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Today’s guest blogger is Lynn Hobbs, an award-winning author. She writes about the importance of setting priorities if you are to achieve anything. She is the author of the powerful faith and family saga the Running Forward Series. The first two books have … Continue reading
We Move On My father felt like he lived in the greatest time. When he was a little tyke living in southwest Texas, his family had a horse and buggy. Of course, most of the time, since they lived in … Continue reading
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Maya Angelou Several blogs back, I wrote on the passing of Spanish literary giant Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The passing of anyone is a time of loss for those the person has touched. When that person has touched the lives of … Continue reading
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Today, I’m interviewing Marni Graff. She has been a nurse, a TV and movie consultant, a mystery writer and a writing instructor. She’s studied at the Iowa Writing Program and at Oxford University. Here is an interesting woman. Jim: You … Continue reading
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oday’s guest is best selling Cynthia Hickey. She has five books published through Barbour Publishing. She has several historical romances from Harlequin’s Heartsong Presents. She has sold over 160,000 copies of her books.
JIM: Where all did you live during those growing up years?
Cynthia: I was born in Redondo Beach, CA but moved from there when very long. We alternated our time between Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Germany, finally settling in Arkansas at the age of ten when my father retired from the Army and returned to his home state.
JIM: Did any of those places have a particular influence on your writing?
Cynthia: Arkansas has. Most of my stories take place in the Ozark mountains. It’s the home of my heart.
JIM: ve never before known anyone who worked in a pickle factory.
Cynthia: It was the perfect high school job. Football was so popular with the town residents, that we had Friday nights off work to attend the games during football season. I did a little bit of everything during the two years I worked there: tossed out hamburger pickle slices that had holes in them, worked the relish and spice line, flipped jars, and worked the conveyor belt when the cucumbers arrived from Texas, sometimes with a snake or two mixed in.
JIM: You have quite a few inspirational novels and a bunch of general novels. When you finish a book, how do you decide what kind of a book to write next?
Cynthia: A literary agent once told me that I have more story ideas than anyone they’ve ever met. I keep a file on my computer of these ideas and when I finish a book, I browse this list. Sometimes I choose something from the list, other times, I’ve got a brand new idea.
JIM: You said your first novel was Fudge-Laced Felonies. How long did it take you to write it and then how long to get it published?
Cynthia: I wrote this cozy mystery in three months on a dare. When a publisher started a new cozy mystery line, a friend told me I should write for it. I had no idea what a cozy mystery was. This friend dared me to write it, and voila … my first book was born. I rarely turn down a dare.
JIM: What is your secret?
Cynthia: Strong discipline, a daily writing goal, a wonderful imagination, and God’s help. My novels include everything from novellas to full length works of 90,000 words.
JIM: Wait, now. You have seven children. Where do you get the time?
Cynthia: Luckily for me, all but one of my children are grown and moved out. The sixteen-year-old is busy with school and work. I didn’t start writing seriously until my children were independent.
JIM: Tell us a little about your latest inspirational novel.
Cy
nthia: An Unconventional Lady is book two in a series based on the historical Harvey Girls. Annie Rollins is adventurous and wants nothing more than to lead tours into the Grand Canyon. Her widowed mother has other ideas and signs Annie up as a Harvey Girl to teach her refinement and a woman’s proper role in the world. What happens next, is a sweet, fun, little romance between Annie and the man her mother hired as the guide.
JIM: Tell us a little about your latest general novel.
Cynthia: My latest general novel is actually a zombie novella. I started writing these because my son and grandchildren wanted to be main characters in my books. I had no idea they would be as popular as they are.
JIM: And what comes next?
Cynthia: My next release, coming out July 1, is the third book in the Harvey Girl series, and I’m starting a new series for Harlequin’s Heartsong line that deals with finding love among natural disasters.
JIM: Lastly, where can we buy your books?
Cynthia: My website at www.cynthiahickey.com lists all of my published works. Come sit a spell an browse.
Today, I am pleased to have Sharon Srock visiting. She started with science fiction and now concentrated on Christian fiction, with three books in her Women of Valley View series. Here’s how her life has changed since she started the series.
Sharon: Mine is the story of an ever-evolving community. When I first started to write the Valley View series, I had no idea that the characters would become so real. I guess that happens to all writers. How can you eat, sleep, and work with people, twenty-four hours a day, for years, and have it any other way? They’ve each whispered their own story line to me and demanded equal time on paper. I was good with that, they weren’t. These greedy women, once granted the small freedom of the written page, demanded not only stories of their own, but a town to live in, families to raise, jobs to go to, and a church to attend. I live in small town Oklahoma, so I gave them the mythical Garfield, OK to live in and a beautiful little church, Valley View, as a place of worship.
I started with a single character who looked a lot like me. Callie is in her mid fifties, married with kids and grandkids, she teaches a Sunday school class at the church she’s attended nearly forever, and works at an OB/GYN clinic. I could identify with this person, I knew who she was (me), I could hear her voice in my head, and I was comfortable in her skin. It was easy to write from her point of view. Callie and I were one in the same, and we coexisted quite nicely together. Then a strange thing happened. Callie developed her own personality. She outgrew me. Callie is bold where I’m shy, she’s wise where I struggle. It wasn’t long before Callie wasn’t just a character on a piece of paper, she was the person I wanted to be when I grew up.
From that one person, a community was born. Callie needed a husband. Enter Benton who resembles my own hubby in appearance if not in deed. Callie needed a best friend so Karla received breath along with her husband Mitch. I wanted to appeal to more than the over fifty crowd, so forty something Pam and almost thirty Terri stepped onto my page. Who knew things could get so out of hand? Pam needed a husband and kids. The church needed pastors. No one wants to read about a group of church women sitting around, talking and eating cheese cake. Where’s the conflict? Enter Samantha, Iris, and their estranged father, Steve. Who knew Steve and Terri would fall in love and generate a second story? Who knew that Pam’s vicious ex-husband would get saved, move back to Garfield, and spawn a story worth telling in a third book? Who knew that Samantha…Well, you get the picture. Pushy, pushy women!
Sigh…With Callie and Terri both a reality, Pam releasing in April , Samantha’s story under consideration, and Kate’s tale in progress, I have no idea how far these very determined ladies will take me, but I’m looking forward to the journey.
JIM: Thanks, Sharon for a very interesting look at how our characters become real. Here’s a short blurb on Sharon’s new novel, Pam.
Pam’s divorce broke her heart. The cruelty of her ex-husband broke her spirit. A bottle of sleeping pills almost took her life. Four years later the scars of Alan Archer’s emotional abuse are beginning to fade under the love of her new husband. When Alan returns to Garfield, Pam must learn that buried secrets and carefully cultivated indifference do not equal forgiveness.
Alan Archer has returned to Garfield with a new wife and a terminal heart condition. His mission? To leave a Christian legacy for his children and to gain Pam’s forgiveness for the sins of his past.
Please visit her AMAZON page to find current info on her books: http://www.amazon.com/Sharon-Srock/e/B009OB2HSO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Connect with her at www.sharonsrock.com..
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SharonSrock#!/SharonSrock
This week, we’re visiting with C. L. Swinney, a man who burst onto the writing scene with such great enthusiasm he overwhelmed some of us. He reads, he writes, he blogs, he writes poetry, he writes mysteries. And having worked at this, he has something to say – about the real work of being an author today.
There’s so much to being an author- most of it happening AFTER we’ve put words down, and that alone can be a monumental struggle. In today’s market, where everyone believes they too are the best authors on the planet, you must search for your own voice, niche really, that isn’t already being used by a thousand other writers. I tend to try to relate this madness to what happens on American Idol. Thousands of people line up truly feeling they can sing, but within seconds, they become the laughing stock of television and only one in a million make it. For writers, it’s the same; about one in a million will make it. Roughly 85% of authors who get published or publish their own work will sell less than a hundred copies, and this includes friends and family (our biggest fans). It’s a sad reality, but one many of us choose to subject ourselves to it. Nevertheless, we thrive on the dance we play with our writing and readers. It keeps us writing, reading, and trying to be better at our craft. We’re glutton for punishment and tend to stay caved up in our homes. It’s the introvert lifestyle that stymies real potential to reach hundreds and even thousands of new readers.
So, in as few words as possible, I’m going to break down what I think is necessary to break out of your slump and embrace 2014. I believe you will sell more books, but more importantly, make new friends if you consider these points. **Disclaimer-BE FOREWARNED, I DO NOT HOLD BACK PUNCHES.
PLATFORM:
Been there, done that. Type the word into Google and see how many thousands of definitions materialize. What does that mean? It means it was a buzz word that continues to be abused by small publishers trying to squeeze everything they possibly can out of the authors they already take to the cleaners. The Big Five call this promotion-they pay for it and do it for their authors.
BLOG:
Today there are literally hundreds of blog sites and millions of blogs. If you don’t have superior content or pictures (best would be including both), know about SEO, back-links, targeted websites, or have several thousand real email accounts YOU ARE WASTING YOUR EFFORTS. You would be better served having a website. Don’t use free templates. Pay someone to make yours at least as good as the next author.
READINGS:
This, to me, is
a MUST. I’ll tell you why. As my good friend John Brantingham explained to me, people don’t buy your book from the actual reading, but they will POSSIBLY buy your book based on your message. Can they relate to you? Do they find you interesting? Ask yourself, do I even have a message? If you don’t, you should. As far as the nerves that accompany standing in front of people and reading your work go, suck it up. Deal with it. Stumble and get a dry mouth, freak the hell out. It’s GOOD FOR YOU. And, it shows you’re human. Humans relate better to humans, not robots.
SOCIAL MEDIA:
Again, you MUST do this. I’ve been talking about this for years and I’m really tired of hearing people saying it’s too difficult to do. Guess what, use Hootsuite. It’s free and does the work for you. You can pre-arrange messages written one time that will automatically push out to all of your social media sites at once. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be doing this. If you don’t think some of the sites are useful, don’t use them. However, I challenge you to find a single bestselling author not using social media.
I’ve got plenty of more tid-bits that I’ll be sharing on guess blogs over the next few months. Please feel free to email with questions. I answer them all.
JIM: Okay. There you have Swinney’s take on the work after the writing. Leave a comment or a question. Swinney won’t shy away from answering.
POV Demystified Let’s talk a little about point of view. In conversation, we talk about somebody’s point of view. “That’s his point of view.” By this we mean, that’s the way he sees things. In a book, when we talk … Continue reading
Our guest post today comes from Lesley Diehl, a retired professor of psychology. She splits her time between upstate New York where she and her husband are renovating an 1872, ghost-inhabited cottage, and old Florida where spurs still jingle in the post office and gators make golf a contact sport. Today, she asks the question, Bury that manuscript in a drawer or rewrite it?
The Self-publishing Jitters
Here’s the dilemma. Open up the file on that old manuscript you never got published, read it, and send it to the trash bin, or at least, file it under “yuk!” and forget it. Or you could read it through, realize how bad it really was, heave a sigh of relief that it never was published, saving you the embarrassment of all those one star reviews, and then… Read it again. Maybe the characters were interesting, but need more depth. Their motivation for trying to solve the crime may be weak. Perhaps the plot is thinly drawn, too simplistic or too convoluted for a reader to follow. The pacing may be too slow and more tension is required to keep the reader’s interest. You could rework it. Naw! But before you press the delete button, reconsider. I did.
Here’s my confession. I took the very first manuscript I wrote, and began revising it several years ago, using the time between writing others to work on the old one. I had several readers take a look at it, I revised again, and just this month I published it. And, yes, I wake up in the middle of the night wondering if I should locate the “unpublish” button and press it. Of course I’m nervous about this work. It was my first attempt at a mystery. I have a blog tour for it coming up in May. Until then I probably won’t know how readers will receive it. I’m taking a chance, and I know it, and I’m terrified.
Write what you know is always sage advice, so I did just that. This book is taken from my life before writing, when I was a faculty member and administrator at several colleges and universities. I spent over 25 years in academie, so it’s familiar to me. I loved being in the classroom, and I loved doing collaborative research with my students. But like any other place trying to survive in a world where resources are becoming scarce, institutions of higher learning are competitive environments where faulty vie for promotions and they don’t trust administrators any more than administrators trust them. Having been on both sides of the fence, I know how difficult life on campus can be.
Given the atmosphere of the college campus, is it any wonder that, in my first attempt at fiction I killed off a college president and then took down one of the faculty? To my credit, when I reworked the manuscript I reduced it from over 100,000 words to around 70,000. Most of those words were located in long convoluted sentences that described in too much detail the inner life of faculty and staff. I left students alone. They suffer enough trying to pass their courses and pay their tuition. Not that students are angels, but later, I said to myself, and that’s just what I did. The sequel to the book has my protagonist take on bad frat boys.
Here’s a short description of Murder Is Academic:
Laura Murphy, psychology professor, thinks there’s nothing she likes better than coffee and donuts on a summer morning until she says yes to dinner with a Canadian biker and finds herself and her date suspects in the murder of her college’s president. Laura’s friend, the detective assigned the case, asks her to help him find out who on the small upstate New York college campus may be a killer. The murder appears to be wrapped up in some unsavory happenings on the lake where Laura lives. A fish kill and raw sewage seeping into the water along with the apparent drowning suicide of a faculty member complicate the hunt for the killer. And then things become personal. The killer makes a threatening phone call to Laura. With a tornado bearing down on the area and the killer intent upon silencing her, Laura’s sleuthing work may come too late to save her and her biker from a watery grave.
So, as I bite my nails and lose sleep over how this work will fare, I’d sure like to hear if others have revamped old work and then published it. Were you as anxious about doing it as I was? And how did it turn out for you?
Jim: Thanks, Lesley, for sharing your feelings on this. I hope you get some good comments on what to do with those old manuscripts.
Lesley has three mystery series in print: her microbrewing series, the rural Florida series, and the Eve Appel series. I can vouch for her books. You can buy them at:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JCV6XG8
http://store.untreedreads.com/Books/UTR9781611879414
Today, I’m interviewing Holli Castillo, whose background runs from
competing as a gymnast at the 1984 New Orleans World’s Fair, to working in many positions in theatrical productions, including performing as a Can Can girl. After she received her JD from Loyola University, she joined the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office. She quit the D.A.’s office when she had her first child, and is now an appellate public defender. Sounds interesting to me.
Jim: How was it going from the DA’s office to public defender? Aren’t those on opposite sides of the aisle?
Holli: They are the opposite sides, but the knowledge and skill translate well from one to the other. The D.A.’s job is supposed to be to present the truth and let the jury make a determination of whether the defendant is guilty or not. The defense’s job is to make sure that no one cheats in getting a conviction. That isn’t the way it usually works out. Having done both, I can say both sides have the exact same goal–to win at any cost. It’s not really so different in the end, and the law is the law.
Jim: At what stage did you decide to write?
Holli: I have been writing stories since I was in Kindergarten and novels since I was in 6th grade. I didn’t decide to try to write something for publication until I quit the D.A.’s Office to stay home with my first child in 2000.
Jim: 
And how long did it take you from when you first started writing until Gumbo Justice appeared in 2009?
Holli: It took about 4 years to write the novel. But then Katrina hit in 2005 and in June of 2008 I was in a head-on collision with a drunk driver and was on my back for a year. So it actually took 9 years, but only 4 of that was writing.
Jim: As with most of us, some personal history influences what gets written. How did your experience in the District Attorney’s office color your novels?
Holli: Nearly all of my ideas are sparked by real cases I’ve handled, either as a D.A. or a defense attorney. The D.A.’s Office definitely gave me the inside track on how a prosecutor’s office works, especially the office dynamics and criminal procedure. I can include all aspects of criminal prosecution in my novels. My protag knows how to do everything I know how to do, she knows the same lingo, she knows how to cheat, etc. 
Jim: Jambalaya Justice won an award before it was published. Tell us just a little about that.
Holli: I entered it in the PSWA contest for unpublished fiction and it tied for first place.
Jim: And the third in this Crescent City Mystery Series is called Chocolate City Justice. First, I have to ask, is New Orleans known as the Chocolate City? I’ve never heard that term applied to New Orleans.
Holli: The title comes from a speech our mayor made on the first Martin Luther King Day following Katrina. He gave a grandiose speech about how at the end of the day, New Orleans would be a Chocolate City again, referring to the fact that more white people were returning to the city than black people. It caused quite a stir.
Jim: Well, I’ve learned something new today. That’s good. Tell us a little about Chocolate City Justice.
Holli: Ryan has just been assigned a real plum by prosecutor standards, a child’s birthday party massacre caught on videotape. But as most things in New Orleans, nothing is what it seems and the case starts to turn into a nightmare. And then along comes Katrina. Ryan plans to evacuate, but does an unexpected favor for a friend, causing her to miss her window to escape the storm, ultimately putting her on the radar of the gang she’s prosecuting for the birthday party shooting. But Ryan isn’t worried. She’s handled some of the worst criminals the city has to offer, and hurricanes never hit New Orleans. Right?
Jim: And when will that be available?
Holli: We’re still working on a release date, but I can safely say this year, sometime in 2014.
Jim: And lastly, where is the best place for us to buy your books?
Holli: They are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and my publisher’s website, www.oaktreebooks.com
Thanks so much for having me!
Jim: It was my pleasure, Holli.