Allison B. Levine's Blog, page 4

My Life in 100 Words…

I’ve been kind of absent lately and last night when the throes of sleep didn’t consume me I thought to myself…Self…let’s see if I can sum up my 36 years of life into 100 words.
So here it goes…

Born from a very young mother, whom I do not know

Accepted by a family who made me their own

School has made me friends for life

Love, loss of family, change of new families

I’ve had alot of wonderful jobs and met some really great people

Lived in NY, NJ, FL, NJ, NV, NJ, FL, TN, NJ

Daughter, Sister, Aunt, Friend, Introvert – slowly becoming extrovert

Artist, a writer, blogtalkradio co-host

Waiting for love with patience

Self-published, still writing, and still passionate about it

Hopeful for everyday I wake up that this day will be better than the last

Ok that wasn’t as easy as I thought, but let me know what you think? Oh and I had to ‘cheat‘ and make a lot one word to make 100…I know, I know the A LOT will be coming.
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Tagged: 100 words, aunt, author, daughter, extrovert, friend, introvert, life, loss, Love, mother, passionate, petting unicorns, radio show, sister, writer

Neglect is a terrible thing to forget…

Maybe I’m spreading myself too thin, too many blogs so little time. So here…I’m begging now…
Spoiler Alert: Bruce Willis was Dead the Whole Time: If guests are treats, then we’re giving you a deep-fried banana split wrapped in bacon. We welcome special guest, Norine Dworkin-McDaniel, award-winning essayist, blogger, and author of nationally-published articles and books to discuss her latest projects and endeavors. And, as an added bonus, we discuss contents of a “Press Kit” for the newly-published author.

Listen Live Thursday, May 10 @7pm EST: Click Here

While I’m in the pleading mood. I ask all my amazing, wonderful, happy, kick-ass, good peeps, followers of mine:

Please follow Petting Unicorns on Twitter @pettingunicorns, Please like our Page on Facebook “Petting Unicorns” and Listen to our shows because we are doing this for all of you, we want you to gain exposure and unleash your talents upon the audio world. So please, we can use support to make this really something more special!

Tagged: @pettingunicorns, begging, blogtalkradio, bruce willis, celebrities, neglect, petting unicorns, spoiler, writing

Genre Schizophrenia

So here I was thinking I’m a Paranormal Romance Writer…

My first book out of the gate was indeed a Paranormal Romance, ever since I can remember (I was about 12, geesh 25 years ago) I was writing about Vampires.

Obsession doesn’t even cut it, I have marble notebooks full, FULL of vampire short stories, poems, monikers (yes, shut up) I was a girl with a one track mind. Queue twenty-three years later I got that Vampire story full in Novel form – may be why it’s so long I’ve been writing it for two decades. Haha.

However, although I’ve enjoyed many a paranormal (fan fiction) or YA novel about the vampiric genre I mostly read Chick-Lit.

I know who’d of thought with my dark writing, but yes I friggen love to read Chick-Lit I am a hopeless but realistic romantic. It’s like reality shows for me you know they want you to think it’s real, but it’s really not.

So this new story I’ve been working on for a while (I still don’t know if it’s a short story or novel) Stories From Plane View is totally Chick-Lit there is no other-worldly character in it except for maybe the main characters inner demons.  And unbeknownst to me at the time this book MAY borderline on soft-core Erotica. I don’t know where the line ends when creating a ‘love’ scene.

So I guess it got me thinking that I really only maybe had ONE PNR novel in me (well three because ADLS will be a trilogy) but I think that was what I needed to get out since the story was crawling around me for so long and now that I have, it’s time to settle back down to the genre of choice.

But that doesn’t mean I can NEVER write another PNR again does it?  DOES it?

Anyone out there in blogfantasyland also a genre schizophrenic, I’d like to know? I’d like to know how you juggle your multiple-writing-genres and do you ever find yourself incorporating both genres together?

Maybe we can make a new genre Paranormal Romance Chick-Lit Soft-Core Erotica? What do you say?

Also…while I have your attention: Check out Petting Unicorns tonight 5/10/12 at 7pm est. It’s our special Mother’s Day show with guest authors Deborah Batterman – Because My Name Is Mother and Colleen Nye Shunk – When In Maui.  Please tune in we love your support!  www.blogtalkradio.com/pettingunicorns...

Photo Credit: http://www.urbandictionary.com/products.php?term=Cuckoo%20Bananas&defid=3932073

Tagged:

Time After Time I Still Have No Time

Work.Is.Crazy.

I’m currently simultaneously proofreading the manuscript to Julia Dudek’s sequel to Pieces, Falling In Two and writing with fervour trying to get a rough draft out of Stories From Plane View.

There just isn’t enough hours in the day at.all. I’m bursting with inspiration and it’s stifled at my day job but then again that day job pays my bills so I love my job!

Whoo ok I got that out. Must keep writing!!!

Photo Credit: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7y8Fpn6WoJ0/Tkou2wMvSEI/AAAAAAAABB4/mkY65igyF0w/s1600/Picture%2B459.jpg

 

 

Tagged: Busy, Crazy, Falling In Two, Julia Dudek, Paying the bills, Pieces, proofreading, Stories From Plane View, Work, writer, writing

Caught the Writing Bug

Ok I have no idea what just happened. I did this whole post and it just disappeared I may have Gremlins.

Anyway this is my new tentative cover, I think it will be way more awesome.  But I’ve been neglectful in all thing i.e. blog, Facebook, Twitter etc. because I caught the writing bug again! I started working on this story gosh maybe a few years ago amidst ADLS when I got blocked I started this.  I like the story.

Stories from Plane View (or Original title Stories from a Plane) let me know which one you like more.

Is about a twenty-three year old travel publication journalist who spends her life in a new luxurious destination every forty-eight hours.  From her rebellious overpriveleged teen years she had adopted the mantra love and live like a man, she didn’t believe in intimate connections or any long-term relationships she just doesn’t have the time for it.

Until she realizes that she’s been going non-stop for three years straight and is forced to take some vacation time. She becomes very uncomfortable with being bound to home, a home that she’s never been in more that several times a year.  One day she wakes up with a strapping young and handsome man in her condo with no memory of the night before.  He turns out to be good for her so she of course feels doomed to ruin it.

This is a story of Bernice who thinks she knows exactly who she is and what she wants. After meeting Oliver she finds out that being grounded is not what she expected at all.

Tagged: consuming, first draft, inspired, neglecting, petting unicorns, writing, writing bug

Myself, Yourself and the Literary Ghost

When you sit down on your computer to start a work your first sentence most of the time gives you the voice of the rest of the book.

I want to touch on First, Second and Third Point of Views.

First Person: The I point of view

Here are some famous first person POV lines:

Call me Ishmael— Moby Dick  
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins— Lolita  
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.— Huckleberry Finn

Second Person: The You point of view

Here are some famous second person POV lines:

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.— Bright Lights, Big City . 
People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.— 1984  
We do not know what things look like, as you say… We know what things are like— A Wrinkle in Time

Third Person: The Omniscient POV lines:

Here are some famous third person POV lines:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife— Pride and Prejudice  
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice— One Hundred Years of Solitude  
 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.— A Tale of Two Cities

I can say with much certainty I am a first person POV writer. Maybe because it’s easier and flows the best or maybe because I feel that the main character is the one to tell the story. There are many debates on this subject, some writers find first person the most difficult because in order to write in first person you have to make the protagonist connect with all readers.

I have never braved second person, mainly because it doesn’t really work within my genre.  Second person is most seen in literary works and I am a genre writer.

Third person can be fun. I see it as a voyeuristic view into the characters and the story.  I have toyed with making my sequel in third person; narrated by a very small character from the first book whom I introduce in the first chapter of the second book. I’m just battling on whether I should introduce the narrator or just reveal them at the end, did I just show my tell?

So I ask all of you, what is your favorite Point Of View?

 

 

 

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Tagged: 1984, a talk of two cities, A Wrinkle in Time, Bright Lights Big City, famous works, first person, hucklberry finn, literary, lolita, Moby Dick, One Hundred Years of Solitude, point of view, pride and prejudice, second person, third person, writing

Sweet & Sour Thursday

Sweet and Sour Thursday–what a fun title.

I have to say that this past couple of weeks have been rough, challenging and busy. Also, I’ve been focused on one thing and one thing only.

Petting Unicorns.

This is a new venture a friend of mine and I started–both of us self-published writers giving back to the community in quirky and plucky radio show antics.

It’s a lot of fun, coming into our 3rd week (Tonight) we are gaining listeners and creating more fun and exciting aspects to the show, anyone hear it last week with the Bad News Robot?

I have to say when I start out to do something I’m obsessive about it, I eat, drink, sleep it and that’s what I’ve done with this, it has consumed my full attention.

And I would like all of you to join in the fun.

Please tune in Tonight @ 7pm EST www.blogtalkradio.com/pettingunicorns “Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner.“  There’s a lot of fun things happening on tonight’s show–the Inappropriate Heckling Challenge, interview with mystery writer and recent recipient of the B.R.A.G. Award, Joe Perrone, Jr. And we’re going to close it out with a discussion about the topical darling bestseller 50 Shades of Grey. 

If I have convinced you to tune in, please let us know what you think, feedback is always appreciated.

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Tagged: 50 shades of Grey, antics, authors, blog talk radio, blogtalkradio, chicken, dinner, exciting, feedback, fun, heckling challenge, joe perrone, jr, mystery writer, new, petting unicorns, self publishing, sour, sweet, Thursday, winner, writers

Let’s Do Bloggin’ Right!

I read this great article yesterday (which will most likely be discussed on “Petting Unicorns” on www.blogtalkradio.com Thursday 5/3/12 7pm EST)

I’ve been blogging now since WOW it was a year April 19th! I can’t believe it’s been a year. A year, 4 different blogs one successful one (this one), my first one, strictly for ranting (ramblingonpurpose.wordpress.com), one blogger.com blog to promote A Demon Love Story but I’ve discontinued that one (I just liked how blogger gave you 10,000 ways to decorate your blog but it got to be too much and I reverted back to the clean, simple and crisp look of WordPress), then of course my friend Julia Dudek and I just started Petting Unicorns just 2 and a 1/2 weeks ago, if you’d like to check it out or follow its www.pettingunicorns.wordpress.com.

I read this article and I realized that where I’m doing a lot of things ‘right’ I still have a lot of learning to do.  Would I love to be on Freshly Pressed? Absolutely, but I know that my area of blogging isn’t widespread enough to be featured (at least that’s what I tell myself). But really I just want people to interact with and have discussion on things we are passionate about.

The article below is about tricks and tips to marketing a blog to get the most bang for your buck as far as search engines.  If people don’t know you, they won’t find you, but if you gear your blog towards popular searches, people will find you!  I will actually take much of the advice in this article and I’ll see how effective it becomes.

Search Engine Marketing Challenge!!

I’m going to try to do everything this article discusses and I will check back with you in a about a month to see how much of a change has occurred.  Oh I love a good challenge!!

I have paraphrased some key points of this article, to view the entire article please click on the link below:

http://selfpublishingtoday.com/2011/06/23/blog-seo-and-book-marketing/

Key Points:

A blog about a self published book can be a very effective book marketing tool for promoting a book and distributing info.  A blog is also highly effective at driving search engine rankings and a key part of the SEO (search engine optimization) plan for your website.

Few Strategies:

Keyword / Key Phrase Research:

Identify target audience. create a list of the keywords and phrases that a potential reader might search for–that directly referenced in your book. Don’t go too broad.

Plan Your Blog Posts:

Make it a habit to first write posts that fit your keyword topics.  Your blog content plan should be structured to attract those readers – but it can still be flexible enough to let your personality show through and have some ‘fun’ posts. You might even take keywords or key phrases and assign them to future days or posts – to keep your writing on task and focused

Write Relevant, Key-Word-Rich Posts:

Your blog posts still need to be readable and not sound like they’ve been spit out of some automated system. You need to write posts that are a balance of good writing / reading and great content that attracts search engines. These are not mutually exclusive goals – if you can accomplish both, you will find your readers more engaged with your topic (and possibly more inclined to buy your book) and you will discover your  web site / blog is building more traffic due to its increased exposure in the search engine listings.

A quick list of items that will improve your book marketing efforts while building reader engagement with your content:

1 – Put the key word / key phrase in the title of your post.

2 – Put the key word / key phrase in the first heading  of your post.

3 – Be specific and use key words / key phrases in the body text of your post.

4 – Link to relevant content in your site and in your blog

5 – Use your key words and key phrases as categories and tags

Other ‘tech’ tips:

Blogging software: WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad

Add your Blog to Your Domain:  If you  really want search engines to drive traffic to your site, then your blog should be hosted right on your book’s web site.

Be Engaged in Your Target Market: No matter what focus your book takes, there is someone, somewhere, already blogging about the topic. Online communities already exist and have active members. Be engaged in this community and invite others to visit your blog.

Research Your Content Titles and Tag Your Content: This starts getting a bit more complex – though the easy part is to research the keywords and key phrases you want to use in your blog book marketing.

Keep Your Content Focused on Your Book Marketing Goals: Your blog must provide unique and valuable content – not a regurgitation of the latest news.

Add Something Extra:  Who said your blog should only include text? Got a YouTube video that covers your core topic? Pictures? Some cool gallery? While text is certainly the most ‘seo friendly’ content – the occasional fun bit is nice.

Deliver Great Content: Try not to stray from your original  writing style – or you’ll disappoint your readers, either when they buy your book or within the course of the conversation on your blog.

You, as a “Brand”:  Your blog will be a cornerstone in creating an awareness of you, your book, and your ideas. All of these contribute to what your readers will come to see as your ‘brand’.

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Tagged: ademonlovestory, allison b levine, blog talk radio, blogger, blogging, blogging software, branding, domain, focused content, freshly pressed, Julia Dudek, key phrases, key words, kick-ass, marketing, marketing goals, petting unicorns, ramblingonpurpose, search, search engine marketing challenge, search engines, self-publsihing, SEO, strategies, target market, wordpress, writer, writing

Our "Two-and-a-Half Week Anniversary" Makeover

Reblogged from Petting Unicorns:

Wow.  Has it been two-and-a-half weeks already?  In. Sane.  Where does the time go?  Truth be told, our show needed a makeover – from the becoming-habitual “start fails” to the lackluster logo design, Petting Unicorns deserved so much more…especially when we realized we are one of the top-ten most popular writing shows on BlogTalkRadio (this is true).  We had a reputation to uphold!  

Read more… 902 more words

 

 

This is my new pet project, on the heels of ADLS starting to get read and reviewed I feel confident that this is my time and Julia's time to shine.

Revenge of Procrastination–By Reason of Something Shiny

I’ve been completely negligible with this blog. It’s #Shamelessplugfriday so I thought I’d bring the funk…

I’m the biggest procrastinator, whatever that can be done now can be done later, or what you can save for later can be done never…I don’t know really.  So in order to make myself feel much better about my procrastination tendencies I thought I’d give you all another one of my EPIC lists.

(courtesy of http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2011/07/01/famous-procrastinators.html)

The Greatest Procrastinators of All Time…

1.  Hunter S. Thompson– The author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas wrote late at night, after days of taking drugs and blowing things up, procrastinating on a story for Rolling Stone magazine about the death of Mexican-American journalist Rubén Salazar. In fact, the wild exuberance of Thompson’s particular grand of gonzo journalism began as an act of procrastination. In 1970, Thompson was sent by Scanlan’s Monthly to cover the Kentucky Derby in Louisville. He blew the deadline. With a courier waiting at the hotel door for him and without a coherent story, he began ripping pages of verbatim notes from his notepad and sending them off to the waiting press. He thought his career was over. It won rave reviews.

2. Franz Kafka– He often complained he had no time to write, however, promoted to chief clerk at Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute with reduced hours, what then? The dark, metaphysically surreal novelist’s biographer Louis Begley chronicled the rest of his day: Lunch at 3:30, nap until 7:30, exercise, and then dinner with the family.

3.  St. Augustine of Hippo–  In the latter days of the fourth century, Augustine of Hippo—not yet a saint—was living with a woman he wasn’t married to when his mother persuaded him to enter an arranged marriage—an engagement that he broke off anyway. During this time he offered his prayer, “Grant me chastity and continence—but not yet,” which has become a motto of sorts for procrastinators.

4. Douglas Adams–The British writer Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, once said that he loved deadlines: “I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” He would need editors to lock him in a room and wait outside as he finished his pieces. He avoided writing his novel The Salmon of Doubt and would soak for hours in a bathtub instead. He had worked on the book for a decade and still didn’t have a complete first draft when he died of a heart attack in 2001.

5. Leonardo DaVinci–Leonardo da Vinci took 16 years to finish painting Mona Lisa. He left both The Adoration of the Magi and Jerome in the Wilderness unfinished. The version of the Virgin of the Rocks in the National Gallery in London took 13 years to complete. The Last Supper was only finished after his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza threatened to cut off funds, and it still took three years. Though he was surely exaggerating, he later claimed to have regretted “never having completed a single work.” At the time of his death, he left numerous sketches for unfinished projects in his codices.

6. Walter Benjamin–The German literary critic once wrote to his friend and fellow philosopher Gershom Scholem that “procrastination … is second nature to me in the most important situations of my life.” Indeed, he never finished his Passagenwerk or The Arcades Project. Yet as a Jew in Germany witnessing the rise of Hitler, his procrastination was perhaps a tactic to put off the gradual constraints on his freedom and what must have seemed to him the inescapable extinction of his people. In the end he’s believed to have committed suicide at the French-Spanish border while running from the Nazis. But the next day his fellow travelers were allowed passage to safety in Lisbon. If only he had kept to his nature and waited—a tragedy of irony if there ever was one.

7. Ralph Ellison–“Whom the gods wish to destroy,” the critic Cyril Connolly said, “they first call promising.” In 1952, Ralph Ellison published his debut novel, Invisible Man, a modernist, integrationist masterpiece. He then worked on what was supposed to be his “symphonic” second novel until his death, in 1994. He never published a word of it, though he left behind more than 2,000 pages of manuscripts and notes, released posthumously, in 1999, as Juneteenth, a whittled down 400-pager, and in 2010 as the 1136-page-strong Three Days Before the Shooting.

8. Trueman Capote–What’s the difference between procrastination and writer’s block? Truman Capote’s case is similar to Ralph Ellison’s, though he’d already had a few books under his belt when In Cold Blood was released in 1966 to acclaim. He had great plans for what he had hoped to be his masterwork, Answered Prayers, but he missed deadlines for years. Capote would have been paid $1 million if he had submitted by March 1, 1981. He never did, although four chapters were published in Esquire magazine. He died in 1984. “Either I’m going to kill it, or it’s going to kill me,” he said. Many writers have succumbed similarly, whether you call it writer’s block or not: Coleridge, Melville, Capote’s friend Harper Lee, Salinger, Dashiell Hammett, Henry Roth, and the beloved New Yorker reporter Joseph Mitchell.

9. Hamlet–“To be or not to be, that is the question,” Hamlet said to himself. Sometimes you just want to tell the Prince of Denmark to stop asking and just kill Uncle Claudius already. The guy basically puts off taking action for most of the play, and in the end pretty much everyone either dies or goes mad. Such are the perils of chronic hesitancy and constant double-guessing.

10. Allison B. Levine–Took her 4 years to read Stephen King’s “It” in high school a time in which reading was not only incouraged but required.  Not only does it take her 2 weeks to take her laundry to get laundered by someone else, she also tends to leave a sink full of dishes from time to time thinking “well, this is spite for lack of dishwasher”. Starting her first novel in 2008 she did not get it finished and published until 2012.  She also has a hard time keeping up with time, distance and memories mostly because she’s too busy procrastinating to remember. It’s just taken her almost three hours to eat a bowl of fruit.

Photo Credit: http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/3/2/idonthaveadd128489641295781250.jpg


Tagged: augustine of hippo, franz kafka, greatest of all time, hunter s thompson, kick-ass, list, literature, louis begley, procrastination, procrastinator, shiny, st augustine of hippo, writers, writing