Writing: A Crazy, Beautiful Life

The Harvest Queen's Tutor available HERE

By Lisa A. Adams

The crafting of good stories takes time, energy, and passion. From conception to completion, the process can be draining, both physically and emotionally. I don't think I really ever understood this when I first dreamed of becoming a published author. But, let's just say I have learned my lesson.

The conception of a story is usually the best time. You are at a high. Ideas are pouring from your brain like water from a faucet, and your fingers on the keyboard can't fly fast enough to get it all down. Plot points, characters, twists, turns, and the ending whiz through the air.

Once the writing begins, the process slows. Some struggle with the wording, others with the grammar. I myself start with an outline and find my characters going in a completely different direction. Frustration starts to take hold and this is the author's first test.  Do they continue, or do they cave to the aggravation?

Those who stick with it, muddle through the murky depths of the unknown. Dredging forward into the abyss, they are constantly searching for the preverbal light at the end of the tunnel. Spotting the light, or the end, nearing causing the pulse to quicken. The heart races as the words magically appear on the screen: The End.

Sadly, many authors only get that far. They take their master piece and hide it away for the world to discover long after they have departed. Fear of rejection, paralyzes them in that safe zone. They are just shy of their dream, but they cannot go any further. I know. I was one of these people.

I started writing about ten years ago. Following the very procedures outlined in the paragraphs above. With the prodding of a few very supportive people, I sent out my first submission seven years ago. The turnaround time was three to four months, and I stalked the mailbox daily after just seven weeks. On the eighth week, I was surprised to see a response. With my heart in my throat, I tore open the envelope to read my form rejection letter. Crushed by the news, I slid the submission in a filing cabinet and there it still sits today.

It took me another year before I got up the courage to send anything else out, and it too was met with a rejection. Though this time, I had personal feedback from an editor. I sent a thank you card to her for her time and didn't submit anything again for another year.

It was four years ago that I read Stephen King's writing memoir On Writing. I devoured his words, and filled myself up with more confidence than I could ever imagine. I found new blogs to follow, entered in contests, submitted almost everything I wrote, and was still met with rejection.

I had read somewhere along the lines, that a writer wasn't ready to be published until they had an inch and a half worth of rejection letters. I have a binder that I kept all my rejections in. My husband thought it as morbid, a symbol of all of my failures. I kept my chin up, and told him it would be a failure if the binder didn't grow.

Just last summer, July 16^th,2012 to be exact, I received my first acceptance. Bouncing through my house, and calling everyone I knew was just the tip of the iceberg. Then came the work. Editing, editing, and more editing.

Surprisingly, I was told that many authors drop out during this period. We've hit a low again, muddling through that icky space of not knowing. But, if you stick it out it does get better. After editing, there is cover art, the final galley, and ultimately release day!

But wait! There's more! The work starts up all over again. The marketing phase begins and you're pushing each day to promote your book without being aggravating to your public. Walking the fine line of building a success becomes tedious. Is it all really worth it?

The short answer? Yes!     

The Importance of Location

Buy Remember Me HERE

By Amaleen Ison

When I wrote my newest release, Remember Me, I didn’t pay much attention to location other than details that affected plot: a remote cabin in a forested area, deep snow, and sub-zero temperatures. My main character has amnesia, so I thought I could be vague on specifics. It was only when my editor asked where the story was set that I considered the question for the first time. My initial response was, “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” she said, firmly. “It does.”

And she was right!

I’d created a bizarre hybrid setting, incorporating a fictitious landscape with Artic weather conditions and British buildings and transport. My first person narrator spoke in British English, and perversely, the one thing I knew with certainty was the story was not set in Britain. When I realized what I’d done, I turned a little pink—actually a lot pink.

Thank goodness for editors.

I subsequently spent a great deal of time researching countries that would provide the right terrain, extreme temperatures, annual snow fall, and remote location.

Finally, I settled on Interior Alaska, and so began an edit that changed everything British to American. The remote, thatched stone cottage became a log cabin, oak trees morphed into fir trees, and I downsized the family Landrover to a Ski-Doo. The list of changes went on and on, not to mention the addition of indigenous wildlife and natural phenomenon. If I hadn’t realised the importance of location before, I certainly did after that round of edits.

So after all the effort my editor and I put in to make the setting authentic, you can imagine my delight when I discovered the following review just a few days after Remember Me was published.

“The biggest thing the author did right was in describing the state of Alaska. I live here and the author nailed it. I'm a very hard sell having lived here since I was sixteen, but in her story you'll feel the bitter sting of winter (and it's a unique achy feeling you'll get in few other places).” – Goodreads Review

To celebrate the release of my novella, I’m hosting a Rafflecopter giveaway to win a $20 Amazon gift card and a copy of Remember Me. Sign up below for your chance to win.

Remember Me:

Sera isn’t living. She’s existing—barely. Bedbound by illness, she has no memory of life before the freezing barn she now calls home. A mournful song haunts her dreams and hints at a past not completely buried—one she’s desperate to uncover. Yet Father’s whirlwind visits to draw blood and administer medication don’t provide answers. He only confirms the one thing she already knows; she’s dying.

A lonely death without ever knowing her past seems inevitable until a sudden, mystifying return to health coincides with the arrival of a boy in the opposite out-building. The inextricable pull to the stranger, and the broken memories that storm her mind when he’s near, warn of a history quite different to any she could have imagined. If she’s to uncover the truth she craves, she’ll have to decide whether knowledge of the past is worth forfeiting her second chance at life.

The Seduction of the Massage

By Lisa A. Adams

I have to admit, when I started writing The Harvest Queen's Tutor, I really wasn't sure which way the story would go. The prompt I was working off of was simply to tell a story based around coming home for Thanksgiving and making a discovery. Not much to base a story on, but sometimes those are the best. I had a time frame and a mission. What more do you need?

I spent a couple hours last summer at my sister's pool with our children, and there she and I found my plot and my characters. With a rough paragraph in hand, I came home and set it aside. I knew my characters were younger, 1^st year college students, and I knew that Michael "Mick" Shover was someone that everyone could fall in love with. But, how was I going to pull off a love scene without crossing some imaginary moral line because of his young age?

Introducing… the MASSAGE! Sensual and Provocative, when I wrote this scene, I was dreaming of being nineteen again and getting to feel that power of touch at such a young age. Let's face it, many of us in our youth were all about getting to the business of sex. It was new. It was fun. And foreplay wasn't even an afterthought.  But as we grow older, the magic of "sensual touch" can be a million times more powerful than the act of having sex. (And if you don't agree, then I'm sure you will agree with the fact that it will definitely lead to some very powerful sex.)

Massages have been employed throughout the world and dating back to the oldest written histories. Wherever there is mention of erotic sex or even pictures before written history, there is more often than not, a description or image of some form of massage.

Today, we are often forced to squeeze sexual acts between our chaotic lifestyles, leaving us little time for true romantic experiences. That being said, I believe that now is the time when things like sensual massages are needed most. To experience the closeness and oneness of a massage with our mates, not only gives us the opportunity to slow down and escape from the chaos, but it gives us time to appreciate the real love and passion that brought us together in the first place.

Sophie Carmichael is a small town beauty queen who won multiple scholarships in high school, including the title "Harvest Queen." She's returned home from her pre-med studies at Duke to ride in the Thanksgiving parade alongside the new Harvest Queen. But since Sophie is close to failing some of her college classes, she's in a panic to find someone to help her.

When Sophie Carmichael busts into the local library looking for tutoring help, Michael “Mick” Shover suspects an intruder. But he finds that Sophie needs exactly what he can give her—access to the library and all its resources. Michael agrees to help Sophie but can't seem to keep his mind on the books. How could he have ever guessed that studying Anatomy could be so interesting?

I hope you enjoy The Harvest Queen'sTutor and the sensual massage that Mick and Sophie share as much as I did.

Lisa A. Adams

Why Zombies Make Me Sad: Crying While I’m Cringing

Buy My Brother, My Zombie HERE

by Rusty Fischer

There is a moment in nearly every zombie movie, where the two heroes, or heroines, or hero + heroine, are almost out of the war zone, have just escaped the building, or crawled out of the tunnel and one of them gets bitten by a zombie.

You know the scene I’m talking about. And now the victim’s fate is sealed; depending on the mythology, in a couple of minutes, or a few hours, or maybe even a day or two, that’s it. They’re done; toast. Zombie toast.

And it makes me sad. Because they’ve always worked so hard to get to that point, and they’re just this side of free and, wham, instant living dead. Maybe that’s what’s so intriguing to me about zombies; maybe that’s why, after nearly 30 zombie stories, books and poems and counting, I’m still struggling to understand them, still coming up with new story lines to figure them out.

And, yes, I know they’re not real but… they’re the realest of the supernatural creatures to me. No superpowers, they don’t sparkle or fly or shape shift, they’re just there, looking like us, but not us.

That’s why my latest Reanimated ReadZ story, My Brother, My Zombie, holds a special place in my heart. It’s about a girl, who’s still human, and her brother; now a zombie. And it’s about their long trek together, their last walk as brother and sister, until he crosses over into what’s known as The Z-Zone, where only zombies fear to tread, and humans cannot go.

It’s a story of love, and loss, of regret and shame, of what was and what can never be. (Plus, it’s got a REALLY cool cover!) So, anyway, just a little rant for today about why zombies hold a special place in my heart, and why I keep writing about them, day after day, story after story, year after year.

So, my question for you: Why do you read about zombies? Do they make you sad, glad, mad or just plain scared? I’d love to hear your comments, and I hope you’ll enjoy My Brother, My Zombie and the rest of the Reanimated ReadZ series of 99-cent living dead shorts!

Yours in Zombie,

Rusty

Win an ARC of an upcoming book featuring your favorite daytime and night time stars!

Textile artist and designer, Jane Elissa, has an upcoming release with Decadent Publishing and Bono Books. It's a New York story that details Jane's journey through the streets of the City, the back stages of Broadway, and covers the charity galas she hosted with scores of Daytime favorites like Bob Woods (Bo Buchanan, OLTL), Kelly Ripa (Hayley Vaughan, AMC), Carolyn Hennesy (Diane Miller, GH), Jackie Zeman (Bobbie Spencer, GH), Nathan Fillion (ex-Joey, OLTL), Michael Weatherly (Cooper Aldeen--Loving), David Hasselhoff (ex-Snapper, YnR), Kristen Alderson (Starr Manning, OLTL &GH), and many more. Featured regularly in Soap Digest and other daytime media outlets, these galas raised millions for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. 

You can be one of five to win an ebook Advanced Reading Copy of  Diary of a Lollipop in a Peanut Factory' from Decadent Publishing/Bono Books! Enter the contest and be sure to take advantage of the extra entries, as well.

Winner will be chosen July 22nd, so enter today! 

BLURB:

…The story of an unexpected life…

Take the train into the station. Step on the platform. Walk to Broadway and open the curtain into the backstage world of New York City—Visit Times Square, 7th Avenue, and Hell's Kitchen. Meet famous celebrities from the worlds of sports, entertainment, and fashion all the while raising money to wipe out Leukemia.

Join artist and designer Jane Elissa as a single phone call to the Leukemia Society alters her life. While she raises money to battle cancer, Jane unexpectedly finds herself living out childhood fantasies, building her own shop at the crossroads of the world in Times Square, and falling in love. She believes she’s conquered her personal fears until one day "memories of Brooklyn" rush in and heartbreak slams back into her life…. She thought she had become a strong peanut, protective shell in place, but then the twists and turns of fate throw her a curve and leave her feeling like a lollipop once more with nothing to protect her heart from dissolving.

This very personal account offers a glimpse behind the scenes into a lifestyle most people only dream about.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Available at BONO Books!

by Rusty Fischer

Losing a school election is bad enough. But losing it to a zombie? Who can’t even read? That’s not only a political failure but, for one (formerly) popular (and very human) student, it’s social suicide as well!

I frown and turn back to the microphone.

By the time I do, I see a string of zombies, maybe a dozen, maybe two, lined up at the microphone at the bottom of the stands. Mrs. Halston stands primly from her seat at the foot of the stage and turns to them.

She takes the microphone off the stand and points it in the face of the first zombie, a junior by the name of Carl Gaff. He used to play for the soccer team before Congress vetoed the Living Dead in Sports Act earlier this year.

He is short and slight and swimming in his green jacket, which only seems to come in one size: XXL. He looks at me calmly and says, slowly, deeply, but quite seriously, “What qualifications do you have that Calvin doesn’t?”

Before I can hear Brody’s voice screaming in my head I snap the first thing that comes to mind: “I can read, for one.”

There is dead silence in the auditorium as Carl Gaff looks at me. I cringe, expecting the place to boo, to erupt, to storm the stage and tear me limb from limb. What I get is even worse: “That’s it?” he asks. I don’t think he really meant it as a joke but the audience laughs, and laughs and laughs and laughs.

All except for the zombies, but that’s only because they’re still busy lining up to ask questions. One by one, they get in line, until the steps leading down from their section are full, and then they line up, side by side, very orderly like, two by two, side by side, a sea of green jackets and yellow teeth patiently waiting their turn.

I look at them, green jackets, yellow stripes down each sleeve, dark hair, dark eyes, gray skin, patient, slow, and eager for a chance at the microphone.

I don’t give it to them. I don’t care if it costs me the election, I don’t care if I look like a clown, I don’t care about anything anymore than getting off that stage.

Immediately.

Doomed to Drama: Or, Why I Write About Zombies

Buy ProjectZ HERE

By Rusty Fischer, author of the Reanimated Readz Series

There’s that scene in almost every zombie movie/book. You know the one I’m talking about: where one of the good guys, the stragglers, the survivors gets bitten and you know, everyone knows, that’s it; he or she is done for.

There’s no cure, chopping the arm or the leg off never works, that’s it: he or she is a dead thing walking. It may take a day, a week, an hour, but soon enough they’ll start to look… different. Eyes glazed over, skin a different color, they’ll stop remembering the name of the current president, or what year it is, or who went home last night on Dancing with the Stars.

And that’s that; human no more. Welcome to the Afterlife.

That’s the beauty of zombies: they’re doomed. Either to rot and fall to pieces, like in some books, or to walk the earth eternally, dead but living, like in mine. And there’s something sad but brave about that. That they just keep going and going and going, making an afterlife for themselves despite all the odds.

And in that doom, there is drama. Who will get it next? Who will the director or the screenwriter or the author decide to go “the zombie way” with? Isn’t that why we turn into the Walking Dead season after season: to see who’s going to survive? To see who’s going to get it?

And with zombies, it’s all still relatively new. Vampires, their rules have been established for hundreds of years. Even werewolves have a lot of literary baggage. But it’s only in the last few years or so that zombie books have taken off to this degree, and that still gives zombie writers like me a little creative freedom to turn that doom into new kinds of drama.

When I wrote Zombies Don’t Cry, I tried to create a world where zombies could be the main characters of a new book series. When I wrote Ushers, Inc., I wanted to create a world where vampires, zombies and werewolves could not only co-exist but, more importantly, play on a level playing field. When I wrote Panty Raid at Zombie High, I wanted grosser zombies than I’d ever written about before to still be the “good” guys.

What’s more, that “doom as drama” presents almost unlimited possibilities. Like today, my latest story in the Reanimated Readz series comes out. ProjectZ is about still being more zombie than human, but being just human enough to know what your fate is; to feel your dream, recognize it and have to deal with it. Other stories in the series talk about what it’s like to lose a brother to being a zombie, or when your ex turns against you because you’re a zombie.

All these 99-cent shorts are a great way to explore the endless possibilities of making zombies the good guys, or humans the bad guys, or vice versa – or a little bit of both. 

And that’s why I’m a zombie writer. So, what makes you a zombie reader?!? Leave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of ProjectZ. Don't forget to leave your email address in your response!