Get a Free suspense novel TODAY!

I don't often promote specific authors' work here, but Jessie B. Tyson is a dear pal from the British Isles and since her new novel, White Heaven Women is free to download today and tomorrow, I thought I'd beat the drum a little.

Many people believe that we have all been here on earth before, with a different name, different life. Some live their current lives believing they’ll be reincarnated after death. This past life theme is prevalent in movies, television ad novels, including the new supernatural suspense White Heaven Women by British author Jessie B. Tyson.

White Heaven Women is a gripping tale set in Whitehaven, Cumbria, UK. Flashing between 1899/ early 1900s to 2000, readers are introduced to two sisters, Beth and Sarah, and the fate that awaits them.

***

Why the author wrote White Heaven Women

Where to begin and most importantly, to keep it short. The starting post is usually a good place. When I lived in north England, I was a Home/ Community Support worker for a woman who suffered from Palsy who asked me to write her life story. All went well for a few weeks until...bingo...one morning my imaginative muse took over like a control freak- it wouldn’t let me write the truth about her anymore! The only thing in my story that is true now is the existence of blue ghosts.

 

Listen to the audio on YouTube to see why the author made the ghosts in “White Heaven Women” Blue – a true audio story!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGnp9nX7HyU 

 

 

Now, go get your free copy of White Heaven Women at:

Amazon US:- http://www.amazon.com/White-Heaven-Women-ebook/dp/B008SDDGV6

Amazon UK:- http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Heaven-Women-ebook/dp/B008SDDGV6

CreateSpace/Paperback:https://www.createspace.com/3966486

 

The charming Ms Tyson would love to hear from you. Contact her at

http://www.facebook.com/jessie.b.tyson

http://twitter.com/JessieBTyson

http://jessiebtyson.blogspot.com/

Proofreading tips and technique

Today's guest blogger, Brian Carey, wants you to take one more look at your writing.

 

After an essay or other written work has been done and completed, checking to ensure it’s in the best condition follows. Proofreading work saves a lot of time and ensures that your work doesn’t go in vein. Proofing software is not efficient. This leaves your open option as the manual way. Here are some tips for you:

1.      Concentration

You need to concentrate on your work if you intend to catch the small mistakes. And to do this, you need to rid yourself of all distractions in the room where you are working. This will promote your ability to see the small errors.

2.      Get someone else do the proofing

This is quite straight forward. Professional editors are in the best position to see ambiguity and mistakes in work. Get some help with the proofreading before hitting send or submitting.

3.      Put it on paper

Sometimes it’s hard to proof soft copy.  This is because of how the eyes are naturally made not to tell the accuracy of typed work. Hard copy proofing is the best approach. Print the work out and proof it.

4.      Homonyms

These ate words that share same spellings and pronunciation, yet have different meanings. For most people, words like complement and compliment are distractive. They could spell disaster in an essay or exam test.

5.      Contractions and the apostrophes

Contractions are difficult. Yet, many people make mistakes that include them in their writing. Words like their and they’re can hurt the credibility of your writing if they are not checked. Also check out for instances where you have used apostrophes in plurals. They are never used there and you need to correct that.

6.      Checking for punctuations

A huge part of proofreading work is to check punctuations. This means looking out for words that are capitalized wrongly, missing or extra commas, periods that have been used wrongly and other typos.

7.      Read work backwards

It’s essential for you to start the habit of reading words backwards. This is because, the brains makes and corrects its own mistakes. Whereas this could be amazing in the ideal world, the corrections are wrong. You need to read each word, back to back to determine which one doesn’t make sense.

8.      Check the numbers

 

 Numbers are often confusing in text. However, humans are mad about numbers.  You never  know what their implications are when they turn out wrong. The best you can do is double checking your number sources. Make sure the numbers you use in the essay or writing is accurate.

Now what kind of proof reader are YOU?  Did you spot any errors in this post, which I put up exactly as I received it?

Writing Creatively after a Career in Academia

Today's guest blogger, Melanie Foster, is a freelance writer , aspiring novelist and business owner. She enjoys writing about her past career in academia, as well as her current ventures in entrepreneurship. Today she has some tips on how to get down to the writing after you've secured that MFA or other writing degree.

 

Say you're like me, and you spent some time in a graduate program. Part of the reason you enrolled in said graduate program is because you enjoyed writing. Soon enough, however, you realize that academic writing is an entirely different animal from creative or even straightforward, journalistic, non-fiction writing. You leave academia to practice the sort of writing you were passionate about in the first place, but you realize that you've become stuck on the arcane, stilted style of academia. What to do? First of all, it's important to know that your training in graduate school HAS helped you become a better writer because you can form very logical arguments about anything. You know how to exhaustively explore any topic, and this is absolutely essential for any creative writer. You've also become a very close and careful reader. But you have to get rid of some academic writing habits. Here's how:

1.      Start reading the kind of writing you aspire to.

After years and years of reading critical theory, dissertations, and research, your writing style will be doubtlessly influenced by the academic style. The best way to reverse this influence is to simply immerse yourself in whatever form of writing you'd like to write. For example, if you want to write literary fiction, read a bunch of classic and well-regarded contemporary novels. If you'd like to write crime novels, read as many crime novels as you can get your hands on. Of course, read outside your chosen genre, too, to lend some diversity to your style. But always be aware that you'll subconsciously be influenced by the material you read.

2.      Check your work for overly long sentences.

This is the bane of the academic-cum-creative writer's existence. You learned to write very long sentences in school, simply because you had to explain very complicated ideas. Plus, all academics write in a long-winded manner. When you are writing creatively, you'll have to be particularly wary of long or convoluted sentences. The best way to do this is to read your work out loud. If you start running out of breath, and you can hear that your work sounds more like research than like a conversation, you know you're doing something wrong.

3.      Share your work with intelligent, non-academic friends.

All writers are shy about sharing their work with others, especially before they're finished. But for ex-academics, it's especially important to share your work to check if it makes sense. When you were in graduate school, you likely hung out exclusively with fellow academics, and you all talked about the same things and in the same way. Whatever you wrote, you wrote for this specific audience of academics. Showing your work to a non-academic who reads lots of creative writing is best. Make sure also that these friends are brutally honest. If they say your writing is confusing, it probably is. Of course, don't accept all criticism, but take the advice of someone you trust and ask how you can change it to make it more readable.

A lifetime in academia doesn't sentence you to a lifetime of academic prose. It just takes some practice to become aware of academic habits and some work to get rid of them. Good luck!

Melanie welcomes your comments and question.  Comment here, or write to her at melanie.foster00@gmail.com

Real Life vs Fictional Detectives

Today's guest blogger, Jack Meyer is a freelance writer and regular contributor at www.nannybackgroundcheck.com/.  While he has a passion for various subjects like education, career and technology, Parenting etc., he also has real-life experience as a police detective.  Today he offers us crime fiction writers some notes contrasting his experiences with the lives of the detectives we make up.

Detective-style television shows or novels can be quite entertaining for those who are in to that genre of entertainment. Although these shows and books are intriguing to watch and read, the role of a detective in real life is much different. The purpose of the fictional detective is to entertain and enthrall you. What differences are there between the men and women of justice, and the actors that portray them?

1. Evidential Time Lapse - Evidence collection is an important part of any investigation. As opposed to the quick response television DNA evidence is processed, it could take several days or longer to process in reality.

2. The Law - Writers can modify techniques and laws to suit the story. Real life detectives have to obey the laws themselves and know how to conduct an investigation. For instance, breaking into a location to possibly acquire evidence could have that evidence thrown out in a court of law.

3. Blasting Away - It is common place to see a war zone break out in the middle of town in an exciting detective movie. However, real detectives would have to account for every bullet fired and mark each one as evidence. That P90 in the trunk would require massive amounts of paperwork.

4. Permissions - Real life detectives don't have the ability to walk onto a location and start an investigation. Without good probable cause or permission from the location's owner, the detective would need to prove that a warrant is necessary. Otherwise, any evidence collected is not admissible in court and would prove fruitless.

5. Timing is Crucial - Fictional detectives have a knack of solving cases within a time frame that watchers and readers are comfortable with to keep his or her attention. Real detectives can spend more than a year trying to solve a mystery, which could become tedious and monotonous to those who relish excitement.

6. Relationships - Many fictional detectives suffer the negative aspects of relationship difficulties as real detectives do. Although this plays into the drama of the story, in real life it is usually a circumstance of a high-stress environment that couples have a hard time getting through.

While some are drawn to becoming detectives in real life, others only want to be entertained. Some may think that the glamor of the detective in entertainment venues is as dramatic and exciting as the real thing. Although it could be an exciting career for some, it could be disappointing for others. Detectives have a purpose when they choose the career, and it's not entertainment.

Jack Meyer welcomes your feedback or questions about true detectives.  You can contact him at jackmeyers08@gmail.com.

Any Excuse Will Do

Today's guest blogger is a busy woman.  Sandra Bowman is Marketing Director for Intrigue Publishing, but she's also a published author of urban dramatic fiction writing as B. Swangin Webster.  With all that going on, she still had no excuse to avoid appearing on my blog...

Well, today I am guest starring….well, I think I’m a star anyway, but I’m here on Mr. Camacho’s blog. I first would like to thank him for this award, oh wait; wrong show. But I would like to thank him for giving me an opportunity to talk to his fans about my excuses…I mean re-writing process. Gasp!

See, I had it in my head that although I love, love, love, yes I said it three times, now will my prince appear. Wait, that’s another blog. Ok, back to the topic at hand. I love my first novel, Let Me Just Say This because I wrote it as a high school project back in 1984. Yeah, that was when there were manual typewriters with the correction ribbon. But I didn’t use a manual typewriter.

I wrote it…as in long hand… on eight yellow legal pads. Now more than 20 years ago, nope not telling you my age, I have looked at it over and over and decided that I am such a great writer that I should go back and re-visit my old friends and let them tell me their story, again. In the eyes of a forty-something year old. So I guess I am telling my age, aren’t I?

So the process has been slow going. I mean I have so many distractions. Like I’m now the marketing director of Intrigue Publishing and I have five grandchildren and I work in a middle school and I have to help mentor new authors and…and…oh wait, those are all excuses, aren’t they. Truth is, I wanted to do this and now I have every excuse why I can’t. And let’s not forget; I’m blogging on my own blog AND Mr. Camacho’s.

So see, there are good reasons why I haven’t sat down in over a week to rewrite my first novel. Did I mention I was in a car accident?

But wait, I’m doing exactly what I tell new authors not to do. I’m making excuses. There is no excuse because I have full use of my hands and my computer and laptop are always near me. So I guess there is no excuse but to do it, right? So here I sit, staring off into space when I could be writing and you know what. I am going to do it.

Right after I go outside and plant some flowers, and maybe wash the car and then I have to go to the store. So I’ll do it when I get back, or maybe I’ll do it first thing in the morning, yeah, that’s it. I’ll do it in the morning. I sure hope I have the energy.

 

Whether you're interested in writing, publishing or attending the C3 Conference, Ms Bowman would love to hear from you.  Message her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/AuthorB.SwanginWebster  or write to anauthor08@live.com  .

My View of Reviews

I am often asked how to get reviews for a book.  It’s a fair question when fewer and fewer magazines and newspapers have review sections, well known reviewers naturally prefer to review well known authors and even bloggers who review books are inundated with books from publishers every month. 

Blogger reviews are great, and you can get them.  The trick is to network with bloggers.  Start by following the blogs you’d like to be reviewed on.  Post comments often.  When they write a review you really like, tweet it, or if it’s already out there, REtweet it.  BE a fan to GET a fan.  When you send your book out it is much more likely to be reviewed if the reviewer recognizes your name.

Even bloggers who don’t usually review books can help you.  Once they know who you are they might agree to let you post a guest blog talking about your book.  Or, maybe they’ll put an excerpt of your book on their blog.  Many bloggers like to do author interviews, so make sure you offer to answer a few questions. 

Another way to get reviews is to become a reviewer yourself.  I write monthly for The Big Thrill, the newsletter of the International Thriller Writers.  There’s no pay, but it makes networking with other writers in my genre very easy.  And when I have a new book coming out, it is very easy to ask people I have reviewed to take a look at it. 

You don’t have to have connections with a newsletter or magazine to do this.  Post reviews on Amazon.com of books in your genre.  Not only does this put your name in front of their readers, but it makes them more likely to say yes if you ask for a review. 

All the same rules apply to getting reviews in print publications.  Your best bet is to get to know the reviews at local newspapers and magazines.  If they don’t have one, get to know the entertainment writer.  If he’s writing about TV or local theater he might want to review the local author’s work too.  So comment on their articles (so easy now that almost all publications are on line as well) so they’ll get to know your name.

And don’t overlook social media sites.  I regularly post on a Yahoo Group called Kindle Korner and when someone mentions one of my novels I ask them to put their comments where everyone can see.  A lot of the group members have posted reviews of my books.  Other good places to get reviews include Goodreads and Library Thing.  Both sites have easy setups for doing reader giveaways.  Readers can win a free copy of your book if they post reviews.

Of course the most important factor in getting reviews is to write a book worth talking about.

Staying Focused

This guest post is contributed by Debra Johnson, blogger and editor of Liveinnanny.com.  This is one writer who knows how to maintain her focus to get her writing done

As a writer, staying focused on my writing is often one of the most difficult parts of my day. I mean, I have so many distractions around me. Facebook and texts, co-workers and family, even music can get me off of my writing train and derail my thought process. In order to stay focused while writing you need to:

1. Keep your cool – Believe it or not the temperature in the room can affect your concentration level. A cool room is better for your brain than a hot one, though if it gets too cold that can cause problems too. But a hot temperature can make you sleepy, nauseated, and even overheated.

2. Keep it quiet – I know that music is your muse, but studies have found that silence works best for higher thinking. If you are just doing point and click tasks then music is fine, but if you are really trying to write turn it off. If you play music to drown out other auditory distractions, then choose your music wisely. Pick instrumental music r songs with lyrics in a language you do not understand to reduce distraction. Keep the sound down low, just loud enough to cover up the other noises.

3. Make time to write – If you do not set aside strict times to write you will never get anything done. There will always be something else to do or someone demanding your attention. Be firm and stay strong.

4. Say no – People will want to disturb you while you are writing. They do not understand that writers get into a flow and once you break it they have a hard time getting back on track. Make sure you tell people no when they come to you with requests during writing time. You can tend to them later, right now is your time to write.

5. Edit later – If you stop to correct every misspelled word or fragmented sentence you will lose your train of thought and everything will take you twice as long. Go back and fix mistakes when you finish writing. Now is the time to keep the flow going.

6. Write down your ideas – One problem that many writers have is that they have tons of great ideas but they feel like they can’t get them out in time. What you need to do is write notes on your ideas. Get them out of your head and down where you can’t forget them. That way you can relax and enjoy writing instead of trying to keep two things (or more) in your head at one time.

7. Reread your work –It is always a good idea to reread what you have written, even if you just finished writing it a minute ago. Every break you take or stop you make is an opportunity for you to lose the focus of your writing. Remind yourself where you were going and what your point was.

     These are just a few ideas to help you stay focused in your writing. There are many more ways that you may find work for you as you write. Remember to keep your eyes on the goal and distractions to a minimum.

Debra Johnson, blogger is a busy writer and editor, but she still welcomes your comments at jdebra84@gmail.com.