Amanda Bonilla's Blog, page 6

Shaedes of Gray ARC Winner

Thanks so much to everyone who left a comment on my ARC giveaway post! I asked readers to guess who was hiding behind the SHAEDES OF GRAY galley in this picture:


There were some great guesses, my all-time favorite being Newt Gingrich (thanks for that, Hillary!!). I love that most of you thought the girl behind the book was my daughter. But the fabulous woman behind the book is none other than...drumroll, please...

My uber awesome, kick-ass agent, Natanya Wheeler! A correct guess was not required to be entered in the giveaway, so everyone who made a guess was eligible. I'll be giving more ARCs away over the next couple of months, so if you don't get one this go around, there will be other chances. Thanks to random.org, I've selected a name from the pool of commenters, and the winner of the SHAEDES OF GRAY ARC is...
GiGi! Congrats! I'll be emailing you today for your mailing address. I hope you enjoy the first book in the Shaede Assassin Series!

Win an ARC of Shaedes of Gray

I find it surreal that people will soon be reading SHAEDES OF GRAY. These butterflies I feel in my stomach aren't unpleasant, though. I'm not terrified--well, not anymore. I'm excited! I'm anxious to share Darian and Tyler and Xander with readers. I can't wait to let Raif loose on the world. And yes, some people won't like the book, the characters, my writing style, whatever. But I also know that there will be readers out there who will love my characters like I love them. And so, since we're just under 3 months from the release date, I'm giving an ARC of SHAEDES OF GRAY to a blog commenter!

All you have to do is give a guess as to who's hiding behind the book in the picture at the top of this post. You don't have to guess correctly to win. Just throw a guess out there along with your email address so I can contact you if you're the winner. I'll draw at random from all comments left between now and next Wednesday, September, 21st. You can comment as many times as you like. Each comment will count as an entry. Good Luck!

A Novel is Like an Occasion Cake

Most states now have senior projects that are a required research project/class necessary for graduation. When my daughter was a senior, she was obsessed with baking cakes. Not just some box mix thrown together, but the kind you see on Food Network shows. Occasion cakes.

It took her a year's worth of research and practice to build her skills up to make her senior project cake. And she didn't do it alone. I helped her make the flowers, roll the fondant, and stack the cakes. It took an entire weekend and one full school day to assemble this cake. Writing a novel is a lot like making an occasion cake.

A novel can't be thrown together over night. Just like an occasion cake, a certain amount of planning has to take place. The cake artist (because baker just doesn't do justice) develops the cake from an idea. That idea is sketched out from many angles. The flavors, fillings, and color schemes are chosen. Garnish and decorations are planned to match. Like the cake, a story is born from an idea. That idea grows and through plotting, outlining, and structure, a sketch is made. Characters are created and developed, the perfect garnish, and through those efforts, a novel is created.

Occasion cakes, just like stories, take time. My daughter didn't wake up the morning before her project was due and throw together ingredients. She did her research, baked many cakes from many recipes and through trial, error, and practice, found the best cake recipe for the job. A novel isn't born overnight, either. Drafts have to be written and revised. Plots have to be tested and restructured. And after many months of writing and re-writing, a solid story emerges.

An occasion cake isn't a one-person job. The sheets of fondant were huge and it took two sets of hands to knead the fondant, roll it out, and place it on the cakes. I prepped the cake with icing, while my daughter secured the gum paste flowers. Like the cake, a novel can't become a finished product without a little help. Critique partners give that helping hand that a writer needs by offering support, an extra set of eyes, and valuable opinions. Plots and story-structure can be as wide as a sheet of fondant. It takes more than one person to smooth it out.

And when everything is said and done, like the occasion cake, the artist can sit back and enjoy her masterpiece. I have to say, though, that there is one difference between a novel and an occasion cake. When we finished my daughter's cake, I felt that it was just too pretty to eat and I didn't want anyone to cut it! With a novel, well, my hope is that the spine will be cracked and the pages, devoured.

Back to School

School started here on Monday. And though I feel sorry for my teen because he didn't get much of a relaxing summer, I have to say, I'm glad to have my routine finally back to normal.

Well, sort of. He plays soccer and his game schedule is pretty packed. My husband and I have vowed to go to as many away games as we can manage, as well as making every single home game. Not that I mind. I'm one of the loudest parents out there. I love sports, and being a former volleyball coach, let's just say that I can get a little worked up.

But what makes me happy is that I get to reclaim my space. There won't be anyone to drive to soccer, driver's ed, the beach, etc. I'll have one less person to cook for and clean up after during the day. I can sit in peace without the sound of Black Ops in the background or Dub-Step (the teen's new music obsession) blaring from his laptop speakers.

For the next few months it's just me, the pets, my laptop, and a couple of deadlines. Bliss.

Everybody Needs a Buddy

Okay, so maybe the title of this post should have been everybody needs a BUNNY. This is the new addition to our "farm." She's a lion's mane angora and in my opinion, she looks a little like a baby Ewok. I mean, have you ever seen anything so freaking cute??

But I digress. Here's why we bought this cute little thing: We had two bunnies and this spring, one of them died. It was pretty sad, and though we didn't do any sort of bunny autopsy, we're pretty sure he just died of old age (Bunnies have a life span of about 6 to 10 years. See, this blog can be educational!). After that, the remaining bunny got depressed. She became easily spooked and took to hiding in dark little corners and behind the hay bails we have stored in the chicken coop. Even with all of those chickens for company, she wasn't happy.

A couple of weeks ago, we came across the angora and of course, how could I resist her cuteness? We brought her home and stuck her in the chicken coop with the old bunny. It took a couple of days for them to get used to each other, but one day when I went to check on them I found the old bunny running around the coop, chasing the new bunny, kicking her legs, and for lack of a better word, frolicking. In the past two weeks, the old bunny has been hiding less. She lays stretched out (a sign that a bunny is content) and has been less skittish.

The hubs was watching Up in the Air with George Clooney the other night (FYI, what a depressing movie!!) and his character said something that really resonated with me: Life is better with a co-pilot. I believe this. We have two dogs, two bunnies, 2 male ducks, 2 female ducks, a flock of chickens, and come next spring, our gander will have a goose again. Animals, just like people, need companionship.

And since I write stories with some sort of romance sub-plot, that desire to connect with another person fascinates me. One of the reasons I'm drawn to romance is that I love to get elbow deep in my character's psyches and peel back the layers of their personalities in order to find out why they need a certain connection or why they've closed themselves off from a relationship. That's why people read romance. They want to experience that spark of connection, relieve the excitement of finding that special someone who can be their co-pilot. It's only natural to want to companionship, no matter its form or definition. Human beings need it, chickens, dogs, and even bunnies need it.

Ode to the Sidekick

Today's post is dedicated to the sidekick. The unsung secondary character who can elevate a story from good to great. I love secondary characters. Sometimes more than the main characters.

I think what I love about sidekicks is that they tend to let loose more than the MC's. They're given more leeway with their personalities and idiosyncrasies. They can be as bad, as crass, as naughty as they want and the reader will still love them because their outstanding personalities are like a get-out-of-jail-free card for any untoward behavior.

I have lots of favorite sidekicks. Ian from Jeaniene Frost's Cat and Bones series is one of my favorites. Ian is a VERY naughty boy, right down to his--uh--body piercings. ;) But he's so damn endearing, I'd forgive just about anything his rakish behavior can dish out. Another of my favorite Frost sidekicks is Vlad. I'm so happy to see that he's getting his own series. He's a sidekick who could easily carry his own series.

Patricia Briggs has Stephan, the vampire with a conscience, and Warren, Mercy's movie-night buddy with a cute southern accent and an even cuter lawyer boyfriend. JR Ward has Lassiter, the Oprah lovin' fallen angel. Lassiter is another sidekick who'll be seeing his own book. In a word...SQUEE!!!

Sidekicks make a story great. What would Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series be without Pam? And would Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series be the same without Nix? No. We need those secondary characters to help carry the story. The hero and heroine are busy fighting monsters, falling in love, and dealing with emotional baggage. We NEED those secondary characters to give those stories a little extra oomph. The laughs on the side. And in the words of SKY HIGH: Hero Support.

Who are your favorite secondary characters? Are there any sidekicks who just turn you off?

Alphabet Soup

My sister actually came up with the title for today's blog post. We were talking about our favorite paranormal/UF books and the discussion came around to books with large casts of supernatural characters. Hence, alphabet soup. We like our books to be crammed with supernatural creatures from A to Z.

When a story is brewing and percolating in my mind, I already have an idea of who (and what) my major players are going to be. And since I love to write series, I have to be really careful not to paint myself into a corner. A small cast of characters can be the kiss of death to a series.

I need variety. I can't settle for just vampires. Or just vampires and werewolves. I want vampires, werewolves, fae, goblins, ghouls, demons, and as many otherworldly creatures as I can think of. Now, you don't have to cram all of these creatures into every single scene. But, these fringe creatures should be introduced at least once, so they can be brought into later scenes or later books with ease. A series is only as good as its individual stories. And no one wants to read seven books about one creature. That's not what a typical urban fantasy reader is looking for. Neither do they want to read about every single supernatural creature under the sun hanging out in one book. That's just too much, and it's easy for the story to spiral out of control. Not to mention the burden of world-building that the author has to pull off in order to keep the story believable.

But by introducing a large cast, you can have one book that focuses on one creature, another book that focuses on another, and so on. Your world-building is only as good as the creatures in your world. And the story options once they're there, is limitless.

How about you? Do you enjoy an alphabet's worth of supernatural characters in the books you read, or do you prefer to focus on a specific creature? And does the lack or excess of either affect a good series?

Finding a Schedule That Works

One of my CP's is going to laugh at me for writing this, but, I'm not a planner. Like not at all. I don't even plan things a day in advance, let alone months. So you can imagine what gearing up for a book release has been like for this non-planner. It's not the sort of thing you can do at the last moment. There's no, "Oh, my book comes out next week. Guess I'll do a couple of things." No, this is a months-long process.

And since I'm not much of a planner, my agent suggested I keep a calendar to keep track of my various social networking and platform building activities leading up to December and my release. So far, the calendar has been great! It's allowed me to see the days/weeks/months right there in black and white and since I'm a very visual person, I can schedule my activities in a way that works for me. I've decided to blog twice a week. I've admitted time and again that blogging isn't my strongest social networking medium. So, I'll blog once a week here, and once at week over at Magic and Mayhem. I'm going to post five days a week on my Facebook page. I LOVE Facebook. The posts can be as short as a sentence or as long as a small paragraph. And I get to interact with primarily readers, which can be really enlightening. I'll pop in and out on Twitter once or twice a day, but I have to admit, being witty in 140 characters or less is really HARD! ;) And I'll be giving away ARC's and jewelry and other goodies on all three social networking sites from August until the SHAEDES OF GRAY release on December 6th.

I have to say, it feels good to have a plan in place and a schedule to go by. How about you guys? Are you the plan-it-out, scheduling sort? Or do you fly by the seat of your pants?

I'm Curious

I'm curious about the readers of this blog. Since I blog on this site so sporadically, I don't ever get much in the comments department. Which, is fair enough, I suppose. I don't often blog because I save a lot of my blog ideas for the Magic and Mayhem blog. Another reason is, that between Twitter, my author page on Facebook, reading and commenting on certain blogs (including the many book review sites I follow), and the group blog, I spend approximately 2 hours a day on social networking alone. And now that I'm under deadlines and accountable for my writing, I feel like every word blogged is a word NOT in the MSs due to my editor.

But I digress. This is about YOU after all. And I'm honestly curious about you. So let me ask you this, blog followers: What genre do you read? Are you a writer as well? And do you enjoy reading blogs about writing and industry relevant topics? I'd really like to know. :)

On the Mayhem Blog

I'm blogging about negative reviews at the Magic and Mayhem blog today. Hope to see you there!