long before I went to school and I never looked back. I remember as a child being given beautiful books for birthdays and Christmas. At the age of four I was often asked to read the afternoon story to the other children, and when I was seven a particularly idle teacher told the other pupils to check their spellings with me rather than disturb her drinking her coffee. Significant points in my life were marked with gifts of books: exam success, school prizes, and most recently a beautiful copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets my Dad gave to me on my wedding day. I still have my favourite books from my childhood: a "Chronicles of Narnia" boxed set which is so well read that the books are now fatter than they were, and I can't fit all seven in the box any more. As an adult I often struggled to find time to read. A friend of mine set up a book club at the start of the year, which I joined without hesitation. It forces me to make reading a priority, and because we all take turns choosing texts I get to enjoy books I would never ordinarily have chosen for myself.

What are some of your favorite books and who are some of your favorite authors?
I love Roald Dahl, Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Phillip Pullman, William Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde. When I read I want to learn something new, or see a universal truth presented in a new way, and I want to be surprised. When I pick up a book I don't want it to be predictable, I don't want it to follow the formula of its genre and in my view a bit of Magic Realism goes a long way. Wit and irony are huge with me.


My favourite author is Angela Carter. She embodies everything I love about fiction. Rich, descriptive prose, a bit of fin de siecle decadence, Magic Realism, vivid characters and unexpected plot turns. I recommend "Wise Children" and "The Bloody Chamber".

What is your favorite thing about reading fiction?
There's always been an element of escapism for me, hiding away in a world created in partnership between author and reader. I love being able to pick up a book years after I first read it and find something new in a second reading. And I love taking hold of the characters, places and events and carrying on the stories long after I've closed the final page. It gives me an unfortunate habit of staring off into space, with the attendant issue of people asking if I'm "OK".

Do you have any “pet peeves” about authors, something they do that really annoys you?
Gosh yes. I'm Captain Picky, chief of the Pedantry Brigade. I get very cross about laziness of style, and repetition of words/phrases. A book I read recently described every building the characters entered as a Tardis. It really became very tedious after a while, especially when it became clear there weren't actually going to be any Daleks in the story. When I was a child I got very annoyed with Enid Blyton, who seemed incapable of writing a sentence without putting an exclamation mark at the end! Sometimes she used two!! The Famous Five is a veritable minefield of punctuation!!!!! Once I'd spotted it I couldn't concentrate, and I never read Blyton again. And since you've got me started, I'm going to mention J.K. Rowling. I cannot stand the laboured story-so-far rehashes in the opening chapters of Harry Potter books 2-4 She should either have written a precis and stuck it in before the book starts, a la J.R.R. Tolkien and Robin Jarvis, or integrated the "catch up" much better within the body of the stories.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that I can't stand books that are half-heartedly edited. There's a lot of commentary around this subject in the Indie sector, with books hitting the e-shelves jam packed with teeth-grindingly awful spelling and grammatical errors, but traditionally published fiction isn't immune to it either. I think the editor of the seventh Harry Potter book was too busy adding up his fee to actually get around to the business of editing the bloated thing. Editing matters. It really does.

Do you write fiction yourself?
Yes. Yes I do. My reading and writing gloop themselves together in a big creative blob, so that when I'm reading I concentrate on things like style, plot and character, enjoying the book more as a result and when I write I'm very conscious of what I like and dislike in books and it all feeds into my writing.

I'm currently working on a cycle of interconnected short stories set in and around a nineteenth century travelling show. It's packed with Magic Realism and my signature themes of loss and obsession. I plan to get it out into the world in time for my 30th birthday.

What do you think about ebooks vs. paper books?
I really don't get the whole ebook versus paperbook debate, and to be honest it bores me. A lot. I don't subscribe to black and white, either/or philosophies.  I adore my Kindle which has opened up access to books they just don't stock in my local bookshop, supermarket or newsagent. It's portable, so I can take it in the car or read it in my lunchbreak. But I also love my paperbooks, they formed an integral part of my wedding and I have some beautiful signed copies of Phillip Pullman's works. There is room for both in our lives. To be extremely bland about it, we all have a wok in the kitchen cupboard. But that doesn't mean we stop ordering takeaway.

What is your favorite Mike Wells book and why?
I loved "Secrets of the Elusive Lover". It's funny, the themes are intriguing and it defies its genre. It isn't a formulaic romantic comedy and I was genuinely surprised by the ending. This was the first book I read where I interacted with the author whilst reading. Chatting to Mike on Twitter and sharing my favourite ideas and lines, writing a review and asking his opinion, really added an extra dimension to the reading experience.

Thanks so much for taking the time give the interview, Emma!

Emma Hunneyball was uploaded onto the internet several years ago, and has been living there ever since. She dispenses her brand of opinionated jabber on Twitter (@emmahunneyball) and holds forth on literary subjects, at length, on her blog In Potentia.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Persistence & the Myth of Overnight Success

I’m always irked by the way the news media presents superstars, particularly in entertainment and the arts, as overnight successes.  The overblown images of these media darlings are much like icebergs.  All you see is the tip.  The many years of hard work and failures that it took for these people get there—the other 9/10ths of the iceberg— is hidden beneath the surface.

The reason superstars are painted this way, I believe, is that it sells newspapers and ad clicks.  Most of us don’t want to hear that Brittney Spears’ spent her entire childhood traveling around the country singing at shopping malls, desperately trying every angle she could to break into show business.  Or that Woody Allen was booed off the stage night after night, for years, until he finally developed his unique style of comedy.  Or that J.K. Rowling lived through a decade of poverty and strife while her writing was endlessly rejected by publishers.

Why don't we want to hear this?  Because it makes being successful sound so very difficult. 

But success is difficult.  It's difficult in any field, at any place, at any time.  

The  "instant success" myth is not only misleading, it's damaging to those just starting out.  If you’re trying to be successful at something and success doesn't come immediately, the way it seems to on TV, it’s only natural to think, "Well, I guess I just don’t have the talent, that magical X factor" and throw in the towel.

There is no "X factor."  We can all name lots of extremely successful people who seem to have very little in the way of raw talent.

The secret is persistence

If you study the celebrities I’ve just mentioned as well as successful people in all walks of life, you see that the underlying ingredient—even more important than talent—is pure, blind persistence.   I know that you’ve heard this a thousand times, but it’s true.

Mainly I’m speaking to the many fiction writers out there who are digitally publishing their books like I’m doing, trying to make it as self-published authors.  It’s a tough game, baby, I’m not going to kid you.  I was online for 12 hours a day, three months straight, before I ever sold even one book to anyone who wasn’t already friend or acquaintance.  It's disheartening to get up every morning and check your Amazon or Smashwords sales, and see: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1...knowing that the one book you've sold is the copy your mother or best friend bought as a “mercy buy.”  With everyone around you giving positive but shallowly supportive comments, accompanied by underlying looks that say, “What are you wasting your time with this for?  Don’t you realize it’s fruitless?”   

Under these conditions, the temptation to give up—to escape that debilitating feeling of failure—is almost overpowering.

However, if you persist, and you have something of true value to offer your readers, you will eventually break through.

But the same thing applies to any difficult endeavor in which you're struggling to achieve success.

I have always been impressed with stories of prisoners who were able to dig through a three-foot thick wall of concrete using only a nail or a teaspoon, simply through desperate, dogged persistence.  If you scrape off only 1/8th of an inch of concrete per day, after one week you’ll be one inch of the way through; after 3 months, one foot of the way through; and after 9 months, you’ll reach the other side of the wall.

Persistence.  There is no substitute for it.

Will you have to change your approach from time to time?  Definitely.  If your nail doesn't seem to be scraping away any concrete, sneak into the prison library and steal a paper clip.  Or wet the concrete with water to soften it first.  And by all means, peek into the next cell and see what your neighbor is doing.  If she seems to be making progress, copy her approach.

The theme of persistence is evident in many of my novels.  In Lust, Money & Murder, Elaine Brogan persists through hell and high water to avenge the wrongful imprisonment of her father—she spends four years studying hard in high school so she can get into the Rhode Island School of Design, where she takes a double major in Intaglio Printing and Russian, all so she is qualified to apply for a job at the Secret Service.  Once she gets in, she has to fight her way through the organization's incredibly difficult training academy...and those are just her first few steps!  In both Wild Child and its sequel, Kyle Dunlap persists in trying to find an acceptable solution for Brianna's severe addiction to the green water, going against the will of his domineering father, fighting off aggressive government agents who will stop at nothing to get their hands on it, and resisting Brianna's ceaseless pressure join her in drinking it and becoming an addict himself. 

The most important advice I can give to anyone who is struggling to be successful at anything, is simply:

Never give up.

This Week's Reader Interview - Johanna Pitcairn

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?  
I am a 28 year old lawyer. I was born in France from a former Eastern German mother and a French father. I grew up in a small town in the center of the country, but my parents and I moved to the French Riviera when I was 15. I moved to the United States in 2006, and have been living in New York ever since. I speak German and French, and obviously English. I love to read and write. My upcoming divorce triggered a need for me to write, which I do every day on my blog, short stories and novel. I also love to discover new authors whose work motivates me and inspires me. 

When and how did you discover that you love reading fiction?  
I always loved to read. I think I was born holding a book in my tiny hands! I remember spending lots of days at the school library. I loved detective novels, so I read a lot of Enid Blyton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and the French author Maurice Leblan. I chose books mostly on the title and the cover - so when I hear don't judge a book by its cover, well..... I totally did that! I must have read about 10 books a week. I was devouring these books and made it a personal challenge to read as much as I could. I recall watching this documentary on Agatha Christie and wanting to be like her. Sitting all day by the typewriter, drinking tea and letting my imagination take control. It was really a wonderful time. 


What are some of your favorite books and who are some of your favorite authors? 
This is a tricky question!! I have many favorite authors. To name a few, I love Victor Hugo, Turgeniev, Guy de Maupassant, Gustave Flaubert, Stefan Zweig, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, Charles Baudelaire, William Shakespeare. 

I don't have many books which I truly loved so much, I instantly knew they'd influence me for the rest of my life. Madame Bovary by Flaubert is one of them. Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. First Love by Turgeniev. Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire. 

I love to read modern authors too, of course, but these ones are the ones that I'll always carry with me everywhere I go. 

What is your favorite thing about reading fiction?   
It allows me to escape from the every day routine. I have a very vivid imagination, and a mind that never stops working, so reading fiction for me is like watching a good movie but on my own terms. I set the stage, the actors, the decor and I let the writer guide me in his/her world. It's wonderful. People who tell me they don't like to read don't know what they miss. 
  
Do you have any “pet peeves” about authors, something they do that really annoys you? 
 One thing that really annoys me is when I read a book that is full of typos and grammatical errors. I read many books and short stories, and I think that right now I'm in the process of going through 5 books since I'm giving reviews on Amazon. I am not mean when I tell an author they maybe should have edited their work a third time. It's not even about the story. These mistakes drive me nuts. I understand that many people out there dream of writing, but it doesn't mean that they're allowed to give us a half-assed job just because they have this great software that gave them the opportunity to self-publish in no time. I consider writing like making good wine or sewing a beautiful garment. It doesn't happen in 3 days. I don't care how eager you are to put your name on a book cover, your work is going to be worthless to me. And I'm going to give you one star. End of story.  

Do you write fiction yourself?  
Yes. I wrote since I was little, and I even wanted to become a screenwriter when I was 17, but my dad told me that the movie industry was a world of sharks so I'd be better off becoming a lawyer. I don't know if the legal industry is less crazy, I don't believe so, but... it helps to pay bills. I took a break from writing for about 10 years. My divorce reignited the writing flame, and I've been working on a SF/UF novel since May 2010. I also blog a lot, and write horror short stories. I'm not published yet. The race to find a publisher will start once I'm done with my trilogy. I don't feel the need to chase several rabbits at the same time. I already have a lot on my plate. 

What is your favorite Mike Wells book and why? 
I read 4 books by Mike. Lust Money and Murder, Baby Talk, The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer and Secrets of The Elusive Lover. My favorite is by far Secrets of the Elusive Lover. That book was well written, and very engaging. It also touched me personally, as I saw myself in the main protagonist. I don't multi-date like he does, but I understood his thought process and his unwillingness to get too attached to one girl by fear of getting hurt. I could totally relate to such behavior. It was a wonderful read. I loved it a lot. 


Monday, September 5, 2011

Wild Child Sequel Released!

In response to popular demand, I'm thrilled to announce that "Wild Child, Book 2 - Lilith" has now officially been released.  This is an exciting day for me--as with the original , I poured my heart and soul into this sequel to make it the best possible read I could.

Wild Child, Book 2 takes up where Wild Child left off.  Join Kyle, Briana, Brawn and Brains for another hair-raising adventure with the magical "green water." I've introduced several new, intriguing characters.  The book is also written in the same lean, fast-paced style as the original.  I believe it will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next!

The book is available now as a Kindle book on the Amazon USA and UK bookstores.  Within a week or two it will be available on Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, the Sony E-bookstore, and others.

If you're not a Kindle owner and you're anxious to start reading the book, it's also available right now on Smashwords in all other e-book formats (Nook, Sony, iPad, Palm) and can be purchased and downloaded immediately.  If you don't have an e-reader, there are a number of free e-readers you can download for your PC, Mac, tablet computer or smart phone, such as the Kindle Cloud.

I hope you enjoy this book.

In the meantime, I'm busily working on Wild Child, Book 3, the next in the series, which I plan to have out by the New Year's holidays.

A big thank you to all the readers and other folks who made Wild Child a smashing success!






This Week's Reader Interview - Alana Denton

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?  I am a 38 year old Business owner that works daily as a technical writer in the capacity of a grant writer.  I also manage my company’s Marketing and social media. My career allows me to work with some amazing non-profits.  My favorite clients are fire departments and first responders; they are our country’s unsung heroes. I’m married and have two amazing sons – Collin is 16 and Avery is 15. My personal daily companion is my rescued, adopted wonder-dog Shaggy. He is a poodle/Scottish terrier and loves long walks, hanging out with his best pet pals, and sitting on the porch swing on rainy days.

When and how did you discover that you love reading fiction?  I’ve been reading since the age of two years old.  I was the first reader in my class, and by 5 yrs old I was helping teach other kids to read.  I have a voracious appetite for books.  “A bad book is better than a good movie” – my personal quote. By the time I was 11 years old, I had read everything in the YA section in our library.  From the age of 8-14 yrs old, my sister and I were the reigning top readers in our library’s summer reading program.  After exhausting the YA books, I moved on to genres in the rest of the library – fiction, non-fiction, historical, romance, etc.  Today, I am a 300+ book a year reader.  I usually average almost one book (full-length) a day. Until getting my first e-reader (Kindle) in late January, I always read actual hard copy books.  The e-reader allows me portability, faster reading, access to books anywhere, anytime…

What are some of your favorite books and who are some of your favorite authors? Authors: Harlan Coben, Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, Catherine Coulter, Ken McClure, David Morrell, John Hart, Agatha Christie, PD James, Maureen Johnson, Jenny Hilborne, Michael Prescott, Erin Nicholas, Linda Winfree,  F.P. Lione, Carolyn Keene*, Kathryn Kenny*, Kate Douglas Wiggins, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott  (*yes I know it’s a pseudonym)
– Books: The Help, Gone with the Wind, Clear Blue Sky, Civil Disobedience, Hearts of the South series, Irish Angel Series, Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success, Robert’s Rules of Order, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms, Little Women

What is your favorite thing about reading fiction?   Fiction allows the reader to be transported to any location and any period in time.  One day you maybe roaming the Irish hills, the next in 1850’s New Orleans, the next day on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with a pirate ship bearing down on you.  My favorite fiction is full of exciting plots and edge of the seat action.  My favorite fiction writers are the ones who utilize the pen to literally create an entire world that is believable, and that the reader feels a vital part.  Almost as if you are experiencing the adventure, sadness, drama, thrills yourself. 
  
Do you have any “pet peeves” about authors, something they do that really annoys you? Talking down to readers in books; not being available online (Twitter, websites, etc) and grammatical errors (really see a lot of that on e-books)

Do you write fiction yourself?  Yes, but I have not tried to seek a publisher or try any self-publishing. I write for myself mostly to vent.

What is your favorite Mike Wells book and why? Lust, Money & Murder – It was interesting reading it in three parts.  It almost felt like a series.  I loved the strong female lead.  How Mike uses the twists and turns of the story where you never know what is coming.  It was an amazing thriller.  I absolutely love a book where I don’t know what will happen within the first few chapters. This is why I love Lust, Money & Murder.  It is an exciting page-turner, a book you won’t be able to put down!

Thanks so much for your interview, Alana!
I applaud you for being a self-published author when it is a difficult (yet exciting) time for books, bookstores, readers and writers.  The economy has made readers, bookstores and even authors re-think every purchase.  Also enjoy following you on Twitter and appreciate the feedback, recommendations and exchanges.

Twitter – @NCSoccerMom 
Alana Tomlin Denton
Linwood, NC