Funny.... but great food for thought

Is this a British thing, a European thing or an American thing?



If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

About Tom Clancy

 This article and document appeared this month in the on-line Writer's Digest Magazine

 The writing world lost a legend with the passing of Tom Clancy. From The Hunt for Red October to Clear and Present Danger to Threat Vector, Clancy entertained millions of readers worldwide and redefined the thriller writing genre (and inspired quite a few video games as well). He was dubbed the “father of techno-thrillers,” a term he rejected, saying he “just writes novels.”

To honor the author of the Jack Ryan novels, we dove into our archives and found this wonderful Writer’s Digest Interview with Tom Clancy from 2001 (featured below). My favorite quote from the interview: “I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I just keep it simple: Tell the damn story.” [Click here to Tweet this quote!]

His last novel, Command Authority, is due out in December.
You will be sorely missed, Mr. Clancy. (Brian Klems, Writer/Editor at Writer's Digest Magazine.

 

 If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Isabel Allende: Story-teller

I was so impressed with the book The House of the Spirits, I had to know more about the author, Isabel Allende. As a novelist and memoirist, Isabel Allende writes of passionate lives, including her own. Born into a Chilean family with political ties, she went into exile in the United States in the 1970s -- an event that, she believes, created her as a writer. Her voice blends sweeping narrative with touches of magical realism; her stories are romantic, in the very best sense of the word. Her novels include The House of the Spirits, Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna, and her latest, Ines of My Soul and La Suma de los Dias (The Sum of Our Days). And don't forget her adventure trilogy for young readers -- City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies.

As a memoirist, she has written about her vision of her lost Chile, in My Invented Country, and movingly tells the story of her life to her own daughter, in Paula. Her book Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses memorably linked two sections of the bookstore that don't see much crossover: Erotica and Cookbooks. Just as vital is her community work: The Isabel Allende Foundation works with nonprofits in the SF Bay Area and Chile to empower and protect women and girls -- understanding that empowering women is the only true route to social and economic justice. (taken from an article on TED.)

 

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Eat, Pray, Love and our perpetual pursuit of happiness

Guest post by: Sarah Mccarthy

You guys in America are always on the treadmill wondering ‘How can I actualize myself?’ while most of the world is running to dodge bullets.

If you are ever uncertain whether there’s enough hatred in the world, visit the Amazon.com review page for that inescapable book and soon to be movie Eat, Pray, Love. One reviewer calls Elizabeth Gilbert “the most self-important, obtuse, boorish, annoying cretins ever to put pen to paper.” Another says that the book “epitomizes everything wrong with American culture today: worship of the mediocre, travel without seeing anything, polarizing of the Other and fake spirituality.” People who love the book really, really love it, and those who hate would like to enter the world of Farenheit 451 just so they could see it go up in a fiery blaze.

Whether you like or hate the book, it brings up some interesting questions. To what extent do we have the right to pursue happiness? Is pursuing our own happiness inherently selfish? Does being wealthy make your problems less valid? Can rich people truly “suffer?”

The first question, about our right to pursue happiness, is a uniquely American question. Other cultures just aren’t very worried about such a trifling matter. In Russia, it’s considered impolite to answer “good” when asked “how are you?”–to do so is to be bragging about your good fortune and putting the other person down. In South Korea (so says a lovely and talented political blogger for this very blog), it is much more important to be fulfilling your duty and bringing honor to your family than to be gaining any sense of personal fulfillment.

But Elizabeth Gilbert is an American, and thus views it as a given that she has the inalienable right to pursue happiness. As a suburban New Yorker, she is unspeakably depressed, and decides to go on a year-long journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia in search of the personal fulfillment that has eluded her. Right from the get-go, plenty of people hate that this–a year-long and wildly expensive journey — was her solution.

What gives her the right? (Other than our own Declaration of Independence, I presume.)
Other people, who might forgive her for the trip itself, despise her because, as she admits, it was made possible by a massive advance from her publisher to write the book. She was able to travel for a full year without needing to work, a luxury that few people in human history have had. Does that negate her whole experience? It does to many. Others just hate that she didn’t do any volunteer work or share her money and instead chose to spend it on gelato and meditation retreats. It’s not the travel alone that bothers them–it’s that she saw the world but didn’t improve it.

But what would she have been doing for the world without her travels? Can anyone really argue that it would have been better for her to continue to be crying on her bathroom floor? Who was she helping there? As it is, she has written a book that, like it or not, has given many people insights into themselves and their own lives. No, it’s not the same as curing homelessness or cancer, but it’s something.

We all know, in theory, that money doesn’t buy happiness, yet we still seem to believe that if someone has money, their unhappiness can’t be valid. America, the nation with many of the world’s richest people, also has one of the highest rates of depression. Why? Because, after a certain threshold (a salary of about $70,000 a year), money does diddly squat for a person’s level of contentment. The problems facing the rich and the poor are different, but it’s not really possible to quantify some unhappiness as “important” and other unhappiness as “trivial.” From reading the book, I believe that Elizabeth Gilbert really did suffer, and I can’t begrudge her the fulfillment that her year-long journey provided.

The movie is coming out in just a few days (August 13th), and whether or not you hate the book or love it, whether you are feeling wealthy or destitute, it couldn’t hurt to stop and ask yourself, “Am I happy?” You don’t have a right to happiness, but, no matter who you are, you always have a right to pursue it.
Picture from Cinema Blend

Sarah McCarthy is a blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog and a writer on online degrees for Guide to Online Schools.



If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Women who make America: Two really good videos

Check out Maker's Blog

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Does Blogging make you a better writer?

Excerpts about blogging from writers who blog
"I'm a writer by profession and it's totally clear to me that since I started blogging, the amount I write has increased exponentially, my daily interactions with the views of others have never been so frequent, the diversity of voices I engage with is far higher than in the pre-Internet age - and all this has helped me become more modest as a thinker, more open to error, less fixated on what I do know, and more respectful of what I don't."  (Andrew Sullivan, writer)

“Writing a blog can be a lot like writing a book; overwhelming at first, in need of structure and flow, and at times very personal. However, a blog is a living, breathing form of writing. Your "story" evolves and changes over days/months/years. You have the ability to connect and interact with your readers. And, the best part, if you missed a grammar error you can go back and correct it!” (Krista Rhea, writer)

A number of editors on staff at Writer's Digest have their own personal blogs and when we started out we were in the exact same place as a lot of you are right now:

 "I am still in the planning stages of my blog. It has been overwhelming to say the least."  (Vicie Moore, writer)

"I'm stuck with my blog. Don't know which direction to go"  (Sharita Gopal, writer)


My take on this
I totally agree with this. Although, I’d been writing most of my life, I actually did not start writing seriously until I began blogging. Blogging forces you to improve your writing skill, work out the kinks in your style of writing, and find your voice. Interacting with comments may help your mode of expression, but seeing your writing in a particular format and reading it back to see if it makes sense is invaluable to a writer.

I probably would not have written my first memoir if it weren't for my blogging. I began writing stories on a writer's site. At the urgency of many many readers on that site, I started organizing them into chapters.  I started having to deal with time lines and transitions (one chapter to the next). Then I found I had to have some sort of story line and plot. to hold them all together. I began studying fictive techniques to enhance the stories. I spent hours learning how to infuse my stories with life. I learned so much about writing during that time.

When I completed the memoir, I let it sit for months. I dug it out one day and was amazed to see how far I had come in my ability to handle large works. I completely re-wrote the manuscript. My writing had improved so much over those years that I started a new memoir using a different, more skilled approach and style. I still intend to publish the first book, but truly believe the second one will be far superior. It's true what successful writers say: "You must write every day and often to improve."


If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Tips for attracting readers to your blog

I was recently asked what bloggers can do to attract readers to their blogs. I came up with the following, based mostly on my experience over the past three or four years that I've been blogging. I'm sure there are many more tips that work well. Bloggers need to be creative with the way they market their blog, and keep an eye and ear open to ideas from other successful bloggers.

One of the best things anyone can do is to post frequently and regularly. I'm not good at that, because I have 5 blogs (which might have been a mistake to begin with, especially after emersing myself in a novel length memoir.) But I try to post interesting material, let people know about it, put links on all the social networking sites, and make comments on other blogs (Very Important!).

I also add pictures and videos, use SEO and tags, join groups, events, blog hops, etc., and interact with other bloggers. Having guest bloggers, doing author and book reviews, and interviews is also helpful. You can pick up new followers from those who follow other authors and bloggers.

I have an on-line friend, Brenda, who is very good at attracting attention to her blog. Among other things, she posts intriguing remarks to pique interest, comes up with clever events and questions for feedback, and writes well. Another excellent blogger is Kelly who spends valuable time on line interacting on a personal level within the social community and supporting other writers and bloggers. This will help to build her  platform.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Ever heard of faux Christmas shopping?

While perusing Face Book this morning I came across this post by an on-line writer friend. It says it all…..about Christmas shopping, I mean, especially for most men.  Seems like the girls can handle it a little better but, honestly, it gets to me so much I do it all on-line. Sorry, retail businesses.  I know this is killing you, but it’s all about staying alive. Check out John Stapleton's observation

"Today, I discovered something worse than Christmas shopping...faux-Christmas shopping- its with all the same shit except you browse, compare retail sales prices to online deals, and you really don't get anything done. You still get all the highlights, with rude customer service, rabid people that lack all sense of shame, and wanna-be Tony Montana drivers that act like they hit a big pile of Peruvian snow before they decided to play MarioKart in the parking lot.

Oh yeah...tis the season to be jolly! Now where's my drank????"


If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Putting Books on My Christmas List

 Book Blogger Holiday Blog Hop

Welcome to my blog She-Writers and Happy Holidays. Do come in an take a look around. I hope you enjoy your visit.

Again this year, I will be giving some of my closest friends and relatives books for Christmas gifts. Most of them are avid readers and appreciate a thoughtful choice for their library. I decided to give my two emergent writer friends, Stephen King’s On Writing, a wonderful book that should be in every writer’s library. Although it’s been around for a while, it’s the kind of book you can re-read and enjoy time and time again. It is so funny, honest, and downright enjoyable…nothing stuffy about Mr. King. I know both recipients will be delighted.

For those interested in culinary endeavors, I've chosen Rachel Ray's new cookbook, My Year in Meals, written with her husband, John Cusimano. It's filled with recipes cooked while the camera was rolling in her own kitchen.  It also includes personal stories, notes about her travels, and wonderful photos of her creations.

The third book I'm giving is also a cookbook. It's a beautiful little book based on the new TV show The Chew, hosted by 5 award winning cooks, two of them Iron chefs.  The book, filled with colorful photos of food and great recipes,  is titled The Chew, Food, Life, Fun and is I believe a perfect selection for my 14 year old grand daughter who loves to cook.

Championing Women Writers

According to Belinda Jack of Oxford University, author of the upcoming The Woman Reader, no literary force has done so much to change the world – nor continues to do so – than the historic team of women novelists and their eager, overwhelmingly female readers.

Snobbism about women’s fiction “goes back a long way,”  Jack tells us in her new book.  And before snobbism stretch millennia of active suppression during which women were prohibited from writing almost anything. “Public speech and harlotry were very closely associated,” Jack said in an interview, describing the very narrow range and reading and writing permissible to women up until the 19th century.

Some psychologists and neurologists trace the origin of the fiction gap to women’s demonstrably superior capacity for empathy, which is thought to enable them to occupy the minds of fictional characters with greater ease than men. And profit: New theories of literature see an evolutionary advantage in the ability to infer the motives of others, a talent that sharpens with reading fiction – and would seem to depend mainly on women to function.

Jack explains women’s historical affinity for the novel in terms of its role as a liberating force. Trapped in a domestic space that forbade self-expression, women traditionally turned to novels “to see more of the world,” according to her. “The amount of life that could be seen at first-hand was limited, and so seeing it at second-hand through reading was attractive,” she said.

Reading novels was in itself an act of subversion, and themes evolved to suit the enterprise. “A lot of the novels that many women would say were the greatest novels do explore unconventional patterns of female behaviour and female life,” Jack said, adding that history is repeating itself today among women in Muslim countries who risk severe punishment in order to read imported novels by, for and about liberated women in the West.

Meanwhile, back home, the Internet regularly launches new literary careers without interference from any gender filter that might once have operated in traditional publishing houses. It made 27-year-old Amanda Hocking, a lonely outcast from the U.S. Upper Midwest, a millionaire with her 99-cent tales of paranormal romance. It shocked and appalled British clerics by making former British call girl and blogger Belle de Jour a national sensation. (article by John Barber,The Globe and Mail, Sept. 06 2012) 

* * * *

On the writer's website SheWrites.com, hundreds of women writers are coming together to support each other in their their writing and the publishing of their  novels, memoirs, articles, essays, and blogs. It is a safe haven for discussion, exploration and testing....a place where they are free to create and express their thoughts through words, no matter how bold or timid...a place to exchange helpful and interesting information and ideas with an atmosphere of  healthy balance between support and gentle criticism..............Nancy

The following She Writes women writers
 and authors discuss their latest projects on their blogs 
or websites. Visit their blogs and comment. 

Nov. 25: Nancy Hinchliff  http://www.amemorabletimeofmylife.blogspot.com/  " I have started a new memoir which focuses on my crazy family...."
  

Nov. 26: Julia Hanna http://mystories.sweetbeariesart.com/2012/11/26/my-next-big-thing-a-writing-blog-hop/ "I am working on a novel which I can best describe as contemporary fiction that re-envisions the traditional romance novel. It is about how a woman can be happy for the rest of her life even if she does not get married. Being an old maid is not some reprehensible thing."

Nov. 29: Thelma Zerkelbach http://www.widowsphere.blogspot.com/
Thelma will talk about her new memoir Stumbling Through The Dark

Nov 30:    Marcia Meier www.marciameier.com/
" I plan to talk about my completed memoir, Sweeping Down the Sky"

Dec. 3rd: Carol Clouse:  http://www.carolclouse.com/
"My project focuses on Native American philosophy in conjunction with sustainability in Architecture."

Dec. 4th: Susan Bearman:  http://2kop.blogspot.com/

"I wrote and self-published a picture book called the Animal Store Alphabet Book 
(http://alphabetanimal.com) based on my husband's pet shop. My illustrator and I 
launched a successful $10,000 Kickstarter campaign to fund the printing and 
distribution of the book and companion products (coloring book, poster, canvas 
prints and book bag)."

Dec. 5th: Valerie Neiman http://valerienieman.blogspot.com/
Valerie will talk about her  new book, Backwater, a taut crime novel and coming-of-age story, as a teenage girl struggles for her identity – and her life – against the backdrop of her cousin’s murder.

Dec. 7th:  June OHara www.juneohara.com
"I'm finishing up a humorous memoir about being a psychotherapist and having my own breakdowns, neuroses and humorous life circumstances."



If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

A really creative video

I am not posting this video to talk you into joining Facebook; although, if you're a writer and building your platform it might be a good idea. I just thought this was one of the most creative videos I've seen in a while and wanted to share it with you. Take a look.................


If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Let's give a big hand for the Women Senators of the 113th Senate!

Up from seventeen, the 20 women voted in as senators in the recent election are making history in Washington. A victory for women all over the world.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Has Phillip Roth really stopped writing?

 I was surprised to read on Salon and in the Huffington Post that Phillip Roth is fed up with writing.

Here's what Roth told Les inRocks (translation from French)

"I do not intend to write for the next ten years. To tell you the truth, I'm done. Nemesis will be my last book. Look at E.M. Forster, he stopped writing fiction aged 40. I used to write book after book, but I haven't written anything for three years. I preferred to work on my archives for my biographer."

He goes on to say "I decided to reread all my books, beginning with the last one, Nemesis. Until I got fed up just before Portnoy's Complaint, which is imperfect. I wanted to see if I had wasted my time writing. And I thought it was rather successful."

 And finally "I have dedicated my life to the novel: I studied, I taught, I wrote and I read. To the exclusion of almost everything else. Enough! I no longer feel this fanaticism to write that I have experienced in my life. The thought of sitting down to write one more time is an impossible one for me. And if I did write a new book, it would most likely be a failure. Who needs to read another mediocre book?" ( Huff Post, Nov. 2012)

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

The Times They Are a Changin' (We hope)

 An online friend of mine posted this video today, with the instructions to pass it on, so that's exactly what I'm doing. This video does not necessarily reflect my own personal leanings. And I am not advertising for either presidential candidate. I'm trying to look at both sides of this issue and keep and open mind.

"...after all these years, we still have to fight for control over our own bodies. Don't forget to vote, sisters." Roberta Kyle, Political Packrat

I love comments

Should authors pay for reviews?

Check out this article about paid reviews by  Carrie Stager on The Mad Reviewer. It brings up an issue writers sometimes have to deal with. Have you ever paid for a review? If not, how do you go about getting reviews?  How do you make sure they show up in places that will benefit the sale of your book?

"Reviewers: We have an obligation to our readers to tell the truth as we see it.  If you are accepting money in return for a good review, you are lying to your readers and yourself. It will eventually come out if you're charging for good reviews." (Carrie Stager)

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Not so positive review of Eat, Pray Love

I came across this interesting review of Gilbert's book. It's a different take on the many reviews that have been done so far. It draws into question the author's honesty, in relation to her writing of the book and what she had to do to make it entertaining. In fact, Ms Mertz found it embarrassing.

Traveling for the Book – How Far Must a Writer Go?
A Review of Elizabeth Gilbert’s
EAT, PRAY, LOVE

by Carol Mertz

As is often the case, travel contributes to the making of a book.

Elizabeth Gilbert created Eat, Pray, Love following a lengthy respite from her normal activities as a writer. She traveled to Italy, India and Indonesia and conveniently used the three “I” countries as sub-divisions within her book.

I found this memoir, though it presents more like a novel, outright embarrassing, so much do we learn about aspects of Gilbert’s private life we’d rather not know. Because of her humor and her ability to write with clarity and with what many regard as honesty, she nearly won my respect. In the first part, particularly hilarious, she is nearly undone by Italy’s pasta offerings and within weeks gains about twenty-five pounds. Was this true, or did she as an author, know how to play up her food indulgences for the sake of her book’s structure? This very overindulgence is what draws her so-called honesty into question.

One senses Gilbert worked intensely with her editor, and together they knew just how far she had to go to make the book entertaining. Her subsequent movie deal and the popularity of her book prove she was successful, by today’s cultural standards. (Eat, Pray, Love was released by Columbia Pictures four years after the book’s publication in 2006.) My slanted eye notwithstanding, her writing, to me, is suspect. She’s willing to go to any lengths. Since she portrays herself as one who knows no boundaries in her writing life or in her private life, she appears willing to risk all for the sake of the sale. This ultimately makes her writing contrived and perhaps unworthy, in my judgment.

If we take Gilbert’s self-portrayal at face value, we see a woman with enough financial resources to travel far and long enough to sort through the devastations of her failed marriage and to select a new path, in this case, an initially salacious arrangement with a Brazilian. The relationship may or may not prove to be one of ultimate loyalty.

Many women, I imagine, are shocked by, or envious of, her ability to travel alone. This freedom is not an essential “plot” element of the memoir, but underlies it. It’s easy to assume most women in the throes of divorce would not be emotionally free enough to take off on a trip, or physically free enough to travel with no foreseeable deadline and no urgent financial or familial obligations. Those of us who bear real family allegiances might be justifiably envious.

Gilbert portrays little guilt about her failed marriage and yearns only for freedom and escape from her suffering. Early on, she tells us she has no religious guide in her life except the zen teacher to whom she is introduced in NYC.

The author contrasts each three segments of her book vividly and artfully. Throughout she exercises no restraint in any of the countries she visits and portrays herself as entirely free to follow her inclinations into any pursuit. I find her attempts at meditation in the ashram not entirely plausible, depicted as passionate strivings toward an elusive something. In my view, Eastern meditation practices value detachment over striving.

Gilbert gains twenty-four pounds during her first few weeks in Rome. In India (Pray, part two of the book) she scrubs floors and supposedly does learn how to meditate, with the help of her guru.

In part three she finds her man. And vah-voom! How she and her man click! Again I ask, contrivance?

If Gilbert truly fund-raised among her U.S. friends to provide housing for a poor woman she meets in Indonesia, and if, as is hinted, she used funds from the sale of her book to help this woman, perhaps we can forgive her her exaggerations.

Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love Viking (Penguin Group) New York, NY (2006) ISBN 0-670-03471-1

- Carole Mertz

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Lee Child Debunks the Biggest Writing Myths

Author Lee Child

Born is Covertry, England in 1954, author Lee Child finished law school in Sheffield and ended up in the theater. He then joined the Grenada Television company as a director, where he remained for the next 18 years. He was fired at the age of 40 as a result of restructuring, and, having been a voracious reader, decided to try his hand at writing.
The result was a successful novel by the name of Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series. The Killing floor, which launched the Reacher series of thrillers, has grown in sales and impact with every new installment.

In the following article, written for Writer’s Digest magazine, he explains what really keeps a reader reading until the end. Like his famous protagonist, Jack Reacher, Lee Child is a bit of a rogue badass—especially when it comes to his thoughts on writing, and debunking popular myths. Here, he tells us  “Why Writing Rules are Mostly Wrong,”


Show, Don’t Tell
Picture this: In a novel, a character wakes up and looks at himself in the mirror, noting his scars and other physical traits for the reader.
“It is completely and utterly divorced from real life,” Child said.
So why do writers do this? Child said it’s because they’ve been beaten down by the rule of Show, Don’t Tell. “They manufacture this entirely artificial thing.”
“We’re not story showers,” Child said. “We’re story tellers.”
Child said there’s nothing wrong with simply saying the character was 6 feet tall, with scars.
After all, he added—do your kids ever ask you to show them a story? They ask you to tell them a story. Do you show a joke? No, you tell it.
“There is nothing wrong with just telling the story,” Child said. “So liberate yourself from that rule.”
Child believes the average reader doesn’t care at all about telling, showing, etc. He or she just wants something to latch onto, something to carry them through the book. By following too many “rules,” you can lose your readers.

Don’t Start With the Weather
“If the weather is what’s on your mind, start with it,” Child said.
Simply put, all-time great Alistair MacLean did it all the time. Enough said.

Suspense is Created by X, Y, or Z
For instance: Suspense is created by having sympathetic characters. More and more, Child said, this rule doesn’t add up. Case in point: In The Runaway Jury by John Grisham, Child said there isn’t a sympathetic character in the entire book—there are bad guys, and worse guys. Instead of sympathetic characters, the book is driven by what the verdict of the trial at the heart of the story will be.“And that’s how you create suspense,” he said—it all boils down to asking a question and making people wait for the answer.

Child added that one thing he has learned throughout his career as a television writer and novelist is that humans are hard-wired to want the answer to a question. When the remote control was invented, it threw the TV business through a loop. How would you keep people around during a commercial? So TV producers started posing a question at the start of the commercial break, and answering it when the program returned. (Think sports—Who has the most career grand slams?) Even if you don’t care about the answer, Child said, you stick around because you’re intrigued.

Ultimately, he said writing rules make the craft more complicated than it really is—when it comes down to it, it’s a simple thing. “The way to write a thriller is to ask a question a the beginning, and answer it at the end,” he said.

When he’s crafting his books, Child doesn’t know the answer to his question, and he writes scene by scene—he’s just trying to answer the question as he goes through, and he keeps throwing different complications in that he’ll figure out later. And that very well may be the key to his sharp, bestselling prose.
“For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader,” he said.

You might also like:
Ann Rule on Breaking Into True Crime
Marketing Essentials Every Writer Should Know About
Thriller Writing Made Easy: 4 Steps to Starting a Thriller
Catherine Coulter: 9 Simple Ways To Be a Better Writer
Giveaway: Win a day pass to ThrillerFest, featuring Jack Higgins, Lee Child, Ann Rule and many others




If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Science Fiction at its best: Karen A Wyle author of Twin-Bred

Author Karen A Wyle

      I met Karen Wyle on line at my favorite women's writer's site:  She Writes.  Karen is a member of one of the groups I'm involved with there, and shared a little about her new science fiction novel, which was published in October of 2011. Despite the fact that I am a memoir and non-fiction writer,  I was intrigued by the subject matter and asked her if I could post a little about her and her book on my blog. The rest is history, so to speak.

 Bio: Karen was born a Connecticut Yankee, but eventually settled in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University. She now considers herself a Hoosier. Wyle's childhood ambition was to be the youngest ever published novelist. While writing her first novel at age 10, she was mortified to learn that some British upstart had beaten her to the goal at age 9. 

Wyle is an appellate attorney, photographer, political junkie, and mother of two daughters. Her voice is the product of almost five decades of reading both literary and genre fiction. It is no doubt also influenced, although she hopes not fatally tainted, by her years of law practice. Her personal history has led her to focus on often-intertwined themes of family, communication, the impossibility of controlling events, and the persistence of unfinished business.

    
      Of course, after reading her bio, I was even more intrigued by her and wanted to know why she decided to write the book she did. With as little research, I found that according to Karen,  

"The origin of Twin-Bred was an article I read about interactions between twins in utero -- synchronized movement, touching, even kissing. Either this article or a comment on the article mentioned the long term effect of losing a twin in utero. As an avid science fiction reader, I tend to see the sci-fi potential in any event or discovery. I imagined a scientist seeking to overcome the comprehension gap between two intelligent species by way of the bond between twins. It would be natural for the scientist who conceived this idea to be a twin; it would be intriguing if she were a twin survivor, and if she had somehow kept her lost twin alive as a companion, who could be a character in the story."

Synopsis of Twin-Bred

Can inter-species diplomacy begin in the womb? After seventy years on Tofarn, the human colonists and the native Tofa still know very little about each other.  Misunderstanding breed conflict, and the conflicts are escalating. Scientist Mara Cadell's radical proposal: that host mothers of either species carry fraternal twins, human and Tofa, in the hope that the bond between twins can bridge the gap between species. Mara lost her own twin, Levi, in utero, but she has secretly kept him alive in her mind as companion and collaborator.

Mara succeeds in obtaining governmental backing for her project - but both the human and Tofa establishments have their own agendas. Mara must shepherd the Twin-Bred through dangers she anticipated and others that even the canny Levi could not foresee. Will the Twin-Bred bring peace, war, or something else entirely?...

    
Karen's book can be purchased at Amazon (Paperback)  (Kindle). Or at  Barnes & Noble.  

And you can find Carol at her website or on face Book

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Book Release: No Remorse, by MaryLynn Bast

Now available at Amazon in paperback or kindle format, No Remorse was released on March 17, 2012. It is Ms Bast's first novel and is slated to be part of the paranormal  fantasy series titled "Heart of A Wolf".

 

Synopsis

     Due to her unusual birth, Amber has abilities no other werewolf has ever possessed. On the run since childhood, the lone wolf avoids contact with other werewolves at all cost, continually moving, constantly looking over her shoulder and always alone. Everything changes when Amber saves a werewolf from the mere brink of death, Blake, the only werewolf to ever protect her. 
     Love blossoms, but not without tribulations when Amber realizes she must help her new pack rescue a member who is being held hostage by a rival pack. Warring with emotions of going from lone wolf to the pack leader’s mate, Amber must decide if she is willing to risk Blake’s life to know true family and friendship despite the fact that the Council is hell bent on locating her and will stop at nothing until she is found. Will Amber’s special abilities be enough to keep everyone safe?

About the Author

MaryLynn Bast is from Texas, currently living in Las Vegas and writes paranormal fantasy romance-mystery-adventure books about werewolves and other were-creatures.  Her writing is influenced by Christine Feehan, Sherilynn Kenyon, and Laurell K. Hamilton.  Bast writes fantasy romance because ..." it allows my imagination to run rampant, permitting the characters of my stories to obtain abilities not possible in the real world."  

Bast is a member of the Las Vegas Romance Writers (a division of Romance Writers of America), the Mainstream, Paranormal, and Erotic Romance Writers of Atlanta and SheWrites – Blooming Late. She is a wife, mother of three, step-mother of three, who loves reading and traveling the world. You can find her mateials on her blog at http://www.marylynnbast.com/

Face Book: Heart of a Wolf
Face Book: Author page

Twitter

Purchase Kindle or Paperback at Amazon

Watch Trailer of No Remorse

 

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment

Interesting Interview with Joe Hill, the writer: son of Steven King the writer

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment