Critters at the Keyboard . . . .: January 2013

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Christine Young - Romance Writer: Christine Young Hosts Medicine Man 1: The Chief of...

Christine Young - Romance Writer: Christine Young Hosts Medicine Man 1: The Chief of...: Please welcome S.R. Howen author of Medicine Man. S. R. will be awarding a $10 Wild Child Publishing GC to a randomly drawn commenter durin...

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

It's Raining Books: Medicine Man I: The Chief of All Time by S. R. How...

It's Raining Books: Medicine Man I: The Chief of All Time by S. R. How...: Today we're visiting with author S. R. Howen on her tour with Goddess Fish Promotions for the paranormal horror story with romantic eleme...

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

MK McClintock Blog: Medicine Man I: The Chief of All Time - An Intervi...

MK McClintock Blog: Medicine Man I: The Chief of All Time - An Intervi...: Shannon Running Deer is American Indian by blood, he has forsaken his people's ancient ways to embrace the "modern" world as a wealthy,...

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Carmen Stefanescu guest blogger

Please Welcome  Carmen Stefanescu Romania Author to my blog.

  I
am Carmen Stefanescu from
            http://shadowspastmystery.blogspot.ro/

            I
live in Romania, better
known as Dracula's country, in Eastern Europe.

            Books have
always meant so much to me. They still do. I cannot imagine having no books in
my life, either in print or e-books nowadays. Books created, in my mind, a new
landscape that allowed me to see life differently. It was the only way to
escape, evade reality during the grim years before 1989, the fifty years of
communist dictatorship when just speaking about God, faith, reincarnation or
paranormal phenomena could have led someone to great trouble - the psychiatric
hospital if not to prison.

            My novel, Shadows of the
Past, was released on 4th December 2012 by Wild Child
Publishing, USA.
It's a paranormal romance/light horror. For me, a Romanian, this is a huge
accomplishment. I can tell you it was
a tough task for a beginner and I, a non-native English speaker, can say it was
a real challenge. Being able to enter the highly competitive world of
publishing isn't easy. Living overseas made it even more
difficult. 

            The
fact that writing my novel took me two months, while finding acceptance for its
publishing took more than seven years, took me by surprise. I looked for literary
agents at first and then, receiving rejection after rejection, I started
contacting publishers directly.
The only solution for me was e-publishing.   However, in this long process I have
learned much and keep doing it. Now I’m at a new stage in my learning
experience with promoting, blogs, websites, review requests, etc.

             The fact that people who read Shadows of the Past say it's a compelling
story, "that will keep
you glued to the pages" showing they enjoy it, even "could relate to the characters" makes me happy;
it feels nice and warm.

            People ask why I publish abroad and
above all why English. As a teacher of English for so many years, I felt
it easy to express my thoughts and feelings in English, even if vocabulary
usage may be a bit tricky. I started with poems that met acceptance abroad and
in 2004 I was awarded the Silver Cup for poetry. 

            Regarding my novel, I absolutely didn’t want to go
self-publishing. I wanted to know, and this could be told only by a
professional editor, if my writing had any value. It appears it has.

            I would suggest to aspiring authors to roll with the punch of rejections and stand up and
try again. And above all: Read! Write! Read and write! In my opinion,
these are the main rules to becoming a writer: read a lot and write a lot. You
can’t do one without the other, no matter how much you try.

            I
want to thank again my editor Shawn for making my debut novel a dream come true,
and for inviting me as guest on her blog!

Happy Writing and Reading to everyone in
2013!






Buy her book here







http://shadowpastmystery.blogspot.com/

 

http://bookblogs.ning.com/profile/CarmenStefanescu

 

http://youtu.be/6LmY-9yDl5s

 

http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/paranormal-c-84/shadows-of-the-past-p-410.html

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Guest Blog--Patrick Royal

Please welcome my guest blogger today:

Patrick Royal Author of Sleep Stalker from Wild Child Publishing

Author’s ideas come to them in many different ways but mine came in sort of a vision. It was one morning on my way to work. A morning I’ll never forget. Gray clouds blanketed the sky and blocked out the sun. Wind blew hard through long blades of grass and sent them into rolling waves.

Now, I don’t consider myself psychic by any means. However, these certain scenes seemed to unveil itself to me. I remember sitting at a red stoplight when a car in crossing traffic passed in front of me. From where I was there was no driver. The light turned green, and I went straight. I traveled a block further, and a shadowy being hovered and floated on the side of the road. When I passed it, I turned my head and looked over my shoulder; it was gone.

Can I say that every writer experiences this? No, I can’t; I only know what happened to inspire me. I bet if you ask 9 out of 10 of them though, they will tell you something overwhelming has inspired them what to write.

Please check out Patrick's latest work:

Sleep Stalker

A group of people are experiencing nightmares. They are a bit more than just bad dreams. After numerous reports of an outbreak of nightmares, unexplainable deaths begin to occur. Three decades later, it happens again. There is speculation that the deaths are at the hands of a demon. Is it a Demon or something more sinister? If it is a demon, can it be stopped?

Sleep Stalker will appeal to the YA13+ crowd as well as adult readers. It takes you on a wild and terrifying ride from the 1960's to modern time and to Hades and back. Do you have your coins for the ferryman...

Genre: Horror

Book Length: Category Novel
Word Count: 61,174
Pages: 216
Price: $4.99

Just read Sleep Stalker by Patrick Royal. I was intrigued by the different stories. Good show of characters and imagination. Would like to see more from this author.
Date Added: 01/06/2013 by Sandi Sipe

This is truly an awesome book and story line!!! It kept me guessing throughout with all the turns and twists! I grew up in the Hobart, Indiana area so to visit the landmarks and the people from my home town, was awesome!!! Great new author to add to my favorite list!! I have read two of Patrick Royal's books and was totally absorbed with both for the few days it took me to read them- couldn't put them down!!! With each new book- the twists and turns continue... Can't wait for your next release Patrick!!!!
Date Added: 01/06/2013 by Rhonda Burton

Just finished Sleep Stalker and loved it! glad to see a good novel in this genre that is not full of gore. Patrick Royal is an author worth reading. My only regret is that I am finished with it. Will definately be looking for his next endeavor. I highly recommend it any wanting a new author to follow. Keep'em comming Patrick. You have a new fan.Date Added: 11/26/2012 by david smith

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Fear and Loathing in 2013

This is this months post for the AW blog chain.

This month's prompt:
The Number 13

With 2013 upon us, now is the time to thirteen it up. Anything from "Happy New Year 2013" to "Triskaidekaphobia" and all points in between!

I thought about this, doesn’t 2013 just feel odd? For some reason 2013 feels like the title to SicFi or horror book.

2013: Thirteen things to fear!

1.) Writing a check and not putting 2013 on it. Not that I write that many checks anymore, everything’s electronic these days, but I know I am going to do it. I will write 2012 for at least a month before my brain realizes that it is 2013.

2.) Reality TV shows. A good number of them are on this new break thing and will be returning in 2013. I am already dreading it.

3.) New shoes. Yes, my shoes have finally reached the stage that duct tape can no longer fix them and I must buy new ones. I hate this process, I can never find ones that don’t bother my feet, I should just become a naturalist and stop wearing shoes all together. Maybe I could star on Dual Survival with Cody Lundin.

4.) Bacon shortage. Forget the zombies. Forget a global pandemic, what happens if we run out of bacon? No more bacon double cheeseburgers, no more bacon and eggs, no more bacon chocolate . . . wait, okay, well, maybe that one would be okay. But what would we do without Bakon Vodka? (And I don’t know about you, but begg’n strips just won’t cut it)

5.) My trash bags no longer fit my kitchen garbage can. In the spirit of everything else shrinking, like the size of a TP roll, that they will decide to make my kitchen trash bags smaller (but in the same size box!) and I will be left puzzling over why they no longer fit the can.

6.) More limited edition flavors. What is it with this stuff? They put out a candy bar, a milk shake, or even a sandwich and then call it a limited edition. What do they think I am going to do? Run out an buy millions of it to squirrel away and sell on ebay later as a limited edition? (NRB?)

7.) Gas prices. Need I elaborate?

8.) Taking down the Christmas tree. Yes, okay, it is still up. I hate the chore of taking it back down, it fun to put up, but taking it down is boring and time consuming. And then there is that ehco in the room when it’s gone. (Helloooooo, why is my room so bare now?)

9.) NYC soft drink laws spread across the country. I am responsible for my own spare tire thank you very much. The government needs to stay out of what I eat and drink, as far as my choices go. What’s next, deciding that my ass is to large for my sofa, so forcing me to buy a new one in a smaller size to make me aware my ass is size large?

10.) Touch screen everything! I like my touch screen phone, however, the touch screen laptops have something to be desired. I have a bottle of screen cleaner right on my desk. Do you know how often I have to clean my screen the way it is now? I’d be cleaning it every 5 minutes if I had a touch screen one. While editing I’d be wondering why the author used orange to mark . . . oh, wait, that Cheetos cheese.

11.) Wal-mart will finally put the last of its competitors out of business. I will them be forced to buy whatever brand they got on sale and the only one they have on their shelves. I tried to by toilet bowl cleaner once and the only thing they had were those toilet wand things—if they worked by magic that would be great, but I kind of doubt that it the case.

12.) Direct TV no longer having AMC. What would I do without the Walking Dead? I have to know what happens next. What about the governor? What happens to Rick? Does he keep losing it?

13.) The toilet seat. Yes, the toilet seat. Let me explain. We have one of those solid oak seats. And one day doing what one does on a toilet seat, and needing to use the aforementioned smaller roll, I reached to take care of things and . . . Jammed a sliver of solid oak under my finger nail. Yes, under my middle finger nail. Now, lets not even mention the pain, and the dripping blood (okay, it was splattering all over the place) but how in the same heck did that happen? One of those things that you couldn’t repeat if you had a script and a director. Then, staring at that matchstick wide sliver under the nail and knowing I had to pull it out . . . Yes, I have good reason to fear the toilet seat in 2013, or until I replace the darn thing.