Please check out the latest YA/NA novel by Kristi Ayers: Strings of the Muse. I’ve reviewed it below. Happy reading!
https://www.bookbub.com/books/strings-of-the-muse-by-kristi-ayers
New author website!
Please check out my personal website, http://www.authorwithadream.com. A unique birthday gift from my husband that I’m excited to share. It’s about time I had something out there.
Third Book? Third book.
It’s been almost a full year since I posted a blog. I think the reasons I gave up were not very good ones: Lazy (maybe), my previous books not having a lot of traffic (possibly) and also, no one reads my blog (assuming). But just in case anyone does, I thought it was a good time to share that 2016’s period of anxiety driven writing is here. AKA The Third Book.
When I published my first book I felt as if I were pregnant for the the first time. The initial months of creating and eventually completing can never be repeated again. The second book was like having my second child. Love, love, love it but you can’t have the exact same book pregnancy twice. And for the sequel to the first, I felt much less anxious and much more in control. So the siblings were birthed, shared with the world and now are growing side by side, and will always be my babies.
Then came the day that I got the urge. The itch or desire or whatever you might call it. I met two goals I’ve had my whole life, back to back. Do I really think I can do it again? I’m getting old. It’s always been there, the back of the brain nudge. Writing and publishing is like a drug and since I’ve never done drugs I’ll just pretend it’s like crack. Once you start it’s very hard to never relapse. I can’t just let it go. So after a couple of years of debating, I’m taking the plunge again. I hope it’s worth it.
While writing YA fiction was fun and sentimental and relatable in a fantasy boy and girl sort of way, this time around I’m gonna (it’s ok to use gonna) be a grownup. I’m taking a chance and I’m excited and filled with all these ideas and places I can take the story that I couldn’t with teens. (Translation: some bad words and other normal human behavior). I want to write a mystery since I love them. I want to write a complicated adult instead of a complicated teenager. I can take the plot in different directions that I can’t with a YA book. And since my previous books never interested one single agent, ah, maybe this one will. One can dream . . . .
It took me awhile to figure it out. Take a bad word out, put it in, make him 17, make him 25. Use big words you have to look up, use simpler words you don’t. In the end, I finally made the decision to take a risk. I’m pretty psyched about it if I can get rid of the stalled script in my head. Only a dedicated writer would take almost an hour perfecting the blurb alone. Which isn’t even important right now.
I was afraid of what people might think if my character uses the F bomb here or there. Or if his mind goes in the gutter sometimes, or if he just isn’t a nice person. But I am a nice person, and a loving wife and mother and daughter. I’m real and characters aren’t and if some of the most religious people I know enjoy risqué movies and books, then why would I even be concerned? Unfortunately, in today’s times, films and books that have grit and sex sell the most. Thankfully, I’m not a trend follower.
So Third Book is gonna be painfully slow, depending on how much time I can squeeze in. I just have to get this main character out of my head and into the computer. I’ll try to be a much better blogger too, even if it means I only type to hear the little clicky sound. It counts as daily computer usage.
Enjoy this beautiful, colorful Autumn Christmas (seriously, stores)?? and count your blessings.
~C
Free promotion
A Halo Sun, the sequel to The Sharing Moon will be available for free during a five day Kindle promotion.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00M8Z5KXC/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1457319780&sr=8-9
Free read!
For a limited five day promotion, The Sharing Moon will be available for free via Kindle beginning December 28th. Check it out!
Scents of Summer
It’s that time of year…the time where I savor the summer songs on the radio, charcoal drifting around the neighborhood, the sound of gulls on the beach, getting out my swimsuit and most importantly, the scent of sunscreen. Not suntan lotion. Sunscreen. I have an obsession with the smell. When I open it I close my eyes and stars dance around. I would like to bottle it up as an all purpose product. Sunscreen smelling cleanser, toilet bowl cleaner, laundry detergent, cologne, diaper cream, weed killer, air freshener, engine oil…I could go on and on and on. I can only imagine life like that. The sun would shine brighter. Money would grow on trees. Taylor Swift would write a happy song. My book would make it big. How can anyone deny such a magical odor? How can anyone pass by the shelves of sunscreen in January and not open the tops and sniff. (Yes, I do sometimes). I like to pretend it’s June and I’m surrounded by Banana Boat wearing Wal-Mart shoppers. Forget the Calvin Klein Obsession! This is the Coppertone obsession! Guarantee yourself a mega social life and the miracle of your soul mate walking into Qdoba clad in a shirt that proudly boasts the Bull Frog logo.
I promote skin safety. Sunburn free. No lobster look. No going ewww at the person in line whose skin is peeling. Buy your sunscreen by the buckets and slather it everywhere. Not because of the addictive smell you see. But just for safety of course. Yeah, definitely.
I love the scent of the lotion on my kids’ skin when I cover them in 5000 SPF protection. I love the clear spray kind that doesn’t leave white gunk all over. I love that summer just isn’t summer without titanium dioxide. Oh baby, just the sound of it gets me going–to the bathroom to make sure we have a bunch of it. And hey, I’m not high maintenance. Generic brands are awesome too. NO-AD plug here. I bet A LOT of brainstorming went on in that marketing session.
I can’t wait for the season to kick in. I can’t wait to apply as directed every two hours and after swimming. Gah! I hope that you, too, can embrace your sunblock. And if you prefer that oily, cancer magnet coconut stuff, well, then you’re not my friend anymore.
Happy humidity,
~C
The Whole Stalker Thing
Happy New Year! It’s January 2, 2014. 2015. Okay, that will happen to me a lot this month.
With Christmas, it was time again to redeem my Barnes & Noble gift card and what did I fill my Nook Glowlight with? Books about stalkers. Upon reading one particular book, I found myself drawn to another and then another, and as it turns out, the more deranged the stalker was, the more intrigued I became. The psychology behind the whole stalker’s mindset is one that I started to study a little bit. Also, the desire girls have to read on and figuratively become the stalker’s victim herself has become a fascination of mine after doing a little more digging. So let’s analyze.
The psycho stalkers in fiction are not the beastly looking guys who lurk and hide and make plans to chain you in the basement. Who they are, exactly, are a combination of princely, damaged and desperately-just-looking-for-someone-to-love-them kind of guys. But please, take note. Stalkers do not look like this:
(That’s Ryan Guzman, Jennifer Lopez’s stalker in her new movie that comes out this month. How many girls in that theater are going to say, “Wow…what a nut. She needs to do something about him.” That boy is why females pick up these books and end up wanting to take the guy home rather than to the police station).
The latest book I read involved quite a psychotic fellow. What I found so disturbing is that the writer made him a handsome bookstore clerk who became smitten with a random woman who walked in as a customer, and he was instantly starry-eyed and in love. Yes, that’s crazy. But it is also how a lot of couples who’ve been married for many years describe the first sighting of their partner. The difference here is when said smitten guy kills other people who interfere, hacks into social media and ultimately changes every aspect of the woman’s life in order to have her. How could any normal woman be okay with that? Well, as it turns out, there are many. All I had to do was go to Goodreads and read the reviews on the few stalker books I’ve just read and the summaries were all the same: they actually felt SYMPATHY for the lunatic because he was…GOOD LOOKING. SOUL-CURSED. And shockingly, I realized I’d started to head in that direction as well. Not about the killing innocent people part, or the scary ways the stalker managed to invade the girl’s life. It was that sad, dejected part of him that made me wonder why? How is someone who looks like that, and is that charming, such a menace? Apparently, I’m not alone in that territory. These authors aren’t writing about serial killers. They’re writing male characters that just-want-to-be-loved. Perfectly flawed characters.
Stolen, The Hypnotist’s Love Story, You, The Good Girl, and my current Nook download, The Twisted Window are all examples of the sympathetic, beautiful stalker. What it comes down to, is that all of the above fictional stalkers should be in prison, with no chance of parole. But throw in the beauty factor, and they all become puppies women want to take home and train to be good after all. Because let’s face it, when someone is stalking you and is obsessed with you, it’s pretty flattering…SAID NO REAL LIFE VICTIM EVER.
Bottom line, is that as females, we want to fix the bad guy. I don’t mean the murderous bad guys. But the ones who feel they need to stalk because they’re so misunderstood. So long as they aren’t completely evil, we want to save them. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case in reality. At least for the victims I read about online and truly felt such sadness for.
So am I strange because I fell into the Stockholm Syndrome category? No, I don’t think so. The whole point of fictional novels are to draw us in and send us into the make-believe minds and worlds of whatever they may be, good or bad. Which is a sign of truly brilliant writing. Don’t feel guilty.
Best wishes for 2014 2015!
~Christy
My love for Sylvia Plath
Poems are so emotional and we all know this. But some poems walk inside of and leave a footprint on your brain that never disappears. And that poet of those amazing abilities to do so is Sylvia Plath.
I have to say, one of the biggest reasons I cling to the meaning behind Plath’s poems is that they are so incredibly heartbreaking that you can understand why some folks sadly relate. Sylvia died so tragically but the way she died seems to override her work and the moods that drove her to that state of mind. Was she born with it? Did she wither away from her own tragic mind later on, her mind a curse she’d inherited because life just couldn’t pull her out from the terror of control snatched away from her. Marriage, children, a fight to understand her own mind and be driven to the point of helplessness that only could be brought to life in her writing? Let us discuss the latter. I might add that only artists, writers, poets and musicians probably relate the closest. No disrespect to those with a fully intact ability to be handed the perfect, stable mind. But to have a gift like Plath’s, you aren’t born handed the material the pain comes from. You earn it. If you have a history of depression, like me, you don’t need the training course of near crippling surges of creativity that bat around your head every.minute.of.the.day. And I truly mean that.
I’m quite fascinated by Plath’s genius form. I have been especially interested in her lately, since I dredged up some of her early poetry and find myself quoting it around social media. Yes, yes, I’ve shamefully watched the movie based on her life and although Gwyneth Paltrow is not even close as Plath, it was still terribly sad. I felt her children’s pain. As for Ted, he was kind of an a-hole who of course felt his superior ways justified any affairs. However, please understand this is just my opinion of the film. Ted Hughes just might have been husband of the year in real life. I do want to confirm though, with my very, very accurate eyesight that he did NOT in any way shape or form look like Daniel Craig. At least Gwyneth looked a teensy bit like Sylvia depending on the hairstyle. Daniel was…no. Just no. But he was incredibly handsome nonetheless.
So how does this relate to my latest book, the sequel to the first? I read a verse lately that stirred feelings about the male lead character who is pretty messed up himself. The female lead is a dreamy, poet-artsy type who’s messed up too. One big happy story! But really, there is plenty of drama yet humor as well. Plus of course the required romance doses that won’t even get your book read without them for the YA crowd. (Was I that romanticized as a teen? Hmm).
Anyway, I loved including poems in my second book and they fit perfectly at the spots I placed them in. Just little verses, not the whole bucket of dreary or newly blossomed love, etc, etc, etc. Death, etc, etc, etc. This fictional boy in question meets all the requirements for a dark poet lover’s cocktail: Cute-check! Self-absorbed at times-check! Confused-check! Cute-check! Has the ability to heal but doesn’t know it-check! Doesn’t want to be saved but has the equally confused girl who thinks she can-check! Cute-check! Paranormal dude-check! Strong-willed-check! I could go on but hey, you don’t really care, probably. On a serious note, it really is an emotionally deep story and does NOT fall into the plethora of paranormal subjects or dyst/uto/pian trends right now. So please don’t even glance at it if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s as far from fluffy as you can get. Because surely there are hundreds of people who are buying it right this second. (Insert cries of disappointment and frustration here).
I found that when my character includes poems and their meanings into her lifestyle or pain, in some cases, it shows how passionate and emotional I have made them. I used to be the same way. I wrote poetry too, decent poetry, horrible poetry. What teen girl didn’t? What I enjoyed about using my favorite prose is that others just might look them up too. I can guarantee if you read a Plath book on either poetry or her life, you will go around jotting her verses on social media too. She is just…well…there was no one like her when it came to the tormented mind and heart.
My absolute favorite quote that I must repeat everywhere I have online accounts is this from Ariel:
“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression. Of something beautiful, but annihilating.”
Perfectly sums up my boy, Damian, in A Halo Sun. How many guys in your life, have or still do FIT THAT PURELY AND UNDENIABLY? If not, you’ve never suffered a ‘Sylvia Plath broken heart.’
Be kind and be thankful this holiday weekend.
~Christy
I Miss Writing and the Mania too
It’s been so long since I’ve blogged that I forgot until last week that I hadn’t. I have more important things on my hands, such as working and dreaming and fantasizing and considering a third book.
I can’t believe I just wrote that.
Here’s the thing–just because you don’t get an agent doesn’t mean you can’t sell. It also doesn’t mean your book isn’t good. I am terrified to do a book signing at my local Barnes & Noble. They provide the signs, the books, etc, etc, the manager, Lisa, told me so. But they don’t provide the confidence and the shoulder to cry on if no one stops at your table. On the positive side, my book would be in the local store, at least until it may potentially bomb. BUT that doesn’t mean you should give up. Writing is like a drug. Just because someone doesn’t like my story doesn’t mean I’ll stop selling it. Especially when people you know think that because you don’t have an agent, you obviously suck. “Published writers don’t live around here. They don’t happen to people we know.” Ah. Whatever. Couldn’t be farther from the truth. Then you have a bookstore chain who shall remain nameless, in the Pacific Northwest, that at first wouldn’t sell your book. Then they saw it in the Ingram catalog, which is the bible of booksellers, and suddenly it was worthy.
The writing is in my veins, pulsing. I don’t know if I want to write YA again. I sort of want to write a book for regular adults. But adults read YA, so I just don’t know. I do know, however, that my ideas could go both ways. It’s quite simple–I don’t write fluffy romance, or dystopia or horror. I just write real. Kinda dark. Kinda complicated. I don’t know why I’m drawn to those kinds of folks. So the genre really doesn’t matter. But the future characters are already haunting me, those pesky people. I am starting to see them everywhere.
It took me about eight months to write, a couple of months to approve editing, cover, agreements, yada yada. So overall, a year-long process, plus I was working full-time. One DOES NOT write a book overnight. I repeat, one DOES NOT write a book overnight. And if you do, no one will take you seriously. Think six months minimum. Many of my Twitter and Goodreads author friends are on their second year of the same manuscript. That’s real writing. Then the self-advertising, outside advertising, pimping the book everywhere, keeping up on stats and reviews and sales and remembering your blogging which no one really reads. I’m not sure if I want to go there again. I could just do it for fun, see what happens. Maybe the third, fourth or seventh or tenth book might get signed. (Curse you, weird, racing, creative mind).
I miss the boys and girls of my stories. I think about them a lot. Like, certain music or places or dialogue will remind me. I can still feel what it was like to write in the basement at three a.m. with a silent house while everyone slept. I still feel that pull to do it again, even just as a hobby. But I also feel the pull to stuff my face with two boxes of mini Charleston Chews and alas, I’ll refrain. God, I love those things. Bless you Mr. or Mrs. Charleston, or South Carolina or wherever they came from. Now can you just make the mini strawberry and chocolate ones too?
I’ll just wait it out, see if the desire fades. I’ll keep my day job in the meantime.
~C
Christy A. Campbell, Author with a Dream 