Writers: Stop Being Reservoirs

There are two kinds of people in the world; rivers and reservoirs.

A river-type person is someone who hears a new view point or thinks of something new and then goes out and tells his friends about it. He lets the new found knowledge flow through him like a river. That type of person gushes their new thoughts onto other people around them. They put new ideas into motion.

However, your reservoir-type people are the ones who hear new and exciting ideas, and rather than sharing it with the world, they store it for later use. These people hoard the knowledge and save it as a reservoir.

I don't remember exactly where I heard about this concept, but it makes sense. There's a quote by George Bernard Shaw that comes to mind. He says:

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

 

Cover Reveal: Devlin’s Descendant, White Aura Book Three by Felica Tatum

Here it is! After long-last, author Felica Tatum has decided to grace us with the cover of her brand new book, Devlin's Descendant, the third book in the White Aura series.
 
I, for one, am very excited about this and can't wait until I get my hands on a copy of this latest installment! I'm still brewing over the cliff-hanger ending of the last book.

About the author:

Felicia Tatum was born and raised in Tennessee. She always loved reading, and at the age of twelve, began writing. Her passion for creating stories grew and in May 2012, she finally wrote her first novel, The White Aura.

She still lives in Tennessee with her daughter and her kitty. She loves cooking, books, and animals are some of her best friends. She watches a lot of Disney channel and often dreams up new book ideas. She's currently working on various projects, including the rest of the White Aura Series, the Scarred Hearts Series, and a novella series. Her dream is to write as many books as possible while entertaining as many people as possible.

Follow Tatum on Facebook, Twitter and check out her website.

Synopsis:

The curse is drawing closer and closer to an end, the only solution; kill Devlin Hart's descendant. Scott is dealing with the aftermath of his discovery while Olivia desperately tries to stop Aiden's recapture. What will happen when Scott reveals the identity of the descendant?

Follow along as Olivia, Scott, Juniper, Sadie, Aiden, and Mark continue their adventure. Discover new secrets, new loves, celebrate a birthday, take a trip to the mysterious sorcery Council, and more in Devlin's Descendant.

And now, for the cover!

Writing a Book is Not Magical

“We have this idea that writing a book is a magical, mystical process involving only inspiration and fairy dust. But nothing could be further from the truth.

 

“The truth is it’s a lot of hard work. And the most creative, successful people I know are hustlers, never slowing down to bask in the glory of a previous achievement.

 

“If you’ve got a project you want to share with the world, chances are it’s going to take more of you than you want to give. It’s going to require your whole self.

 

“It might even break you and cause you to scream or freak out. That’s okay; this is all part of the process.

 

“In the end, you will be better for it. And all of it will be worth the pain.”

 

- Jeff Goins, Writer

 

Writing creatively has been hard for me lately. I happened to come across this quote and wanted to share with you all. I hope it speaks to you as much as it did to me.

 

Thanks Jeff, for reminding me.

 

Is it worth it? Are you willing to go through all the pain? I know my answer to those questions now.

 

Hint: I'm not giving up.



Cover Reveal: Mangled Hearts by Felica Tatum

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be part of the street team for author Felica Tatum and to be allowed to reveal the cover of her upcoming novel, Mangled Hearts, which will be coming out July 12.

I squealed when I opened my email inbox last Saturday to find this cover waiting for me. You don’t know how hard it was to keep it under wraps until today!


Felicia Tatum, author

First off, a bit about the author. You may remember, I did an interview with her a while back following the release of her first novel, The White Aura. You can check that out here if you’d like.

This writer claims she’s loved reading always and began writing when she was twelve. Born and raised in Tennessee, she wrote and published her first novel just over a year ago in May 2012. Mangled Hearts is her third – yes, I said third! – novel out since that time.

 

Tatum still resides in Tennessee with her daughter and posts pictures on social media of her beautiful white cat (which has made my longing for a pet cat all the worse since I can’t have one). Besides writing, she loves to cook and read. She says that animals are some of her best friends and she watches a lot of Disney channel (I assume with her daughter).

While inspiration for her books literally comes straight from her dreams, her ultimate dream is to write as many books as she can and entertain as many readers as possible.

Now, for the cover reveal!

A (Breif) Break from JuNoWriMo – 3 Reasons Why You’ll Benefit

Hey everyone, I’m in the last week of June Novel Writing Month but I just had to take a quick break from my word sprints to tell you about a couple of items you may be interested in.  

First off, the lovely A.E. Howard has recently released the book trailer for her highly anticipated sequel to Flight of Blue. While The Guardians is due out September 3, 2013, she has given us the following to keep us occupied until the book arrives!

(click the link!) http://aehowardwrites.com/books/the-guardians/

Also, a free book alert!

The wonderful Andrew D. Mellusco is giving away free e-book copies of his second book, Blackstone & Brenwen: The Mirror & The Meretrix until Sunday! Personally, I love the Blackstone & Brenwen series so much that I could probably qualify for stalker status on all of Mr. Mellusco’s social media sites. I just hope this giveaway signals something about the next and third installment of the series!

 

You could check out an interview I did with this author here.

Be sure to check out this free e-book here: http://www.amazon.com/Blackstone-Brenwen-Mirror-Meretrix-ebook/dp/B0046A9OSO

And finally, while I haven’t posted on my own blog for a little while (hoping that will change in July), I have done a bit of guest blogging. You can check out some of my appearances at the following links.

http://scotzig.com/2013/06/17/amanda-fanger/

http://unicornbell.blogspot.com/2013/06/guest-post-writers-momentum-by-amanda.html

Well, that’s it for this update – now, if you’ll excuse me; I have a novel to finish writing.

Thanks for reading, as always! I’ll be going on my annual family camping trip next week, and when I come back I intend to get back into writing a weekly blog post!

Oh! And be sure to stop in this Friday for another special book-related announcement!

My Recipe for Writing Success

I won’t even pretend to be an expert on this writing thing. Heaven knows I still struggle with figuring out all there is to do with plot and story arcs and character development and whatnot – not to mention the actual description and words – that goes into writing a book.

I’m not even going to say “good” book. For now, let’s just concentrating on the idea of getting a book written from start to finish.

But, I have learned a few things since I started taking my craft seriously. And when I say seriously, I mean with the intent of publishing…someday…to share my stories with others.

All this month I’ll be taking part in JuNoWriMo – like National Novel Writing Month, but in June. I am attempting to write a 50,000 word novel this month, and I must say I am not nearly well-prepared enough for this.

Good thing for me, preparedness is often overrated when it comes to writing.

Book Sale Alert!

Hello everyone! Today, I’m using the power of blogging to help get the word out for my writer friend, published author Felicia Tatum. Click here to see my interview with Felicia about rediscovering her passion for writing. You can also see my Goodreads review of it by clicking here.
 

Felicia’s book The White Aura is the book of the week at Passionate About Books (there’ll be giveaways all week, so check back often!) and it is also on sale this week, My 27-31! The giveaways will include two sets of magnets of Felicia’s books The White Aura and its sequel The Vessel as well as two e-copies of The Vessel.
 
Also, read to the end of this post for an exciting sneak peak at Felicia’s new book!

What To Do When You’ve Written the Worst Book Ever

There you are, sitting down to start writing your novel. It’s exciting, but you’re scared too. You want to know what you’re capable of, what ideas you can portray and what ideas you can tell, so you lock that apprehension away and start typing.

As you’re going along, you begin to think to yourself, “hey, this isn’t so bad! In fact, I think I’m a halfway decent writer!”

And so you keep writing. Every once in a while you hit a snag in the story, find places you’re not quite sure what should happen next and you sometimes skip around from one part to the next. But no matter what, you keep focused on the thought of how good it feels to be writing and you struggle through. You push on to the next paragraph, the next page, the next chapter.

Until finally you’re done! You sit back from the keyboard after hours and weeks and months and years and years of sweat and tears have been poured into this story. Now, you set the story aside for a while, because that’s what the experts say to do. You go out and celebrate as you get some distance from your story.

Then it comes time for the first read-through.

“Oh, this won’t be so bad,” you tell yourself, remembering the story you were trying to write.

But then you actually read it with fresh eyes. And you feel like crying. Maybe you actually do. Because your story didn’t quite come out as you wanted.

Congratulations.

You’ve just written the worst.

book.

ever.

The Semicolon Project

Today I took part in The Semicolon Project.  

On April 16, 2013 anyone who self-harms, is suicidal, depressed, has anxiety, is unhappy, going through a broken heart, has lost a loved one, etc. was instructed to draw a semicolon on their wrist to raise awareness.
The event is sponsored by the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention - Save A Life Facebook group. I'm a vocal supporter of this group because I have known too many who have taken their own life. Too many tears have I cried for those lost, yet others have cried more than I and their loss is so much greater than mine.

Knowing and seeing first-hand the resulting pain brought to friends, family and loved ones has stopped me from causing myself harm on more than one occasion. It is through God's grace that I have always been lifted up at the right times, kept from sinking too far into the void of darkness that is fear, self-pity and doubt.

I beg of anyone who has ever considered taking the easy way out to seek help. You will be a stronger person for doing so.

A semicolon was chosen as a symbol for this day because it represents a sentence the author could have ended; but chose not to.

The author is you and the sentence is your life.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

The Liebster Blog Award!

The awesome G.A. Albrethsen, author of the Age of Restoration series, has nominated me for the prestigious Liebster Blog Award! I have to say, the Liebster award is one of the first blog awards I ever saw floating around when I started blogging, so this means a great deal to me that I’ve been nominated for the award.

Be sure to check out his blog!

 

In accepting this award I must share 11 random facts about myself, answer 11 questions from my nominator and then nominate others.

 

Here we go!

Author Interview with Patrick O'Scheen

Hey everyone! I’m here today to tell you all about this incredible book I just read called Dreamer – Chronicles of Marithe, Book One by Patrick O’Scheen. It’s the debut novel of a very talented author. I got the chance to read an advanced copy of this book, which will be released on Amazon from Tate Publishing May 7th.

When Patrick asked me if I’d be interested in reading and reviewing this book and helping generate some interest, he described it to me as fantasy fiction – right up my alley. Then while reading Dreamer, I was pleased to discover that it was basically about a dragon.

How, I thought to myself, can you go wrong with dragons?
 

Publisher’s description: We all have a little Dragon inside of us, something that struggles to find solace… Dreamer is the first book in a series that portrays life as a mixture of fantasy and reality. The main character, Magic, flows between the worlds, often preferring one more than the other. Both of his lives are fraught with their own dangers. He must struggle with illness and alternatively with the life of a Great Red Dragon.

A warning: this is an adult book with a higher level of sexual content. More than I like to read, but the rest of the book was great. You can see my review for Dreamer on Goodreads here.

Please help me welcome the author of Dreamer, Patrick O’Scheen!

*hoards of adoring fans screaming as he comes out*

ME: Hey Patrick! Thanks for stopping by my blog! First off, I want to say how I was swept away by Dreamer and the storyline, its characters and the beautiful descriptions you use. For the duration of this interview, I consider myself a student – here for the sole purpose of learning what I can from you about the craft of writing!

To start out, can you tell a little bit about yourself?

Enough is Enough

A professional procrastinator such as myself could explain away their lack of writing by saying they were waiting for inspiration. Indeed, I was waiting for inspiration.

That’s pish-posh.

 

Take my recent two-month break from blogging as an example. While trying to decide what to write for this post, I started doing some other things to occupy my time, such as unpacking boxes from my recent move and settling in to my new place. Before I knew it, I was fully immersed in house chores and other such endeavourers.

Then I realized what I was doing.

So in the middle of washing dishes tonight, I put my soapy sponge down and went directly to my computer to start writing.

6 Things You Didn’t Know About Becoming a Published Author (Guest Post)

Today’s guest post comes from RaeBeth McGee-Buda, author of the newly released book, Silenced, a Young Adult Suspense. This is the 15th stop on her month-long book tour.

6 Things You Didn't Know About Becomeing a Published Author

1.    It takes time. I thought a writer sat down and wrote until their hearts were content. When they finished their book it was time to throw it together and boom ... it’s done. Boy was I wrong. It takes a lot of time and sometimes it takes many people working together when working against a deadline.

2.    Editing is tough. After I got done writing my book I wasn’t prepared for the extensive amount of editing that needed to be done. I went through the manuscript. Then I had a few close writer friends go through it. Once they were done I went to my critique group. I did another round myself. Lastly it went to a professional editor... twice.

7 Random Things Learned While Packing

To all my faithful readers, I apologize that this week's post is late. I'm in the middle of packing to move to a town that is almost four times the size of where I live now and have been a little distracted, to say the least. I'm moving to take a job at a larger newspaper and am advancing my journalism career.

 

This is an entirely new experience for me, as I’ve never lived more than fifteen minutes from the home I grew up in. I’m nervous, but excited at the same time. I’m looking forward to seeing what God has in store for me!

Anyway, I took some time out of packing today to do a little bit of writing. The first thing I want to do is thank EM Castellan for sending me the One Lovely Blog Award! You rock girl!

As part of accepting this award, I’m supposed to share seven random things about myself, but since I did that for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award, I’m going to share seven random things that were inspired in the process of packing:

1)   Hi. My name is Amanda Fanger, and I… am a notebook collector. It all started off rather innocent; just a new journal here or there, until buying new notebooks and journals became a destructive habit. Now, I cannot walk into a store without looking through their notebook section and seeing if there is one I want to take home. I’ve promised myself not to buy any more until at least a third of those I already own have been used, although this shall be a difficult because I know I will be tempted with new designs and styles that I’ve never seen before in this new town…

Blog of the Year (And Dealing with Change)

2012 was a fun ride for me – a total roller coaster! In fact, it was so fun that I’m having a hard time letting go so I can concentrate on all the new things I have coming up in 2013.

And by new things, I do mean a LOT of new things coming up! That’ll all come in a later post though, when stuff starts to settle a bit more.

For now, I’m going to concentrate on one final piece of 2012 business that I kind of sort of forgot to take care of before the calendar turned over. It’s that I was nominated for Blog of the Year! Thanks to SydneyAaliyah for the nod!

Be sure to check out the rules here.

Now, for the nominations! (This is always the fun part!)