Tag: authors

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NaNoWriMo Featured Author of the Week: Amanda Fanger

Hi there! My name is Amanda Fanger and 2012 is my first NaNoWriMo. A year ago was the first time I had ever heard of National Novel Writing Month. It was just before Thanksgiving that my tongue formed the syllables NaNoWriMo for the first time. I thought it was crazy and I wanted to be a part of it.

The novel I have decided to write is (for now) called Spell Bound, although that title will eventually be changed because, since the story idea was first conceived, I’ve come across other books by the same title.

This story came to me as a series of scenes that kept playing out in my head, over and over. It took me something like five days to write approximately 26,000 words for a very rough, but very complete, first draft when I was in high school. I was so proud of the words I’d labored over to fill my little notebook, but I knew it wasn’t long enough to be a real book. Of course I’d have to write a second draft and flesh it out a bit.

But when I attempted to write that second draft and fix some of the plot holes, the story fell flat. The all-fire passion for the story that had inspired me during that week of insane writing was suddenly gone. It seemed that as I tried to think of ways to overhaul the story, to add more complexity, it only seemed to create more problems. It got to the point where I simply had to put the story away because I was frustrating myself and losing my interest in the story altogether.

While the original manuscript was collecting dust in my desk drawer, the story was far from dormant. It was at the back of my mind, intensifying and building, growing into something of a monster.

And now it wants out.

Some of the simplest elements of the original story are still mostly intact, and a few scenes from the first version are still there, but the overall feeling and scope of the story has changed.

I’ve yet to do an outline of this new version of the story, but I know I’m going to have my hands full with this one. It will be unlike anything I’ve ever written before. The biggest challenge is going to be the world-building and creating a society stepped with conspiracy and corruption.

During NaNo, I hope to complete the new first draft.

Synopsis: Within our world are points that transport magic-bearing individuals to realms where magic governs all. Within each realm is a magician-king who sends trained magician guards into the world to recruit undiscovered magicians into their ranks before the rulers of the other realms do the same.

Most of those brought back never realized they were magicians and have just a trace amount of magic in them. But sometimes a magician is brought back who is more powerful than most. Sometimes that power goes to their head when they are trained to use their magic. And sometimes they decide to overthrow the magical government in a bloody display just because they can.

When one man sends the otherwise peaceful realm of Lisbond into chaos, Seaira is forced to overcome her insecurities about her magic in order to survive. While her only concern is in protecting her son, this timid young woman may be the lone magician capable of stopping the crazed raise to power of the man she loves.

To learn more about Amanda, visit her blog (http://www.amandafanger.blogspot.com/), follow her on Twitter (@amanda_fanger) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/amandafangerwriter).

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NaNoWriMo Featured Author of the Week: Veronique Kootstra

As you can probably tell from my name, it hasn’t got an English ring to it. I was born in The Netherlands where I did most of my growing up. At the age of twenty-one, after studying journalism for a year, I could no longer ignore the urge to move to another country for a change of scenery. Skip forward ten years and I’m still living in the same place; Edinburgh, Scotland, which I now call home. It took me few years to get back into writing but quickly came to the conclusion that it is what I love to do most.

Looking for new writing challenges helps me to stay focused and, most importantly, to keep writing, even when it‘s sometimes challenging to combine it with a full-time job. I mainly write quite dark flash fiction with psychological undertones. NaNoWriMo is a great opportunity to start the one thing I have, up to now, found too daunting to even seriously think about. Knowing that other writers all over the world are doing same thing will hopefully spur me on until the end.

The NaNo novel I have planned is based on a flash fiction story titled ‘Lost’ which I wrote a few years ago. It’s a seven hundred word story that is somewhat personal and I’ve always wanted to do something more with it. The dedication it will require still worries me, going from writing very short stories to a novel is quite a big leap but one I’m now ready to take.

I’ve not got a polished synopsis yet or a title I’ve settled on, but I’ll try and tell you about it as best as I can. The main characters in my story are Diane, a fifty-five year old woman who has bipolar disorder, and her twenty-six year old daughter, Alison. The struggle for both of them to accept the disease becomes apparent throughout the story. Both find it difficult to let go of the past and move on. Diane’s psychotic episodes are written in such a way that hopefully the reader comes to understand that the things she experiences are very real to her. Nobody can completely understand what goes on in her head, however it does deserve an equal amount of attention in the story as Alison’s struggle to come to terms with her mother’s illness. Alison gets comfort out of reading the short stories her mother used to write on coloured cards and read to her when she was little. Undoubtedly, the subject matter carries baggage but my aim is show different sides of the disorder and not focus on just the negative. At the heart of the story is a complicated but loving mother-daughter relationship.

Some say write about what you know; others are for embracing the unknown. As this is my first attempt at writing a novel, I’ve decided to go for the ‘know’ option, but as it’s a subject that is very personal to me (my mother suffers from bipolar disorder) this is by no means the easier one. It did cross my mind to leave out the fact it’s partly autobiographical, but this could imply that I’m embarrassed about it and that’s certainly not the case. I feel very strongly about wanting to contribute to reducing the stigma of mental illness. As I’m very aware that I can’t just rely on my own experience, I’ve done as much research as possible beforehand. My aim is create a story that is engaging and real.

I would love to connect with other NaNoWriMo writers, you can find me on twitter @vkootstra or if you want to have a peek at my blog: www.veroniquekootstra.wordpress.com.

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NaNoWriMo Featured Author of the Week: Brittany Westerberg

I was the typical “nerd” of the class all throughout elementary, middle and high school. I loved reading. I couldn’t get enough of books. I would read as I walked home from school in our town of 800 people. When I was in the fifth grade, I remember being bored at my uncle’s house over Christmas one year and trying to read Moby Dick, though it was too heavy (in numerous ways) for me back then.

I started writing in a journal when I was in elementary school, and I started writing stories in middle school. My family had this old Apple Macintosh computer from the early 1990s, and it was only good for typing on. I would sit on the arm of our old couch – since there wasn’t really room for a chair in that corner of the basement – and write. I wrote three novels on that computer, in multiple documents, since the word processor that was on there would only deal well with documents that were about 30 pages long.

After I went off to college, I started on a journalism degree, wanting to continue writing somehow in my chosen career. I didn’t think that I could be a novelist or a full-time author. That dream was too far out there. My younger brother, however, didn’t think so. He found those novels I had written on that computer when he was going through it – my family had finally decided to trash it – and thought they were good enough to be published.

At that time, we didn’t know much about publishing, but we started sending queries to publishing companies that accepted new authors. We got a lot of “no” answers at first, though two or three of them were, “We’ve reached our limit of new authors this year, but keep trying! This is worth publishing!” It was heartening to hear.

It didn’t really sink in that my dream of being a published author had come true until I had a real copy of my book in my hands. My first novel, Into Fire, about a teenager named Leora who discovers she can do magic, was published in 2011 by Silver Leaf Books. The second novel in the trilogy, continuing Leora’s journey, is set to be published next year. I’ll be working on the third and final novel during NaNoWriMo. I have the general plot figured out, but the only part I have written is the last chapter. (Yes, for some reason, that came through my brain clearly before the second book was even finished.) My overall goal is to finish it by Christmas, with the majority of it (shooting for more than 50,000 words) being done in November.

My day job is as a marketing coordinator for a manufacturing company and a wife to a wonderful engineer, craftsman and bug-killer. We just recently bought our first house in Sioux Falls, SD. My dream of being a full-time author is still out there, and I’m chasing it.

Find Brittany online:

Her facebook page
Her twitter account: BrWesterberg
Her Goodreads Author page
Her website/blog: brwesterberg.wordpress.com
Her Amazon Author page
Into Fire on Amazon

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NaNoWriMo Featured Author of the Week: Alissa Leonard

Hey All! My name is Alissa Leonard. This is only my second year doing NaNo, and this year will be completely different. Well, maybe not completely. Last year I wrote almost 20K in November (which was AMAZING for me), and I’m hoping to do more than 20K this year (yes, that’s pathetic, but I figure ‘more than last time’ is a great goal – while, of course, hoping to reach that elusive 50K by some miracle). I had approximately 10K on the novel before November last year, but I have only the very first scene this year. Well, the first scene and the last scene…it’s the same scene, but cut in half. The rest of the book will flashback four years and follow the story, so really I’ve written the last scene… Or something. That scene is 1,343 words. 🙂

Last year I wrote a YA high/heroic fantasy novel. I actually just finished it in October (the first draft ended up at around 150K). I’m letting it sit this month and jumping into NaNo with a SHINY NEW IDEA, which is not a fantasy novel. That’s kind of odd for me. I typically lean toward fantasy/sci fi, so when this one hit me…well, it was strange that I was so excited about it. I’m actually not sure what I’m going to call it (You Must Really Love Him is my second working title already). I have no idea what kind of novel it would be marketed as (definitely YA, possibly a combination of Literary Fiction and Christian Romance? I’m going to call it Literary Romance, just because I can and no one can call me on it because no one has read it yet).

The idea came to me as I was thinking about my high school experience and wondering what might have happened if I had made different choices than the ones I did (which would, of course, make me a different person). It’s probably as close to autobiographical as I’ll ever get, but it will include so many things I never did or considered. It’s my way of exploring how our choices matter. All of them.

It will explore concepts of faith and relationships and how the choices we make affect everyone around us. My spark was to show a first person POV Christian perspective where the main character’s growth in her understanding of Jesus and the Bible heavily affects the choices she makes and how she interacts with people, and the consequences of those interactions.

I am a discovery writer (pantser, as some people like to call it). That means I don’t have an outline. Some discovery writers are able to do some planning, I am not one of them. I’ve tried. I sit and try to think of what’s going to happen in the scene I’m writing…and nothing. Without my fingers on the keyboard (or sometimes I can brainstorm some with pen and paper) I cannot continue with the story. Perhaps that will change with time? Perhaps I’ll learn tricks or something that will help me overcome that, but it’s not now. I am extremely jealous of all the outliners out there – especially when it comes to NaNo. You see, you can practically WRITE YOUR BOOK before November, I can’t do a thing. Not legally anyway. So, I have a plan. I’m going to sit down in October and brainstorm ideas for scenes. Very general ideas. I’m hoping for general events during high school (dances, parties, birthdays, trips, etc) and things I want to accomplish (two characters discussing a certain topic, this realization, this confession, etc) and hopefully have some sort of framework to hang stuff on come November. Like maybe I can have a discovery writer’s outline somehow. I’m not sure it will work, but I’m going to try it. I would love to be able to do some sort of pre-planning and this book lends itself well to trying this idea out, especially since I am drawing a lot from my own memories. I can sit down and think, “hmmm, what happened to me in high school? How did I respond? How would she respond? How would that change things? For her? For him? etc.” Maybe I can even make it halfway (to 25K) with this approach.

Anyway, I’m super excited about this idea and I can’t wait to begin. I’m on Twitter at @lissajean7 and I have a blog at www.alissaleonard.blogspot.com if you’re interested in checking me out. I write a lot of flash fiction, so you’ll find a lot of that on my blog.

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Featured Author: EM Castellan

E.M. Castellan

My name is EM Castellan and I am a YA Fantasy writer. I live in an English castle, travel extensively, read voraciously, listen to bands few people have heard of and watch too many movies to count. In case you are wondering, I also have a full-time job, so I mostly write at odd hours and drink a lot of tea. I have been writing for years, but during the past year, I have written the first book in my Epic Fantasy trilogy THE DARKLANDS. I will soon start looking for an agent with it, but in the meantime, I want to take a break from that story. Thus, JuNoWriMo is for me the perfect opportunity to put THE DARKLANDS in a drawer for a month and to work on something else. Continue reading “Featured Author: EM Castellan”

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Featured Author of the Week: Melinda McGuire

Melinda McGuire

Hello fellow JuNoWriMos!

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo and won, so I’m familiar with the set up of the WriMo concept, which is exactly why I signed up for JuNoWriMo. Honestly, I wish we had a WriMo every third month. I’d be a prolific writer then!

Nelson and Cora – The Journey is my planned JuNoWriMo story. This is the second book in a trilogy. The first book, Nelson and Cora – The Beginning, was my NaNoWriMo novel. If all goes according to plan (cue the maniacal laughter), the last book in the trilogy will be my NaNoWriMo novel for this year. Continue reading “Featured Author of the Week: Melinda McGuire”

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Featured Author of the Week: Greg Welch

Background

Greg Welch

I’ve been writing seriously for about 4 years now. It started out in response to my quarter life crisis I guess, but the truth is, I’ve always been working on stories, even before I knew what they were.

I like to think of myself as a horror writer, but mostly I evoke disturbance, trouble, and tragedy. I like the darker stuff. I don’t think I went through anything as a child that screwed me up, but then again maybe it’s just a repressed memory?

Currently I’m in college working on an English major, bettering my craft, and settling into my identity, role, and responsibility as a writer. I’m finally coming into my own and finding my place. I’m feeling more sure of myself and all around happier with who I am as a writer and what I have to offer. Continue reading “Featured Author of the Week: Greg Welch”

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JuNoWriMo Features Authors and YOU

I’m so glad you’re doing JuNoWriMo with us! June is going to be amazing, and it’s coming soon, so I hope you’re getting ready.

We Want to Feature YOU!

We’re big believers in teamwork and supporting writers. Through the next few months we’ll have regular blog posts to keep our community connected. One of the things I’m really excited about is our Featured Authors section. During JuNoWriMo we plan on having a series posts highlighting a few of our authors. It’s a great way for all of us to get to know each other better. I don’t know about you, but I’m very curious about what my fellow writers are going to be working on in June. And some of the titles/synopses I’ve seen sound very intriguing!

You don’t have to be published or famous to get featured here. You don’t even have to have finished a book yet. We’d like to help promote you—and this is a great forum for that. Continue reading “JuNoWriMo Features Authors and YOU”