Friday, May 31, 2013

Announcing: Till Death Do Us Part!


Will Ida Mae survive her own wedding?

When charming,and mostly bald,widower George Gilmore asked Ida Mae Babbitt to marry him, she was surprised and delighted. But now he has made another proposal,to hold the wedding in two weeks,while all his children are in town. Flustered but sure she can handle it with the help of her friends, Ida Mae agrees.

The plan doesn't go over so well with George's family, however, and Ida Mae finds herself the victim of a plot to stop the wedding. At first the incidents seem like harmless pranks, but they escalate until Ida Mae finds herself in real danger,and in real pain. Bells are ringing, but are they wedding bells or death knells?




It's always so much fun to announce the arrival of a new book baby, and this one has me especially delighted. It's the fifth and final installment in the Secret Sisters Mysteries, and the ladies are excited to share their latest adventure with you. 






And don't forget, if you'd like to update your Secret Sisters Mysteries collection with a blue copy of "Secret Sisters" to match the rest of the series, you can pick it up here!


Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Guest Blog: Marcia Mickelson





I first met Marica Mickelson when her first book came out, and we've been friends ever since online and through LDStorymakers. I'm delighted to be a stop on her blog tour for her new release, The Huaca

Shyness Is Not Good Marketing

I’m extremely shy and sometimes find it hard to talk to people, and this is especially true when it comes to talking about my books.  When I first started writing, I felt it suited my personality perfectly as I prefer solitary activities, such as being shut away in a room to write. This is perfect for me!

Then… I realized that once the book is complete and has been published, it is guess what? Time to talk about your book! I hadn’t counted on that, but it is true. It’s an author’s job to talk about her book and to market her book. This realization has caused me to slowly come out of my shell.

It has been slow, though. Just ask my co-workers who didn’t know I wrote books until almost two years after I started working there. Why, you might ask? I don’t exactly know…shyness, I think. I can’t tell you how many times people have come up to say:  “I didn’t know you wrote books.”

It is a good thing that I surround myself with people who help me do the talking that I find difficult to do. My husband is a prime example. Just recently, he was taking a picture of me at Barnes And Noble as I was holding my new book. A few young women were nearby and after realizing that two of them had photobombed our picture, I turned the nearest corner to hide. He, on the other hand, approached them, started talking to them, and then handed each one of them my business card.

Earlier that evening at a restaurant, the manager had come up to us to see how our meal was. We made small talk about how the school year was almost finished, and it came up that I was a teacher and just as eagerly anticipating the end of the year. Immediately, my seven-year-old son says to the manager: “She’s an author too.” This led into a conversation about my book, and my husband then handed her a card, which she asked me to sign.

So, there you have it! Shyness is no way to market your book. Once the “easy” part (writing the book itself) is done, then it’s time for the hard part (marketing) to begin. First, surround yourself with awesome family and friends that will help spread the word about your book. Second, forgo the shyness and talk about your book. And, for goodness sake’s, don’t work someplace for two years without telling your co-workers that you write books!

Here’s a little bit about my book.
Seventeen-year-old Ellie Cummings just wants to be a regular teenager, but after her mother’s mysterious murder, she isn’t sure if she’ll ever be normal again. Her mother’s death has left Ellie and her father worlds apart. And when her best friend abandons her, Ellie has no one else to turn to—except for the strange boy who says he can help.

Gabe de la Cruz seems to know way too much about everything,
and her instincts tell Ellie to stay far away. But when he claims that he can communicate with the dead through an ancient Incan artifact, Ellie can’t resist the temptation of seeing her mother again. In the hanan pacha—the Incan afterworld—Ellie’s mother sends a message to help Ellie understand what happened the night of the murder—a message that may be better kept a secret . . 

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Through the Years

This is the other video I made for the LDStorymakers Writers Conference this year.


The Men of Storymakers


This is a funny video I made in conjunction with the LDStorymakers Writers Conference this last weekend. I was the MC, and it's tradition for the MC to come up with something funny each morning.

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Author Interview: J. Lloyd Morgan

Have you ever just met someone and just thought, "I could be friends with that person?" Well, sure you have! And so have I. One of those people was J. Lloyd Morgan, who contacted me a couple of years ago to do a blog tour for him. Then he asked me to edit a book for him. And then we did a book signing together. And then I edited some more. And ... yeah. Good times.

Signing together at said book signing.

Jason (that's what all the cool people call him - Jason) recently undertook a project that I found quite fascinating and I was excited to help him out with it. Let us now launch into interview format and have a chat with J. Lloyd Morgan.

Question: Jason, you based your most recent book, The Mirror of the Soul, on the songs of Chris de Burgh.  How did you come up with this idea?

Answer: I’ve been a fan of Chris de Burgh for years, since the first time I heard “Don’t Pay the Ferryman” on MTV in the early 80s. However, his song “The Lady in Red” is probably what he’s best known for. He continues to put out new albums. In 2006, his album The Storyman included the song “The Mirror of the Soul.” I was blown away by not only the story, but also of the song’s message. Since I’d already written my first novel, I thought, “Wow, the story of that song would make a great book.” But I also thought, “Hmmm. How do you fill out a full novel based on a single song?” So I got the idea to interweave other Chris de Burgh songs into the narrative.

Question: Did you find it easy or difficult to weave each of his songs into the story line?

Answer: It was hard figuring out which songs to include, but from there, it was fairly easy. Books tend to be a lot of little stories that combine into a greater overall story. While I invented most of what is in the book, the basic plot and some of the subplots were inspired by songs.

Question: One of Chris's songs, "Lady in Red," has a very contemporary feel while the others are more medieval in nature. Did that present a problem?

Answer: Yes and no. At its heart, “The Mirror of the Soul” is about the characters who happen to be in a medieval setting. The song “The Lady in Red” is really a love song that is fairly timeless. Granted, while I did a lot of research on the time and place of this book, I’m sure some historian will point out, “In 1453 they did not have the color red!” or some such nonsense.

Question: What was Chris's reaction when you contacted him about this project?

Answer: To even get the idea to Chris, I had to go through his management. They really liked the idea and asked for a full-blown outline for Chris to review. I was on pins and needles after I’d sent the outline. Chris said the outline was “very strong” and loved the idea of mixing in his other songs. He even gave a suggestion for one of the songs, which I included. (The song he suggested was “The Girl with April in her Eyes.”) In the end, he gave not only his permission, but also his encouragement.

Question: You are also the author of other books - The Hidden Sun, The Waxing Moon, and The Zealous Star. Can you tell us a bit about those?

Answer: The Hidden Sun was my first novel—it sort of defies a traditional genre. It’s not fantasy or historical fiction. It’s fiction that takes place in medieval times. I wanted to write a story where people are faced with problems that they couldn’t solve using magic or modern technology. While editing it, I got an idea for a book (The Waxing Moon) that’s not really a sequel as much as an additional story that takes place after the first book. The last book of the series, The Zealous Star, is pretty much another standalone book that also ties the whole series together. If all goes according to plan, it should be out in June of this year.

Question: What do you consider to be the most rewarding thing about being an author?

Answer: Tricky question and I’m going to give you a tricky answer. Personally, the best part of writing is when I get an idea that really works—and it almost always comes while I’m in the process of writing. That creative spark is an emotional high. It’s also nice when you hear either first or second hand that someone really enjoyed what you wrote. In a way, writing is a form of immortality. My books will, hopefully, be around quite a while after I’m gone.


Question: Do you have any writing rituals that make the process easier for you? I, for instance, write best when I have a glass of ice water and a tube of Chapstick nearby. Well, they aren't just nearby - I do use them. You know what I mean.

Answer: When writing for a certain genre, I tend to listen to music that reminds me of that genre. I wrote a couple of short stories for Michael Young’s Christmas anthologies, and listened to quite a bit of Christmas music beforehand. When writing The Mirror of the Soul, I listened to nothing but Chris de Burgh music for nearly three months. (And I loved every minute of it.) When I’m writing, I need it to be totally quiet. I lock myself away and come up for air now and again.

Click here to order The Mirror of the Soul, which is awesome, and click below to see the video of the song that inspired this whole idea!



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