Helping Writers Become Authors
June 8, 2017 by marianne h donley in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Writing tagged as KM Weiland, outlining. story structure, Writing advise
The Internet hosts an amazing feast of website for writers. Some offer weird advice (it is the internet) and some offer good advice, but some offer excellent advice and provide step by step guidance—for free. One of those excellent and free sites is K. M. Weiland’s Helping Writers Become Authors. The website was the winner of Writer’s Digest 10 Best Websites for Writers in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Helping Writers Become Authors is easy to navigate with a helpful menu across the top. On your first trip to HWBA, click on “Start Here” where K. M. Weiland has organized her “whopping big” website into quick steps to get you started. Two of my favorite articles is included here : How to Write Character Arcs and The Do’s and Don’ts of Storytelling According to Marvel.
She has free books Crafting Unforgettable Characters and 5 Secrets of Story Structure and for those of you who like to listen to craft she has a huge series of podcasts available both on her website or through iTunes. She also has a giant Story Structure Database where she deconstructs books and movies pointing out where the story structure is spot on and where it needs help. It can be very helpful to see the story structure bones of other authors. The database includes new movies like LOGAN and old ones like the 1959 BEN-HUR and books like WHITE FANG and GONE GIRL. The database also includes two short stories and a video game.
K.M. Weiland has several reasonably priced books about writing from Creating Character Arcs and Structuring Your Novel to Outlining Your Novel. Structuring Your Novel and Outlining Your Novel are also available as workbooks.
Just this week she also released Outlining Your Novel Workbook Computer Program (for PC and Mac) which I’m pretty sure is going to be a birthday present for me. I am very interested in seeing how this program compares to Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Pro which I use and really like.
She also writes historical and speculative fiction. Her titles include the award winning Storming, Dreamlander and Behold the Dawn. (Dreamlander is a free ebook.) I’ve read Dreamlander and enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to reading her other novels especially Storming—because hello, 1920s Dieselpunk!
Check out Helping Writers Become Authors. Let me know what your favorite resource is.
Marianne H. Donley makes her home in Tennessee with her husband and son. She is a member of Bethlehem Writers Group, Romance Writers of America, OCC/RWA, and Music City Romance Writers. When Marianne isn’t working on A Slice of Orange, she might be writing short stories, funny romances or quirky murder mysteries, but this could be a rumor.
June Traditions
June 1, 2017 by marianne h donley in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley tagged as June, Kids, Summer, writing
June Traditions
Graduations and wedding. Strawberry stands close. Corn on the cob stands open.
June bugs attempt suicide by flying into a patio door. News programs announce grunion runs. Janet Evanovich’s new novel is sure to be on the book store shelf soon. June gloom weather patterns make it impossible to know what to wear each day. Pick shorts and a tee, the clouds never burn off. Jeans and a pullover guarantee it will be ninety by ten fifteen. The significant other always announces that the air conditioner will not be turned on until after the Fourth of July. The kids get out of school.
Ah, no school. For me, that was always both a blessing and a curse. I loved the slower pace of summer days, kids making mud pies, decorating the driveway with sidewalk chalk, back yard sleep–overs, and the wide-eyed wonder of a child blowing bubbles. I was less thrilled with sibling squirt gun fights that degenerated into all out bloody warfare in thirty seconds or less, other parents who assumed that because I was a teacher and therefore home during the summer I would leap at the chance to entertain their little darlings twelve hours a day five days a week for free, and those heartfelt words, “Mom, I’m so bored.”
No school for my kids rarely translated into no other commitments for me. I taught summer school classes, took graduate math classes and always had a novel on which I was working. So how did I carve out time for writing with a job, graduate school, three kids, and a husband who traveled?
First, I insisted both my sons and my daughter did housework. They made their beds. They vacuumed. They washed dishes. They scrubbed toilets. Few of their chores were completed as well as if I had done them myself, but I learned to turn a blind eye to what I didn’t have time to fix and to ignore snippy comments from other adults.
Next, I let my children join inexpensive summer time activities. The PTA arranged a summer movie series for children, a juice-box, a small bag of popcorn and the movie all for a dollar. Park and Recreation always offered swimming lessons, art lessons, piano lessons, gym classes. I traded play days with other mothers. But rather than drop my kids off and return to pick them up, I packed a lawn chair, a clipboard, sun screen and stayed. I graded papers during swim team practice, completed non-Euclidean geometry homework during gym class and edited chapters of my very first book while my kids played in the sand.
I arranged my desk and computer so that I could see the back yard while I worked. If they needed me closer, I handed them their own paper and pencils, pulled chairs up to my desk and had them write with me. I got wild stickers and made a refrigerator chart. They earned a sticker for each book they read and could redeem the chart for a small prize from the junk store. I bought books on tape like Treasure Island, The Hobbit, Tom Sawyer, cheap tape players with head phones and handed them out when I needed quiet time. If I was truly desperate and they were truly bored, I let them watch videos, a huge treat at my house where the TV never turned on unless it was dark outside. I set my alarm for four and wrote all morning, something I still do today even though my children are out of the house and have children of their own.
So if your children are home for the summer, cherish them and those mud pies drying in the sun, but plan on carving out time for your writing. You are creative, and if you really want to write, you will find a way.
4 0 Read moreThe Painted Queen
May 17, 2017 by marianne h donley in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley tagged as Amelia Peabody, Elizabeth Peters, Joan Hess
I’ve been a fan of Elizabeth Peters in all her incarnations, from her Barbara Mertz non-fiction, to her gothic mysteries as Barbara Michaels. I like her short stories, the stand alone books, and the series. I’ve read and reread all her books.
I found out last week, quite by accident, that The Painted Queen, a brand new Amelia Peabody, is scheduled to be published. I clicked the link because Elizabeth Peters has been dead these past four years, and I was very curious as to how a new book could be possible. Much to my surprise the book has been co-written by Joan Hess from Ms. Peter’s unfinished manuscript.
Evidently, I’ve been living is a fog for a while because the book was first announced several years ago, and it will, finally, be published in July of this year.
From reading all of Ms. Peters’ author notes over the years, I know that she was friends with Joan Hess (and wouldn’t I have liked to be a fly on THAT front porch), so I think it’s very fitting that Ms. Hess finished the book. I’ve read just about all of Joan Hess’s books as well, so I know that she is more than qualified to handle this task. And it’s fitting that a friend finish her book as she finished Charlotte MacLeod’s The Balloon Man. (You can read about it on the Remembering Barbara Mertz website.)
While I was on the Remembering Barbara Mertz website I found a Rafflecopter giveaway for 20 pre-publication versions of The Painted Queen. (Which, of course I entered.) Part of the giveaway asks fans to tell how they were introduced to Sitt Hakim.
I remember that well!
Both Mémère (my grandma) and Grandma Trudy (my husband’s grandma) love to read murder mysteries, and they both belonged to The Detective Book Club. Some of you may be old enough to remember these books. They arrived monthly, and there were usually three mystery novels in each volume. Both grandmas were very generous about donating their books to me when they had finished reading them.
Just look at the authors featured in these books: Erle Stanley Gardner, P. D. James, Ellis Peters, Tony Hillerman, Charlotte Macleod/Alisa Craig, John D. MacDonald, Donald E. Westlake, Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen among many many others. In The Detective Book Club, I found Georges Simeon’s Inspector Mairget, Leslie Charteris’ The Saint, Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax (senior citizen and CIA spy), Hamilton Crane’s Miss Seeton, and Rae Foley’s Mr. Potter (which is who I always thought of when reading about the wizard and kept waiting for someone to say, It’s Murder, Mr. Potter).
It was here I read Amiee, Come Home by Barbara Michaels while I was still in high school. And a few years Elizabeth Peter’s Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first Amelia Peabody novel.
Like my grandmas I passed the books to others–usually to my mother and sisters (all reader!), but I kept the copy of Crocodile on The Sandbank. That book was funny; Emerson was very cool, and it was about Egypt. (My family was stranded in Cairo in the early 60s. Our plane had mechanical trouble and an hour layover turned into a week stay, complete with a trip to the pyramids, my seven-year-old sister escaping the hotel, and a jewelry merchant who tried to buy my mother. So, I’m partial to books set in Egypt.)
I read other Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters novels in The Detective Book Club over the years but didn’t really connect any of the novels with Crocodile on the Sandbank. Then I got one of the books from 1981 with the second Amelia Peabody, The Curse of the Pharaohs, as lead novel. 
Within the first sentence, I knew that this was the sequel to Crocodile on the Sandbank. I read it in one night and then went to the bookstore the next day. I showed the book to the clerk, and she showed me a whole bookcase of Elizabeth Peters novels and then mentioned that she was also Barbara Michaels.
I may have heard angels singing.
I did hear my hubby tell the kids we were eating out that night because Mommy would be busy. And that he was going to have to get another job, because that bookstore bookcase full of Elizabeth Peters’/Barbara Michaels’ books was going to bankrupt him. (He wasn’t much of a reader then, but I’ve corrupted him.)
And that was how I was introduced to Sitt Hakim.
Amazon has pages of The Detective Book Club available. You can probably find volumes at every garage sale in the US. There are books on Etsy and ebay and for some weird reason they are listed as decorator books for ‘man caves’ I’m not sure why.
Did you ever read novels in the The Detective Book Club?
Where and when were you introduced to Sitt Hakim?
Will you be reading The Painted Queen?
And that Rafflecopter give away—I won a copy!
Marianne H. Donley makes her home in Tennessee with her husband and son. She is a member of Bethlehem Writers Group, Romance Writers of America, OCC/RWA, and Music City Romance Writers. When Marianne isn’t working on A Slice of Orange, she might be writing short stories, funny romances or quirky murder mysteries, but this could be a rumor.
You can find her short mystery, Tomato Blight, in ONCE AROUND THE SUN.
5 1 Read moreA Pick Six Interview with Author Jenna Barwin
May 12, 2017 by marianne h donley in category Pick Six Author Interviews tagged as Dark Wine at Midnight, Jenna Barwin, Pick Six Author Interview
Pick Six Author Interviews are occasional features on A Slice of Orange. We send a bunch of questions to the author who then picks just six of the questions to answer. This month we are featuring a Pick Six Author Interview with debut author Jenna Barwin.
Jenna Barwin is an author of the Hill Vampire Novels, which blend mystery, wine, and romantic spice into a heady combination. She has degrees in sound engineering, theology, the law, and if a degree was offered, she’d have one in the school of love. She believes in changing careers frequently enough to keep life interesting. She has worked as a circus magician, news video editor, and public law attorney (but not all at the same time). She brings those varied experiences to her writing. When not writing, she enjoys both land and underwater nature photography and is known to occasionally attend a Victorian dance in full regalia right down to pantaloons and a hoop skirt.
Dark Wine at Midnight, the first book in her first urban fantasy Hill Vampire series, was released on April 25, 2017. It’s equal parts mystery, political intrigue, and romance. She’s currently working with an editor on the next book in her series, Dark Wine at Sunrise. You can sign up for Jenna’s newsletter at https://jennabarwin.com/jenna-barwins-newsletter/ or find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
One: What’s the best thing about being an author?
The best? Getting paid to fantasize! I love escaping into the fantasy and watching the story unfold. But I also love connecting with readers, learning about them, and why they read. So making connections with readers is also at the top of my list.
Two: What are you currently working on and when can we read it?
I just finished writing Dark Wine at Midnight, and you can read it right now. It’s an urban fantasy romance, and combines mystery and political intrigue with a love story. It’s book 1 in a series, and is set in an exclusive winemaking community of vampires. Here’s the elevator pitch: A research scientist is forced by her people to spy on the vampires she’s trying to help. One of those vampires is an expert winemaker with eyes the color of dark bourbon—and just as intoxicating—who’s hiding his own deep secrets. To succeed, she must convince him to trust her, despite the dark secrets each carries, and the mutual attraction they can’t resist.
I’m currently working on book 2 in the Hill Vampire series, Dark Wine at Sunrise, and it’s due out in late 2017 or early 2018.
Three: In your books, who is your favorite character and why?
Enrique “Henry” Bautista Vasquez is my favorite character. I enjoy writing him. He’s the first character I created in the Hill Vampire series, and I just loved the process of discovery—peeling back the layers to find out who he is. He’s originally from Mexico. He came to California in the early 1800s, where he was turned vampire, and founded the fictional town of Sierra Escondida. So he has a deep backstory, entwined with California’s history, and I like weaving the two together. He’s also an expert winemaker, with dark brown eyes and long black hair, but he’s a bit moody. Because of a dark secret he carries, he’s been unsuccessful at relationships. He’s also very protective of the town he founded. So when Dr. Cerissa Patel arrives in town, he’s suspicious of her, but also attracted to her, and his suspicion is fighting with the feelings she’s stirred up in him.
Four: If a spaceship landed in your backyard and the aliens on board offered to take you for a ride, would you go? Why or why not?
Absolutely, I’d go. I grew up watching Star Trek, and always wanted to go where no one had gone before, but with one exception. If the aliens had really long, scary-looking, meat-eating teeth, I might reconsider. I don’t want to be the next item on the dinner menu. But then again, if they wanted me as dinner, or for a science experiment, I doubt they’d offer. They’d just snatch me up. So offering a ride puts them in the “likely to be friendly” category.
Five: Where can we get your books?
Dark Wine at Midnight is available right now in Kindle Unlimited, and in ebook and paperback formats on Amazon.
DARK WINE AT MIDNIGHT
To save humanity, a reluctant spy must convince a handsome vampire to trust her, despite the dark secrets each carries, and the mutual attraction they can’t resist.
More info →
Six: Do you have a website, blog, twitter where fans might read more about you and your books?
I love to connect with readers. To get all the latest scoop, they can sign up for my newsletter at: https://jennabarwin.com/jenna-barwins-newsletter/ Or find me and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
And if you want to see some of the visual inspirations for Henry’s home and Sierra Escondida, I’m on Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/jennabarwin/).
Thank you, Jenna for doing the Pick Six Author Interview.
If you would like to be featured in a Pick Six Author Interview, please send us your information through the Contact Form.
3 0 Read more
Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer with Elena Dillon
May 7, 2017 by marianne h donley in category Writing: It's a Business tagged as Elena Dillion, Online Classes, Visual Content Marketing
Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer
Instructor: Elena Dillon
Cost: $79
Dates: On Demand at Teachable.com
What is visual content and why do you need it for your marketing strategy? And how does this apply to your author business?
The answer is simple.
Visual content is anything that uses pictures, graphics, video, etc. When you see a GIF of cats falling off tables? That’s visual content. A pretty graphic with a quote from a book? Visual Content. Those fabulous cooking videos where they make a cinnamon roll apple pie in twenty seconds? Visual content.
It’s what will get your content seen. As a matter of fact, statistically your readers are 44% more likely to engage with visual content. Hmmm. 44%? Hard to ignore. We all want to work smarter not harder, right? In this class, you will learn:
- How to decide what kind of visuals will work for you and your business
- How to create all kinds of visuals
- How to make one piece of content work in many different ways
- Drive traffic where you want it to go (your website, lead page, Amazon or other retailer page)
- Save time and effort in your marketing efforts
Who should take this class?
This class for you if you’ve never created any kind of graphics on your own. It’s for authors who need to learn how to create visual content for their author business and are unsure about using new technology. We will go over:
- Strategies for smarter marketing
- Tools that make visual content easier to create and more manageable
- How to plan out your content and marketing so it takes up less precious writing time.
And believe it or not? I’ll make it fun. I’ll teach you how to create a graphic while you’re standing in line for coffee. =)
About the instructor:
Who Am I?
I’m Elena Dillon, an author of the award winning Young Adult Breathe series. When I’m not writing, I love to help my author friends with technology and social media. I’ve taught Social Media for the Confused and Terrified, Pinterest for the Confused and Terrified, Visual Content for Authors and spoken at numerous conferences, chapters and groups about social media and indie publishing.
Most of the time, I’m a wife to my husband of twenty-six years, mom to my two grown kids and servant to my high-maintenance English bulldog, Brutus, while I wait, not so patiently, for grandbabies.
Enrollment Information
Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer
Instructor: Elena Dillon
Cost: $79
Dates: On Demand at Teachable.com
3 0 Read moreFeatured Books
THE CONSPIRACY
When family ambition turns deadly Chase Garrett must keep Harper safe and both of them alive.
More info →
SEA DREAMS
Can help from a lavender-eyed sea witch, a few enchanted cupcakes and a touch of New Moon magic really rescue a once famous now washed up artist from himself?
More info →
