C.R. Everett's Blog, page 7

No Brainer Blog Tour Schedule!

Look what's coming!





JUNE 5th-





• Bex ‘n’Books - http://bexnbooks.blogspot.com


• WTF R U Reading - http://www.wtfareyoureading.com


• Island Lovelies Book Club - http://islandloveliesbcb.blogspot.com


• Lil Bit of R&R - http://www.alittlebitofrnrreviews.com[





JUNE 6th-





• Fab, Fun & Tantalizing Reads - http://www.fabfunandtantalizingreads.com


• The Book Town - http://thebooktown.blogspot.com


• Yesterday & Tomorrow's Reads - http://yesterdayandtomorrowsreads.blogspot.com


• Fated Paranormals- http://www.fatedparanormals.blogspot.com/





JUNE 7th-





• Krystal ClearBook Reviews - http://krystalclearbookreviews.wordpress.com


• Lady Pinks Book Shelf - http://ladypinksbookshelf.blogspot.com


• My Art to Inspire - http://www.myarttoinspire.com/myatiblogs


• Author Angela Orlowski-Peart - http//:www.angelapeart.com





JUNE 8th & 9th –





• No tour for the weekend!





JUNE 10th-





• 2 Bibliophiles Guides to Seriously Awesome Books - http://2bibliophiles.blogspot.com


• Author JD Nelson- http://nightaberrations.blogspot.com/


• Author Fabio Bueno - http://fabiobueno.com/





JUNE 11th-





• Book - Marks the Spot - http://caughtinasnyderwebb.blogspot.com


• Up All Night Book Addict - http://upallnightbookaddict.blogspot.com


• C. R. Everett – Author Blog -http://www.creverett.com/12801/64701.html


• I Feel the Need, the Need to Read - www.ifeeltheneedtheneedtoread.com





JUNE 12th-





• My Cozie Corner - http://coziecorner.blogspot.com


• Author Tara West - http://tarawestauthor.wordpress.com/


• eBook Lovers Co-Op Blog- http://eblco.wordpress.com





JUNE 13th-





• Author Lavinia Urban - http://laviniaurban.blogspot.co.uk


• The Bookish Snob - http://www.thebookishsnob.com/


• Angela Brown in Pursuit of Publishness- http://publishness.blogspot.com/

Love, Carry My Bags has a new look!!

Love, Carry My Bags has a new look!! And so does the website, to match!





Facebook fans loved the old cover. Readers connected with it, especially after having read the novel. I loved the old cover and its symbolism of the book. Why change? Nearly 60% of the book content is in the New Adult age category and the remainder is highly influenced by crucial decisions made during those New Adult years—characters living with regrets from those decisions and discovering lessons learned. I felt that a cover style in line with the NA market trend was the best way to convey the essence of the book…and it’s eye catching.





I’m excited about transitioning to this new look!! How about you? Please comment below.

The Lull of the Land

I'm happy to introduce a guest post today from a dear friend of mine. Just as the characters in Love, Carry My Bags were drawn to the Pacific Northwest, the land lulls in real life. Enjoy.





My name is Kim Struthers and I have known CR for almost 30 years. We first met as teens and she has remained a valued friend despite the ups and downs of our respective lives and the considerable distance between us. That distance grew even greater five years ago when I moved from Vancouver, BC, back to my hometown of Smithers, about 1100 kilometers (or about 700 miles) north of Vancouver.





Smithers is a beautiful little town (pop. 5,000) nestled in a mountain valley. While it has many things to offer, I believe those who flourish here are those who carry-on a boisterous love affair with the great outdoors. It’s hard for me to explain to my urban friends how good it is for my soul to live here. Every day I wake up and see mountains in almost every direction that I look. There are rivers and lakes here too but it is the mountains that draw me. In the summer we explore them by hiking and biking and in the winter we play on them with our snowshoes and snowboards.





These three short pieces will hopefully convey this connection that I feel to the land and provide you with a glimpse into my life. I hope you enjoy them.





Migration





The rush and tumble of mountain streams as they cascade off an ancient glacier.


The wide, gorgeous sky, pouring down with brilliance.


The mountains beckon, the wind whispering an invite to scramble their secret pathways to the top.


My ancestral road snakes along, each kilometer propelling me home to a future full of my past.





Was my northern migration a foregone conclusion?


Has the desire been lying dormant in my veins and limbs, a generational and geographical time-stamp upon my cells?


What activated this preservation of the past, this body memory that ensures I’m attuned to the beacon’s signal?





What I do know: the imprint of this land lies upon me like a lover’s hot hand,


Its brand on my most intimate, most primitive, of parts.


I abandon resistance and let magnetism take its course.


My inner compass finds its true north.








Hill Trail I





We snowshoe up Hill Trail, each step breaking through the soft spring snow. It is silent, save for our efforts, as we move up and into the past.





Something cracks my genealogical genetic code, awakening my dormant DNA that has lain quietly, suspended in the blood that courses through my veins. But it is now starting to hum as each step takes me back, a journey of lifetimes, to walk step in step with all those who have come before.





The burnt trees stand like mute sentinels, a silent forest of ancient ghosts, guarding us on our journey. They are story trees, these forest fire totem poles, each knot a seminal event, each broken branch and jagged top a testament to their fiery ending. Burnt boils scar them like adolescent acne, belying their age and wisdom. Their silvery-grey bark like boar hide is cool to the touch rather than warm with lifeblood as I expect. Even now, decades after the fire, we can smell the burnt wood if the wind is right. I feel safe, sheltered, protected by these ancestors who witness our journey and usher us forward into the past.








Hill Trail II





We ascend from the frozen snow-covered marsh, moving up through the trees and into a strange underwater world of snow. We are surrounded by giant white mushrooms and pine snow horses, their heads bowed in silent reverence. Huge trees like snowy kelp wave in the wind, dancing in the ocean’s fluid current. We stand on the snow ocean’s floor, lulled by the soothing movement, looking up through the silvery light, cocooned in a bubble of silence and snow.

Colour Wielders by Dawna Raver - Cover Reveal!

Behind the Mysts, hidden from Mortal eyes, is a land where Gods and creatures of myth and legend dwell. And in the Mortal Realm, their Princess lives.





Quinn Sinclair is clueless to who she is. She thinks she's an ordinary young woman—well, mostly ordinary—living an ordinary life with her less than loving mother in Conifer, Colorado. On the night of her birthday, Quinn finds herself betrayed by a man who sends her life spinning out-of-control.





As she struggles to pick up the pieces, a vision of a man with haunting tourmaline-blue eyes begs her for help, and she finds herself transported into a Magykal battle forever changing her life.





Arik Morgaine—Demigod bad boy and outcast of the Magykal Realm—tried to avoid contact with Princess Quinn Sinclair for eighteen years, not wanting to make good on an old threat. But the fates have other plans. Arik can no longer deny his growing desire for Quinn, or the need to protect her from those wanting to control her burgeoning powers. Can the two of them come together and save the Magykal Realm from being destroyed by the Darkest of Magyks, or will powers beyond their control destroy them and their world forever?





Colour Wielders will be available in digital and print formats from Curiosity


Quills Press April 19, 2013. Go to dawnaraver.com for more updates.

Epistolary Formatting for eBooks

In my novel, Love, Carry My Bags, several chapters have a large epistolary component—letters back and forth between the characters. Imagine my nasty surprise when the careful formatting of those letters that I did in Microsoft Word came out quite differently on the Kindle previewer! Grrr.





Not all Kindles or Kindle reading apps are created equal. I know, you are saying to yourself, “duh.” Obviously there are the black and white models and the color models, but I thought that the content stuffing inside would make the words on the page look of the same format. Not true.





Today I’ll share a secret I discovered through trial and error. I read the formatting guidelines, both from Amazon and Smashwords and found nothing about what happens when you want “Love, John” off to the side after a letter has finished…and you don’t want it crawling vertically down the page, most troublesome on the Kindle Touch and Paperwhite models.





Here’s what I found out. Initially, since “we all know by now” that tabs are a no-no in ebook formatting, I followed the instructions and set a paragraph indent of, say, 2.8 inches aligned from the left. Looked great in Word. Tested fine on Kindle and Kindle Fire, iPad. It was only later that I knew of the problem, when a reader mentioned that most of the “sign-offs” appeared vertically down the page at times. After much ado, I discovered that Kindle preserves the large indent as the most important part of the formatting, then crams the individual letters of the words up against the side, causing them to go vertical. (See attachment for before and after examples.)





Here’s the fix. Paragraph format the “Love, John” RIGHT aligned, with an inch indent on the RIGHT. This pushes the words toward the middle-right as one would normally sign a letter. Kindle no longer fights to keep the space in front of the “Love, John,” but instead preserves some space on the back end, keeping the words horizontal as they should be. Since not all Kindles are created equal, some models don’t respect that right indent, but they do respect the right alignment. Some models display “Love, John” horizontally all the way over to the right, and some display the right indent as I intended, either case is much better than the prior formatting fiasco.





Now, if you put a huge right indent, you can cause the same problem on the left side with words going vertical down the page, but if you really want your words that far to the the left, then left align and indent left about an inch.





I used this same trick for the quotation credits at the beginning of my chapters as well, right aligned, right indent a half inch. All better now.





There is a Kindle update to Love, Carry My Bags, fixing this issue. If you have not already gotten it, and need the update, go to Manage Your Kindle, find Love, Carry My Bags in your list of ebooks and click where it shows update available. Anyone buying today will get the most up-to-date version.





I hope this helps! Let me know. Comment below.

Author Spotlight – A. L. Burgos

Today I am welcoming my first guest, A. L. Burgos. I’ll turn it over to him as he discusses his writing in his own words and then I’ll return with my take on his novel, Sec4rets.





YA books and what is too much!





Let me introduce myself, my name is Anthony Luis Burgos and in the author world I am known as A. L. Burgos. I published my first teen drama entitled "Sec4rets" back in September.





When I decided to write a book, I wanted to go the whole YA route because that is what I love to write. I noticed that YA sections have become full of books with vampires and it made me a little sad. What happened to the days of books about teenagers and the drama they go through? Well my book Sec4rets focuses on that.





In Sec4rets, four best friends enter high school and are faced with the drama that comes along with the tensions of this transition in their lives, while keeping secrets from each other. Now we know what high school can be like and we know it’s not always fun and games. You have the catty girls, the bullies, the outcasts, and the ones trying to find themselves. I wanted to tackle a lot of teen issues in my book, but at times I had to ask myself if it was too much. I didn't want to go too far and offend anyone, but I also didn’t want to censor myself because I know how kids can be in high school.





I had a reader tell me that she would not let her kids read my book because it contains adult language and references to sex, drugs and self-harm. Now I understand that some people have different beliefs from others, but I feel like the issues that I address in my book are relatable to teenagers today. People, especially parents, may not want to believe that their child is doing these things but in reality a lot of them are.





I write what I write to entertain people, but to also have people open their eyes to what it's like for teenagers out there in the 21st Century.





Bullying amongst teenagers is unfortunately at all time high and it’s becoming more and more common. Teen suicide has taken over the role of jumping rope or hanging with friends. It's like a new ‘thing’ that they are doing all because of what is going on in school and on social networking sites. It makes me sad that some parents don't see what their kids are going through, so I tackle these issues to open eyes and to instigate shock.





In addition to bullying issues, it’s important to recognise that drugs and liquor are often a part of a teenager’s life at younger and younger ages. I will admit, I drank before I was 21. I will also say that not all teenagers do it at a young age, but a lot are doing it. Your child has friends and these friends could be the ones introducing them to these dangerous vices. It’s all about being savvy and aware.





I do think it’s essential that parents should sit down and talk to their kids about what is wrong and what is right. This is not intended to be about telling parents how to parent; rather it’s a reminder, as is one of the purposes of my book. In our busy lives, it’s very easy to forget the simple things of sitting down with our children and having family night with them, asking them how their day was, meeting their friends, talking to them about the dangers of drugs and liquor. One of my aims in Sec4rets is to raise these issues, to highlight them so that families can discuss them, address them and put preventative measures in place to protect their children.





I’m a firm believer of not putting the blame on books, TV, movies, or games for what our children are doing. Rather than playing the blame game, we must protect, and educate our children.





So my request to you is: please read my book and know that this is the true world your kids live in while at school, not the ones we want them to live in an idealistic world.





Anthony





Back to C.R.--





Sec4rets, wasn’t the novel I was first expecting. It was different. I thought it was going to be about the coming-out of a gay teen, but it was a lot more than that. This book is a serious teen drama. And by that, I mean SERIOUS drama. I’m not talking about hairstyles and wardrobe here. I’m talking about troubled inner-city teens dealing (poorly) with alcoholic parents, poor role models, drug abuse, cutting, death, and fragile friendships. These kids come across as tough kids, but underneath, they are often frail and doing the best they can in their mixed-up lives. Sec4rets reads like a soap opera, flashing from scene to scene to make up the story. There are editing issues which the author is aware of and intends to address in the future. If you are interested in some hard-core teen drama, this may be the book for you.





Giveaway Drawing





To be entered into a drawing for a free PDF copy of Sec4rets, please leave a comment below. In addition, at the end of the blog tour, each Sec4rets winner will be entered into a second drawing for A. L.’s next book coming out in June, Sec4rets 2.








Synopsis





We all have secrets...





Mark, Tiffany, Kevin and Kim are best friends. When they enter High School together they find out that it's not all fun and games as they find out that drama is involved. They must stick together to get through High School but when they start to keep secrets from each other, ones that can tear them apart, their friendships will be tested as the secrets come out. So will their friendships survive or will the secrets be too much and tear them apart? Let the secrets come out.





Author Bio





A. L. Burgos (Anthony Luis Burgos) lives in NYC in the gritty area of Harlem. He never ran the streets of Harlem rather he found the joys of writing. At the age of 10, he began to write and he discovered that it was an escape from the outside world. YA drama and mystery thrillers were his passion; he wrote his first story (not published) titled "Forever Friends" at 11. His dream was to become a famous author one day, so he would be able to move his mother out of Harlem. Anthony has self published his first YA drama "Sec4rets" which is getting rave reviews from readers claiming it’s an edge of your seat ride and amazing, while at the same time tackling real life teen issues. He is working on several new books hoping to be released in 2013.

Thank You Facebook

Earlier this week I had another free promo for Love, Carry My Bags. I did even better than the last time, reaching #3 Family Saga and #7 Literary fiction. Again, I had enthusiastic helpers to help me spread the word and I even learned Twitter just in time for the event. @authorcreverett





I’d like to tell you about some of those enthusiastic supporters. First, I opened a C. R. Everett’s Fan Club and Street Team group on Facebook. (I’m still recruiting!) I had noticed one person mention my name on Facebook, appreciating authors. I didn’t know if this person had read my book or not, but I figured, hmm, maybe she’d like to be on the team. So I messaged her. It was a resounding YES! Cool.





Then I asked if she knew anyone else who might be interested, and she quickly offered up a name and I got another resounding YES. Neither one had read my book yet, but thought it sounded good. (And have since read and loved it.)





Then, Amazon took away one of the reviews of my book, for reasons unknown. I Facebook’d about it. One outraged reader (another “stranger,” I thought from England) asked the title of the book. She’d read it, so she posted a review to replace the one taken down. So thoughtful! After checking her Facebook profile, I discovered she’s not from England at all, but from my hometown!! And we didn’t previously know each other. Not only that, but she had worked at the hospital I mentioned in my novel AND she’d gone to “Mulford High” which is not a high school at all, but a community college that I’d also talked about in the book.





Small World. And Facebook made all that happen.





Thank you, Facebook. Without you, I wouldn’t have these and many other wonderful new friends!

Love, Carry My Bags Bonus Feature

A seagull calls.





This is what I wrote in one part of Love, Carry My Bags to give a sense of quiet in the wilderness, out on the water amongst the San Juan Islands. Then I thought, it’s not quite enough. What other birds hang out in the San Juans? I googled it. Then a serendipitous thing that has happened to me many times over in the experience of writing Love, Carry My Bags, happened: I found seagull and raven lore. Not just lore, but lore that originates with Native Peoples of the Pacific Northwest, where the San Juan Islands are.





Perfect.





As I read the tale, something popped into my head: a raven answers.





I thought, oh yeah. This is good. Two birds calling to each other in the quiet. That’ll give a nice sense of stillness. And what’s even more perfect is that the final product, this simple passage, exemplifies so much of the turmoil in the entire novel. “A seagull calls; a raven answers.” It gave me goose bumps. The sentence packs a huge subliminal punch. My aim all along was to layer the novel, with subtext speaking to the reader, giving deeper meaning to the surface words.





The seagull and raven lore fit perfectly into my plan.





Gotta love serendipity.

Unbaked

At the start, you jerked me around, avoided the kitchen because you couldn’t forget your first wife served up something bad. You had thrown it away.

You hadn’t learned to cook. I was no chef either. But we found a complex recipe and decided to bake it together.

Marriage Cake

NOTE: Read all instructions first.
Combine dry ingredients in large bowl to form a connection:
3 parts Shared Values
2 parts Mutual Interests
1 ½ parts Humor

Incorporate the wet ingredients slowly until the mixture is smooth:
1 part each-- Caring, Patience, Attraction, Self-Control, Kindness, Gentleness, Respect, Selflessness, Love, and Physical Intimacy

Pour into a baking pan and bake over a slow burning flame for an even texture, taking care not to burn the outside or to leave the center cool and undone.
Top off with sprinklings of Forgiveness as needed.

Recipe must be doubled, each member of a duo supplying half of each ingredient.

The recipe was simple, yet we screwed it up. At the start, we mismeasured the proportions and didn’t incorporate the dry ingredients first, causing lumps. You misread the recipe and threw in some Disrespect and Selfishness. Then you threw in ingredients the recipe didn’t even call for, things like Anger and Rudeness with a sprinkling of Short Temperament. I said, “Don’t throw those in. You’ll ruin it!” and you said, “It’ll be fine, it’s still got Caring and Love.” I tasted the bitter batter. Didn’t like it at all, but swallowed the disgusting combination, believing extra Forgiveness and Love could mask the taste. Then, I also, diverted from the original recipe and turned up the heat.

You tasted…didn’t like…decided to add more Mutual Interests, after the fact, to see how that would work even after the cake was baked with a raw center. I said, “No, I think we need more Humor,” and you said you couldn’t find any. We returned the cake to the oven on a slow burning flame until the center was done, but the texture was still off. The bitterness of Anger, Disrespect, and Selfishness still lingered, and even though it wasn’t as strong, it had a bad aftertaste. When I sprinkled Forgiveness, I also tasted Freedom. You tried to unbake the cake, pulling out remnants of Anger, taking back Harsh Words, using Peace to try and dissolve Selfishness, and in the process, spilled Neediness into the mix.

You said, “I’ll fix it. Frosting.” I said the recipe didn’t call for frosting. The cake should only need sprinklings of Forgiveness to top it off or else it was no good.

You combined a sweet mixture of New Patience and Self Control, coating the top, then handed me a bite, saying, “Some people eat it this way.”

The sugary mess overpowered the cake, all in a lump instead of even throughout, and the bottom, still bad. I made a face. You handed me some milk to wash it down, the way it’s supposed to be, but I knew when many people ate it this way, they washed it down with alcohol instead. You took a bite, smacking your tongue against the roof of your mouth like your salivary glands exploded. “I can eat it like this,” you said, pretending to like it.

I screwed up my face again, shaking my head. “It sucks. I’m trashing it.”

You can’t unbake a cake. You have to start new, fresh.
I hope you don’t forget this time either. I hope you learned to cook.

Skyrocketing to the Top!

It has been crazy busy the last three days. My computer feels like Mission Control. Yesterday was the last of three days of giving away my debut novel, Love, Carry My Bags, for free on Amazon.com.

A huge success!

One reader finished it between Thursday and Saturday, posting a 5-Star Amazon review which brought tears to my eyes. A fellow author from a writing group I recently joined said she had been wholly engrossed in the book, setting it aside only when her Kindle battery died. She said it was the first book in a long time she’d read outside of her normal genres that captured her attention so well, and she also said she was borrowing some “technical” ideas for her own work.

That’s what we indie authors do; help each other out.

At the peak of the giveaway, Love, Carry My Bags topped out at #2 in Family Saga in both the US and UK, #9 in Literary Fiction in the US and #4 in Literary Fiction in the UK. Overall in the free Kindle store I reached #149 at one point. Whew! I don’t know what I expected, but this far exceeded my expectations.

I would like to thank some wonderful folks for happily helping me out. Authors Melody Anne, Ruth Cardello, and Terri Marie all shared the freebie news with their established fan base and cheered me on. EBook Lovers Co-Op Facebook page tried me out as their inaugural book club author. Thanks Gigi and the Indie Love Book Club fans. AJ Lape, author of Grade A Stupid (current book club selection) pointed me in many of the right directions for help on getting the word out, and Kelley Grealis, author of The Descendant and next up in the Indie Love Book Club, happily plugged my book in her social network. We talk shop. Kim Scott, author of The Ruth Chernock historical series gladly shared and shared and shared. She also offered me a guest-blog spot on her blog, which I would say is where it all began.

There are so many more, that I cannot name everyone, but I do know this: adding us all together is exponentially more than the sum of the parts. Thank you everybody!