Hold The Mustard

This is a catch up post. A Heinz 57 conglomeration of news regarding books and my own writing.

I have joined the cool kids and hopped on board the E-Reader train. That's right folks I am the proud new owner of a Nook. Nothing will ever replace the feel look and smell of a real book but I'm no dummy. I see where the future of publishing is headed. My first e-book purchase was a nearly 2000 page collection of Mark Twain works. I spent the princely sum of $2.99 for the purchase. The reader and cheapskate in me loves that fact.

In other book news, two of my weekly critique partners have novels out. Both Val and Caron are great critique partners. I look forward to our weekly sessions and my writing would not be nearly as good without them. I'm quite honored that both saw fit to thank me in their acknowledgments and at least now I can say my name appears in two novels. Caron is going to do a guest post for me at some point and I'm still trying to convince Val to do the same, but here is a little bit more about both of their books.

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An Uncommon Crusade

coming January 2011 from Written World Communications

Only God can save them now . . .

Elisabeth, Simon, and Hugo join an ill-fated crusade to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim occupation. Blinded by their desire for power, glory, and vindication, they pay a terrible price for their ambitions, suffering shipwreck and enslavement in Egypt.

“Although this novel uses the Children’s Crusade of 1212 as its background, it is not a historical chronicle, but a very personal story, with few of the actual political players of the period appearing in a major role. Instead, the story traces the lives of several of the young followers of Nicholas of Cologne as they travel to Jerusalem, and over the years after the Crusade disperses. Each of the characters . . . comes across as bold, rich, and easy to relate to rather than overworked. The author does a good job weaving the divergent stories together, both in terms of the pacing and in the way they come together at the end of the tale . . . an enjoyable story with believable characters and an exciting plot.” Publishers Weekly

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Val's new book is titled, Tears of Like Souls and it will be out very soon, but you can purchase the first book in the series, Blood Of Like Souls, now.

Here is a book trailer for book one.

Yes, the two books are vastly different in content and I suppose in target audiences, though I can say this reader enjoyed both. Funny thing is in crit group we all read a sample of our work usually 15-20 pages so it takes the better part of  a year to read and discuss a novel length work.  That slow pace is excruciating for a impatient reader like myself but the added bonus of hearing the author read aloud their work and getting to know things the average reader will never find out makes it  a lot of fun.

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Just as Val and Caron's writing style and subject matter differs so does my own work. Val likes to kill people and make her readers chew on their nails. Caron likes to expose emotions and make the reader engage with the characters she creates on such a level that by the time you are through reading her stories the people inside feel like old friends. Me? I toss out a bunch of BS and hope it makes somebody laugh.

Longtime readers of this blog have heard me talk about a tale titled Plundered Booty. It started as a 7 thousand word short story. At the time I wrote it Plundered Booty was quite the departure from the emotion-driven Women's Fiction stuff I had been writing. Many of my writing friends read the story and declared I'd found my true voice. They told me humor was my bag and I needed to write a humor novel or better yet flesh out the characters from Plundered Booty and turn it into a novel. So I did just that. Plundered Booty the novel had some successes, most notably a Top 100 finish in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel contest. And while my little short story turned novel did not win I take pride that it beat out 3900 other stories to make it that far.

A few agent requested and read the full but sadly none offered representation. I shelved my Booty and began work on The Feedstore Chronicles. Then came news of an upcoming E-book collection. I first thought I'd write a new short story and submit it, but then it dawned on me that Plundered Booty the short story would be a perfect fit.

But when i reread the short story all I could think about was all the things I did better in the novel version. So I wen to work and soon my Booty grew fat. 30,000 words of obesity. So I began trimming tightening and  finally submitted a 12,000 word version that I am quite proud of. And sometime in 2011, you will be able to purchase the collection and finally get to see and read all of my Plundered Booty.