New BHCAuthors Website—Connecting Readers to Authors

Last year I chose to partner with Blue Harvest Creative to help me publish Solitude, Servant, and novels yet to come, and now Blue Harvest Creative is excited to announce the next generation of independence has arrived!

Welcome to the BHC Authors website—a place dedicated to bringing readers and authors together. If you love to read, this is the place to be. Find a new favorite genre or author. Check out new releases and titles. Or enter a giveaway or promotion.

Here’s what you’ll find when you visit BHCAuthors.com

·         Author spotlights—Get up close and personal. Enter our monthly giveaway for a chance to win autographed print titles or eBooks from featured authors.

·         Reader/ARC (advanced reader copy) Program—Love to read? Want to see new titles before they are released? Enjoy giving feedback and discovering new authors or genres? Be sure to sign up for our ARC program.

·         News and events—Check our calendar often. You never know where a BHC Author will turn up!

·         Are you a reviewer, blogger, or journalist interested in review copies or scheduling an interview? Visit our media center, and we’ll be sure to get you everything you need.

·         Librarians and booksellers can also contact us at the media center. We’re here to make your job easier.

·         If you run a readers’ group, we offer book club reader’s guides for many of our titles and we’re always adding more.

·         Purchases titles and other nifty products from our Amazon affiliate store—From books to writer’s tools of the trade, and more, you’ll find it all here, right at your fingertips.

·         Meet the BHC Authors—many are multi-award winning and USA Today bestsellers—and get to know their work.

·         Subscribe to our newsletter and be the first to know about new titles, promotions, events, sales, and more. We hate spam as much as the next person, so we only send out about one email per month. Our intent is not to solicit services. Our newsletters only feature information about BHC Authors.

We’re just gearing up, and we’ll be adding more exciting features. Love our website? Have an idea to share or something you’d like to see featured? We’d love to hear from you, and we appreciate and value your ideas and suggestions. Please email us at:  Feedback (at) BHCAuthors (dot) com

Thanks for stopping by and supporting independently published authors!

Click HERE to visit the BHC Authors website. 

Meet Bobby Roland

Bobby Roland knows things he shouldn't, and I'll tell you why: he has a gift. Or is it a curse?

For those Bobby has saved, his gift is a blessing. He has premonitions of disaster, you see. So it's up to him to rescue those who find themselves at death's door.

Bobby, of course, is the young hero of The Chronicles of Servitude. Servant, the first novel of the series, was released in November 2014, but the idea for Servant was brewing long before that.

About five years ago, my husband suggested that I write a book about demon hunters who have superpowers. I scoffed at the idea. Why would I bother with such a thing? Hasn't that been done before?

With great hesitation, I tried to write Bobby Roland's story. I failed. I started again. I failed again. The story just wasn't interesting and the characters fell flat. I can't tell you how many times I tried writing Bobby's story only to abandon plot lines and start again from scratch. In one incarnation of the story, Bobby was in a rock band and was reeling from the death of one of his fellow band members. In another incarnation, Bobby's clairvoyance caused a great rift between him and his parents. I discarded both of these ideas, as neither felt right.

In the beginning, Bobby's story was set in Ohio, but I realized that Ohio was too populated to fit the story's needs. I can't remember exactly why I transplanted Bobby to Oregon specifically; just that Oregon has more wide open spaces where shady happenings can be overlooked.

Changing the setting from Ohio to Oregon opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Bobby is from Ohio and moved to Oregon. He is young and trying to find his way--and maybe he's even running from something he might not consciously acknowledge.

And so, the story, as well as Bobby's personality, began to take shape. Bobby is awkward around girls and wants to be able to do the right thing even though he's usually terrified out of his wits. He's often shy and insecure. He can be hotheaded, too, which is perfectly understandable since he's often stressed.

As I continued to write the story that would eventually become Servant, I realized that much of Bobby's personality was my own. I, too, have been learning to find my way and my life's purpose. I struggle with social awkwardness. And I also yearn to do what is right.

In Sacrifice, Book 2 of the Chronicles of Servitude, Bobby will face even more challenges that he must overcome. He is still learning. And so am I.

Bobby Roland knows things he shouldn't. 

Plagued with premonitions of disaster, he fights to save others’ lives. What Bobby doesn't foresee is that rescuing a stranger from death will place him in the line of fire. 

He discovers a world of evil spirits and tormented souls when he becomes entangled in a madman's plot to kill the Servant, a man chosen by God to exorcise demons from the possessed. When Bobby falls under spiritual attack following the encounter, he must choose between saving others and saving himself.

Buy Servant from www.amazon.com.

So I'm Rewriting a Novel...

The Land Beyond the Portal, my first published novel, is actually the second novel I ever completed. (At some point after I'd started writing it, I put it away for a few years and wrote a novel about shapeshifting lizard aliens called Solorthians. It is unlikely, for reasons needless to state, that this novel will ever see the light of day.)

Back to The Land Beyond the Portal. I finished the first draft in 2010. It was released in 2011. In 2012 I poured my heart out writing Rage's Echo, and while I did so I noticed that a profound change had taken place in my writing.

Fast forward to 2015. I knew it was time to redo The Land Beyond the Portal, quite simply because the writing itself was weaker than it is currently. I'm more than 10% of the way through the first draft of the rewrite, and I thought I'd share some of the differences with you to help illustrate what I mean.

Original version

She needed some medicine for the pounding headache she had developed within the past few nerve-racking hours and started up the steps to the second-floor bathroom, where such items were kept. When she was halfway down the hallway, she heard her cell phone ringing in the living room. Her heart pounded even harder. They were finally calling her back! The teenager wondered for the thousandth time why her grandparents didn't have their own phone and raced back down the steps, not looking where she was going. She tripped over her grandfather's pair of house slippers, tumbled down five steps, and landed headfirst on the slate floor below with a sickening thud. This was met with blinding pain and abrupt darkness. She was falling, falling...

Rewritten version:

The headache pounding behind her eyes was getting out of hand. She threw a glance at the satellite clock on the fireplace mantel, sent up a prayer that someone would call her soon, and hurried up the stairs to the second-floor bathroom, where her grandmother kept what she called her “pharmacy” inside the mirrored medicine cabinet.

Her cell phone started ringing the moment she reached the top of the stairs. Her heart in her throat, she made an about-face and raced back down the stairs so fast that her feet became tangled with each other and she lost her footing on the wooden risers.

The last thing she remembered was flailing for a handhold, and then her head made contact with the hardwood floor below, sending her into abrupt darkness.

So yeah...this is what I've been doing while working on Surrender: The Chronicles of Servitude Book 3 as well as revising Sacrifice: The Chronicles of Servitude Book 2. It's funny; I never knew that I could juggle.

New New Name, and Other Updates

This blog has a new name, folks.

Again.

In the olden days, it was Where Daylight Fades. Then it was Brain Problems!

And now it is The Lonely Artist, which is more fitting than the others (even though my brain does indeed malfunction approximately 98.2% of the time).

I've been The Lonely Artist over at Read Write Muse for the past several months, and I felt it was time to make the change here, as well. Being an artist *is* often a lonely endeavor. We sit alone for hours each day refining our craft. Many of our friends exist only in our heads. Many others live far from us, and we only get to meet them in the real world on rare (but glorious!) occasions.

One such glorious occasion.

Now that that's out of the way, I have an important announcement to make: after much consideration, I've decided to terminate the contracts with my publisher for The Land Beyond the Portal and Rage's Echo. They will be republished in due time under my own imprint. I'll be sure to let you know when they are available again!

In the meantime, happy reading! We'll chat again soon.

It's Been HOW Many Years???

I started writing my first novel, The Land Beyond the Portal, in 2003.

That was twelve years ago. I was fourteen years old.

My writing has changed a lot since the days I sat down with a ballpoint pen and notebook and began to write the story that wouldn't be seen by the reading public for another eight years. Just for fun, here are some pictures from that notebook. (Don't mind the terrible penmanship. Apparently it's a requirement for authors to have bad handwriting.)

Somehow through the joys of revisions, this chicken scratch turned into a novel. Weird.

Be Polite, Stupid!

I have been a published author for four years. In those four years, I have had a lot of book signings. I’ve had signings at cafes and bagel shops and pizza places. I’ve had signings at craft fairs and antique machinery shows. I once signed books during Bingo at my old church, and even braved 40-degree weather sitting outside signing books at a donut shop, but then I caught a cold.

On April 27, 2014 I had my second-ever signing at a bookstore. The store employees set a table up by the front doors, and I covered it in a tablecloth, bookmarks, business cards, and neatly arranged my books among them.

Then I sat down and waited to ensnare innocent customers and tell them about my books.

Partway through, one of the employees walked by and I said, “I’ve sold two so far! That’s two more books than at my worst book signing!” Then he said, “That’s two more books than most of the authors here have sold at their book signings.”

At the conclusion of the signing, I pried into this matter further. According to the employees, whom I found friendly and helpful, most of the authors who have had signings at their store sat in the back, didn’t talk to any of the customers, and became angry when they didn’t sell any books.

My mind was blown.

Sure, I’ve had my fair share of disappointments. But you know what? IT ISN’T ANYONE’S FAULT. I am one author out of a million. So are you. And you and you and you. You are not a princess so it would only be logical not to act like one.

As an author, you’re probably trying to build a name for yourself. Part of this involves forming lasting relationships with other people, whether they be readers, other writers, bloggers, or–you guessed it–employees at a bookstore. If you throw a fit when things don’t go your way, you’re only hurting your reputation. Nobody wants to read something that was written by a brat.

Muser Rob says, “To connect to people in such personal ways and then behave like a tool towards the very people who facilitated the connection to whom the connection was made, just seems…counter-writer. But then again, entitlement is more contagious than the flu.”

You can say that again, Rob. It seems that some authors want to be treated like the next Stephen King when they’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve the treatment. You have to WORK to build an audience. You can’t expect a bookstore to do it for you. And treat other people the way you would like to be treated. Show some respect. If you don’t sell any books at your book signing, thank the store anyway for letting you be there and for having given you the opportunity to sell them. 

And when you refuse to talk to any of the customers at the place where you’re signing books, it’s your own fault when nobody takes an interest in your novel. You know what I do? I greet people as they walk by. Then I ask them what they like to read. Then I tell them what my novels are about.

It’s that easy.

Granted, many people still won’t be interested in your books. And that’s okay. Not everyone reads thrillers. Not everyone reads paranormal romance. Not everyone reads mysteries. Find the people who do. And be nice to them. Because when you’re rude, you give authors a bad name and pretty much kill your chances of ever being successful.

So, authors, I implore you to be polite with everyone you encounter, whether it’s online, on the phone, or in person. BE POLITE. Because if you don’t, I will find you. And then I will kick your butt.

A Belated New Year

I'm always the sort of person who lags behind. I still don't own a smart phone. My Christmas tree is still up. I put up my 2015 calendar yesterday. That water bill I've been meaning to pay is still sitting on the table amid a bunch of crap I need to clean off of it.

I haven't even set up any events yet this year. I should probably be ashamed of myself.

What HAVE I been doing, you ask?

Well, I've been writing, catching up with my reading, and staying inside with my cats where it's warm.

With kitties as cute as these, wouldn't you stay inside with them, too? ;)

I'll start posting updates about my current projects when they near completion. In the meantime, stay warm, and have a happy new year!