C.L. Cannon's Blog, page 28

Recommended Reads: The Eternity Road

The Eternity Road By: Lana Melyan
My Rating: 

My Review:

A wonderfully refreshing book! I thoroughly enjoyed the mythology and unique storyline. The characters are likable and complex in construction. The story is unpredictable and keeps you on the edge of your seat for what comes next. I especially loved some of the pop culture references!

Blurb:

On her eighteenth birthday, Amanda has a dream that feels strangely lifelike. When Amanda recounts the experience to Melinda, the faithful housekeeper who has looked after her since her mother’s death, she assures her it’s meaningless, with no significance at all. But Melinda isn’t telling Amanda the truth.

Craig, the older brother of Amanda’s friend Hanna, has loved Amanda from afar for years. But a deep secret, going back centuries in time, keeps him from ever making a move.

When Melinda, who has a secret of her own, tells Craig about Amanda’s dream, it changes everything between them. Two vampires posing as men are pursuing Amanda, and Craig is devoted to keeping her safe. Luckily Craig and his sister are Hunters, the only supernatural creatures able to defeat the evil beings.

Craig and Hanna will do anything to protect Amanda, because they know that their friend has a special mission … even though she doesn’t have any idea of what’s happening around her or who she truly is.

Get your copy today!

The Eternity Road

The post Recommended Reads:

The Eternity Road appeared first on CLCannon.net.

Fiction-Atlas Charity Book Auction

Fiction-Atlas is pleased to present the very First Annual Charity Book Auction! Generous authors will be putting their books up for auction, and lucky bidders will battle it out for the top bid on each book. All proceeds from this auction will be donated in a 50/50 split between the two following charities.

Kid’s Need To Read and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital

We will be having 30-minute slots for each author to give a brief description of each book and to post each individual book they would like to donate to this cause. One introduction post with all your links and author info will be allowed as well.

In addition to books we will also be auctioning off Pop figures, t-shirts, keychains, bracelets, and other fandom related items.

None of the books up for auction are going to any children, so all genres are welcome. The money that is raised with each bid will be lumped together in one large sum and then split between the two charities.

I have created an events page for direct donations to St. Jude and for Kids Need To Read. I will also be adding the 50% donation from all book auctions to this event so that we can see, just how much money we have raised for these amazing charities.

You can donate now if you wish, no amount is too great or too small.

http://events.stjude.org/fictionatlas

http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/courtney-cannon/fictionatlas

To join the auction or donate books to be auctioned off please go to the event page here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/179879455808086/

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Increasing visitor engagement to your website

Hello, everybody! It’s #WebsiteWednesday! Here are some tips for increasing visitor engagement to your website.

Ok, so you have traffic coming to your author site, so how do you get your audience to interact with you and what will make them want to come back for more?

Involving your audience is always a great way to get repeat visitors to your web page. Monthly contests or games are an excellent way in which you can do this.

For example, you can have a competition each month for visitors to share a post or a tweet for a chance at a prize (an e-book, a paperback, swag, an exclusive excerpt)

You could have a guessing game where your visitors try to guess your favorite celebrity or your inspiration for a character, your favorite musician, etc. It gives the visitor something to do and helps them get to know you at the same time.

How about a monthly poll? Getting feedback from visitors is an important part of marketing. Use the poll to find out what they like the best about your book. Who is their favorite character or villain? What do they want to see next? Or to get demographics like: What part of the world are they from? What genres do they generally read the most? What tropes do they enjoy? All of this information can be gotten quickly and compiled later to help you promote your books in the best way possible to a target audience.

Alright, now that we have the fun and games out the way, what else can you do to engage your visitors?

Content is KING. Make sure your website has plenty of content that is regularly updated and is easy to access from any device or location. Do a weekly blog, or even a bi-weekly blog. Taking the time to pen a few words other than the ones inside your novel is not a crime. Update your readers on what is going on in your life, what events you’ll be attending, what travel plans you might have or a funny story about your family or even something that happened during the writing process. People come to your website to find out more about you and what you are writing. The same old tired content will discourage them from checking back regularly and could lead to them forgetting you altogether.

If you feel comfortable in front of a camera record a video for them about writing or your books. Give them a glimpse into the process. Mention any upcoming events or releases. Do cover reveals or brief WIP readings that will make them feel like they are a part of the publishing and writing process. Ask for their comments and critiques.

Create a music playlist that your fans can listen to while they read your books. This helps them crawl into your mind and visualize the world you have built with the music that brought it to life in the first place. This helps people see your vision of scenes and who doesn’t love discovering new music?

If you have the talent and time, you can even do things like hiding “easter eggs” on your site that open up exclusive content or prizes on your site. You can hide these in text or in graphics around your site, and it will keep the visitor looking through every page looking for more.

The post Increasing visitor engagement to your website appeared first on CLCannon.net.

My first published story!

Hello, all!

My first published story Chasing Time has been included in the 13 author Holiday Heartwarmers anthology! This is such an emotional day. I wrote this story on a whim and to have it be my first published work is an honor. There was a 10k word limit to the submission, so after the 90 day KDP Select period is over, I would like to expand this story to a full sized novel. Don’t worry! I’m still working on Forget Me Not! Chasing Time has some similarities to Forget Me Not because it has to do with the bond of strong, lifelong friendship. Please go check out my short story for now, to whet your appetite for Bree and Finn!

Buy Links

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N08QN99

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32965880-holiday-heartwarmers

Blurb for Chasing Time

Carly and Micha are best friends. They have been since the sixth grade when Micha moved to the sleepy southern town of Corwin, Tennessee. For most of their teenage lives, they spent their time trying to get out. When they finally manage to do so, first love, betrayal, asinine exes and a heart-rending loss puts their bond to the test. Will a trip back to Corwin for Christmas be just the shove they need to confront their past and make a better future?

Blurb for Holiday Heartwarmers

Immerse yourself in this eclectic collection of short stories featuring authors from around the world. Travel to different places with them as they enjoy an unexpected journey back home to reunite with family and take a chartered flight to the North Pole. Shiver with the cold and anxiety as their loved ones get stranded in a snow storm in Alaska or share the amazement of gazing at the spectacular views during a hike to Machu Picchu. Explore the Indian subcontinent by train, share an unforgettable vacation in Cyprus or venture into Afghanistan in the midst of war.

Holidays are a time of sharing and can take many forms. These stories explore the issues of family dynamics, reflections on life, and finding the true meaning of love and acceptance. They also show that sometimes, it is just as important to let go of old feelings and old memories. This collection of short stories is sure to warm your heart and light the spirit of Christmas.

 

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#FeelGoodFriday Nov 11th 2016

#FeelGoodFriday Inspiring stories about the author journey!

This week I am pleased to have Andrew Barrett, author of “Stealing Elgar” and “No More Tears.”

Let’s give him a big welcome! His guest interview is below as well as his author contact and buying info! Thanks for sharing with us Andrew!

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Hello, everyone. My name is Andrew Barrett, or Andy if you prefer.

Courtney was kind enough to let me mumble on for a while about my writing ‘career’. So here it is, along with snippets from a few interviews I’ve done over the years.

I’ve just crashed through the 50-year-old barrier, completely unscathed! I’ve been a CSI in England for a little over 20 years, and for those 20 years, I’ve written crime thrillers with a heavy forensic slant (surprise, huh?). Prior to this, I wrote horror, and of the three horror books I wrote, none of them were any good. Okay, they were appalling, but I now see them as kind of an apprenticeship; a good grounding that helped me into my current genre. So, I suppose I actually began writing almost 30 years ago. And the inspiration was a really bad book! I don’t remember the title or the author, but I do remember thinking that I could do a lot better.

And so, I tried. Turns out I couldn’t do better at all. It was horrid and has never seen the light of day, thankfully.

But I’d done something that most people only dream of doing: I’d written a book. I had actually written a book! And once that feeling gets a hold of you, it’s very difficult to get away from it. I wanted more. And so, I wrote another, and another. And I could see that they were getting a little better each time.

So, I had the bug and a very small pool of experience. All I needed now was something to write. And that’s when I landed the CSI job. I wrote my first crime novel, A Long Time Dead, in my first and second years as a CSI. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. I don’t know how, but I managed to get an agent who made me re-write the damned thing over and over. And then he bailed out on me. It was heart-breaking at the time, but he’d left me with a much better book. So, I rewrote it yet again, and it became quite a good book!

Over the next few years, I wrote another two books featuring a CSI (termed SOCO back then) called Roger Conniston. They were Stealing Elgar and No More Tears. And they were pretty good.

But I didn’t stop there. I wanted to write something that was multi-character-based. I wanted big; I wanted epic. And I wanted a new, more charismatic, lead character. In walked Eddie Collins.

It was about this time that I became aware of Amazon, and self-publishing.

260k words later (about 1000 pages), I had The Third Rule. It became a book you either loved or hated; it was so big that you could easily immerse yourself in it, and a lot of people loved it. Some didn’t, and their biggest complaint was that it was too big.

Part of being a writer means it’s a good idea to listen to what people say, and enough people were saying it was too big for me to ignore them. So, I edited it right back as far as I could and ended up with 180k words, which was much better, though still way too long to fit into the mainstream genre. And since this book is the first in a new series, the edit proved a wise move, since people will choose to carry on with the others in that series based entirely upon the first one.

Despite him being an angry and abrasive man with a loathing for authority, Eddie turned out to be popular, and so I was inspired to write Black by Rose (my favourite book) and followed it with Sword of Damocles.

And right now, I’m working my way through the edits of his new novel, Ledston Luck (working title), and have written two shorts as well.

There’s so much more to tell but time is short, so I’ll leave it there. What follows are a few excerpts from recent interviews that illustrate my love of writing.

What is your inspiration to write?

Not too sure how to answer this one. But I’ll give it a go. I believe that if you spend your life as nothing but a consumer, it is a life wasted. I believe that creativity – irrespective of form (painting, writing, sculpting, making music, cooking, restoring, whatever…) – is central to human existence and fulfilment. Yes, I realise how deep that sounds, but I could not bear to go through life as a pure consumer (I feel guilty just watching a film!). I like to think that I’m creating something when I write, something that will outlast me, and something that I hope sincerely will bring a little bit of pleasure to someone else. Since I can’t sculpt, cook, or paint (quite like drawing, though)), I choose to write. And now I’m afraid I cannot stop!

What drives you to continue writing?

This will sound like a cliché. But I write because I feel empty if I don’t.

But there are many other reasons why I write – even though I’m not exactly commercially successful; but that has never been a reason for me to write (proven by the fact that I’d written six books before Amazon was even born). I write because I enjoy that total immersion in a story, the utter belief that good will always win over bad, even if good is slightly soiled by the end of the tale. There’s no feeling like it when you’re so far into this other world that your fingers cannot keep up with the thoughts coming out of your mind. It’s always a bit of a shock to realise you’re making all this up, and you have to get ready for work.

I also write because I adore the way people interact with each other (study them), and so the way the characters do too. I write because I enjoy the feeling it gives me to know someone else is reading my humble stories, and hopefully, enjoying them a bit.

Do you have any advice for new writers?

We’re all new writers, aren’t we? Each time we begin another project, we’re on a journey of discovery, not only within the story, but within ourselves too. My, how deep was that?

Forget writing what you know (it’s the one piece of advice almost every How to Write a Book book tells you (unless it’s non-fiction of course!)), and write the kind of stories you enjoy reading. There’s a good reason for this: any reader will see straight through your attempts to enthral them with knitting pattern plots or accounting woes. If you enjoy Westerns, write one. Even if you’ve never been to a saloon in Hic County.

Forget writing for money. If you deliberately set out to earn cash as a fiction writer, you will fail as surely as your plans to win the lottery. Unless you’re very lucky of course.

Write because you enjoy it because you can’t live without it. Write because it makes you happy and above all, write because of the chance to make other people happy.

A reader wants to disappear from their own world where the washing up and the vacuuming are waiting; they want to see if Wild Bob Hiccup is gonna get a belly full of lead when Jenny-Lou Stetson sees him stealing getaway horses.

Your plot will be thin and your characters, shadows; you’ll think it’s just enough to get you to the finishing line, but it won’t be because the finishing line is when you leave a reader satisfied.

Website:

www.andrew-barrett.co.uk

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/AndrewBarrettUK

Amazon:

www.amazon.co.uk/Andrew-Bar…/e/B0055888Q0/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/AndrewBarrett.author/

Eddie Collins on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/EddieCollinsCSI/

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Have your own author story you’d like featured? Please type it up and send it to info[at]fiction-atlas.com. All stories are posted in the order that they are received! Please be sure to include any links you want to have featured with your story.

The post #FeelGoodFriday Nov 11th 2016 appeared first on Fiction-Atlas .

#ThesaurusThursday Nov 10th 2016

Sorry about missing yesterday’s post, I was so overwhelmed with orders and promoting my new short story! But never fear! I’m back today!

It’s #ThesaurusThursday! Expanding your vocabulary each week!

Today we are going to list synonyms you can use in place of the word ‘cold.’ Make your manuscript more diverse by switching up common words.

bitter, bleak, brisk, chilled, cool, crisp, frigid, frosty, frozen, icy, intense, raw, snowy, wintry, arctic, chill, cutting, hyperborean, icebox, keen, sharp, Siberian, stinging, algid, below freezing, below zero, benumbed, biting, blasting, boreal, brumal, frore, gelid, glacial, have goose bumps, hawkish, hiemal, iced, inclement, nipping, nippy, numbed, numbing, one-dog night, penetrating, piercing, polar, rimy, severe, shivery, sleety, snappy, two-dog night

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#TalentTuesday Nov 8th 2016

It’s #TalentTuesday! Every week I will be featuring an author that I think has true talent!

This week that author is Deliaria Davis who is the author of Mistress of the Vampires a paranormal erotica book.

You can also support Deliaria by following her on social media!

Author page – http://www.facebook.com/DeliariaDavis

Twitter — http://www.twitter.com/MattsBella

Blog — http://deliaria.mreauowpublishing.com/

Goodreads — https://www.goodreads.com/deliariadavis

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#MemeMonday Nov. 7th 2016

It’s #MemeMonday! Don’t deliberate too much!

#amwriting #amediting #indieauthor

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FeelGoodFriday Nov 4th 2016

#FeelGoodFriday Inspiring stories about the author journey!

This week I am pleased to have Maggie James Fiction, author of the “His Kidnapper’s Shoes.”

Let’s give her a big welcome! Her guest interview is below as well as her author contact and buying info! Thanks for sharing with us Maggie your story is fascinating!

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Thank you, Courtney, for featuring me on your website! I’d like to relate the story of how my first novel, His Kidnapper’s Shoes, came into being. In 2010, fed up with life as an accountant, I quit my job and went travelling for a year. I didn’t tell anyone, but I intended to write a novel along the way, to fulfil a lifelong ambition. And that’s what happened, albeit with a few twists and turns. In hindsight, it’s one of the best decisions I ever made!

So what were those twists and turns? For one, procrastination continued to dog my writing ambitions. Two months into my trip, I still hadn’t written a word, mainly because although I yearned to be a novelist, I didn’t know what to write about. That dilemma got sorted during my stay in Vietnam. During a casual conversation, someone said how child abductions aren’t always down to predatory paedophiles; other reasons exist, some of them tragic. This started me thinking, and eventually formed the basis behind His Kidnapper’s Shoes.

Although I had the idea, I found it hard to combine travelling with writing. More time passed, and still, I hadn’t penned a single word. One evening, while in the small northern Chile town of Arica, I experienced somewhat of an epiphany. I vowed to travel to my next destination, find a decent hotel, and write every day until I had my long-awaited first draft. I took a bus to Bolivia, enduring a nasty bout of altitude sickness along the way, and ended up in the charming city of Sucre. I began writing in December 2010 and finished His Kidnapper’s Shoes in February 2011.

My original intention was to search for a publisher after returning to the UK. That didn’t happen. While in Bolivia I got talking to another traveller, who pointed out the benefits of self-publishing. I checked it out and became convinced this was the way forward for me.

I eventually published His Kidnapper’s Shoes in March 2013. The book did well, and I remained happy with my decision to self-publish. In another twist, however, that all changed earlier this year. In February 2016 I received, out of the blue, a call from an acquisitions editor at one of Amazon’s publishing imprints. She told me how much she had enjoyed my book, and after a couple more conversations and various emails, Lake Union offered me a contract to republish His Kidnapper’s Shoes along with my next novel, After She’s Gone. After consulting other authors and reading the contract carefully, I decided to accept. So far I’ve had no reason to regret my decision, and I’ve enjoyed working with Amazon!

The new version of His Kidnapper’s Shoes is being republished by Lake Union on November 16, 2016. It is now available for pre-order via this link:

http://smarturl.it/HKSnew

If you’re in the US and you’d like the chance to win one of 100 electronic copies of His Kidnapper’s Shoes, why not enter this Goodreads giveaway?

https://www.goodreads.com/…/sh…/207671-his-kidnapper-s-shoes

Website and blog: http://www.maggiejamesfiction.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MJamesFiction/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mjamesfiction

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/maggie-james/64/381/727

Google+ : https://plus.google.com/101511690389687930651

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/828751.Maggie_James

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/maggiejamesfict/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maggie-James/e/B00BS9LVMI

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/maggie-james

Authorgraph: https://www.authorgraph.com/authors/mjamesfiction

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Have your own author story you’d like featured? Please type it up and send it to info[at]fiction-atlas.com. All stories are posted in the order that they are received! Please be sure to include any links you want to have featured with your story.

The post FeelGoodFriday Nov 4th 2016 appeared first on Fiction-Atlas .

#ThesaurusThursday Nov 3rd 2016

It’s #ThesaurusThursday! Expanding your vocabulary each week!

Today we are going to list synonyms you can use in place of the word ‘friend.’ Make your manuscript more diverse by switching up common words.

acquaintance, ally, associate, buddy, classmate, colleague, companion, cousin, partner, roommate, chum, cohort, compatriot, comrade, consort, crony, familiar, intimate, mate, pal, playmate, schoolmate, sidekick, spare, well-wisher, alter ego, bosom buddy, soul mate

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