Day Two - A Book

Today I'm featuring Digitus 233. A young adult book by K.D. Emerson that is amassing many 5* reviews.

Blurb
When Zeph, the adventurous son of a millionaire hid in the cargo hold of the Learjet carrying his brother Zander to camp he had no idea there was anything dark or ominous going on. That was until he watched Zander ejected from the plane onto a barren arctic island and Zeph, trapped on the plane, found himself headed for South America. Will he be able to expose the truth behind Digitus, the world's dominant corporation, or will they succeed in their sinister plan to control his brother and destroy the world?
This is more than an action packed book series; it's a wakeup call to the world. Will we allow ourselves to go blindly into slavery or will we stand up and fight for freedom and our basic human rights before it's too late?

"This is a book I've been waiting for a long time! A perfect adventure without violence or sex. Something that suits both girls and boys and yet is a great read for adults too. Personally that `for boys' part makes me especially happy as I've really had a hard time figuring out what to recommend for teen and young adult boys but not anymore. So if you are Teen/YA reader, have sons, nephews, grandsons... don't waste time pondering what to read next. Get your own copy of DIGITUS 233 right now! Me? I'm definitely gonna buy copies of DIGITUS 233 for all of my nephews and godsons and I'm sure they'll enjoy the story as much as I did and when the next part is out I will be the first in line to get it!" Jennifer Loiske - review.

To find out ore about the author and to order a copy of her book visit http://www.amazon.com/K.D.-Emerson

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digitus-233-K-D-Emerson

Enjoy your book. Thank you for stopping by and check back tomorrow for another author.

Marie
www.mariegodley.moonfruit.com

Author a Day - Day One

 

Today I'm starting my Christmas countdown with prolific writer Jennifer Loiske.

 

 

http://www.jenniferloiske.com/

 

 

Her books range from New Adult, down to Young Adult. The first books in each series are shown here.

 

To order your copy got to UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jennifer-Loiske

Or http://www.amazon.com/Jennifer-Loiske

Enjoy Reading and be sure to check back tomorrow for another author.

Marie
www.mariegodley.moonfruit.com

Blog a day until Christmas

With Christmas nearing, at what seems to be a very fast pace, I've turned my thoughts to presents. And as we all know what great presents books make I've decided to post a blog every day featuring a book or author so that you can all find some great presents for your family too.

So from 23rd November until 23rd December my mission is to try and post every day. My last post will be the 23rd December because Christmas Eve is always so busy and is time for my family.

I hope you enjoy the blogs and find the perfect present amongst them.

Marie

www.mariegodley.moonfruit.com

Escape - book Launch

Nadia's is excited to announce that her newest book, Escape, will be released by Master Koda Select Publishing on 8 November. She invites you to the book launch party on Facebook. All are welcome to come join the fun. Here's the link to the event. It's simple to join, simply click 'join' at the top right of the page and pop in on the eighth at 3:00 pm CST.

•                     Would you like to tell us about your new release?

I'd love to. Escape is the second book in the Rough Hewn Trilogy. It picks up almost two centuries after the first families settled Kilmservy Village and brings us to present day, and their descendants. Carolyn Breckenship discovers that she's living with a serial killer. Rather than leave, she decides to find enough evidence to put him away. Doing so puts her life, and the lives of her closest friends, in danger. Each one will have to make a choice to leave the village until the killer is caught, or stay where they will live in fear of being snatched away at any moment. One of the group will barely survive an encounter with him.

 

•                     How did you choose the genre you write in?

The paranormal short story, Ziggy Returns, was sort of a fluke. During a conversation with a friend, I said, that would make a nice addition to a story. We agreed, and from that one statement came a ghost story. With Rough Hewn, it sort of chose me. I hadn't planned to write it, but did. I suppose, since I like to read horror, mystery/suspense and thrillers, I would naturally feel comfortable writing in those genres.

 

•                     Was this story hard to write? I mean, emotionally, did it take a toll on you?

Admittedly, there are parts of the story that were hard to write. I took more than my share of walks between scenes.

 

•                     Are there any characters in your book who remind you of someone you've known personally?

Not really. I think most of the players in my books have characteristics of many people I've known. Nothing specific, outside of the way one might twist his/her head around to look at something, or a quirky smile. Stuff like that is what comes from people I know.

 

•                     What are you working on now?

I'm working on the third Rough Hewn book.

 

•                     Do you have any plans to pull characters from this book into another one? Perhaps, expand on the trilogy, making it a series?

I've considered it. I actually have a few story bites running around in my head for Lorianna, her son and another character.

 

•                     Finally, when is the third book in the Rough Hewn Trilogy coming out?

I don't have a release date for the third book, yet. In fact, It's not finished. The groundwork is done. I know where the story is going and how it'll wrap up, but it's only 1/3 complete. I'll finish it in November, but the release date remains open.

 

 

BIO:

Nadia Kilrick is a Florida native who finds tranquility in the simple life of the Deep South. She believes there is no better place to contemplate life's journey than sitting beside a slow moving creek shaded by mighty moss-draped oaks. It's there that dreams burst free from within the chasms of the human heart.

 

Nadia has written fiction since childhood. The busyness of life and raising a family slowed the progress of her writing for two decades. When her children moved away, she began writing articles for the web. Her passion for fiction writing quietly stirred while writing articles related to gardening, family, self-sufficiency and do-it-yourself projects. Now she writes fiction full time. Thriller, suspense/mystery and paranormal are her favorite genres to write. When reading, she reaches for psychological thrillers, true crime, mystery/suspense, horror, paranormal, western and historical fiction.

 

Nadia is pleased to announce her debut short story, “Ziggy Returns: A Short Tale”, was published by Master Koda Select Publishing in August 2013. Kilrick’s “Rough Hewn: People of Kilmservy Village”, the first book in the Rough Hewn Trilogy, was released in September 2013. All titles are available at Amazon.com.

To find out more visit Nadia's website or media pages.
http://www.nadiakilrick.com
www.facebook.com/NadiaKilrick
www.twitter.com/NadiaKilrick
www.nadiakilrick.blogspot.com

And for her books go to: http://www.amazon.com/People-Kilmservy-Village-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00F02DTXS/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

http://www.amazon.com/Ziggy-Returns-Nadia-Kilrick-ebook/dp/B00EE8SJWU/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

Thanks for stopping by - good luck with the book Nadia and enjoy your launch party.

Thank you once again to my readers.

Marie

www.mariegodley.moonfruit.com

When to Send

When do you hit the button that sends your manuscript to an agent or publisher? In the past I've sent it too early but when do you know?

When first starting out you tend to hit the button the minute you've finished writing, checked it over - yes - so out it goes. The next day if you pick it up you'll soon spot little typos (at the very least). As you become more experienced you get other people to read it, put it to one side and come back to it. this may be repeated many times. Then you send it out.

But it's rejected - what then? If you've been lucky enough to get feedback - you work on the areas highlighted, get someone to read it and revamp it again. There seems to be a pattern forming doesn't there?

You realise that your new version was better than your old one and might curse that you sent the previous one out - but then hindsight is  a wonderful thing.

Having just done my third overhaul of my first Young Adult book - I have found a new publisher and have sent it out to see what happens. Is it ready yet? I don't know. It's is much better than it was. I could keep sitting on it but as I don't know how else I would change it I've decided to send it out and hope for some good feedback or *shock horror* the offer of a contract - you never know - it only takes one person to see the potential in it.

I think you will always be able to see ways to improve your story - even after it has been published - Philip Pullman has included 'lantern slides' in the back of his Dark Materials series - which are little snippets he would have added to sentences in his books.

Now it is the waiting game - the worst part for an author but it also releases you to start working on something else. When your manuscript is sitting stewing you always have it at the back of your mind, once it's sent you have that time to start something new.

So until I hear back I'm off to do some more editing on another story.

Keep your fingers crossed for me and Good Luck to anyone else who is taking that scary step of sending their baby - sorry I meant Manuscript - out.

Marie

www.mariegodley.moonfruit.com

Sending out Love

I know a lot of people are going through some tough times at the moment. I wish you all strength and love to get through it.

When my own craziness has calmed down I'll be back with a long overdue post.

Peace everyone.

Marie

Coming 1st October 2013

As the launch of his book is drawing nearer I invited Bruce Blake onto the blog to give us an insight into his writing.
First off lets start with some facts about Bruce.

 

Bruce Blake lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. When pressing issues like shovelling snow and building igloos don't take up his spare time, Bruce can be found taking the dog sled to the nearest cafe to work on his short stories and novels.

Actually, Victoria, B.C. is only a couple hours north of Seattle, Wash., where more rain is seen than snow. Since snow isn't really a pressing issue, Bruce spends more time trying to remember to leave the "u" out of words like "colour" and "neighbour" than he does shovelling. The father of two, Bruce is also the trophy husband of burlesque diva Miss Rosie Bitts.

 

Over to you Bruce - what can you tell us about the writing of your book When Shadows Fall.

 

When I tell people I wrote the first draft of my upcoming novel, When Shadows Fall (The First Book of the Small Gods) in fourteen days, they either stare at me with a blank expression, make me repeat it to ensure they didn't mishear me and I actually said forty, or they ask me how I managed to churn out an entire novel in such a short time. Since you are not looking at me, and it clearly says 'fourteen' days in the last sentence, I'm going to assume you fall into the third group...so here's how it happened.

 

Firstly, it's important to realize I am a full-time writer—making stuff up is what I do. This output didn't happen in half-hour snatches here and there, but in 5-7 hour chunks of tapping on my laptop's keys. Before you stop reading because you don't have that much time to write, realize that what's most important about this output is how much I produced in the time I had—consistently about 1300 words/hour. This number—your productivity—is how all authors should evaluate the effectiveness of their writing time, with a goal of maximizing the number of words written in the time available. It can be difficult to work around a day job, family, and other commitments—and none of us can jam more hours into the day—but you can control what you do with the time you have and get the most out of the minutes you put in at the keyboard. Here are the steps I took to keep my word count high.

 

1.      Pre-planning. More effort went into the planning of this book than any I've ever written. For a month, as I was writing and editing another project, I spent my evenings world-building for the Small Gods series. It was really during this phase that the seeds of the story grew and blossomed. The more I learned about the background and history of this world, the more the story I was planning kept taking twists and turns I wasn't expecting.

2.      Outlining. There's always a debate amongst writers about outlining versus writing by the seat of your pants. Simply put: I find I'm more productive when I have a pretty good idea where I want to go. It means I don't lose writing time by stopping to think about what to do next. This dovetails perfectly into the next point.

3.      Daily planning. This is a tip I picked up from Rachel Aaron's great little writing book 2000 to 10000: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love. It's a simple concept...take the first five minutes of your writing session, grab a pen and paper (that's right—the old-fashioned way) and jot down what you will be writing about. Include actions, bits of dialogue, descriptions; all the points you want to hit, plus some of the detail. This is your road map for what you will write today—not tomorrow, not yesterday, but today.

4.      No editing. Sounds funny, doesn't it? Of course I edit, just not while I'm writing the first draft. I know too many writers who never get to the end of their manuscript because they spend too much time polishing the first half of the book to perfection. Not only are first drafts supposed to suck, I know the way I write; chances are good that, if I did a bunch of editing before I finished the rough draft, something else would change and I'd end up going back to rewrite all that careful editing, anyway. Time well wasted.

5.      Unplug. The internet is not your friend. If you are writing and you can't find the word you're after, can't come up with a great name for a new character, or need to do a bit of research, bookmark it and save it for non-writing time. Seriously, it will still be there at 10 o'clock on Thursday night when there's a commercial during The Amazing Race...do it then. Don't even get me started on Facebook and email

6.      Make writing a priority. We all hear many writers lamenting that they can't find time to write. I never have that problem because I plan my writing time, then make everything else work with it. I did the same thing when I was working sixty hour weeks...the job schedule was the only thing that was inflexible, everything else had to realize I had a book to write.

 

With planning and forethought, it's more than possible to write quickly without sacrificing quality. Be ready, be focused, be dedicated...now go write.

 

Cover blurb:

A hundred hundred seasons have turned since the Goddess banished the Small Gods to the sky, leaving the land to mankind alone.

 

For Prince Teryk, life behind the castle walls is boring and uneventful until he stumbles upon an arcane scroll in a long-forgotten chamber. The parchment speaks of Small Gods, the fall of man, and the kingdom's savior—the firstborn child of the rightful king. It's his opportunity to prove himself to his father, the king, and assure his place in history. All he needs to do is find the man from across the sea—a man who can't possibly exist—and save mankind.

 

But ancient magic has been put in motion by a mysterious cult determined to see the Small Gods reborn. Powerful forces clash, uncaring for the lives of mortals in their struggle to prevent the return of the banished ones, or aid in their rebirth.

 

Named in a prophecy or not, what chance does a cocky prince who barely understands the task laid before him stand in a battle with the gods?

 

So don't forget the date :1st October. To find out more about Bruce visit his Goodreads page http://www.goodreads.com/author/Bruce_Blake where you can follow his blog and see all the other books he has published.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Marie.

www.mariegodley.moonfruit.com