Showing posts with label book launch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book launch. Show all posts

Saturday, October 6, 2012

BOOK EXCERPT: SEVENTH DIMENSION - THE DOOR: A Young Adult Fantasy, CHAPTER 1: “The Dark Secret of Shale Snyder”





Prologue

A diary entry many years later:

“Long ago, a magical king was born in a kingdom where animals talked and intellect sparred with spirituality. It was a time when truth transcended culture, forgiveness won battles, and love conquered a young girl’s heart.

But lest I get ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning—which happened a long, long, long time ago. So long ago, I barely remember the beginning of my journey to the Seventh Dimension.



Chapter One

The Dark Secret of Shale Snyder


I hid in a closet underneath the stairs—my safe house. Nobody would find me in here. It wasn’t used because the ceiling was too low. After the accident, the closet became my friend. I wanted to avoid Judd, who came over to visit Chumana. She was not my sister but we lived together.
Guilt overwhelmed me. The door creaked as I turned the handle. I held my breath and peered through the tiny slit. Moving shadows darkened the room. Judd, Rachel, and Chumana stared into a small brown shoebox.
Chumana burst out crying. “I hate Shale.”
I cringed. She already hated me anyway, ever since we moved in with them a few months earlier.
Rachel stood and recited a Jewish prayer. “Barukh shem k'vod malkhuto l'olam va'ed. Blessed is the name of his glorious kingdom forever and ever.” With her unkempt hair, puffy red eyes, and flushed face, I barely recognized my best friend.
“Why are you praying?” Judd snapped. “We aren’t here to pray.”
“Accidents happen,” Rachel said.
“She should be cursed,” Judd exploded.
“Don’t say that,” Rachel said.
 “How do you know it was an accident?” Chumana asked.
I looked away. I couldn’t listen. My whole body quivered—what kind of curse?
Judd’s voice cracked. “I demand she tell us what happened.”
The three twelve-year-olds sat silently for a moment before Rachel responded. “She fell down the stairs with Fifi and she’s afraid.”
I swallowed hard.
Judd pulled his uncle’s Atlanta Braves cap over his eyes and clinched his hand into a fist. “I hope Shale never has any friends—for the rest of her life.” He covered his face and sobbed.
I bit my fingernail holding back tears. I’d never heard a boy cry. Could his curse come true?
Chumana’s red hair matched her fiery temper. “That’s not enough of a curse. She already doesn’t have any friends.”
“I’m her friend,” Rachel said. “Accidents happen.”
Rachel lived two buildings down from us in the Hope Garden Apartments. Would she still be my friend if I told her the truth? I didn’t just fall—it was what I was doing when I fell. I was too afraid. I rubbed my swollen ankle, a reminder of my foolishness. The doctor hoped it would heal, but Fifi lay in the box.
Probably God hated me, too. If I told the truth, everyone would hate me. I couldn’t even tell my mother. My father—he left me long ago.


***

Two Years Later

I felt a hand reach underneath my blue skirt. I spun around on my toes. Students in the crowded hallway blended into a blur of anonymity. Hurried bodies shoved past. Am I going crazy? Did I imagine it? I scanned faces and froze each one, like a snapshot with a camera.
“Shale, why are you standing there? Come on or you’ll be late to class.” Rachel was waiting at the hall lockers.
I walked towards her as the bell rang.
“Are you okay?” She furrowed her brow.
“I’m fine.” I smiled, pretending nothing had happened. I’d think about it later. “Did you finish your analysis of As You Like It?”
Rachel’s brown eyes bulged. “Is it due today?”
“Here’s mine. You can take a quick look if you need to.”
“Oh, thanks, Shale. I hate Shakespeare anyway. No copying, promise. Just a peek.”
“It’s no different from reading Spark Notes on the web,” I quipped.
When we walked into English class at Garden High School, I sat in the seat closest to the door and stared out into the darkened hallway. Who did it? What would I do if I caught him? Mrs. Wilkes’s voice brought me back to reality as she recited from a Shakespearean play.

“All the world’s a stage.
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances
And one man in his time plays many parts
His acts being seven ages.”

What was my part? At fourteen, did I have one yet?

***

Later in the afternoon, I tripped while stepping off the school bus. My books were scattered over the ground. My bum ankle from the accident two years earlier would catch at the worst possible moments—what I considered my eternal punishment.
Scrambling to pick them up, I wiped the red Georgia clay off my math book. The bus waited long enough to make sure it wouldn’t run me over before pulling away.
“Hey, wait up, ya’ll.” I walked faster to catch up as Rachel stopped, but Chumana and Judd kept going. We still lived in the same apartment complex on the south side of Atlanta—had for years.
“If you used a backpack, you wouldn’t have dropped your books,” Rachel chided me.
“Mine broke.” I scanned Rachel’s back. “Where’s yours?”
“I did my homework at school. This is all I needed.” Rachel waved a thick book with strange-looking letters in the air.
“Can you read that stuff?”
“Sure,” Rachel laughed, “but I don’t know what it means. You could too if I taught you.” Rachel flipped to the first page. “You start on this side.” Her finger pointed to a line of Hebrew and she ran her finger across the page from right to left.
 “Really?”
“Yes.” Rachel giggled. “So who reads backward, the English or the Jews?”
 “I’d say the Jews. I can say that since I’m not Jewish, right?”
“Why not?”
“Writing would sure be easier if English was right to left. I wouldn’t smear my words.”
Rachel nodded. “I forget you’re left-handed. It’s crazy, isn’t it—like the Brits drive on the left side and we drive on the right.”
We walked for a while not saying anything. I glanced at my friend with her striking olive skin, almond brown eyes, and brown hair. “Do you like being Jewish?”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know any different.”
 “I wish I was Jewish.”
“Why?” Rachel asked.
“It would be neat to be able to say I was something.”
“You could go to church,” Rachel suggested.
“Mom and Remi would never go. Every time they talk about God or anything religious, they end up fighting.”
Rachel flinched. “That’s too bad. By the way, thanks for your help with English.”
“You’re welcome.” I switched my books to the left, thinking how much I hated the long walk home, especially since we now lived farther away. The new unit we moved into when Remi and mother married was at the very back by the woods.
Rachel frowned, noticing my musings. “What’s it like having a father now?”
I bit my lip hesitating. “At least I have my own bedroom and don’t have to share with Chumana.”
“That’s good,” Rachel agreed. “How did you ever end up living with her anyway?”
“Mother didn’t have any money when we moved to Atlanta. She found an ad that Chumana’s mother placed in the Atlanta Constitution looking for a roommate. It was a cheap place to live.”
I eyed Judd and Chumana ahead of us. “What are they talking about? They have been spending a lot of time together.”
Rachel lowered her voice. “I know.”
“Maybe they deserve each other.”
Rachel edged up even closer to me and spoke in a whisper, “You never knew your father, right?”
“No.” I clutched my books which now seemed heavier. “Mother couldn’t wait to marry Remi after being divorced for so many years. Then she cried all night when they returned from their honeymoon in the mountains. I couldn’t sleep. I wondered why, but was too afraid to ask.”
“Maybe it was a bad honeymoon,” Rachel chortled.
“Silly you. How can you have a bad honeymoon?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel replied. “I’m sure it’s happened.”
“I hardly knew Remi the day they married.”
“It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to be at your own parent’s wedding. I mean, it might be funny if it could happen,” Rachel said.
“Like Back to the Future?” Then my thoughts darkened. “How would you like having a stepfather you don’t know?”
Rachel shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”
I’d never confided in anyone about my past but now I couldn’t stop. “Presents arrive twice a year from North York. I don’t remember anything about my father. One day he left and never returned.”
“I can’t imagine what that would be like,” Rachel said.
“Sometimes I get angry.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. “About what?”
“Mother didn’t ask how I felt about her remarrying.”
We walked in silence as my words hung in the air. I kicked a rock on the sidewalk and it skipped into the gutter. Rachel’s warm nature was comforting. She came from such a perfect family, or it seemed. I’d tell her things I wouldn’t tell anyone else.
Voices from the past mocked me. “Do I walk like a chicken?”
Rachel laughed. “No, you don’t walk like a chicken.”
“Do I have big lips?”
“Big lips?” Rachel stopped and stared at me surprised. “No.”
“You don’t think so? Every time I wet them with my tongue, I worry I’m making them fat—so I was told.”
Rachel examined my fair face. I pretended not to notice. “You’re beautiful. Who would say such mean things?”
I didn’t want to tell her. What was the point in making him look bad?
“I love your green eyes and long brown hair.” Rachel reached out and grabbed a couple of strands, flipping them over my shoulder. “I wish mine wasn’t wavy with all the humidity. I use an iron to straighten it but it doesn’t stay that way for long.” Rachel giggled. “Guys love long, straight hair.”
“Remi wants me to call him dad, but that seems weird.”
A few feet in front of us, Chumana knelt on the sidewalk.
Rachel squinted. “What are they looking at?”
An earthworm wiggled on the sidewalk, barely warm from the late afternoon sun. A few weeks after Christmas, it was the wrong time of year for creepy crawlers.
“It’s probably cold,” I said.
Judd lifted his foot to squash it.
“Wait,” I demanded.
Judd glared at me.
“Why kill it?” I asked.
He leaned down and picked it up, dangling the worm a few inches above the sidewalk. “Have you ever dissected one of these?”
I shook my head.
He stiffened. “I should make you squish it between your delicate fingers.”
I stared at the worm. Judd dropped it on the sidewalk. As he started to smash it again, I leaned over and shoved him. “Just leave it alone.”
Judd’s face turned beet red. “Don’t ever push me again. You hear me?”
I nodded. My knees spasmed like a jack-in-the-box.
“You don’t like squishing worms but you killed my puppy.” His icy eyes ripped at my soul.
Rachel said, “Get over it. You sound so hateful.”
Chumana glared through her thick, black-rimmed glasses. “Judd is right, though, Rachel. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember,” Rachel whispered.
My heart raced as I picked up the worm—its slimy body was cold to the touch—and stuck it in my pocket.
Judd shook his head and stomped off.
Ruefully, I urged Rachel and Chumana, “You two go on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Rachel nodded. They continued walking, leaving me alone.
After wrapping the worm up in some brown leaves, I placed it on a warmer corner of the concrete. When I lifted my eyes, I saw the white dog for the first time. She sat nearby wagging her fluffy tail.
As I approached her, she stood and limped backward. The scruffy creature was dirty and mangy, with floppy short ears and almond brown eyes. If she belonged to someone or was lost, the owner wasn’t taking very good care of her. A fuzzy feeling warmed my heart. Did she like me? Before I could get too close, the dog turned and ran away. 

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

BOOK MARKETING: INTERVIEW WITH LORILYN ROBERTS: “Taste and See,” First Chapters by John 3:16 Authors





Interview with John 3:16 Marketing Network 
Founder Lorilyn Roberts

About
New Book
Taste and See


QUESTION: Why did you decide to publish Taste and See?

LORILYN: The idea for Taste and See, a Sampling of First Chapters, came after reading Nathan Bransford's blog on September 29, 2011. He asked the following question:

“There is so much talk about self-published books in the writing-o-sphere. But have you actually read one?"  69% said yes and 30% said no out of 1,772 votes.

That made me think, that one out of three readers has never read a book that is self-published, and if you include print-on-demand books, the percentage is probably higher. I thought, why not give those readers an opportunity to enjoy a sampling of first chapters by authors they have never heard about who are published in a variety of ways?

The John 3:16 Marketing Network doesn't make a distinction and I have always maintained that readers don't care how books are published. If someone finds a book he likes, he will buy it. From that thought came the idea, why not give authors an opportunity to share the first chapter of their book in a “First Chapters Sampling”?

We have all enjoyed chocolate samplings, coffee samplings, tea samplings, and other such assortments, and it's fun to "experiment" and try something new. Sometimes we find something we really like and then we head to the store or web and buy the product, whatever that might be. It's long been known as a proven marketing strategy to give people samples of free products to try, so we are just "piggybacking" on an old idea with a new twist.  I sent out an email to our members to see how many would be interested and the response was overwhelmingly positive.

A very small portion of the publishers was reluctant to let their author contribute a first chapter, so we offered the option to contribute something else; hence, the miscellany section. We wanted to include everybody who wanted to participate.

QUESTION: What are your long-term goals for Taste and See?

LORILYN: My long-term goal is to increase the opt-in list for the John 3:16 Marketing Network.  I hope to eventually offer free e-books, more sample chapters, and other book opportunities. Perhaps we will have a book club where books can be purchased at a discounted price.

The short-term goal is to provide exposure for the John 3:16 Marketing Network as well as Network authors. New and low-profile authors' greatest obstacle to successful sales is exposure. I hope readers will take advantage of this FREE opportunity to sample first chapters and other offerings by close to sixty authors. It's a win-win for everyone. Readers discover new authors, and authors get exposure to readers who may want to buy their books.

QUESTION: How were the books chosen for Taste and See?

LORILYN: The chapters in Taste and See were chosen by the authors themselves. The opportunity was weighted toward those who had contributed the most to the John 3:16 Marketing Network; i.e., featuring authors in the network on their blogs, posting Facebook and Twitter announcements for book launches, offering free e-gifts for book launches, participating in the forum, and other social networking activities.

QUESTION: How does Taste and See expand upon the John 3:16 Marketing Network's ability to help authors market their books?

LORILYN: Because this is an innovative idea, I am not sure how successful it will be to promote authors' books, but my feeling is we focus on process and God controls the outcome. My overall goal is to promote books with a Christian worldview, and in so doing, we are making an impact on the world. If we make a difference for one reader or one author, that is a profound accomplishment. Every great book ever discovered began with one person.

QUESTION: What other plans do you have for the John 3:16 Marketing Network in the future?

I have lots of ideas but until I finish my Masters's in Creative Writing, my time to implement them is limited. I do struggle with that because I tend to be impatient, but God is teaching me patience and to wait on Him. As it is said in Ecclesiastes 3:1: "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven." (King James Bible, Cambridge Ed.)  It is then I remind myself that the John 3:16 Marketing Network is bigger than my vision and that God has a purpose and a plan. When I give my dreams to the Creator, He does far more than I could ever have hoped for or imagined.

My biggest “reward” from the John 3:16 Marketing Network has been the relationships I have formed with members. We pray for each other, encourage each other, share knowledge, post links to articles, announce upcoming opportunities, provide answers to questions, write book reviews, and offer encouragement when needed. We even share heartaches and disappointments, for there is a genuine humility among members. There is nothing else like it on the web.

For more information on Taste and See: Volume 1, click here.



Tuesday, February 22, 2011

LORILYN INTERVIEWS Tracy Krauss about her book ”My Mother the Man Eater”



Lorilyn: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Tracy: Although I have always loved the creative process and have been a “storyteller” for my entire life, I started writing about 25 years ago. Of course, in those days it was a compulsion I found time for during my children’s naps. I hammered out reams of paper on my mother’s old typewriter, or filled notebooks with my scrawl. 

When the home computer age came to be, it revolutionized my writing, but I spent many tedious hours retyping what I had previously written and discovered most of it wasn’t really worth the paper it was written on! I finally started looking more seriously into publishing about eight years ago.


Lorilyn: How do you write? By the “seat of your pants” or outlining?

Tracy: A little of both. Once I get the inspiration for a novel, I like to create very elaborate background stories for each character. I like to know my people inside and out and understand what makes them tick. Then I do a rough outline, eventually expanding into plotting each Chapter or scene. Invariably, though, when I start the actually writing process, lots of things change and I go with that. The characters seem to take on a life of their own and often surprise me with what they say and do.

Lorilyn: Tell us about your new book, where the idea came from, how long it took you, what inspired you, and how people can get a copy.

Tracy: My Mother the Man-Eater 
was originally inspired when I was playing the Sims. The characters and interaction mushroomed into the idea for this book – a forty-something cougar on the quest for fulfillment. 

From the time I actually sat down and began crafting the idea into a book until it was finished was about four years. I tend to work on several projects at once, so this was while working on three other novels and about six plays (not to mention working). I

t is available at the usual online stores - Amazon, B & N, Chapters/Indigo (in Canada), Blessings Christian marketplace, and others. It is also for sale in several local brick and mortar stores in my area, Chapters/Indigo Stores, or directly from the publisher.

Lorilyn: What would you say to a writer who aspires to write fiction? Any good tips?

Tracy: Never stop learning. The moment you think you know it all is the moment you become stagnant. This means writing, writing, writing, and sharing your work with a critique group or other trusted friends. (Start with people who won’t be too hard on you.) 

After that, seek critique from unbiased and professional people. These commentaries often hurt, so get used to it and get tough. It makes you stronger and makes you a better writer. 

Taking courses and workshops is probably also a good idea as is reading lots of books in various styles and genres. Finally, examine your reasons for writing. If it is to get rich and become the next NY best-seller, then maybe you should quit and do something else. 

If it is your passion, however, you really don’t need me telling you what to do. You already know: WRITE.

📗📗📗📗📗

Tracy Krauss is an author, artist, playwright, director, worship leader, and teacher. Originally from a small prairie town, she received her Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Saskatchewan. She has lived in many places in northern Canada with her husband, a pastor, and their children. They currently live in Tumbler Ridge, BC

My Mother the Man-Eater is Tracy’s second published novel. A third novel Play it Again is currently in the production phase and is the sequel to her debut novel And The Beat Goes On, an archeological suspense. Other published works include a play called ‘Ebenezer’s Christmas Carol’ available through Pioneer Drama Services.