K.C. Sprayberry's Blog, page 146

The Collection

A collection is a group of related, or non-related, stories by one author. There is always a theme, whether a particular genre, several stories of the same plot, or even the same character.
Some of these books are rather long. Others are too short to be in print, but are an enjoyable break when you’re standing in a long line or during the commute home.
One thing these types have in common is that they’re meant to entertain and in some instances, provide background in a series of related books.



Blurb
Hailey Hatmaker and the Ghosties are back! So are the ghosts who keep popping up in Landry—a kindly grandma, a surly janitor, the breakfast burrito lady in the school cafeteria, a ghost with terminal allergies, and others. Seems the Great Beyond wasn’t enough. They like living in Landry just fine.
Get Ghosties Tales on Amazon 


Excerpt
Hello, Ghostie Central. Tripped through the other blogs earlier and couldn’t find anything like what’s going on with the Landry Ghosties. I so hope someone out there has an answer to our current manifestation because we have absolutely no idea how to handle it. First, though, a little history about my particular talent.
My name is Hailey Hatmaker. Don’t crack the usual jokes. I’ve heard every single one and they stink. I adore living in Landry, Georgia. It’s a really old town in the northwest part of the state. Most times, we feel like we’re more connected to Chattanooga than Atlanta, but that’s another story—and another ghost problem to solve in the far future.

Dear Significant Other

I address this Monday Blog Post to the significant others in the writing world. You know who you are—the provider of copious amounts of caffeinated products, tissues to wipe away tears, the one who deals with the hardships of the real world while your writer partner pounds out yet another story.
Those of you who have a writer partner that must, absolutely must, work what we disgustingly call a day job, there are moments—quite a few moments—where you will wonder if it is all worth it.
For those who must suffer through the day after day, hour upon hour, and minute by minute exaltations of “I’m almost done.” We truly understand your frustrations, we have heard every exhortation of “Please help with the children.” We didn’t mean to miss dinner with your parents for the millionth time, but…
We have to finish this plot point. It’s absolutely vital to completing our masterpiece.
This character is weak. I’m redeveloping and can’t stop.
The scene stinks. Needs more description… more description… more description.
I’m well aware your parents are on the way to the restaurant, but I can’t stop now. I’m on a roll.
These and many other excuses dominate the world of the author. We can’t stop. The stories are pouring out of our head. Stopping will create a partner who is nothing but a dull eyed, monumentally boring companion who will mumble story points under their breath while scribbling scenes on a napkin at the restaurant.
Or we’ll sit straight in a chair at whatever child oriented event you’ve dragged us to. Our minds will be on how can we use that kid out of step with the others in our book. Those sweet looking girls on one end might make a side story, if we can figure out a way to create a situation for them. A couple of boys in the back look like they’re ready to pull pigtails or dump a bucket of water on the teacher.
So, dear significant other, while you tap a foot outside our work area, please understand this…
We can’t help ourselves. The story is bigger than food. The tale we’re crafting is far more important than dinner with your parents. Our children will understand when Mommy or Daddy is famous one day—we can’t ignore the story!

Everybody Reads YA ~ Ghosties Trouble to the Max

Happy “Everybody Reads YA” Sunday! Today I’m sharing an excerpt from my paranormal novel Ghosties: Trouble to the Max. The Ghosties can cross the streams!




It felt so good to discover ghostly action in Landry once again. The Ghosties had just finished a dry spell like no other we had ever seen. We’d just gone through five months with nary a ghost to bother us. No goo oozing out of heating vents, or papers flying out of hands to plaster against the ceiling.


The call this morning had me, the fantastic, fabulous Hailey Hatmaker, gathering my group together lickety-split. We met up on the run, and raced all the way over to Bank of Landry. Once there, we had almost danced with glee at what greeted us. That was an hour ago. This particular ghost was proving far more difficult to exterminate than we had anticipated.


About the Author


Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.


She’s a multi-genre author who comes up with ideas from the strangest sources. Some of her short stories have appeared in anthologies, others in magazines.





Ghosts are popping up all over Landry. The town is being overrun and no one knows why—least of all Hailey Hatmaker and her Ghosties crew. Only none of these ghosts are talking. They’re terrified of something that only Hailey and her team can figure out. Something which could prove disastrous for them all.

Ghosties Trouble to the Max 

Strong Verbs

Your verbs are very important to the story. They portray action, emotion, drive your book along. That’s why all verbs must be strong.
Unfortunately, there is a current trend to modify verbs, weaken their delivery by using “begin” and “end” or other words that in effect, dilute the verb and slow down your book.
It’s time to take your verbs into the writing gym and make them strong. Your zeal to create a well-crafted story must be tempered once you start a sentence with “the wind started to blow,” and never end that statement. Instead, the wind should gust and blow with a temper that is sure to scare everyone in a ten mile radius.
How does one send their verbs to the gym?
The idea is to review and edit your book as you go along and before you submit. If you’ve used a modifier with your verb, either another verb or an adverb, take it out. Slice and dice is the order of the day when giving your verbs a workout. Yes, things begin to happen, but in a book with strong verbs, they happen. People don’t start to pick up an object; they lift that object. Animals don’t begin to attack; they attack.
Be brutal. Eye those words like you would another author’s book, when you’re helping them find errors. Think heavy duty pen scratching out words that aren’t necessary. Believe that you are making your character’s actions stand up and count.
Put your verbs in a power lifting position and leave them there. Watch their muscles grow. Give them the opportunity to carry the story well.
Once you’ve done this, bring those verbs home from the gym and leave them, strong and proud, where they belong—in a story that rocks.

Second Chances

We all want a second chance in life, an opportunity to right a wrong and maybe rediscover a relationship we once thought we’d blown. How often does that happen? More than most people realize. Second chances are the fates way of letting us know that a happily ever after is possible, if we open our eyes and grab the opportunity once it’s presented to us.
In Love Anew, location and circumstances, in addition to external pressures, drove Treena and Rick apart. Their love was cast aside as responsibilities and other people lured them into believing lies. When given a second chance at life, their physical and emotional scars hold them back, make them doubt their commitment. Can they make things work a second time?



Blurb
A promise to wait forever shatters from doubt. Doubt in her fiancé and doubt in herself causes Treena Andrews to make a choice she comes to regret. Fifteen years later, can she make the broken pieces of her life whole?

Get Love Anew on Amazon! 
Excerpt
Treena Michaels glanced at the miniscule diamond engagement ring on the third finger of her left hand. Four months ago, Rick Wilson had put the ring there and promised to return to her. Everything she’d dreamed of had happened in the space of two short years. She no longer lived with her father—a man who preached blind obedience for women to their men and enforced his teachings with fists and hateful words in his home. For the first time in her life, she was free to pursue a career she’d always dreamed of having, becoming a social worker for children who lived as she had after her mother disappeared. Within the next year, she would be Rick Wilson’s wife. All she had to do was wait for him to come home from the War on Terrorism unscathed.


“He’ll come home,” she whispered. “Rick promised.”

Be A Team Player

You, as an author, have a responsibility to observe the care and feeding of your team. You know who those people are—the editor, proofreader, cover artist, and anyone else involved in the production of your book before it’s made available for sale.
If you’re wondering exactly what goes into this care and feeding, think about all the time you put into writing your book. Along the way, you utilized beta readers or a critique group to iron out the kinks, search for dangling plot points, and make sure every sentence flowed from one to another. The pride you felt once your book made it through the final pass of pre-submission checks needs to continue, once you’re offered a contract.
One of the first people you’ll have contact with is the editor-in-chief with your new publisher. That is the person who initially decided your book was worthy of a contract. The individual who is marshalling the group of people who will be your team during the pre-publication process. The first thing to remember is that the editor-in-chief doesn’t only handle your book but in all likelihood, many, many other books. They are a master juggler, a multi-tasker extraordinaire, and a person who has the task of making sure your book shines when it’s published. This individual often works long hours with his or her many authors, ensuring each one thinks they have the undivided attention of their editor-in-chief while also attending to the rest of each team they set up.
A cover artist has the unenviable job of turning your dream of an ideal cover into reality. And in this case, reality often falls short of the dream. Many authors today still believe that a book cover today is created with either an illustrator hand drawing the cover described, or models being used in exotic locales with a professional photographer working to get the perfect shot. That couldn’t be further from the truth. In many instances, the cover artist is working with a stock photo that may or may not be altered slightly and adding the title, author’s name along with a series title if necessary and a tagline.
The disappointment many authors feel when seeing the finished product has often translated into a heated rant being sent to the editor-in-chief by the author, demanding that the cover artist be fired and a new cover made immediately. Of course, this time whoever is assigned the job had better get everything right and they had better do it the way the author wants it done.
Back up there for a minute. You, the author, opted to submit your book to a publisher. You signed the contract. I’m sure you read and understood every word of that contact before signing. Most publishers’ contracts aren’t difficult to understand at all. So, if you did all this, you will know if your publisher allows you to have a second cover made, or even several covers made, until you are satisfied. And don’t for one minute think that you will enjoy final say in that cover. Cover art, like editing and proofreading, is being paid for by the publisher. They are taking a chance on you, the author—a chance that your book will make back everything that they’re paying out in order to turn a profit.
Next is your editor, whose care and feeding will result in a fine product for you to offer your many fans once it’s published. Ranting at your editor can and often has resulted in a less than satisfactory product. The relationship between an editor and an author must be friendly but also one of an individual who can fix the problems within a book and another individual who realizes that although the editor-in-chief loved the book when the contract was offered, they also knew it would need polishing before it was ready to make available to the public.
Finally, you have your proofreader. Authors rarely have much contact with their proofreader. A proofreader goes through the book one last time before the editor-in-chief readies it for upload. Your proofreader will fix missing punctuation. They will make sure no words are misspelled or missing. They might even tweak the formatting, to ensure that your book looks and is fabulous.
All this time, you are waiting patiently (allegedly) or not so patiently (in many instances) for your book to be ready for publication. Some authors feel the need to constantly email their editor-in-chief, demanding to know what’s taking so long. They’ve lost sight of the fact that the team behind the scenes isn’t involved in one book at a time, but many.
What you, the author, can do while you’re going through this process is remember that your team works hard for you, but they are mostly working hard for your publisher. A well turned out book benefits everyone, and that means the team must work together.
Be a great team member—care and feed those people working to make your book fabulous.

Everybody Reads YA ~ Valentino

Happy “Everybody Reads YA” Sunday! Today I’m sharing an excerpt from my paranormal short story: Valentino. Eros’ evil cousin tries to ruin Valentine’s Day.




He presses harder on the accelerator, his foot twitching inside his sneaker. His is an easy life, one he’s taken for granted for years, but now … now … things are so different. Jack Byers lives only for Lea Wright.
Jack comes from the richest family in Landry. They live on a hill, overlooking the valley where most of the town barely exists since the recession began, yet he’s never really been as bad as the rest of his family. Sure, he has movie star good looks, with his shoulder brushing mink brown hair, green eyes that tend to sparkle with repressed laughter, and a build that put him on the football team long before he entered school.
About the Author
Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.
She’s a multi-genre author who comes up with ideas from the strangest sources. Some of her short stories have appeared in anthologies, others in magazines. 


Jack has plans for his girl on Valentine’s Day. Lea hides a horrible secret from everyone in her new hometown. Not to be outsmarted, Valentino comes between the teens. Can Jack and Lea stop the demon before midnight of Valentine’s Day?


                                                       Valentino


 
 

A Phenomenon

Social media is here to stay. So are the posts we put on the various groups that are so popular—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Kik, a blog, or even our website. There is a very true saying that you need to remember—what goes on the internet stays on the internet forever.
Oh yes, that embarrassing post you yanked down only moments after putting it up but was shared by three of your close friends is now forever wafting through the ether of the internet. If someone wants to know about you for any reason, a quick search will soon have you wondering why you lost that fabulous job or explaining just what you were thinking.
Or you virulently are opposed to a particular political candidate and make that fact known whenever you have a chance. But, you’ve picked a career field where what you post on social media has a strong bearing on your ability to get a job. And your potential boss requires that you maintain a low profile during election cycles, because any of his/her employees speaking out about candidates in a less than flattering manner can impact their business. Except… you decide your political beliefs are more important than your boss’ are and go ahead with your posts.
Don’t be surprised if you suddenly discover you don’t have a job any longer. An employer is perfectly within their rights to terminate a person if they negatively affect the bottom line. With so many people still looking for jobs, you are but a blip on their radar once they decide you aren’t worth the trouble any longer. Oh, good luck finding another job very fast, unless it is with the candidate you support. Your attitude that you can do as you please will follow you for a good long time. And once the election is over, there’s no guarantee that you’ll have a permanent position if their elected position comes to bear.
The bottom line is that you, and you alone, control your future. Social media is fun, if you use a little discretion. Remember, everyone doesn’t have to know every little thing about your life.

Romance Short Stories

Just how does one create a romance along with its many elements and do it as a short story? Impossible, you say. Quite possible, I say.
Romance does have some unbreakable rules. You need to have the couple coming together. You do need vivid description. Mostly, you need the romantic involvement that leads to a satisfying conclusion.
All of this can be done in a short story. It’s rather simple if you work at it. All you need to do is define your in your opening paragraph the characters and their attraction. Instead of beginning with description of their lives before they meet, jump into the middle of the action.
The middle of the action—the most defining element of a short story.
You’re limited on how many words you use in a short. Therefore, instead of wasting words on vivid description and a lengthy process of getting the characters together, you need to begin with what would normally be the middle of your story. From there, you can develop a story anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 words with ease in the same way I’ve done with Last Chance.



Blurb

The tragic death of their child in a horrific fire scars Keri-Lynne and Jack Montrose in ways they never could have imagined, driving them apart for eighteen years. It is only when the truth of the fire comes out that they have one last chance to accept and embrace the love that they buried for so long.
 Get Last Chance from Amazon!
Excerpt
A soft breeze, the kind that came during the warming from winter to spring, ruffled Keri-Lynne Montrose’s waist-length blonde hair. Her hair wasn’t the blonde idolized as the perfect American female but rather a honey color with streaks of strawberry tones that never came from a bottle. Creamy skin most thought would burn under the South’s strong sun tanned gently. Hazel eyes surveyed a greenhouse hidden behind a high hedge, to keep others from knowing she was experimenting with the forbidden, but only forbidden by hidebound traditionalists who feared change.             “What today?” She examined the herbs she nurtured in this glass building. “I have to find a way to help Mother.”

Taglines

It has become fashionable to use a tagline for our book. Not just for promotion but also on our book covers. We want to attract attention of potential new readers. Since we can’t put our blurb on the front book cover, we seek another way to advertise our product.
This means coming up with a catchy phrase that will make someone stop and wonder just what is behind that beautiful cover. If done well, a tagline is an invaluable advertising tool. If overdone or wrong, you have a major mess that will drive away new readers instead of attracting them.
Exactly what is a tagline?
A tagline is quite simply is a catch phrase. It doesn’t describe the characters, nor the plotline. A tagline gives nothing away. All it does is hint at what lies behind the cover.
Perhaps the tagline below is the best example of how to do one.
One ring to rule them all.
Six simple words. Six words to identify one of the most well loved movies series and book series. The books these movies were based on cover many generations of the same family. I can tell you from experience that nine out of ten people reading this blog have already identified this tagline. How many of you haven’t read J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings books. Even less people didn’t see the movies. This is perhaps one of the largest franchises in the entertainment industry.
And their simple yet evocative tagline will always identify them.
Notice how you don’t see anything about Frodo, Gandaulf, or any of the other iconic characters mentioned. There’s no detail about a golem that terrorizes Frodo during most of the tale. Nothing about a love story between a human male and a female elf. Nor is the final battle many of us still describe a part of this. All Tolkein has used is a single symbol of the book to create a tagline that will be memorable millennia from now.
Instead of demanding that a logline—a longer description used to detail a movie—be put on your book cover, you need to refine your book into five to six simple words—words that may one day describe your work to millions of fans.