A Guest Post by C.V. Smith Author of Nettie Parker’s Backyard

C.V. Smith, an educator for over 30 years, has woven timely and important themes of anti-bullying and tolerance toward all into this historical fiction novel. Laced with a touch of mystery and magic, the reader’s interest is held while simultaneously learning about African-American slavery and WWII. Choices, caring, and commitment all build to the twist ending, proving love to be the greatest force of all. The wide appeal of the novel contains something for every child, ages 9-13, and adult, alike.

The idea for Nettie Parker'sBackyard came to me in a very vivid dream, and whereas most of my dreams go unremembered, this one was definitely unique.  Its powerful detail and message ended with a revelation that has affected my own personal beliefs, further compelling me to write the book.  My research took me down some fascinating avenues as I discovered such things as the Gullah language in the Sea Islands, the Kindertransport, sand fly fever, and the role African-American soldiers played in WWII.  Nettie's character was based on that of my granddaughters; thus, some of her best virtues are those of trust, love, and friendship.

I have been a teacher and para-educator for over 30 years, most of which were spent in classrooms where students were just beginning to think for themselves and about themselves.  The book is written for ages 9-13, the time when youth questions everything.  Adolescence is starting and many children feel insecure about themselves, their relationships with peers, or even their own families and home life.  These insecurities manifest themselves in various behaviors; some children withdraw into themselves, while some overcompensate for their fears by bullying others.  I have witnessed that when bullying begins, even if innocently meant with only an off-handed word or two, prejudice often follows not far behind.  I wrote this novel hoping to illustrate to children that bullying and intolerance toward race, religion, or the physically challenged have no place in our world.  Certainly, with tools such as the internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc., the world is becoming smaller in many ways, and so the ill-effects of prejudice are felt even more strongly today than in the past.  I believe that my book inspires readers to see that what matters is the "core" of each person, and that acceptance of others and their differences truly means enriching themselves.  I further believe that more must be done to inhibit bullying; not doing so only enables the passing of prejudice from one generation to the next.

Secret head start for the GiveAway for those who have read this guest post.  Come back on the 31st and enter again, this gives you twice the opportunity to win. 

All Treat and No Tricks! 

Five Books Will Be Given Away, One Hard Copy and Four E-Books

Entries will be accepted October 31 to November 6, 2011

A Guest Post by Whit Gentry Author of Revenge:No Statue of Limitations

Whit Gentry has been generous enough to allow me to  post this short essay.  It is truly a window into someone's personality.   I have corresponded with Whit and thought he was a good guy.  After reading this essay I concluded without a doubt, I am correct, he is a good guy and a very good writer.  He conveys a lot of feeling and emotion in this short essay.  It evoked strong childhood memories of my own.   Kudos to Whit for his insight!  Read this, I bet it will evoke memories for you as well.  

Life is but a Collection of Memories

I recently found out that a childhood friend and dear memory of mine had passed away.  Even though our paths had not crossed in well over fifty years, the memory was always there for me to call upon.  My life after sixty seven years remains to be touched by the time we spent together.

In the early 1950’s, it was common and expected of the grown children to return to their parents house with the grandkids in tow.  My parents were always pleased that I wanted to take the forty mile drive to grandpa and grandma’s house at least once a month.  My grandparents were also always glad to see us and pleased that their grandson wanted to see them.  Well, I did want to see them and I did love being with them on their small farm with a garden, cows, horses, and chickens.  What really pleased me though was the opportunity to see the neighbors.

Gordon and Vera Black lived in the next house down the gravel road.  They also had two horses but what they had that really interested me was three daughters.  To me Gordon Black was one of the king pins or pillars of the community of Foreman, Arkansas, population 903.  Mr. Black worked at Welch’s Department Store on Main Street and was located across from the hotel and the Sheriff’s Office which had a jail cell.  As far as I was concerned, Mr. Black owned Welch’s Department Store.

I respected Mr. Black but I admired his three daughters more.  The oldest daughter was Amanda, several years older than me and since she was considerably taller than me, I came to just about her waist; I knew that I never had a chance to win her heart.  The youngest daughter, Carol, was still in diapers that seemed to always be fouled and my memory of those garments was just too fresh for me to consider being her best friend.  The middle daughter was by far the pick of the litter to me.  Yes, she was a little taller than me but love can overcome some steep obstacles.  To this day I can remember a round faced beauty with ample freckles framed by brownish blonde hair and a smile that could melt the hardest of hearts. 

After visiting with the grandparents, I would sprint down the gravel road or cross the two barbed wire fences and pasture to get to the Black’s homestead.  The first vision at the Black’s house that lit me up was the radiant face of Jane Black.  In my sixty seven years of observing many sun rises, I must say that it was never as bright as Jane Black’s face on those Saturday afternoons.  I was eight and she was ten, life was good and its memory is as if it were last month.

Saturdays were special in the pre television days, we would each get a quarter from our parents and would then walk the gravel road to town, which seemed like many miles of houses, farms, a stream and a railroad; but today the distance has been reduced to hardly more than a mile and the people that travel it today don’t know what they’re missing.

What an adventure walking to town and when we reached downtown Foreman, a whole city block of bustling stores on each side of Main Street and cars parked in front of the stores on the paved street, we were in awe.  We would stand on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and just take in the enormity of it all, it was mind boggling.  The picture show was at the other end of the block from the hotel and next to my Uncle Rob and Aunt Willie’s grocery store that was a bank at one time and had a walk in vault where the potatoes and onions were kept so they wouldn’t sprout.  I liked to play in the big black vault but the onion odor could be overcoming at times.

With our treasures of twenty five cents each, we would pay Mr. Stuart a dime each to get into the movie house and we could buy a six ounce bottle of Coke for a nickel and a box of popcorn for another nickel, leaving us each with ten cents since we shared the coke and the popcorn.  The serial of Flash Gordon was my favorite and Jane liked Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.  I think she liked them because she had a horse that looked like Trigger.

When the movie was over, we would get a nickel’s worth of candy at Uncle Rob and Aunt Willie’s store and would walk the sidewalks that were filling with people coming to town on Saturday.  Wooden benches lined the sidewalk and were a prime location for people to occupy as they visited with folks walking the sidewalk.  Other folks sat in their cars and visited as people passed by.  My dad and grandpa would drive both cars to town Saturday afternoon and park one in a prime place where the family could sit and visit with passersby that evening.

One of the most entertaining things for Jane and me to do was to peek into the pool hall, a forbidden place for young people.  We loved to peer into the pool hall and be swished along by the grownups walking the sidewalk.  “You kids get along”.  I guess they thought they were saving our souls.  Of all the time that we sneaked a peek, we never saw anything that resembled the stories of what happened at the Pool Hall; what a disappointment.  Before we rode home with our parents, we would spend our last nickel on an ice cream bought at the drug store, the place where the big kids hung out.  The drug store with its’ black and white tile checkerboard floor, small metal tables with metal chairs, and marble counter with bright red swivel stools was a place you had to grow into to be accepted.

I feel it necessary to come clean now about an affair I had while being friends with Jane.  It was the forth grade and Miss Casey became the center of the universe for me.  As I reflect back on the forth grade and try to identify what I learned most, the only recollection I have is the long beautiful legs of Miss Casey.  She’s probably about a hundred years old now.

After entering the fifth grade, Jane and my relationship took a leap forward.  She was thirteen and I was eleven, almost.  She had free reign to ride her horse and my grandpa occasionally allowed me to take his plow horse for a ride with Jane.  There is no telling how many miles we covered both on and off the road.  Sometimes we would take a lunch and be away from home five or six hours and no one ever expressed a concern about our absence or what we were doing.

  My grandpa spanked me only one time in my life and it was because of Jane.  We had left in the morning, riding our horses, and ended up in town that afternoon.  After we drank a coke, we untied our horses and rode them slowly down Main Street, like we were grownups.  After we crossed the railroad tracks and were on the gravel road home Jane said, “I’ll race you home” and she took off like a banshee.  I took off after her and I quickly discovered that I was no longer in charge.  The old plow horse knew where he was, he never caught Jane but when he got to his farm he abruptly turned right and didn’t stop until he got to the backyard of the farmhouse where grandpa happened to be sitting under a shade tree.  When the old horse made the right turn, me and the saddle slid to the left side of the horse and that is where I was when he stopped in front of grandpa.  The horse was covered with lather and breathing hard.  Grandpa pulled me off the side of the horse and took me to the smokehouse where I was made to understand that it was not acceptable to run the horse from town.  Fearing embarrassment I never told Jane about my dramatic arrival or the lesson that had been pressed upon my behind.

As Jane and I grew older, the time we spent together waned.  The advent of hormones, teens, and cars separated us from our frequent gatherings.  The forty miles between us seemed to grow.

I haven’t seen, spoken or communicated with Jane in over fifty years, and now I’ll never have that chance.  I wish I could have told her that I was blessed to know her and am a better person for knowing her.  I miss you but you will always be with me, Jane Black.

I’ve just finished writing a novel and the heroine of my story, an FBI agent, is named Jane Black.  When I was writing the story I came to this character and without pre-thought or planning, my two fingers typed out Jane Black unconscientiously.  Being of a simple mind, it never occurred to me until a year later when I was told of Jane’s passing that my heroine, Jane Black was really my Jane Black.

The mind is scary sometimes.

Whit's book, see my review several posts back.

Finding Time To Write By Pamela Samuels Young: A Guest Post

Finding Time To Write By Pamela Samuels Young, Author of Murder on the Down Low and Buying Time.
In the beginning, you were full of excitement about that novel that had been bubbling around in your head. You finally planted yourself in front of your computer and started typing away. Day after day, you rushed home from work, anxious to pick up where you left off. Then life intervened and you haven’t been able to get back to your novel for weeks, or maybe even months.

Take it from me, finding time to write is one of the most challenging aspects of being a writer who is still holding down a full-time job. While the lack of time to write can sometimes be so frustrating that you want to throw in the towel, please don’t. Whether you have just an hour a week or one day a month, use that time and use it wisely.

Here are some tips that can help you find time to write, even if you’re convinced you have no time.


1. Prepare a Weekly Writing Schedule
Sit down with your calendar on Friday evening and go through everything you have to do for the coming week. Determine where you can find time to write, even if it’s only an hour and schedule that time as you would any other appointment. Do the same thing the following Friday and every Friday thereafter until you develop a regular writing schedule. If you fall off track, simply hop back on.

2. Determine What Activities You Can Give Up
When you prepare your writing schedule, review your activities the previous week and determine what things you can give up. Do you really need to see that new Will Smith movie this weekend? How much time did you spend watching your favorite TV shows? Maybe you can go to the gym three days a week instead of four. Identify all the activities you can eliminate and use that time to write.

3. Learn to Write Anywhere
If someone had told me five years ago that Starbucks would be one of my favorite places to write, I would have laughed. How could anyone write in a noisy coffeehouse with constant foot traffic? Well, it works quite well for me, particularly when I’m in the zone. I’ve since learned to write in a number of odd places. I’ve written in the car while my husband is driving, in the beauty shop, even in the doctor’s office. While I love my writing getaways where I spend an entire week or weekend alone in Palm Springs writing away, I’ve learned to write wherever I am and you can learn to do the same.

4. Ask Your Family for Support.
Explain your writing goals to your family and friends and ask them to support you. Tell them that achieving your dreams of becoming a published author will mean seeing a little less of you. While you may attend the family barbecue, you might have to tiptoe out a few hours early to squeeze in some writing time. Writing is a solo venture and sometimes, those closest to you may make you feel guilty for abandoning them. Don’t let the guilt deter you from your goal. Trust me, once you’re a successful author, no one will hold it against you.

5. Read Time Management Books for Writers.
Sometimes it helps to seek advice from professionals. There are two books on time management for writers that I highly recommend. They both offer practical strategies as well as tips for helping you stay motivated. I would even go as far as urging you to spend some of your writing time reading these books!

Write is a Verb: Sit Down, Start Writing, No Excuses by Bill O’Hanlon. The author of this book is a psychotherapist and writing coach who conducts workshops for writers. He focuses on helping writers determine what motivates them to write. He offers practical and useful techniques to help you start and finish your novel.


Time to Write: Professional Writers Reveal How to Fit Writing into Your Busy Life by Kelly L. Stone. In Time to Write, Stone shares the stories of several successful writers who explain how they did it. You’ll hear from big name writers like Sandra Brown, Catherine Coulter, and Tess Gerritsen. Once you see how they got it done, you’ll realize that you can do it too!


Wow Pamela, what great advice!  As a fledgling author I love to hear what advice the successful authors can offer.
Bill

Guest Post by Author James Boyle of Ni'il, The Awakening

On Becoming a Writer


Another question I'm often asked is when/how did I decide to become a writer. Believe it, or not, the clouds didn't part one day and a brilliant beam of light pinion me to a spring meadow. There was no epiphany. But it's all I've really wanted to do since high school anyway.

To begin with, I've always been a voracious reader. I was blessed to be the oldest child of two parents who would rather read than watch television, or go to the movies. Reading has always been an important part of my life. And when I say reading, I mean broad-based reading: mysteries, crime, historical fiction, horror, classic literature, westerns, I read it all. I even tried to read a Harlequin Romance once, but couldn't do it.

I was voracious. And I didn't just read and enjoy the story. I imagined stories like the ones I'd just read,

Somewhere around sixth grade, I read Treasure Island and was so enamored of the romance of the pirate I had to read every pirate novel I could get my hands on. There were probably three. The scarcity of pirate novels was terribly frustrating. I still remember thinking to myself that I'd just have to write my own. I couldn't do it, of course, but that's the first time I remember thinking it.

In high school, I became a reporter for the student newspaper and was good at it. I became the editor, then the editor of the yearbook. I began to try my hand at fiction, but never actually finished a story until I was eighteen.

I went to college, as a journalism major, but quickly discovered that I didn't really want to be another Woodward or Bernstein so much as a Kurt Vonnegut. So I switched majors to English, began to seriously study the craft of fiction, and the rest is history.

After thirty plus years of practice and study, I'm beginning to figure out what I'm doing.

I still haven't written that pirate novel.

A Guest Post by D.C. Corso Author of "Skin and Bones"

Islands in a Common Sea-D.C. Corso

I could lie and say that I had the underlying theme of isolation in mind when I chose to set Skin and Bones, my first mystery, on the fictional Carver Isle. I could bend the truth and say that it was all part of my grand scheme of placing guarded and distant characters in a community which is itself remote and distant. But at the time I didn’t really consciously think about it – who really develops a theme in advance of a story? The superficial truth is almost disappointing in its simplicity: I chose the Pacific Northwest island community because it was something I knew, and something that felt right.

Back in the late eighties and early 90s, I lived in Seattle. Being in my mid-twenties at the time, I missed California and the comfort of friends and family, and moved back to the Bay Area. I returned often to visit my sister Ginny and her husband Stu on Bainbridge Island, discovering that while on the surface island living appears very quaint, there are in reality vast socioeconomic gaps. As the price of Seattle homes jumped in the ’90s, longtime islanders found themselves with skyrocketing property values – and taxes – as more and more city folk sought to relocate to Bainbridge. Naturally, resentment grew between those who held ranches and farmland on the island and those who eagerly sought to develop and sell said land. While I didn’t want economic disparity and class resentment to be at the forefront of Skin and Bones, I can’t deny that it’s a hugely important part of the scenery.


But why not just set the tale in a suburb? Honestly, because island communities are much more closely knit than you might find in a suburb. Suburbs allow for a comfortable distance from your neighbors, and this simply does not exist within island communities. While everyone does not necessarily know everyone else on an island, they do know everyone on their block, sometimes far more than they want to know them. In most suburbs, people tend to know just what they need to get by. They know roughly who their neighbors are, but not much beyond their names and house numbers.


Had I set the tale someplace like West Seattle or even the remote and woodsy Snoqualmie, the story might have worked, but those locations still felt far too accessible. Water lends distance to that which may otherwise be near, so the island community completed the setting puzzle nicely.


Looking back, I think the writer in me subconsciously understood that a dark and isolated township surrounded by water would perfectly reflect the story's underlying darkness and the characters' own issues and problems. Then again, hindsight is 20/20.

Thank you for your insights!

Bill

Guest Post by Buying Time Author Pamela Samuels Young

Digging Out of a Writing Slump

You’ve been working on your novel for months, maybe even years, and lately you feel more discouraged than ever. Perhaps it’s the disappointment of not having finished the book yet. Maybe you don’t know where to go next with your story. Or it’s possible that you’re just physically and emotional drained from all the time and effort you’ve poured into this dream. I’ve been there!

Occasionally falling into a writing slump isn’t reason for alarm. What’s important is that you don’t stay there too long. Here are five tips for re-energizing yourself when you feel like giving up.

■ Read Inspirational Stories About Writing and Writers

Take a writing break and read about successful writers who weathered the storm. Here are two excellent books to get you started:

"Knit Together: Discovery God’s Pattern for Your Life" by Debbie Macomber.

This book was such an inspiration to me. Macomber, a best selling writer with more than 100 million books in print, openly shares her story of writing rejection. Once you read about her writing journey, you’ll close the book anxious to get back to your own novel.

"Rotten Reviews & Rejections", edited by Bill Henderson and Andre Bernard. This book shares the rejection letters and stinging reviews received by many successful and prolific writers, from Stephen King to Upton Sinclair to James Joyce and more. You’ll scratch your head at the discouraging rejection letters these wonderful writers received. They didn’t give up, and you shouldn’t either.


■ Don’t Strive for Perfect Prose

Many new writers think that everything that flows from their fingertips must be golden. Hence, if they write a few pages that don’t sound worthy of a Pulitzer, they’re disappointed. Forget about writing a perfect prose right out of the box. The most important part of writing is rewriting. Just concentrate on finishing your first draft. Then revise until you’re pleased with the final product.

■ Set a Writing Goal

Make a commitment to write a set number of pages per week. Can you commit to writing 10 or 15 pages per week? Or perhaps writing three hours a day or three days a week works better for you. Whatever goal you set, make sure it’s realistic. Start out small and once you get into the flow of things, increase your goal. And if you fall short one week, don’t beat yourself up. There’s always next week.

■ Start a Writer’s Group

Put the word out that you’re looking to start a writer’s group. Tell friends, family members and colleagues that you’re looking for three or four serious writers who would like to build a supportive writing environment for themselves and other writers. You’ll probably have a lot of interest in the beginning, but only the serious writers will be around for the long haul. Establish a regular meeting time (at least once a month) and require at least two members to produce work for the group to critique each month.


■ Think About Your Story

Most people assume that if you’re not putting words on paper, then you’re not “writing.” I don’t feel that way. The next time you’re taking a long walk, standing in a grocery store line, or stuck in traffic, use the time to mull over your story. Think about your characters or your plot. Imagine your protagonist having a conversation. Think about how you might describe a room. Challenge yourself to invent a predicament that creates conflict for your character. If you come up with some great ideas, don’t forget to write them down.



Pamela Samuels Young is a Los Angeles-area attorney and the author of four legal thrillers. Her latest release, Buying Time, is her first stand-along novel. A former television news writer, Pamela is the Fiction Expert for BizyMoms.com and is on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. To contact Pamela or to read an excerpt of her books, visit www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com. For more writing tips from Pamela, visit www.bizymoms.com.

Bill Walker, author of “A Note From An Old Acquaintance”:

I would like to thank Bill Walker, Author of “A Note From An Old Acquaintance” for his guest post today. I asked Bill if he could write about how he progressed from graphics designer to author and what motivates him to write. It is always interesting to see what motivates the creators of our literary entertainment and enlightenment.

From Bill Walker

Author of “A Note From An Old Acquaintance”:

The irony is that I've always been a writer, from about the age of eight. I wrote my first book at ten, called The Adventures of Mouser, which was a modern day pastiche of Ben and Me, a story about a very intelligent and inventive mouse. Graphic design came much later and very much as an accident.
My father, a lifelong gadgeteer, was getting into computers toward the end of his life. One of the programs he purchased was Adobe PageMaker. I think he got it simply so he could see how the novel he'd started would look in print. After his death, I inherited his computers and software and I guess I started wondering the same thing: How would my books look professionally typeset? Well, I started messing with the program and enjoying another aspect of creativity. In fact, it was almost a complement to what I did with my writing in that it used a different part of my creative mind.
Anyway, around 1998, I had just finished writing Titanic 2012. I was also (and still am) an inveterate collector of books. At that time I was buying a lot of signed editions from Cemetery Dance Publications and had become friendly with Rich Chizmar, the publisher. In one of our conversations, I told him about my new manuscript. He said, "Let me take a look at it." I was flattered, but Rich's meat and potatoes is horror, so I harbored no illusions that sending him Titanic 2012, a mystery/love story, would amount to anything.
Well, a couple of weeks later, he faxes me a contract. He wanted to publish it. And when I told him that I wanted to do the book design for it, too, he said to run with it. That one book led to a freelance career that continues to this day. For me, graphic design is another important aspect in the presentation of the story. My goal as a writer is to entertain and perhaps provoke a bit of thought. My job as a book designer is to make that book as attractive and as readable as possible. The last thing anyone wants is a reader fighting the page because of poor choices in typography and layout. So, that is how I came to be working both sides of the fence.
One Review

Thank you very much Bill for your words and the insight as to your motivation. Readers if you are so inspired you can get Bill’s books at Amazon.