Farley’s Friday: A Special Announcement

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 7 Comments

Farley here,

My friend, Joan Y. Edwards, is having a special day.

As you know, I’m getting older. I’m almost 8 now, and that’s a lot in dog years. Kristina will take care of me as I get older, but humans need care too. So, Joan has written a guide about caring for the elderly, and I think it might help my human friends.

Screen Shot 2016-05-12 at 9.25.36 AMToday, Joan’s book, JOAN’S ELDER CARE GUIDE, is available.

Joan asked me to help spread the word, and how could I not? She’s been following Farley’s Friday for years, and always has  a word of encouragement for me.

So here I am, wagging my tail in encouragement at Joan.

Go, Joan, Go.

What’s her book about…

Joan’s Elder Care Guide: Empowering You and Your Elder to Survive gives you, the caregiver, ways to meet your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social needs and those of your elder to promote healing, well-being, and survival. Based on the author’s research and fourteen years of experience caring for her mother, this book provides many resources to find the right place for your elder to live, explains ways to improve communication to help find solutions to problems, and gives organization ideas for medical, financial, insurance, and legal documents.

It offers ways for a caregiver to get time away from caregiving responsibilities and contains information substitute caregivers must have to keep their elders safe. Along with all this, the book explains the signs of the end of life, ways to celebrate an elder’s life, and gives duties of an executor of an estate. It also includes ten useful charts to assist in assessing and recording an elder’s needs and capabilities.

Woof Woof.

BOOM. How To Create A Successful Thunderclap Campaign

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

As I move through my publishing journey, I’m trying new ways to make my work visible, and I’m sharing what I try with you. THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELLING BOOKS TO NON-BOOKSTORES is my first non-fiction book, and probably needs a different marketing strategy than my novels.

My latest venture is with Thunderclap.

Thunderclap is a crowdspeaking platform that helps people be heard by saying something together. It allows a single message to be mass-shared, flash mob-style, so it rises above the noise of your social networks. By boosting the signal at the same time, Thunderclap helps a single person create action and change like never before.

The first step in creating a Thunderclap campaign is creating an account. Just follow the instructions. I supported various campaigns, so I understood what it meant to ask others to support my campaign.  It’s easy and not intrusive in any way.

I discovered that by supporting a campaign one post went out on my facebook account as a specified time. You can also support campaigns on Twitter and Tumbler or on all three platforms.

The second step is to create your campaign. I searched through the successful campaigns for non-fiction books and studied how to create a campaign.

Here’s mine.

Screen Shot 2016-05-12 at 9.32.30 AM

The third step is to get 100 people to support your campaign. Once that’s done. Your message will go live on the date you specified. If you don’t get at least 100 people to support your campaign, then no message will be posted and you won’t get the visibility you were striving for.

To get 100 people takes a bit of work. I went through my list of contacts and chose 150 people who I thought would support my campaign. I sent them a personal message asking for help. It took me just under a week to hit 100.

I’m posting today because yesterday I reached the 100 mark. My campaign is successful and one message will be sent on May 28th on the networks of everyone who has supported me.

Right now, my reach is just under 225,000 people. I would love to reach 500,000 people.

To support my campaign, just click here.

Let me know if you try a Thunderclap campaign, and I’ll be sure to support it.

Thank you to everyone who has already supported this new venture.

Thanks for reading…

 

 

 

Write Better Fiction: Point Of View

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 11 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover Point Of View. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

What is Point of View?

I use the Point Of View (POV) in many of my spreadsheet columns and have been asked to describe what POV is.

POV is the perspective the story is told from. There are three main types of POV.

  • Omniscient
  • First Person
  • Third Person

There is also second person, but this doesn’t seem to be used much in commercial fiction, so I won’t spend any time on it.

OMNISCIENT is when the narrator of the story knows all. The narrator can get into the head of any character to drive the story forward.

An excellent of a novel written in omniscient POV is the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. One way to determine this is to notice that the narrator provides information that the characters are unaware of.

FIRST PERSON means the narrator is speaking directly to the reader. This comes in the form of ‘I’.

Janet Evanovich writes the Stephanie Plum novels in first person. Often, near the beginning, she’ll write something like: My name is Stephanie Plum. I work as a bond enforcer…

THIRD PERSON is written from the he said / she said narration.

Of course, I have to mention my novels for third person point of view narration. I wrote  DESCENT, BLAZE,  and AVALANCHE in third person. I like to change points of view and get into the heads of more than one character, so this style suits me.

My favorite book on point of view is The Power Of Point Of View: Make Your Story Come To Life by Alicia Rasley. If you want an in-depth description of all the points of view and their variations, this is a great book to read.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have any thoughts on POV. What form do you write in and why?

Thanks for reading…

Mystery Mondays: Darlene Foster on Location of a Novel

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 18 Comments

As we continue our journey through Mystery Mondays writing advice, Darlene Foster is here to talk to us about location. Just check out the titles of the four books below, and you’ll see why she chose this topic.

Location, Location, Location

by Darlene Foster

AmandaBooks

 

Jane Austen gave us English country villages, Charles Dickens took us along the streets of Victorian London, and Lucy Maude Montgomery made us fall in love with Prince Edward Island. The location of many well-known works of fiction are an important element to each story. Think of one of your favourite novels and I am sure a vision of a place comes to mind.

Real estate agents declare the three most important things to selling a property are – location, location, location. The same applies to writing a story. It doesn´t have to be a real place. In fantasy, writers create worlds of their own. But it still should feel real. The reader should be able to picture the place and to feel they are there with the characters, in order to hold their attention.

A skilled author does this by using all the senses and by weaving action and dialogue within the description. Today’s readers no longer like large chunks of description. Young people in particular are used to a faster pace and get bored by description quickly.

 

Amandaonthe Danube
To Be Released Oct 1, 2016

 

 

 

In my Amanda adventure novels, I start with a location and create a story around it. This may not work for every writer but it works well for me. Initially, I wanted children to read about places I had visited that they may not know much about. After writing pages of detailed description, I came to the conclusion that what I wrote was totally boring and kids wouldn’t read it. I started to think about what a twelve-year-old would notice and how she would feel in that location. Then I created a main character and a mystery for her to solve. The adventure developed naturally from there. I continue to use the same main character, but the location changes in each novel of the series.

I have learned to pare down descriptions and write about the location using all five senses. I want the readers to feel the heat as Amanda crosses the desert on a camel, experience the fear as she is being chased through Gaudi´s buildings in Barcelona, smell the musty underground tunnel at Windsor castle and taste the sweet gingerbread in Nuremberg.

One of the best compliments I received was from a reader who used to live in the United Arab Emirates. After she read Amanda in Arabia – The Perfume Flask, she told me she felt like she was back home. That is what keeps this writer writing!

Whether I am out for a walk or travelling, I take many pictures, not just of regular tourist sites but of unique things that kids would find interesting. I keep my photo albums close at hand to refer to while I’m writing. They provide me with great ideas and a visual to help with descriptions.

As a writer, I am constantly on the lookout for the perfect location, location, location.

Darlene’s Bio:

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Brought up on a ranch in southern Alberta, Darlene Foster dreamt of travelling the world, meeting interesting people and writing novels. She is the author of the exciting adventure series featuring spunky 12-year-old Amanda Ross who loves to travel to unique places. Her books include: Amanda in Arabia – The Perfume Flask, Amanda in Spain – The Girl in The Painting, Amanda in England – The Missing Novel and Amanda in Alberta – The Writing on the Stone. Readers of all ages enjoy travelling with Amanda as she unravels one mystery after another. Darlene and her husband divide their time between the west coast of Canada and Orihuela Costa, in Spain. She believes everyone is capable of making their dreams come true.

The fifth book in the series, Amanda on The Danube – The Sounds of Music, will be available October 1, 2016

To find out more about Darlene…

 

 

 

 

Farley’s Friday: Animals in Need

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 7 Comments

Farley here.

Today I’m worrying about all the humans who have been separated from their pets and all the pets separated from their humans because of the fire in Fort McMurray.

If you haven’t heard, there is a great facebook site connecting people with their pets.

If you’ve lost a pet or found a pet, this is the place to list it. There are cats, dogs, donkeys, horses and even a dragon.

Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/Fort-McMurray-Fire-Emergency-Animal-Assistance-1585681045093011/
Thank you to all the wonderful people looking after the animals.

Screen Shot 2016-05-06 at 9.16.26 AM

Woof Woof.

Mystery Mondays: A Year of Advice

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 8 Comments

I can’t believe one year is coming up since the first Mystery Monday post.

It’s been a year of collecting great writing advice. So as a thank you to all my readers, I’ve created a book containing the advice from more than 30 of the author that I’ll give away starting June 20th, 2016.

The contributing authors have all given consent that their advice can be included in the book. They will retain all rights to their work. But they have generously allowed me to compile it into a book.

It’s with great excitement that I show you the cover today.

Screen Shot 2016-05-05 at 2.24.17 PM

I’ll be starting a newsletter, and for those who sign up the book is yours. I plan to create both a PDF and Mobi format. This is a learning experience, so bear with me as I try this out. All contributing authors will receive a copy directly from me.

Next, I just have to  figure out how to use  MailChimp and how to create a newsletter…

Thank you to all how have been reading and commenting, and thank you to the contributing authors.

Write Better Fiction: Avoid Repetitive Scene Openings

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover Scene Entry Types. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

Over the last few weeks, we covered scene entry, scene middle, and exit hooks. I’d like to back up a bit and look at scene entries again.

My husband was my first beta reader, and he read the first draft of the first novel I wrote. As it turns out, that novel is AVALANCHE, to be published this spring by Imajin Books.

His first comment to me, and I was a little crushed, was:

“Do you know you start every scene with a character in a doorway?”

I was expecting, “I love this book,” not actual critique. Well, I’ve since toughened up and have realized critique is much more helpful than unwarranted praise if you’re trying to write better. His comment drove me to figure out how to vary scene openings.

As you know, I use a spreadsheet to self-edit my novels.

I have a column called entry type. The choices are:

  • Dialogue
  • Thought
  • Narrative
  • Action

If you have other categories, please let me know in the comments below.

Once I’ve filled out my spreadsheet, I create a pie chart to see if my novel is balanced.

Screen Shot 2016-05-02 at 10.00.51 AM

 

Then I create a graph, to check if I’ve start the scenes in a variety of ways and didn’t get stuck in a pattern.

Screen Shot 2016-05-02 at 2.11.27 PM

 

D is dialogue

A is action

T is thought

N is narrative.

The idea is to ensure I haven’t started too many scenes in a row in the same way. If I have, I go back and revise the scenes, looking for a different way to write the opening. I don’t want to bore a reader by getting into a pattern.

I critiqued DESCENT, BLAZE and AVALANCHE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have any suggestions how to check for repetitive scene entries?

Thanks for reading…

I Think We Have A Name!

~ Kristina Stanley ~ Leave a comment

Dan Alatorre, author and host of” helpful writer ramblings from a disturbed mind just like yours”, is introducing a new writing contest. This could be interesting…

Reblogged from Dan’s site…

Dan Alatorre AUTHOR's avatarDAN ALATORRE

Remember last week when I asked if we should have a writing contest with prizes here on the blog? (What, you forgot? Click HERE)

A way to showcase you amazing people and give you an award to brag about?

I think we’re going to call the writing contest on the blog Word Weaver. It will be a quarterly contest with small cash prizes and maybe some money going to charity. Maybe I can also get some author friends to donate some books or something, too, as additional prizes, and eventually I’ll make a phone call over to the Tampa Tribune are the Oracle or something around here and see if they want to be a sponsor.

In the meantime, I thought the name, Word Weaver, was pretty good!

Word Weaver

See? Cool.

And as for a logo, I thought just those words with maybe a vine winding around…

View original post 59 more words

Mystery Mondays: Susan Toy on Dancing the Sophomore Slump Two-Step

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 27 Comments

I “met” Susan Toy  when she agreed to host me on ReadingRecommendations. I was nervous approaching her and requesting a guest spot. But she generously welcomed me and showed me the ropes for guest blogging. Today, I finally get to return the favour by having Susan on Mystery Mondays.

Dancing the Sophomore Slump Two-Step

by Susan M. Toy

… or I’m Writing as Fast as I Can!!It’s been four years since I published my first novel in the Bequia Perspectives series. Four long years. I began writing Island in the Clouds in 2001 with the intention of eventually writing and publishing a quartet of novels all set on the Caribbean island of Bequia and involving murder and mystery of some sort or another. So I gave the first novel that sub-title, suggesting the books that followed would be written from various perspectives of people living on the island. My cover designer, Jenny Ryan, further sealed the deal by adding a “1” to the top of the spine of the print edition. There was no going back on my word.

cover susan full colour jan2012 - large - Copy

In 2004, I completed the first draft of One Woman’s Island. 2006 saw the major completion of Number Three, Tropical Paradox (I wrote this for the Humber School of Creative Writing program). Number Four in the quartet (working title: Menopausal Mamas) began as a NaNoWriMo project, but it quickly developed into another novel set on Bequia. 2007 was when I wrote the bulk of that novel.

I tell you all this, because it’s not for lack of material I haven’t yet published another novel in this Bequia series.

I just happen to be the Queen of the Procrastinators. Heck! Writing this guest blog post is another means of procrastinating!! Procrastination is not my only problem, however. It’s what leads me to procrastinate that I want to address here. After all, it’s not like I’ve just been too lazy to get that second novel prepared and published. (Well, I have been sort of lazy, but there have been other mitigating circumstances.)

Over the past four years (I ePublished Island in the Clouds in Feb. 2012) I have promoted myself and my book, continued promoting other authors through Alberta Books Canada, looked for and developed new ways for all authors to promote themselves and their books; moved from Canada back to Bequia; developed the idea behind IslandShorts and ePublished (Oct. 2013) several short stories by J. Michael Fay and my own novella, That Last Summer.

I created the blog Reading Recommendations https://readingrecommendations.wordpress.com/ (Nov. 2013) and have promoted close to 300 authors from around the world (including Kristina Stanley!

https://readingrecommendations.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/kristina-stanley/) through that site. I have beta-read a number of author-friends’ manuscripts and helped them prepare for publication. I’ve been working with a new writer who will be ePublishing a full-length non-fiction book with photographs through IslandEditions. Bought a trailer in Ontario where I will now spend my summer months. I contributed a short story to Tim Baker’s https://readingrecommendations.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/tim-baker-2/ collection, Path of a Bullet, and I’ve written a number of guest blog posts as well as series of posts on my own blog that have proved to be very successful. I even took part in a discussion on self-publishing held at the

I even took part in a discussion on self-publishing held at the Calgary Public Library when I was visiting the city last October. Oh, yeah – and I read A LOT of books! Drank buckets of coffee. (AND WAS SUCKED INTO THE FACEBOOK VORTEX FROM TIME TO TIME, OF WHICH I AM SORELY ASHAMED.)

So cut me some slack!

Truth told, though, I’m not being entirely honest with you about the real problem of what’s held me back from rewriting and publishing that second novel, and I’m here now to confess my sins. Much of what I mentioned above that has kept me busy during the past four years is indeed busy-work … and an excuse on my part. (Whoa! I just went into the kitchen to begin washing dishes in order to avoid writing about this problem of mine! Housework signifies serious work avoidance.)

The real problem lies in this being my second book – my sophomore novel. Let’s face it, I have been extremely lucky and blessed with the response to Island in the Clouds. Really, only a couple … okay, three, reviews that were less than stellar. The rest, and many written by readers I didn’t know before publishing, were nothing short of excellent and praising, and so many of those readers have been asking for another novel about Bequia, because they enjoyed the first that much. An author can’t ask for anything more!

Jenny Ryan has already designed a cover and it’s been sitting on my desktop ever since – for inspiration. That was the reason I placed it there, anyway.

onewomanisland-cover-draft-3

 

I did receive some feedback about a few aspects of the first novel that have helped me make changes to the second. I had always intended the second to be written from the perspective of a different character than Geoff, the narrator in the first, but I’ve also decided to change a number of the secondary characters who were in the first novel and introduce new ones that are solely figments of my imagination. (No more “Is this so-and-so?” from readers who know Bequia.) I spent a lot of time, especially during this past year, recreating characters and adding new material to the story line. I’m just about finished with that, am finally working on the last chapter, and will send the entire manuscript on to my editor Rachel Small http://rachelsmallediting.com/ to have at it. I know there will be necessary rewrites after that, so my dream date of May 1st for publication has already faded away. I’ve decided not to make any more promises. This novel will be finished and published when it’s good and ready!

But all this does not explain my real reason for taking my time. In all honesty, I am downright scared of the dreaded …

Sophomore Slump!!!

You know, the second novel not living up to the enthusiastic reception of the first, that it’s all wrong and readers are going to hate it. My fear has kept me from the keyboard, has caused me to find other things to do – anything at all! – to avoid finishing and publishing, actually proving that my fears are true!

So that’s what it’s all about, Alfie. (And Tim and Rachel.) And the more often well-meaning friends ask, “When will your next novel be published?” the more I dig in my heels on my way to the computer, do an about-face, and find something else to spend my time on instead. Oh, look! Another author who needs to be promoted!

This guest blog post for Kristina’s Mystery Mondays was originally intended to be a little shove in the right direction, to encourage me to finish, because I now had a deadline to meet. When we discussed my writing something for her blog, I really did believe I’d have One Woman’s Island published by this date, so my post should have acted as a promotion of the book. Instead, I’m leaving you, Kristina’s readers, with a link to the first novel (in case they haven’t read it yet) and a promise that the second novel will be finished and published … soon. I hope. But not before it’s time.

Reminds me of this old Orson Welles commercial …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSs6DcA6dFI

But right now I do believe it’s time to make another pot of coffee.

SusanToy-1Susan M. Toy has been a bookseller, an award-winning publishers’ sales rep, and is a promoter of books, authors and reading. You may learn more about Susan here. https://islandeditions.wordpress.com/about-susan-m-toy/

For more information about her published books, click here for Island in the Clouds https://islandeditions.wordpress.com/island-in-the-clouds-a-bequia-novel/ and here for That Last Summer. https://islandeditions.wordpress.com/islandshorts/

 

 

 

 

 

AVALANCHE: Stone Mountain Buries A Man

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

AVALANCHE is the story of why?

Today, I proudly get to show you the cover…

How does a cover come to be? You need a good cover designer, like Ryan Thomas Doan. But how does he decide what to create?

Well, I gave him a detailed description of what I wanted. Did you hear the sarcasm?

Here are the three short sentences I sent Ryan:

I think it’s important to keep the look the same as DESCENT and BLAZE. I’d like the font, type and placement all to be the same. Maybe a hand flying through an Avalanche.

And here is what Ryan sent me:

Avalanche Cover Final

I’m absolutely amazed at his talent, and I’m very pleased with the cover.

Thank you, Ryan.