Guest Post: Louise Herman

Louise Herman Guest Post

Happy holidays everyone and I hope you are enjoying the break.

I have decided to take a week’s respite, from writing the third book in my YA Urban Fantasy series, ‘Split Blood’, to catch up with author interview and guest post requests. I am looking forward to discussing my writing experience, so far, with the ups and downs I have encountered throughout my self-publishing journey.

Why did I start writing?

I started writing when I was in high school because I loved creating magical worlds and characters with super human abilities but put this passion to one side when other commitments took over (college and university).

I decided to return to writing approximately ten years ago, when it was possible to publish my own work, and I signed up to Amazon Kindle and Smashwords to publish my first YA Fantasy prequel novella, ‘The Orcus Games: Blood Moon’.

I love the freedom this genre gives me and now I have a little more free time, I have decided to devote it, to complete the rest of the ‘Split Blood’ series, along with a creating few surprises which will hopefully enhance the readers experience and allow them to delve deeper into the ‘Split Blood’ world.

What have been the positive aspects of self – publishing?

When I started writing the first book, I honestly did not think past finishing the story.

I was more focused on creating strong characters, showing they’re difficult evolution and creating a believable magical fantasy world.

It was when I started to research the self-publishing process that I became excited about the amount of input I had in promoting and marketing the novels, communicating and networking with a vast array of people (readers, fans, bloggers, etc.).

What have been the negative aspects of self-publishing?

There hasn’t been any aspects of self-publishing that have put me off continuing my passion but I have realised that you have to be:

·       Hard working (research is the key for stories)

·       Focused (set realistic deadlines for yourself)

·       Passionate about your work and genre (you may not always get positive reviews and feedback on your work but take the constructive criticism on board and build on it for future stories)

·       Organised (I have so many spreadsheets with blogger details who I have worked with in the past, deadline dates, competitions I am doing, readers I need to reply to, etc.)

·       Creative (do not just put your creativity into your stories! Be creative in marketing, advertising and networking! Think of different ways you can get attention to your work that hasn’t already been done. I know this is difficult but I love book trailers and am in the process of editing the trailer for ‘Split Blood: The Ancient Codex – Part One’)

I love being a self – published author because I get to experience everything first hand but there are times that I feel I would love to have a literary agent so that I can solely focus on the writing and leave the marketing and promotion to a professional.

Any advice for new authors going down the Self-Publishing route?

I still feel fairly new to this industry, so I can only base any advice on what I have learnt so far.

I think that anyone wanting to self-publish a book needs to look at it like you are about to produce a film:

Pre-Production

·       Do the research for your stories and get feedback from friends and family (make notes, create strong characters: personality profiles, history, the cause and effect of conflicts and grievances, etc. Create a believable world: laws, descriptions of landscapes, buildings, politics, economy, etc. Build up to conflicts and / or romances: do not rush these because you want it to be believable, have sub plots that lead up to these and make it that once the story reaches the climax, it will leave the reader wanting more, etc.)

·       Test out your work on social media (I love Wattpad!)

·       Get a good book cover artist, website, blog and ensure you have signed up to social media sites

·       Find a good proof-reader and / or copy editor

Post Production  

·       Ask bloggers for book reviews

·       Host competitions

·       Try to attend Book Fairs

·       Update social media regularly

·       Interact with readers and fans

·       Do not spam blogs, social media and other book related sites with links to your work. Talk about your interests too and allow the reader to know the person behind the great stories.

Author Biography

Louise Herman is a North London Fantasy author obsessed with pear drops sweets and 80s Fantasy films.

In between reading James Herbert novels and drinking too much coffee, she writes Young Adult Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance novels.

Louise Herman has currently written five YA Fantasy books to date (December 2015); The Orcus Games Prequel Trilogy and The Split Blood series, which take the reader on a journey of magic, mystery, obsession and forbidden love with seductively dark consequences.

For more information, please go to: www.louisehermanauthor.com

Links

 Author's Website

 Amazon

 Smashwords

 Twitter

 Facebook

 Wattpad

Guest Post: Alexa Piper

How To Write A Love Scene

By Alexandra Seidel

Before we get into that, let’s be clear about what a love scene is, at least in the context of this post. A love scene is intense. It is the point in a story when two characters (and one of them is the protagonist) get to know each other better, when one enters the orbit of the other. Such scenes can contain sex, but you can just as well build heat or give the story momentum without having anyone take their clothes off.

1. Do you need this scene?

This is one of the reasons why I like to make a distinction between love scene and sex scene. In romance, there is a lot of, well, steamy romance going on. This is absolutely fine, it’s like the laser guns in an sf tale, and readers shouldn’t be ashamed of what they like to read.

But the love scene? The love scene is a different beast. In it, characters discover how they really feel for one another, they learn something about themselves and the other person that they didn’t know before.

So yes, you do need a love scene (in romance writing), but before you have two people declare their undying love for one another, make sure the story demands it. Make sure it adds to the tension and doesn't slacken it.

2. Did anyone say tension?

Yes, yes I did. And please, a lot of it. Tension is what keeps the readers interested in our plot. If there is no tension, all that remains is boring, sappy. So let there be obstacles, a jilted lover lurking in the shadows, a quest that's waiting, our protag's desires and wants that conflict with their relationship to the love interest.

This tension is also ultimately what builds the plot of the story, and it is what keeps the protagonist on their toes. Therefore, the tension needs to be real, a real threat or something the protagonist does really need to do, or else.

3. Hold on a minute, what just happened?

The purpose of a love scene is change. Something in the protagonist will change: they realize a truth about themselves that they were not aware before. Something in the love interest will change: they will reveal to themselves and the reader why they care about the protagonist. Taken together, these insights will change the chemistry between the protagonist and the love interest, ideally in a way that allows the plot to move forward with the tangible motivation of a survivalist running from a horde of zombies.

So best be clear in how these changes are articulated. Seeing as there are at least two people involved in a love scene, dialogue is a good way to go, but it never hurts to make change seen and felt. Seen in how the characters now act, and are able to act, differently, felt in the new ways they now interpret what they see around them.

With these three points in mind, any love scene should turn out just fine. And it can be just about as steamy as the author wants it to be, too, because why not?

About Luminous Dreams:
Relax, close your eyes... and dream. Eight tales, eight sensual dreams of enchantment, wanderlust and lovers’ longings, of searching and finding; these dreams tell of birds of fire, curses that lie like bridges between night and day, and hunger for sweet seduction.

Luminous Dreams is available in trade paperback and ebook via Amazon.com, All Romance eBooks, WorldWeaverPress.com, and other online retailers, and for wholesale through and Ingram. You can also find Luminous Dreams on Goodreads.

About Alexa:
Alexa Piper enjoys writing, romance, and the paranormal. This said, becoming a paranormal romance writer seemed perfectly reasonable, but for Alexa, it is more than that; it's fun. Alexa’s work has appeared in the Red Moon Romance anthology Demons, Imps, and Incubi and The Naughty List. Luminous Dreams is Alexa's first collection, and she hopes her readers will have as much fun reading it as she had writing it. Check out Alexa’s online home (alexapiper.com) for all things related to her writing and be sure to follow her on Twitter @prowlingpiper. 

Guest Post: Marie Piper

GUEST POST:

My beginning as a writer came, as many do, from writing fanfiction. When I was about thirteen, I fell in love with the Old West thanks to a little-known and short-lived CBS Western called “The Magnificent Seven” and it launched me full-force into writing. First, I wrote fanfiction for the show (none of it particularly good, by the way) and then over the years the stories I was writing melted into creating my own Old West worlds and the characters to populate them. 

Cricket Bend, the town the FIRES OF CRICKET BEND series is set in, is an amalgamation of a hundred old west towns I’ve read about and seen in movies and on TV – From Linda Lael Miller books to HBO’s Deadwood - and I’m thrilled to be able to share its stories of love and adventure with readers of this genre. The characters at the center of HAVEN’S FLAME, Haven Anderson and her fiancee Matthew Frank, are ordinary people. But ordinary people often have extraordinary stories…

BLURB:

“Sometimes passion smolders, and other times it burns…”

High-button dresses aren’t made for hot Texas springs—or the burning desire Haven Anderson has for Deputy Matthew Frank…

After a lifetime of friendship, Matthew and Haven are finally engaged, but he doesn’t seem to share Haven’s emerging passion. Feeling rejected and uncertain about her future, Haven finds herself attracted to the handsome new saloon owner, Hank Porter. 

Matthew holds Haven at arm’s length, despite the love smoldering inside him…

Matthew’s father was run out of town years ago for nearly killing his mother, and Matthew fears the lack of control passion can cause. Having been taken in and raised by Haven’s family, he vows to always treat her with affection and respect.

The season brings cattle drives and rowdy cowboys—and Haven can’t stay away from the saloon…

As the doctor’s assistant, Haven tends Hank after a fight, and befriends a lively “upstairs girl,” Callie Lee, despite orders from the Cricket Bend Sheriff—her father—to have nothing to do with anyone at the saloon. 

Along with the cattle drive come the lawless McKenzie brothers, a rude bounty hunter, and rumors of a dangerous man headed their way. Caught up in this whirlwind, Haven remains torn between her love for the romantically distant Matthew and the more earthy passion offered by Hank and his scandalous reputation. 

Should she follow her heart or the desire that puts everything she’s known at risk? Or even more importantly, will the people she loves still be standing in the aftermath of…

Haven’s Flame

Preorder on Amazon

AUTHOR BIO:

Marie Piper earned her B.A. in English Literature from Michigan State University, and lives in Chicago.  She loves travel, coffee, and surrounding herself with her book hoard. Marie has several short pieces of romantic/erotic fiction being published in anthologies over the next few months, but it most excited about her debut novel, HAVEN’S FLAME (the first book in the FIRES OF CRICKET BEND series) coming 10/27/2015 from Limitless Publishing. Say hi via Twitter at @mariepiperbooks.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:

Twitter: @mariepiperbooks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MariePiperBooks

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/MariePiper

Website: http://mariepiper.com

 Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.

Guest Post: Lindsay Marie Miller

All Roads Lead to Savannah: The Story behind Emerald Green

Author, Lindsay Marie Miller

My debut novel, Emerald Green, is set in the historic, classic, oldest city in Georgia. Savannah. But I have a confession to make. I’ve never been there.

Yes, I know. How can you possibly construct a fictional narrative in a town you’re never visited before? Whose food you’ve never tasted, whose sights you’ve never seen, whose oceans you’ve never swam in, and whose trees you’ve never climbed? It’s a sin, I know, to not partake of the culture, setting, and atmosphere that you are trying to emulate, but I have been near Savannah.

In fact, I was staying in Georgia on that fateful night, when I scribbled out the most unorganized outline of a story about Tom and Addie, two teenagers who would become irrevocably smitten with one another among the throws of danger, mystery, and suspense.

I was in Atlanta, and I couldn’t sleep. So, when it came time for me to set the location of my star-crossed lovers , I chose a town that wasn’t that far away, a town that I had seen several times on wide green interstate signs, on the drive up to my grandfather’s house from my home state of Florida. Savannah.

Perhaps the reason why those two cities had been grouped together in my head, was because Savannah was where Mammy had insisted Scarlett O’Hara go, when she was young, beautiful, and in mourning. (My grandmother raised me on Gone with the Wind and fried cornbread, so forgive me.)

*Side Note: One summer, I watched Gone with the Wind every weekday for two months straight. My daily routine: Lunch. Movie. Swim. I know, it was a problem.

If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that Scarlett goes to Atlanta anyway, because that’s where Ashley will be. And there I was, in the same town, and yet that other possibility loomed before me. What would have happened if Scarlett had gone to Savannah instead?

So I went to Savannah for her, in my mind, of course. And when I gave up my headspace to that town, not the one that I’d seen overhead on bright green road signs, but the fictionalized version, the Savannah that I had imagined, the Savannah that I wanted it to be, the pen in my hand couldn’t write fast enough. As Addie began to tell me her story, her voice became clearer, and easier to understand, while I wrote by a dimly lit lamp on the bed in my grandfather’s guestroom.  

Looking back, I now realize that I never knew how pivotal that moment was at the time. But isn’t that how life is? You don’t appreciate how great a film is, until 75 years have passed and not a single movie since has been anything like it.

I want to see Savannah one day – the real thing, in the flesh, not that moving image in my mind – and I will. I’ll make sure to stop by Atlanta on the way though. Sure, it’s 250 miles out of the way and in a totally different direction, but I would feel lost any other way. Because in my mind, I had to go to Atlanta to get to Savannah.

Besides, I hear they have a really nice Margaret Mitchell Museum, in memory of the beloved author, who fashioned an epic romance of Southern belles and gentleman and war, and most poignantly, all things that were swept up, lost forever, and quite literally, Gone with the Wind.

I’ll read the road signs, and I’ll follow the map. But no compass could ever lead me towards that blessed destination in my mind, that Savannah, that Tara, or that Atlanta. Because they are all one in the same, infinite points, simultaneously splitting and converging, only to do the same thing again.

I know where I’m going, and I know where I’ve been, because all of the tire tracks always lead back to the same place – that dark, secluded, mystical haven of fortune and fate.

My imagination.                                                   

Book Blurb: On a chilly December night in Savannah, Georgia, seventeen-year-old Addie Smith dreams of an alluring young man, too mysteriously handsome to be real. When spring semester commences the following week, at Maple Creek High, a new student, named Tom Sutton, arrives, bearing a striking resemblance to the beautiful stranger from Addie’s dream. Addie feels inextricably drawn to Tom, and his rare, unwavering resiliency, as the enchanting nature of first love takes hold. But when a cold-blooded criminal returns to Savannah, in pursuit of a long-forgotten possession, Addie must confront the darkest secrets of an elusive, hidden past that threaten to destroy her future. 

Author Bio: Lindsay Marie Miller was born and raised in Tallahassee, FL, where she graduated from high school as Valedictorian. Afterwards, Lindsay attended Florida State University and graduated Summa Cum Laude with an English Literature major, Psychology minor, and Specialized Studies in Markets and Institutions. Lindsay began writing young-adult romances at the age of 16 and had completed 6 (unpublished) novels by the age of 20. Her debut novel, Emerald Green, has just been released as the first installment in a four-part series of young-adult romantic thrillers. In her free time, Lindsay enjoys singing, playing the piano and guitar, and writing songs. Lindsay currently resides in her hometown of Tallahassee, FL, where she enjoys summers under the sun, in the company of beloved family and friends. 

Contact/Buy Links: 

Amazon Author Profile

Author's Smashwords Profile

Author's Goodreads Profile

Facebook: Author's Facebook Page

Twitter: @Lindsay_MMiller

Emerald Green on Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

Kobo