Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 194

Happiness is…

Six Sentence Sunday

Books of the Immortals – Water, chapter 2: Morgan and Kahnee. And yes, he's as passive as he sounds (and no, he doesn't feel passion, for anyone).

***

"You are a heartless man," Morgan said, his love almost turned to hatred, after five years of relentlessly unrequited passion. Kahnee didn't answer, nor react.

Morgan contemplated his lover's naked body, the dark drawings on his skin, the oval face and long black hair, the eyes turned somewhere else, lost who knows where, but not ever with him. Morgan wanted to scream when Kahnee was so passive and indifferent to his outbursts.

"I'm hungry," he decided. "Let's eat."

They were in a waterfront tavern that night, and Kahnee followed him downstairs, docile as usual.

***

I have a drawing of the two – but I changed the tattoos in the book trailer!  

Water is out on Smashwords, Barnes&Nobles and Kindle.

Now hop back to the Official Blog for more six sentence goodies and thank you for visiting!

WoW Saturdays

Both "writers on writing" and "words of wisdom" can be shortened with the same word. Thus, welcome to WoW Saturdays, June to September 2011. Enjoy this collection of writers quotes throughout the summer.

"Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind."

- Rebecca West

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than write for the public and have no self."

- Cyril Connolly

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

- Ray Bradbury

If you let other people know that you're a writer, the chances are excellent that they will a) want free writing lessons, b) want you to write their life story, c) want you to collaborate on a book, d) will want you to write some nonfiction.

- David Farland

Thinking of all traditional fiction publishers as one large great judge of books is just flat wrong. A few people, sometimes less than two or three, are in charge of getting a traditionally published novel out to readers. Sure, there are others along the way, but only the editor, a sales person, and a publisher are the judges of quality of the book. And often one or two of them are missing in the equation.

- Dean Wesley Smith

Book review and…

To check the book blurb, click on the cover, I'll let the BuyPage do the talk.

I guess this can be considered a paranormal romance, but instead of vampires or werewolves, we have gypsy mythology, which is refreshing (did I mention how tired I am of vampires – unless they have long dark hair and are called Jorick – and even more of werewolves?). So kudos to that. I don't like first person narrators either, unless they possess Pearl's British humor – OK, my way of saying I liked the voice of this particular book.

I take out one star (so that's 4/5, if you really want to count them) because it's a small publisher and it should have provided with copy-editing. I wouldn't have mentioned the typos if it were an indie author, but as it's one reason to look for a traditional publisher, they should at least provide something besides cover and packaging, shouldn't they?

Anyway, recommended reading for paranormal romance readers, by an author I met though Six Sentence Sunday.

And… the author was unavailable for an interview, so in spite of the lack of "resounding YES" to yesterday's post, considering also the fact that the above mentioned books also deals with souls (and reincarnation), I thought I'd share the blurb for First Sci-fi Baby… feel free to comment.

Title: Soul Stealers

Genre: sci-fi (romance) novella

Blurb: Planet Earth, one century from now. Population has dropped under two billion and mankind works for the well-being of the planet, backed up by computers and eco-friendly energy. But there are still people who feel greed, anger, envy and miss something they cannot have.

Beth is a virtual director specializing in 20th century movie stars whose latest muse is the hologram of Keanu Reeves. Until the soul stealers make her meet a flesh and blook man who looks exactly like her latest virtual star, but is even more damaged than she is. Will they overcome their blocks and differences to build a real relationship?

Good? Bad? Awful? So-so? Let me know, thank you!

Oh, and speaking of holograms… I won't rewrite it, but it's probably less sci-fi than expected. Ah, those Japanese…

(a special thanks to my friend the Japanese expert Massimo Soumaré for putting the link on Facebook with great serendipity! )

the long weekend

… which was the one including Aug15 (National Holiday in Italy, dunno about the rest of the world).

As joining my family in Garfagnana was way too complicated (2 train changes), I just stayed in. And wrote. The last of the Tales of the Southern Kingdoms poured out in three days. So it's a wrap, I can now concentrate on my historical novel again, yippee! Which brought me to another quick search on 12th century quills and pencils – especially quills, try googling that. Fascinating stuff!

What else? I ironed three months of clothes (I can tell because there were long sleeved shirts in the midst) and made myself a brand new t-shirt – to celebrate the completion of the Tales of the Southern Kingdoms, now divided in two volumes (1 set before BoI Air, 2 set after BoI Air). I will soon have to upload the revised versions of the tales that are already on Smashwords.

my shiny self-made t-shirt (back and front printing!)

I also deleted all the books from Feedbook, because all those free downloads didn't really bring any sale, so I thought it was a waste of time. The free reads are now only on Smashwords. Who just sent me a kindly reminder of a book review, but it's next on my TBR list, I have another one that I have started and hope to review tomorrow, first. Oh, and I started inking SKYBAND 8, for my dear and very patient reader…

And then I bought myself a tiny tiny MP3 reader, to listen to all those wonderful Bollywood soundtracks and a few more selected tunes… I wasn't expecting it to be that small, I shall call it Tiny! And no, those are not the original earplugs, in case you were wondering. I "borrowed" them from a long distance flight years ago, and I'm aware of the fact that the jack is bigger than Tiny itself, but well… that's how I like my music, OK?

shiny new Tiny and first sci-fi baby

Last but not least Lulu/UPS delivered my latest baby's printed version, so you get a glimpse of something that isn't out yet… sneak preview for your eyes only!   Should I ask for advice on the book blurb? Would you like to chime in like you did for BoI Water? If there's a resounding "YES!" to this question, I'll post it next week…

daily prompt – August 2021

First of all, a big thank you to all you ladies who commented yesterday – you made my day and the stats spiked up (which shouldn't really matter, but million thanks anyway). I think it made an excellent discussion and boosted my writer's self-confidence again. Thank you and be patient while I answer the last two comments and visit your wonderful blogs – nice meeting a couple of people as well! Rambling on!

So the daily prompt was imagining my life in ten years time – a wonderful opportunity to daydream or make my own predictions!

If all goes according to plans, I'll be a full time writer living on my royalties, with probably more than one pen-name to tackle different genres. Although I'll probably use some form of personal style – a mix between the Chicago Manual and whatever is used in Europe – I hope my voice in English will be as well formed as it was in Italian. That would be my 20th year writing in English as well, so I should be proficient by then!

I don't know in which country I'll be living in, because I have no idea whom I might meet in the next ten years. Maybe I'll follow the love of my life (who hasn't showed up yet, in case you were wondering, and I sure hope he won't be jealous of my husband, Mr Writing, or we won't get very far! Nah, I'm sure he's going to be very supportive! ) or maybe I'll be stuck where I am now (please, please, God, no…).

I'll be a little over the half century mark by then, and hopefully a little wiser… Heck, I might even have found my place in this world and happily fit in! And I'll probably have settled on the lower stair and started traveling again and visited all the countries that are still on my list.

It's good to think about the future. But now let me go back to the present and try to make the best out of it!

Blogging writer

Traffic has gone down dramatically on this blog and not only because it's August and everything is slower because everybody is on vacation. I made private most of my most visited posts, and you know why? They brought the "wrong" readers here.

The first time I'll see on my dashboard that someone typed something related to my name or my writing in the search engine box, I'll celebrate with a vignette.

Until then, I'll keep wondering why people look for answers on search engines and mostly on blogs. I mean, I'm sure there are experts' blogs out there, but if I'm researching something I'd rather go to a web page, possibly the official one when available. Like following the links from Wikipedia entries (again not the best place for research, but a good start).

Yes, I do follow many blogs, but usually it's to be entertained – although I follow some pros also to be educated. What I don't understand is who said bloggers must do instructive posts to drive traffic to their site? Can't a blogger just ramble and entertain him/herself and his/her readers?

The most successful blogs are usually news blogs or opinionists blogs, and I'm none of them. Successful authors have successful blogs for obvious reasons. Do I want my blog to be successful? Yes and no. I want traffic, but not any kind of traffic. I'd like to find readers, people who like my writing and give me feedback so I can improve. I'm self-taught and don't think I can teach anything to anyone. And I'm bad at following the rules – I think there are too many already.

Who made them anyway? Who decided what bloggers should blog about? And the final and most important question – and I'd really love to hear your opinion on this – what are people looking for when searching for something on the internet? And why do they read blogs? Why do you?

Thank you for any answer you can provide…

Happiness is…

Six Sentence Sunday

Hello Sunday visitors and welcome. Continuing from last week.

***

She looked disappointed and he couldn't hide a smile of sympathy.

"I can give you sex, if it's the reason why you bought me," he said. "But do not expect passion in return."

"I never had a man like you," she said, thoughtful. "Today I'm busy, but tonight I'll have your body."

"Of course, my lady," he promised.

***

Books of the Immortals – Water is out on Smashwords and Kindle. Or you can read the full chapter here.

Now hop back to the official blog for more six sentence goodies! Happy Sunday!

WoW Saturdays

Both "writers on writing" and "words of wisdom" can be shortened with the same word. Thus, welcome to WoW Saturdays, June to September 2011. Enjoy this collection of writers quotes throughout the summer.

What I wish…what I wish is that writers with a sale or two, writers like me who still need day jobs and write when they can, I wish we had champions. We who are not overnight successes, the ones who sell one or two — no one ever followed up. No one ever asked, "So, what else ya got?"

- Jeff Pulice

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master."

- Ernest Hemingway

"Writing is a struggle against silence."

- Carlos Fuentes

"The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium."

- Norbet Platt

"Writing, I think, is not apart from living.  Writing is a kind of double living.  The writer experiences everything twice.  Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind."

- Catherine Drinker Bowen