October Featured Writers

This month's Featured Writer's are a lot of fun! I met them through pubwrite hashtag on twitter. And it's been one party after another. When I could attend!

First up is AJ Aalto, twitter @AJAalto who has discerning tastes in literature (liked my zombie erotica comedy :D) and is a hoot to follow even if you're not a part of the conversation! LOL helps to follow lots of our friendly peeps on pubwrite. The things you overhear O.O!

Something about our dear writer of gore you might find surprising, and I find endearing is that she is one of those candle fiends. She says she rarely goes a night go by where she hasn't lit a dozen or so. Everything looks better by candlelight and that they help her relax.

BIO


"AJ Aalto is an unrepentant liar and a writer of blathering nonsense offset by factual gore. When not working on her horror novels, you can find her singing old Monty Python songs in the shower, eavesdropping on perfect strangers, stalking her eye doctor, or failing at one of her many fruitless hobbies. Generally a fan of anyone with a passion for the ridiculous, she has a particular weak spot for smug, pseudointellectual assholes and narcissistic jerks; readers will find her work littered with dark, imperfect creatures and flawed monsters. AJ cannot say no to a Snickers bar, and has been known to swallow her gum."



Something about me that's different:





My first book (and only, so far):



TOUCHED (Book 1 of the Marnie Baranuik Files)

"The media has nicknames for Marnie Baranuik, though she’d rather they didn’t; twice-Touched by the Blue Sense, a rare dual-talented psychic with a doctorate in preternatural biology and a working knowledge of the dark arts, she was considered without peer in the psychic community.

Her first big FBI case ended with a bullet in one shoulder and a chip on the other, a queasy heart and a serial killer in the wind, leaving her a public flop and a private wreck. When the FBI’s preternatural crimes unit tracks her down at her remote mountain lodge in Ten Springs, Colorado for her insight on a local case, she isn’t particularly eager to stick her neck out again, but her quiet retirement is promptly besieged by a stab-happy starlet, a rampaging ghoul, and a vampire hunting jackass in tight Wranglers. Marnie figures the only real mystery is which one will kill her first.

Too mean to die young, backed up by friends in cold places, and running with a mouth as demure as a cannon’s blast, Marnie Baranuik is about to discover that there’s no such thing as quitting time when you’re Touched."



Her current work in progress is DEATH REJOICES (Book 2 of the Marnie Baranuik Files)



Here's the shortened link to the ebook on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Touched-Marnie-Baranuik-Files-ebook/dp/B005NXLJK4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1316526168&sr=1-1



Here's the link to the launch blog: http://www.ajaalto.com/?p=1205
 
 
Next up is eatthepen on twitter and also a lot of fun and a bit tongue in cheek. (There are reasons I don't dare say that in connection with AJ Aalto :D! LOL she'd get me good!) His wit and dare I say charm? are just small reasons to want to follow his twitter account. And no, in case you're wondering, his twits are not all goodness and light, but they are a lot of fun!
 
And how many of you are aware of his secret? After reading Dan Simmons' 'Hyperion' sequence, he became obsessed with the poetry of Keats, and can still quote large chunks of the major odes! One of his ambitions is to recite Keats for an appreciative audience someday. Well Richard, I hope you get your chance! Without further introduction, I give you his "official" bio.


Bio: R.J. Davnall has been telling stories all his life, and thus probably shouldn't be trusted to write his own bio. 'Heaven Can Wait' was written when he should have been reading for his PhD in philosophy at the University of Liverpool. He lives on *the* Penny Lane, in an attempt to channel any of the inspirational genius that might still be lingering there. When not writing or messing around on Twitter, he can usually be found playing piano or obsessing dangerously about videogames.





 'Heaven Can Wait' (YA Fantasy). Blurb:

When the Non-Agency tells Tom he's dead, he doesn't see much reason to believe them. But he is, and it's their job to convince him. When he falls for Mary, the still-living daughter of his murderer, Tom knows the Non-Agency will try to keep him from her. They'll stop at nothing to send him towards the light, and he's about to learn there are worse things than dying...


Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Can-Wait-Non-Agency-ebook/dp/B005P208W8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317077139&sr=8-1


Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/86000

And It's ON!

So, the game is on! The two stories have posted here for your reading pleasure! Please no trying to guess who wrote what. LOL really vote for the one you like the most! So far, from what I hear, it's a close thing! It was fun and I wrote a lot and edited a lot and threw out more :P

Also, go here to catch up on Dangerous Lands. From here on out, I'll be writing the episodes by myself. It's a bit nervewracking :D I'm sending my newest installment as soon as I finsh the last edit run-through. It's so much fun to have writing events happening! I miss being able to write everyday. I'm going to try to go back to everyday, even if it's only half an hour. I've been so overwhelmed, but I'm adjusting.

Now go! shoo! you have reading to do!

The cage match!

Today is the day. I get to write 2000 words of brilliance to be posted on @threecifer's blog tomorrow. Today, I get the prompt, in little over an hour...then all's fair in love and war :D

To catch the prompt, go here today, and to catch the match and vote go there tomorrow :D Wish me luck!!

PS I'm extremely tired...been up since 430 this am...but that's when I do my best writing, so watch out Anne-Mhairi!!

PSS Featured writers will be back for October with some awesome peeps!! Stay tuned!

Cage Match

It's on!!! Fantasy in the Cage Match sponsored by Al Boudreau is on! It's myself and my CP partner, Anne-Mhairi, better known for her pink mice :P she's @AMhairiSimpson on Twitter! I'm @L_Bushman in case you don't already follow me :D


So what's up? He gives a writing prompt--basically sets up a scenario, and us writers write a 2k word story in 24 hrs (or less, since I believe he's putting this on EDT and I'm Pacific :) He then posts our stories up with a chance for you to vote!!

Have Mercy

That title makes me think of a song. I just realized how long it has been since I blogged. Someone needs to whip me. I have lots of good excuses (two day jobs, writing deadlines, painting commissions and closing week of husband's play) but the real problem has been my internet. I've been paying 70.m for an aircard that works like crap and now after YEARS and YEARS of using this, they started charging roaming. This card was grandfathered in to the free unlimited everything. Well, I didn't mind the slow internet before cuz it was what it was. But they're going to charge roaming for a netflix movie that we can't watch half of cuz the playback time is too slow? Get real. So I've cancelled that card (not officially because I want more time to pay the bill which I'm afraid to look at) and it quit working lik 75% of the time. Found new bundle thingy, but have to do it in steps cuz of money. So, should have internet at home by middle to end of October, depending on installation stuff.

We're getting Satellite internet :D yay! Will be good and fast all the time. NO more crap from towers down and stuff. Although, sounds funny to me that we're getting satellite internet when there's a satellite due to fall out of the sky, yanno?

Anyways, I have had trouble with my borrowed laptop. Fixed for most part, but I lost my notes on the fantasy story I'm doing for Splintered Lands, which is worst than losing the story that I'd already written (except for one glorious scene. I think the original word descriptions and pacing was better than my rewrite, but ce la vie. Anyhoo, I've re-written over 6k already. only 90k more to go :P Also need to rework part of a short, but I figured out how I can do it without changing the flavor when I reread their information. I'm excited! I keep forgetting to download the ongoing to a jumpdrive, so should be getting on that as well. ON top of that, I've had another painting commissioned!

We've had a few spider bites, the worst on my husband recently again, a bit of asthma trouble, but otherwise, we've been doing alright. My kids are now excited about the internet stuff even though it's a little ways away. We'll be able to have more than one computer on the internet at a time!! yes!

So, after you've whipped me and scolded me, you going to forgive me for taking too long to blog?? Please?? I did do a short update on my website, http://www.leonajbushman.com/ so does that count? lol It feels good to be back in the writing mode even if I can't share my triumph's and angst with the social world while doing it. I sure miss twitter...trying to do it on phone, but that stinks :P

How've you all been??? Anyone getting any wonderful writing or painting done??

Hello!!

So, it's been another crazy week. Shows opened, I had an interesting time with the sound a few times!! LOL Turns out my asthma decided I neeeded to pay attention to it. I've been seriously fighting it lately. I had a visit to the hospital. They decided to let me go home because, a) I wasn't panicking, b) I had good vitals, and c) I'm not an idiot :D LOL Pretty much was the long and short of it. I was given meds for my machine, combivent to take 4x a day, prednisone for 5 days, and a different daily allergen med. It's making me feel like I have an angry lioness under my skin ready to claw its way out. I keep reminding myself (and everone around me!) that I'm on prednisone. :P But at least I have these things to help me through it!!

I am looking forward to a weekend of painting and sewing. It'll help offset all the cleaning we need to do!! Show times always end up putting us behind. I didn't think it was going to be so bad this year since only Nate is in the show, but...painting set and running sound have put me in that position! LOLOL

I'm also writing. Started the novel that's due Oct 1... yeah, cutting it close, but this novel has a much involved synopsis with lots of the twists and turns already written out (making it harder for me to start!) so once I get through the "why write it, I already know everything that's happening" issue I always get if I do that, I'll be  cracking! Anyone who's wanting to help with the whip, is more than welcome. :P Plus, I've gotten CP Edits back on my paranormal and started on that a bit. Now that I'm feeling better, and will hopefully continue to improve on that, I'm thinking I'm going to rock the house down this next month!!


AAAAND---it's my birthday and I've had a blessed amount of wishes on my facebook and I'm grinning from ear to ear! What a blessing the writing community is! So thank you to all my friends and family who've wished me glad tidings so far!! It's made me feel good :D

'Til next time...

HA TWICE IN ONE DAY

LOL I'm so tired that my editing efforts have been useless so I've been reading some back blogs to try and catch up. As a result, I'm full of information, doubt, righteous anger and what ifs.

I decided to post a couple of those to you. What if you're writing a multiple POV book? I can here the dreaded word "headhopping" hopping around in your heads already. But really, if you're writing a book form omniscient or multiple POV you must have some transitions. I've heard everything from, "Make sure you put space here so reader knows it's a change of POV" (heard it from multiple writer friends) to you can't do that. You have to have new chapter, scene change, whatever.

I've also heard from some editing friends. Mostly, they say the key is transition, like dialogue. But then, you have all the writer wannabe's (including myself) reading books going "hey that's headhopping, how come they got away with it! or I can't read this book cuz I'm now in the 7th person's POV for the book.

What do you do if you're reading an Omnscient storyteller type book? If you have an all knowing narrator, you're going to know everyone's thoughts and feelings. Have we gotten so stuck on holding everyone in the craft to a list of rules, that we've forgotten how to enjoy a well crafted story? I took one such person's supposedly educated wisdom to heart that, I, who was in AP classes growing up, have a hard time staying in one tense because I radically and frantically worked too hard at taking "was" out of my vocabulary because someone's creative writing teacher told her was was passive voice.

I was new at the writing thing and enoungh years out of school to believe said person. They were wrong. Anyways, I'm working on it. Of course, it's not helping that I've spent months changing my mind about tenses in a particualr book I wrote (went from third person past tense to first person present to first person past. You try it. Change a completed 85k word MS from one tense to the other and see what happens!)

Then there's the self pubbed stuff going around about poorly written etc. Well, to my deep horror, I have published a version of Winds of Fire that wasn't the final draft and can't seem to find the final draft (after beta readers & final changes.) so I dropped the price on my books and offered a major coupon to the twitter followers. I may have to pull it for a bit since I started a job and I'm having MAJOR formatting issues with everything. I got to thinking. Everyone is saying, you have to pay for editors, etc. Well, most of the writers I know are not rich enough to pay the 2-5 cent PER WORD cost of a professional editor. We are all trying to help ourselves. In doing that though, a lot of, "you absolutely have to do it this way" is happening and when I ask my editor friends (which I got through following their blogs and participating in discussions!) will tell me the right way and I have to follow my heart on it.

Then there are people who say don't cuz you might get poor sales. Well, maybe. I've backed off on advertising when I found the errors (after a fit of crying) so I can fix them. But also, I'm selling the fun ones through indie means. Not that the ones I'm holding back are dull and boring (quite the opposite, in fact!) but the ones I'm self publishing are the ones that I wanted out there, but have decided that I no longer want to pursue traditional publishing routes with those particular books. I wonder how that will bear on things later? But since I'm querying a project that is not of the same genre, will it be a mute point whether the sales turn out good when I go back to hitting the advertising hard, or if I pull it from the market? They're not the same genre, just some books I've written.

And maybe I'm too tired to really see any of this clearly LOL Oh, and by the way, I don't LOL in my books or use much in the way of parenthesis, or say cuz. Those are cheats here as I'm lazy on the blog :D (Oh, and I don't put smiley faces in either, even though it's tempting since I'm self pubbing LOL)

If you've self pubbed, share why. If you now read books looking for errors instead of enjoyment, even if it's subconsciously done, fess up here!