Eleni Konstantine's Blog: Eleni's Taverna, page 24

Musa Monday: Liz DeJesus

Welcome to Musa Monday. My special guest today is YA author, Liz DeJesus.  

Welcome to the Taverna, Liz!



· How did you come to write YA? What attracted you to the genre? 

It sort of happened by accident. My intention was to write a fantasy novel that happened to have a seventeen year old girl as the main character. But the more I wrote, I quickly realized that this was meant for Young Adults. And I’ve always read Young Adult novels…it really doesn’t matter as long as the writing is good. (grin)




· Please tell us a little about your road to publication.

My whole writing career has been a series of ups and downs, so I’ll stick with the road to publication for First Frost. Once I finished writing First Frost, needless to say, I was excited about the book. I submitted it to agents and publishers hoping that someone would love the book as much as I did. I got a lot of rejections, but some came with personal notes from the head editors of a lot of publishing houses so that was a very good sign. It let me know that I was on the right track. But after a while rejections started to get to me. Why didn’t someone just say ‘Yes’?

Enter Musa Publishing. I forget how I found out about them, but I ended up going to Absolute Write forums and was reading some of the things the other writers were saying about this brand new company and Celina was also there answering questions and explaining to everyone what Musa was all about. I liked the way she patiently and politely answered questions. That was what drew me to them. So I read their guidelines very carefully and submitted First Frost. And I waited…then I waited…and waited some more (I had my baby and still nothing). And what happened was that the head editor had emailed me asking for the rest of my manuscript and the email got lost in cyberspace. Lucky for me she wanted the book badly enough that she emailed me again two weeks later asking if I got the first email.

I couldn’t believe it! She wanted the rest of the book. I emailed her back with the book and a few days later she asked me to revise a few things and rewrite a few chapters. I don’t know how I did it (sleep deprived much?) but I did everything she asked and before I knew it…I had a contract with Musa Publishing. BEST. DECISION. EVER. I’ve had a wonderful experience with the company. I can’t wait to send them my next book, which incidentally is the sequel to First Frost, titled Glass Frost.


· Your current release is First Frost published by Musa. Can you describe this book for us?

Here’s the official blurb: 

For generations, the Frost family has run the Museum of Magical and Rare Artifacts, handing down guardianship from mother to daughter, always keeping their secrets to “family only.”

Gathered within museum’s walls is a collection dedicated to the Grimm fairy tales and to the rare items the family has acquired: Cinderella’s glass slipper, Snow White’s poisoned apple, the evil queen’s magic mirror, Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted spinning wheel…
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Frost wants none of it, dreaming instead of a career in art or photography or…well, anything except working in the family’s museum. She knows the items in the glass display cases are fakes because, of course, magic doesn’t really exist.

She’s about to find out how wrong she is.

There’s so much more to the story obviously. Rose gets kidnapped and taken to Everafter (the world where all the fairy tales took place). Bianca has to figure out how to use magic in order to rescue her mother. There’s romance, adventure, humor (Bianca and her best friend Ming are hilarious together), magic, a dashing prince, and last, but certainly not least…The Big Bad Wolf.



· Are you a plotter? Pantser? Or somewhere in-between?

Panster all the way. The way I write is kinda stream of consciousness. I let my mind wander and whatever scenes stand out are the ones that I write. Then it’s my job to tie everything neatly together and make sure everything makes sense in the end.



· What are you currently working on?

I just finished Glass Frost. Gonna give it one last read through before I submit it to my publisher, Musa Publishing. And I just started working on the third book in the series, tentatively titled Shattered Frost. I’m also writing a few short stories here and there for a couple of anthologies. J



· What is your favourite part of the process of writing?

It’s a tie between the beginning and the end. Because when you start writing a novel it’s exciting to discover where your characters are going and what they’re going to say and do next. But after a while you’re looking forward to the day when you finally type those two little words…THE END. And that’s extremely satisfying to me.



· You’re also a poet. Is it hard for a poet in this day and age to get their work out there?

I hate to say this but yes. A long time ago I published a book of my poetry but it’s currently out of print. I’ve tried getting more of my poetry published but it’s gotten rejected so many times that I decided to focus all of my energy on fiction. I still love poetry and hopefully one day I’ll publish another book of my poems. (grin)


· What are you currently reading? 

I’m all over the place right now. I’m reading Shannon Connor Winward’s novel To the Touch (still unpublished which is a crime all by itself), I’m also rereading Cinder by Marissa Meyer and I’m reading Nadia Knows Best by Jill Mansell.

~~~~
Thanks again to Liz for joining me at the Taverna.

For more information about Liz DeJesus and her writing please visit her website: http://lizdejesus.webs.com


Check out Liz's cool book trailer.
Try our video maker at Animoto.

And here are the Buy links for First FrostMusa Publishing | Amazon.com | Nook

~yia~

Super Sunday:

"The part of my writing I find the most rewarding is when people write to me or speak to me in public to tell me how his or her life has been changed by my books."
~ Sidney Sheldon



And now for some funnies....



I sooooo resemble this in the morning
But look how cute....





Have a wonderful week everyone.

~yia~

Stunning Saturday: Photography

It's been a while since I've shown photos. These have been sourced from G+ or Facebook. The problem is I have no idea who the original photographer was.




Just love this castle!
Ingenius - until there is a sore limb :)
Very ethereal
Gorgeous rose
Nothing like stepping into a book
What a cute photo! Just love owls
Looks like a glorious natural rug...
Disclaimer: No claim is made on copyright for any artworks in the Stunning Saturday posts. I stumble across art works and save them for inspiration but can not always find the artist's name.


~yia~

Fantabulousness too: Giveaways

I'm over at Bitten By Paranormal Romance giving away a couple of copies of Gateway to Hell. Come and say hi - click HERE.





See that's fantabulous as well right?

~yia~

Fantabulous Friday: Mind Raider

This week on Fantabulous Friday, I want to pimp...um...spread the word about my writing buddy, Anna Hackett's, new book, Mind Raider. 
You may recall that Anna was a guest last week on my Writing Buddy Wednesday feature.

Now for some Mind Raider....


Never hide, never cower and live by your own rules. Life has taught mind raider Mara
Ross to never let anyone break her. Especially not the crime lord who tortured her for her
ability to control other people’s minds. But now her former tormentor has kidnapped
another woman and Mara will do anything to save her—including joining forces with a dark,
powerful man who is more dangerous than anything Mara’s faced before.

The CIA’s experiments left Callahan with lethal powers he must control with every inch of
his will. As the leader of Haven, a sanctuary for anomalies, he stays focused and alone…until
Mara blazes into his life. Cal knows he must keep his distance from the fiery mind raider
because she threatens his control…and if his control breaks, people die.

On a mission deep in the wilds of Indonesia, desire explodes between Cal and Mara. But as
the two wounded souls are drawn to each other, terrible secrets from Cal’s past threaten to
drive them apart.


Read an Excerpt


Amazon | Smashwords | All Romance


And don’t miss the first novella in The Anomaly Trilogy, TIME THIEF.

Sounds fantastic. It's going to be on my TBR shelf very shortly *big wide grin*

You can find out more about Anna on her website. 

~yia~

Writing Buddy Wednesday: Cathleen Ross

Welcome today to my blog, erotic romance author, Cathleen Ross. I've recently read on of Cathleen's Forbidden Fantasy series (Taken) and was blown away with the writing. It also made me laugh, which was quite refreshing.

Now over to my interview with Cathleen....

Welcome, Cathleen!




 You have published both long and short fiction. You have now delved into self publishing with your Forbidden Fantasy series. How did this come about?
I go to the States every year and I attended a talk by some NY Times best-selling authors, who spoke about self-publishing along with Amazon and Barnes and Noble representative about self-publishing. By this time, Psychic Sex, my first Spice Brief had sold twenty-nine thousand copies online and in the Naughty Bits Anthology but the line was closing, so I decided to upload my own shorts on Smashwords, starting with Take Me, an erotic revenge and redemption short. It started selling immediately.

Encouraged, I uploaded over the period of a year five more stories. Four of the stories are priced at .99cents and earn 34 cents per sale. Two stories are priced at 2.99 and earn approximately 2.00 a sale. It doesn't seem like much but remember that traditional publishers pay eight percent of net. I'm earning more from selling a short story than I do on my books with traditional publishers because Amazon pays over 70 percent on sales over 2.99. It is possible to make money selling erotic romance on the web but you need to be persistent and keep uploading new product. Erotic author Author Selena Kitt said in a Smashwords interview that she's making three quarters of a million dollars a year but she has a lot of product up on the net.


What or who inspired you to write?
I read Mills and Boon obsessively when I was a teenager, plus anything else I could get my hands on, especially if it was racy. Even so, it never occurred to me that I would end up writing at the hotter end of the spectrum until a publisher came to RWA looking for some sexy short stories for an anthology. I sold my first erotic story to that publisher and have kept selling after that. The other factor was when I had my daughter, I had to give up my career as an educator because my daughter was asthmatic. I wrote to keep my sanity. Still do. I'm always in a good mood if I get enough word count down. When I spend a day on housework, I'm vile. Sometimes I wonder why my husband loves me so much.




You are very open about your psychic abilities. How do you find people react to this? Have you used any situation in your stories?
My psychic abilities were always there but up until the age of thirty I could ignore them, then my daughter started seeing dead people. It worried me because I couldn't see them - not that I wanted to - but no one could get a peaceful night's sleep. I studied mediation under a spiritual healer and this opened my third eye. It helped me learn about spiritual protection. I could protect my daughter better and eventually when she hit eleven, she stopped seeing the dead. Although she's in total denial about her own gift she still knows things she shouldn't without anyone telling her. At least she's stopped dodging dead people on the street now.

 I channel for my friends and family. All I ask them is to let me know what comes true. I have a 98% success rate and my friends and I laugh about it because sometimes I channel and tell them things that seem unlikely, then it happens. Life has twists and turns like that. The more I do it the better I get because I learn to interpret the symbols and what they mean. Even if my friends start off non believers, because they are my friends, they put up with me and my weird ways. Eventually, they end up believers because what I tell them happens. Some of the stuff I get is telepathic, so I warn them of that. I can't always tell what is a prediction and what is telepathic. It's an annoying gift though, because sometimes I want to know something and I can't get the answer. I can't read for myself so sh*t happens to me and I fall on my face but at least I can help others. I think where it helps my friends is if they are having trouble with a decision, I can tell them the pathway that they're going to go on. The gift brings clarity and happiness to others. Some of my writer friends have made good decisions and money from my bossy boot guidance.

Lately when I've been channeling I've noticed that if the person I channel for has done something good for another person out of genuine generosity of the heart, the guides on the other side send the person a reward.

It isn't fun knowing bad stuff is going to happen to people and I always hope I'm not going to see anything negative. I try to be subtle if I see something I'm not happy about but it's very difficult. Recently a close friend of mine was going on a overseas holiday. I knew his mother was going to die but I couldn't tell him because I refuse to tell anyone negative things. I just told him to go and see his mother before he left. The poor thing flew to Europe, arrived, his mother died, so he hopped back on a plane and flew back. He was in Europe for one day.

I think the way I see the world is reflective in a lot of my writing. My character, Arabel, in A Knight in her Bed, uses her hands to heal, my Demon Prince, character Agrat channels energy, my character Marina, in Dirty Sexy Murder was in denial about her psychic gift like I was until it became so annoying I had to acknowledge it.


You were recently on the ‘Not Your Normal Paranormal’ panel at the Romance Writers of Australia. What is ‘not normal’ about your paranormal fiction?
I know there is more out there than we can see and I base my work on that. I don't write vampires because I don't believe in them but I do believe angels exist because I've seen them. I also know dark energy exists and my characters reflect this. The Preta demon in the Ice Princess, is a mythological Tibetan creature. My Demon in The Demon Prince is an elemental demon. He's not demonic but his half brother, who is a fallen angel is the grandson of Satan. I'm careful when I write not to tap into real evil, because I channel easily these days and I don't want to attract the attention of anything bad. I put a lot of white light around myself when I work. My paranormal fiction has some unusual characters. Shift into Pleasure sold to Harlequin Spice Briefs because it was different. Although the paranormal genre is going well and has faithful readers, editors get sick of seeing the same plot lines. It's important to be original in your work.


Can you tell us a little about your latest story, Taken?
I wanted to have fun with an erotic story. Taken has a heroine who is a priestess of a Californian cult. She has psychic powers and will lose them if she loses her virginity. Noah, my hunky hero, rescues her. The trouble is there is an instant attraction between them. I had a lot of fun writing this. Sometimes we erotic writers take ourself a bit too seriously, so it's great to mix it up.


You can find Cathleen's work on Smashwords and Amazon (which also has the Harlequin Spice Brief, Shift into Pleasure).


You can find Cathleen at her website, Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads. 

Guest Blogging

A quick post to say I'm over at Anna Hackett's blog, Midnight Confessions, today.

Click HERE to go on over and say hi, and go into the running to win a copy of Gateway to Hell.

~yia~

Fantabulous Friday: the beginning

It's the first Fantabulous Friday - yes, I know things have gone beyond ridiculous with my day of the week columns, but hey, might as well continue the tradition and Friday was feeling lonely. Aw.

First of all let me say how much I love the word fantabulous. It's well, just fantastic and fabulous! (yep, for those of you who didn't know that it is a combo of those two words which coined the word in the 1950s according to the computer's dictionary).

A little while back, I was reading a Roald Dahl book, The BFG, to my godson, and there it was and I realised that it must have been Dahl who introduced me to the word as a kid.

So what will Fantabulous Friday be about? Well anything fantabulous that I think worthy of commenting. Broad scope? You betcha.


Today's fantabulousness (don't think that is a word) is the word fantabulous.


~yia~

Musa blog post

I'm on the Musa blog talking about Reading feeding the soul.

Come along for your chance to win a copy of Gateway to Hell.


You can find the post HERE.

Don't forget Monday's blog hop post about Musa's anniversary. The more blogs you visit, the greater your chances to win.


~yia~

Trailer Thursday: James Bond

Tomorrow, October 5th, is Global Bond Day marking the 50th anniversary since James Bond graced our screens. Ah, Sean Connery...


Source: Best Movies Ever Entertainment News

To celebrate, here is the latest Bond movie, Skyfall , with Daniel Craig as Bond.



Youtube link


Source: Best Movies Ever Entertainment News


I do love the Bond films - Sean is the old favourite but I loved Pierce Bronsan thinking he should be Bond from his Remington Steele days, and I'm enjoying Daniel Craig's performance too - as well as the over the top action.

Do you have a favourite bond?

~yia~