An Interview with Tabitha Lord

Tags

Book Club Babble, Book Marketing, Editing, Indie Publishing, Writer Courses, Writing Conferences

I’m a Storyteller …

I always have been. 

When I was a little girl, I wrote poetry, horse stories, adventure tales. I daydreamed about far-off planets, brave heroines, epic journeys. Then life happened. A good life, full of love, laughter, tears, children, work, play, and real adventure! Time passed, but the stories, they were still there, and one day I began writing them down again.

GLVWG’s Sandra Almonte interviewed Tabitha author of the award-winning Horizon series.

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Sandra:  I would like to start with…you have a HUSBAND, FOUR kids, TWO cats AND a black lab. How in the world do you find time to write? Do you have a set time you “get away” to write? What advice can you give those of us that think we don’t have enough time in the day to write?

Tabitha:       I’m hyper-organized, and if someone really wanted to mess with me, hiding my to-do lists and notebooks would send me into a tailspin! Seriously though, I work with a calendar and plan out my time so that I feel proactive instead of reactive, and I can ensure that I’m attending to my priorities first. I wrote a blog about my obsessive organizational habits, Inside a Writer’s Mind – On Editing, while working with a calendar, and I’ll be sharing thoughts on that during one of my programs at the Write Stuff conference.

But really, there’s never enough time until you decide to make the time. Once I commit to writing a new draft, I protect my creative space fiercely. And, over the years, I’ve learned a lot about effective habits, my personal rhythms, and the amount of time I need in order to have a productive creative writing session. I plan my schedule with this information in mind.

Sandra:  You’re also a senior writer at Book Club Babble. How did you become part of that group? How do you juggle your own blog and book writing with writing for the club?

Tabitha:       Several years ago, my friend and I attended the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC for the first time. I think one the best things about conferences are the fantastic people you meet who become part of your writing “tribe.”  That year, we met some fellow writers who had just started a book blogging web site. They invited my friend and me to guest post, and within a few weeks asked if we wanted to partner with them. There are now seven of us – six who do the writing and interviewing, and one who specializes in marketing strategy and promotions. We read every book we promote, but we don’t promote every book we read. We pride ourselves on the quality of our recommendations, and on the care we give to each author.

I love this work. It gives me an opportunity to read in all genres, and to assure that I keep up the habit of reading even when I’m busy with my own writing projects. The writing community is so supportive of one another, and it’s gratifying to read something wonderful and then be able to enthusiastically promote it on a well-respected platform with good reach.

An Interview with Jane Cleland

Tags

Plotting, Writer Courses, Writing, Writing Conferences, Writing Suspense

 

Jane K. Cleland was born in Boston and reared in Newton, Massachusetts, graduating from Newton High School. She then attended the University of Denver, graduating with a B.A. in English and Theatre. She obtained an M.B.A in Marketing and Management from Babson College and an M.F.A. in Playwriting and Speechwriting from Western Connecticut State University.

Jane is the author of the Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery series, which includes eleven novels published. The first Josie Prescott book was an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association bestseller and nominated for the Agatha Award, Macavity, and David Awards for Best First Novel.

Her non-fiction publications include “Mastering Suspense, Structure & Plot,” which is the winner 2017 Agatha Award: Best Nonfiction.

Bernadette Sukley had an opportunity to speak with Jane about her writing and helpful hints to other authors.

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Bernadette:  What prompted you to start writing?  An inciting event? A teacher? Some inner calling?

Jane:        My mother was a writer, so I grew up thinking that’s what women do. And then there was Nancy Drew. The first time I read one, I knew I wanted to write that kind of book.

 Bernadette:  Question: A favorite author(s)? Why?

Jane:        Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser mysteries, Irwin Shaw’s NIghtwork… I could go on and on.

Rex Stout: He created a world where honor and decency count above all. And the books are funny and charming and a love poem to New York. (Mr. Stout wrote from 1934 to 1975. The stories from the 40s, ‘50s, and 60s are my favorites.) I’m an active member of the Wolfe Pack, the literary society that celebrates all things Nero Wolfe. http://www.nerowolfe.org

Robert B. Parker: He created a world where honor and decency count above all. (Do you notice a theme?) Early Autumn is, in my view, a literary masterpiece.

Irwin Shaw’s Nightwork is also a literary masterpiece. It’s a story of redemption, of the incredible power of second chances.

An Interview with Matt Betts

Tags

Media Kits, Poetry, Science Fiction, Steampunk, Writing Conferences, Writing Craft, Writing Horror

 

Matt Betts’ short and flash fiction has focused a lot on humor and horror. His work appears in Arkham Tales, Ethereal Tales, the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology, Bizarro Fiction! The Journal of Experimental Fiction 37, A Thousand Faces and Cinema Spec: Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy.

Matt’s poetry has been published in numerous venues, and his poem “Godzilla’s Better Half” was nominated for a Rhysling Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s highest honor. His poetry has appeared in Star*Line, Escape Clause, The Book of Tentacles, Illumen, the 2010 Rhysling Anthology, Kaleidotrope, and others. One of his pieces was also mentioned in a New York Times article on zombie poetry.

“Matt Betts doesn’t seem to know all writers get put into a box. He ignores genres and boundaries and simply writes what his imagination wants. His stories are what make reading fun.”—Greg Hall, Everyone Hates a Hero

Bernadette Sukley had a chance to speak with Matt about his writing and the writing industry.

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Bernadette: A favorite author(s)? Why?

Matt: I read quite a bit, and have a number of favorites. Stephen King is certainly one of them. He’s written some fantastic books. I think he’s a favorite because he makes stories seem so simple. As an author, I started writing because I thought anyone would be able to write his kind of fiction, but I soon found out that it isn’t easy to write like that. It takes work to make something so easy to read, and yet so effective.

I’m also a huge fan of Elmore Leonard. Again, his stories are pretty straightforward, but his dialogue and characters constantly blow me away.  He’s another one that made it seems easy. His stories are simple crime stories that never turn out quite so simple. My goal has been to make my dialogue as good as his and to follow one of his rules for storytelling: Cut out the parts that people tend to skip.

Bernadette:  What is it about zombies that have captured the attention of literature (and other media)?

Matt: I think zombies are one of the great monsters in literature and pop culture. As a reader, you don’t have to understand their motives or anything else about them. They want to kill the living. That’s pretty much it for motive. Therefore, the author can write about the heroes of the story. The focus shifts to how average people handle dealing with such a mindless adversary. You can examine how people do, or don’t, band together to survive. I think from time-to-time that’s a welcome change from complex villains with intricate schemes and complex backstories. And it’s fun to see how each author has interpreted zombies-are they fast or slow, smart-ish or mindless, are they after brains, is someone controlling them? Each vision can be interesting and pretty unique.

An Interview with Bob Mayer

Tags

Cool Gus Publishing, Novel Writing, Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Conferences

Bob Mayer is a New York Times bestselling author of over sixty books, including “Eyes of the Hammer” and the CEO of Cool Gus Publishing  www.coolgus.com.

The 2018 GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™  is proud to present Bob Mayer as our keynote speaker. On Thursday, March 22^nd, he will guide attendees through A ONE DAY NOVEL WRITING SEMINAR. The presentation begins with the original idea and heart of a story, developing plot and character, working with point of view and, in conclusion, pulling everything together to sell your book and the business of writing.

Friday and Saturday, he will present topics on Write It Forward: From Writer To Successful Author, E-Pub, POD and the Future of Publishing for the Writer, and The Military for Writers. Saturday, he will speak at our luncheon I Will Make it Work.

GLVWG’s Bernadette Sukley does the honors of interviewing Bob.

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Bernadette: Your first book, “Eyes of the Hammer” debuted in 1991, but at what age did you start writing?

Bob:  The key was that I was a voracious reader as a child. I read everything I could get my hands on; growing up in the Bronx; I’d bike to the local library. When I’d read through that, I biked further to the next nearest library. I’d take the subway to Manhattan to the main branch, guarded by Patience and Fortitude, the two lions.

At West Point, I wrote a psychology paper that was supposed to be a study of some historical figure, so I picked the protagonist of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and turned it in, inside the LP. Then I also wrote a short about a young man arriving at West Point in the mid-1800s based on some diaries I read in the archives. In the military I wrote lots of orders; also the Gettysburg Battle Staff Walk for the JFK Special Warfare Center.

But I jumped right into novel writing with a book in 1988. Technically, it wasn’t my first book published, but it was called Dragon Sim-13, based on a mission my A-Team had done.

Bernadette: A favorite author(s)? Why?

Bob:   A terribly unfair question. There are so many. I believe Stephen King said, “read writers who you aspire to be like.” Great writers. Not so much the literary canon, as I really doubt Ulysses was the best book of the 20th Century. Sorry. I heard enough drunken Irishman stories growing up. Off the top of my head, there’s Kate Atkinson, Larry McMurtry, Michael Connoly, Richard Russo. I read a lot of non-fiction. Currently devouring American Lion by Jon Meacham. I’ve read all of Pat Conroy’s books, which are an intriguing study in plotting and prose. He has operatic plots, way over the top, but when Jimmy Buffet can set your words to music, you can write any damn thing you like. We used to live across the Intracoastal from Dafuskie Island, the setting in The Water Is Wide.

I like authors who combine great characters with intriguing plots. I’m not a fan of books that I need to read four times and write a paper on in order to try to figure out what they meant. That’s not good writing in my opinion. I can grasp what Hemingway meant the first time. He was direct and to the point.

An Interview with Richard White

Tags

Fantasy, Science Fiction, SFWA, World Building, Writer Beware, Writing, Writing Conferences

Mitzi Flyte, a GLVWG member, had an opportunity to interview the multi-talented Richard White.

Richard will be at the 2018 GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ on Saturday, March 24, where he will conduct sessions on Writer Beware, Writing Realistic Fight Scenes, and World Building 101.

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Mitzi: Who are your favorite genre writers and did they inspire you?

Richard:      How many pages did you give me for this interview? *grin*  Wow, that’s a tough question, but to try and keep this to a reasonable length, I’ll try and hit my top ten:

• Glen Cook
• Anne McCaffery
• Barbara Hambly
• R.R. Tolkien
• Gordon R. Dickson
• David Drake
• Brian Daley
• Tara Harper
• Katherine Kurtz
• Alan Dean Foster

 

I can track a lot of my current writing to these authors. In fact, I like to tell people that my current fantasy noir novella series I’m writing is my homage to Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I. series. The Military Science Fiction novel I’m finishing is about an Armored Cavalry Regiment in the future, which is probably influenced by Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers series.  Any of my sword and sorcery or high fantasy stories could have links to The Dragon and the George, or The Armies of Darkness, or the Deryni series and so on.

Great books, great movies, and even great radio shows (both old-time radio and current works) can’t help but influence an author. Anyone who says they’ve created something completely unique is probably not being honest with themselves. We’re all influenced by everything around us – the object is to take the influence and make it something unique to yourself.

Mitzi:  Do any of your stories scare you. If so, is it while writing or after you’ve written them?

Richard:      Normally no. However, I just finished doing a short story for Green Ronin which is set in their Freeport role-playing game universe where I wrote the story from the POV of a serial killer. I found myself going into a very dark part of my mind to write this story. I also developed an appreciation for the writers on the show Criminal Minds, because I found myself actually not wanting to write some of the stuff that I wrote. I certainly edited and re-edited a few sections of the story to try and reach the fine point between being horrific and exploitive, and that’s before I received the edits from my actual editor.

I think this story reinforced in my mind why I’m not a horror author. I can go there, but I’d really rather not. It’s not so much that it scared me that I went there, but it made me uncomfortable that I could go there.

An Interview with Ben Sobieck

Tags

Crime Fiction, Wattpad, Weapons in Fiction, Writing, Writing Conference

GLVWG’s resident Mark Twain, Charles Kiernan, spoke with Ben Sobieck, who will conduct three seminars at the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™, on March 24, 2018, with Weapons in Fiction, Writing inside a Franchise, and Using WATTPAD to Build a Writing Career.

Ben Sobieck describes himself as a thriller writer, which encompasses several traditional genres: mystery, action-adventure, crime fiction, and noir. He has also written many short stories and numerous flash fiction pieces. He is also a big promoter of Wattpad. That might need a little explanation.

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Charles Kiernan: Thanks for this interview, Ben. Let’s start with what is Wattpad? Why should our conference attendees avail themselves of this service?

Ben Sobieck: Wattpad is a social reading website and app, which means it’s like a cross between Facebook and Kindle. Writers post short stories and novels on the site, and they don’t charge anything to read them. What’s the benefit of giving something away for free like that? Sixty million devoted readers from all around the world is what. They read, read, read, and they will follow the writers they love to the gates of hell (or heaven, if they’re not reading my work).

What this does is fill in the missing piece that a lot of writers have when building their careers. They need a platform of readers who care deeply about their stories. When they do, it’s a lot easier to pull agents, publishers and other partners into their orbits. For instance, a query letter might site that the story being pitched has 100,000 reads on Wattpad. That shows proof, and that’s powerful.

I’m happy to say that I’ve partnered with publishers, movie studios, TV producers, and more through Wattpad. I won a Watty Award for one of my stories. Not to toot my own horn (which means I’m about to), but the competition for the Watty Awards is the world’s largest online fiction contest. When I entered in 2016, there were 140,000 entries.

How does Wattpad work with that many entries? It’s all about the data. I’ll be going into more on that in my presentation.

Also, I am serving as editor of The Writer’s Guide to Wattpad, which will be out in the summer of 2018, and will be published by Writer’s Digest Books. It’s Wattpad’s official guide, so I must be doing something right. Or very, very wrong. One or the other.

Meet DT “Dan” Krippene

Tags

Pinterest, Social Media, Writing, Writing Conference

A native of Wisconsin and Connecticut, DT ‘Dan’ Krippene is a former Peace Corps Volunteer who deserted aspirations of being a biologist to live the corporate dream and raise a family.  After six homes, a ten-year stint in Singapore and Taiwan, and an imagination that never slept, his muse refused to be hobbled as a mere dream. Now a full time writer, DT writes mostly science and dystopian fiction.

Dan was a featured author in the January 2017 Bethlehem Writer’s Roundtable with a dystopian short story, “Snow Belt Sanctuary“, and contributed to the GLVWG’s 2016 anthology, Write Here, Write Now, with a paranormal MG titled “Locker 33C“. He has just completed a science fiction novel of a near-future earth brought back from the edge of extinction by benevolent otherworldly beings who foster a gender separated society.

He’s been a GLVWG member since 2010, and was quickly shanghaied into revamping the group’s social media platform. He set up the GLVWG WordPress Blog, and coached members how not to embarrass themselves with Facebook posts. Dan will give a presentation at the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ at 7:00 PM on Friday, March 23, on the basics of using Pinterest for Writers, just before the bar opens at our annual Meet & Greet.  Dan assures me he won’t go overtime, as he expects to be first in line for a drink.  If you miss the presentation, you’ll find him reliving his High School AV days, lugging projectors and recorders between sessions at the conference, probably spouting words you can’t say to your mother.

Meet Tabitha Lord

Tags

Indie Publishing, Writer Courses, Writing, Writing Conference

 

In her own words, Tabitha Lord is a storyteller.

When I was a little girl, I wrote poetry, horse stories, adventure tales. I daydreamed about far off planets, brave heroines, epic journeys. Then life happened. A good life, full of love, laughter, tears, children, work, play, and real adventure! Time passed, but the stories, they were still there, and one day I began writing them down again.

Tabitha will present two seminars at the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™, March 23, 2018. In the morning, So You Want To Be an Indie Author, followed in the afternoon with A Marathon, Not a Sprint: Long-Term Marketing Strategies for Indies.

GLVWG’s, Geoffrey Mehl, had a chance to speak with Tabitha about her home life and career.

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 She’s a wife, mom, a former educator, and a passionate Boston Red Sox fan. She’s also a full-time award-winning novelist, blogger, and indie publisher.

How Tabitha Lord juggles all the elements of a hectic lifestyle is the topic of one of her four programs at the 2018 Write Stuff Conference in March. She’ll also share her insight into the editing process, indie publishing, and marketing strategies.

Tabitha holds a degree in Classics from the College of the Holy Cross and taught Latin for many years at an independent Waldorf school, where she now serves on the Board of Trustees.

Her debut novel, HORIZON, won the Writer’s Digest grand prize for self-published fiction in 2016, and was named a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the Indie Excellence Awards. The sequel, INFINITY, was released in June 2017, and her short fiction is published through World Weaver Press, Grimbold Books and Belanger Books. 

GLVWG Write Stuff™ Conference Schedule – Friday, March 24

Tags

Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Conferences, Writing Courses

7:00 a.m. Check-In table opens
Pick up registration materials at the check-in table

 

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Seminar Syllabus for Friday, March 24

 

Kathryn Craft

Interview with Amy Deardon – Award Winning Author and Publisher

Tags

EBook Services, Indie Publishing, Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Conferences

GLVWG’s Donna Sooy recently interviewed Amy Deardon, who will be at the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™, Friday and Saturday, March 24 & 25, 2017.

On Friday, Amy will give conferees tips on Insider Self-Publishing: Separating the Amateurs from the Pros. Saturday, she’ll conduct two sessions, What’s the Right Type of Publishing for My Book?, and Does My Book Have What it Takes?

 

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DS:  I read you are an award-winning author, publisher, and budding online entrepreneur. Congratulations. What is a budding online entrepreneur? 

AD: Writing/Publishing is a wide-open field, with more options now for people to create and sell information than ever before. I am constantly looking for methods to deliver helpful products that will allow others to reach their goals… and hopefully allow me to help support our family in the process. A win-win!

DS: There are times when people relax at home, they read, crochet and color in the Mandela pattern books. What is your favorite pastime when relaxing?

AD: I tend toward the crafty side with sewing and needlework, although don’t do nearly as much as I used to. It seems I’m always working on a writing project and the computer is never too far away.

I’m fortunate enough to be able to do a lot of work from home, and since it’s not healthy to be too closed in I get out to exercise, or to meet with friends for coffee, or go to Bible study. Evenings are nice when my husband and kids and I cook dinner together as we talk.