Reblogged from Dab of Darkness:

In the original novel announcement, I suggested a a release in the first week of June.  Frankly I may have been a bit overly ambitious on this, and while I still hope for a June release I haven’t even got a copy of the manuscript to my editor.  So chances are we are looking at more of an end of June release.  Now before you all strike me down in rage, I really want to release the best possible novel I can.  I love Lexia, Lance, and the rest of the characters here and I want to make sure I present their story the best way that I can.  The beta readers have given me some excellent feed back that requires a bit more tweaking to the story.  But trust me, as you will see below, Lexia will knock your socks off.

Before I get to the excerpt, I’d like to say some of my thank yous again.  Joy Anna is the beautiful Lexia Santarelli you see on the cover below.  I want to thank her for being the first person to ever portray one of my characters, and I didn’t even have to beg.  Kristin Irons is the photographer and cover artist responsible for the cover.  She only made me beg a little bit. I really need you to visit these two great women on Facebook and give them the thank you they deserve. Finally, I’d like to say that I will be working with Tiffany Carrera as my editor for this novel.  Though I have known Tiffany for years, this is the first time I will be working with her on a project. I’m looking forward to it.

Now I suppose you are ready to read Chapter One.  Well here it is:

Copyright 2013 Kristin Irons and Richard Flores IV

Volition Agent: Chapter 1

Copyright Richard Flores IV

The alley had a smell of fresh rain mixed with the odor of a week’s worth of trash.  This late at night the traffic was light; occasionally a car could be heard driving down the wet roads. Lexia Santarelli leaned against the brick wall of the six story apartment building, looking over her finger nails.  She didn’t understand the need to start her assignments in such filthy locations, but her handler chose the locations.  It was out of her control.

Lexia glanced at her watch.  He was late, but that wasn’t really a surprise.  She pushed off the wall and walked over to a side door of the building.  Knowing how her handler, Lance, didn’t like to waste time approaching target, it was likely in this building.  It wouldn’t hurt to find a subtle way in.  She reached out to test the handle, suddenly her arm jerked back.

“What do you think you are doing?  You know you’re supposed to wait for me,” Lance’s voice spoke in her mind.

“And you’re supposed to let me know when you jump in,” Lexia whispered.

“We don’t need any fingerprints left on this assignment.  Did you bring your gloves?”

“Of course,” Lexia’s realized Lance had taken full control of her movements as her hand went to the Glock in her shoulder holster.  “Damn it, Lance.  You think I can’t remember my own gun?”

“I’m just making sure.”

Lexia began slipping on her gloves.  “What is today’s assignment?”

“We’ve got an informer.  An Agency employee is believed to be passing on information about who we are watching.”

“Well let’s get started,”  Lexia opened the alley door.

She made her way down the dimly lit hallway.  Lance must have overridden the building’s automatic lighting.  As she approached the last door on the right a click could be heard as the door unlocked.  Lexia opened the door and looked up the flight of stairs. Somehow she knew it was three floors up.

“Third floor,” Lance’s voice echoed.

“I know,” Lexia started up the stairs keeping a brisk pace.  “What’s the hurry?”

“She’s getting ready to leave.”

Lexia pushed through the third floor door.  She walked down the hall looking at each door number as she passed it.  The creak of a door opening could be heard around the corner.  Lexia peaked around and saw a short blonde woman near the door.  The blonde looked the other way first, Lexia ducked behind the wall.

Easing around the corner Lexia saw the blonde was turning to lock the door.  Lexia moved down the hall at a pace just short of running.  She took hold of the blonde and crashed through the door.

A scream echoed in the room as the blonde fell onto the floor.  Lexia shoved the door shut.  The woman scrambled backwards in an attempt to get away.  Lexia picked her up and tossed her on the couch.

“Take it easy,” Lexia said to Lance.

“Wh- Who are you?” The blonde cowered back into the couch.

“Agent Santarelli,” Lexia spoke Lance’s words.  They didn’t give names, what was Lance thinking?  “What are you doing?”

“I know what I am doing.  Let me do the talking now,” Lance said.

“I was just going out to get some things.”  The blonde moved closer to the edge of her seat.

“Don’t feed me bullshit, Jamie.”  So that was her name.  Lexia decided to follow protocol and let Lance talk.  “We work for the same people.  And our boss knows what you’ve been up to.”

“I don’t understand.  I’m just a secretary.”

Lexia picked Jamie up by her shirt and pressed her against the wall.  Lexia put her face close to Jamie.  “Who have you told and what have you told them?”

Tears began rolling down Jamie’s face.  She sniffled once, but said nothing.

Lexia slammed her against the wall again. “I asked a question!”

What has gotten into Lance?  In the past year working with him she never saw him get so angry with someone who was clearly so defenseless.  Worst of all, he was using her to do it.

“Calm down.” Lexia said in her own words.

“I’m calm.” Lance said in her head.

“I don’t know what you want.” Jamie said in between sobs.

Lexia heard a door open down the hallway.  Pulling her gun, she spun to the direction of the sound.  It was pointed at a man with a golf club held up high.  Lexia felt her finger pull the trigger.  In a surreal scene she saw the man fall to the floor, never hearing the shot.

“God damn it, Lance!” Lexia yelled forgetting protocol.

Suddenly Lexia was knocked to the ground by Jamie.  Her head smacked the floor, dizziness and stars filled her vision.  As her head cleared, Jamie was straddled over her.  She delivered a hit to Lexia’s stomach, Jamie wasn’t strong but it got Lexia’s attention.  Lexia threw her off.

Jamie rolled over into the wall.  Lexia heard a baby crying.  A baby.  But Lance already had Lexia diving on Jamie again.  Lexia realized they were struggling for her gun.

Jamie was no physical match for Lexia, but she refused to let go of the gun.  Another shot rang out, a bullet wizzed past her head.  Jamie was going to kill her.

Lexia finally was able to twist Jamie’s arm so the gun was pointed at Jamie’s chest.  There was a crack.  Jamie screamed.  Suddenly there was no resistance from Jamie.  Lexia had broken her elbow.

Cries came echoing down the hallway, the baby only got louder as time passed.  Someone is must have called the police.  Come on Lance, we got to go, she thought.  Lance couldn’t hear her thoughts, and he didn’t release Jamie.  The gun still in both women’s grip was pointed at Jamie’s own chest.

Tears covered Jamie’s swollen face, the faintest signs of bruising were starting to show.  She looked into Lexia’s eyes.  Then she glanced down the hall at the room were the cries came from.

“Please, don’t kill me,” Jamie pleaded.  “You’re not going to kill me are you?”

“I don’t know sweetie, I don’t know,” Lexia said for herself.

Lexia forced Jamie’s finger down on the trigger.  Lexia closed her eyes as the gun fired.  She pulled the gun from Jamie’s hands and holstered it.

“God damn you,” Lexia yelled.  “She is a mom.  Don’t you hear that baby?”

“She was a traitor and an enemy of the state,”  Lance said.  “We need to get out of here.  The cops are on their way.”

Copyright Richard Flores IV

Truthfully, I didn’t sell many books on this tour.  So in terms of getting a return on my investment, the tour was not even close to successful.  But you can’t always measure these things in dollars and cents.  And while I eventually want to write for a career, I never became a writer to make a ton of money.  I will likely do a book tour again.

Don’t forget you have another week to enter the Giveaway and a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift card.  So go over the this page and enter to win.  Don’t miss out on that chance.  You can gain five more entries from checking out this blog, just enter “Orangeberry” as the pass code.

All my blog tour hosts were great, but I did have a few favorite stops.  Here are a few of them for you to go back and read:

Here is my stop at Anya Breton’s Blog.  I enjoyed my interview with Michael McDuffee on his blog.  My guest post at KY Bunnies Blog was a topic I talk about a lot.  You can find a excerpt of Dissolution of Peace on Gentleman Reads.  Find out why I don’t use an outline on this post at Blog-A-Licious Authors.  And last, find out ten things you didn’t know about me at Books are Magic.  You can find a full list of all my tour stops here.

As I mentioned, Orangeberry did a great job filling the tour.  They did so well, that there are lots of posts still to come.  I will post those on Facebook and Twitter as they come along.  Please check them out.

As a special thanks to everyone who followed along on the tour, I am going to post at excerpt of my next novel at 3pm pacific time!  Other than five beta readers, no one has seen the first chapters of Volition Agent, I am excited to share it all with you!  I’ve also never shared an excerpt before, so if this creates a buzz maybe I’ll have a few more sneak peaks.  In either case, make sure you come back to see it (I might even add more entries to the giveaway).  And if you haven’t yet you can purchase and review Dissolution of Peace on Amazon.

What was I going to rant about?  I was going to rant about how the people closest to me seemed to treat my choice to be a writer as a joke.  As if I was just doing a cute little hobby.  About how I have family and friends who ignore everything I post about my writing, who never share it with their friends and followers, and on and on and on.  See, I am already starting to rant again.

But as I sat there looking at the blank Ranting Blog I was about to write, I wondered to myself, Why do I care?  Why do I let these people bring me down?  The answer is pretty simple.  It is the same answer to why rejection bothers writers.  It is human nature to care about what others think of you.  You may not like it.  You may even deny it.  But we all care about what others think.  We care even more when it is family and friends.

But in reality you are just letting those people drag you down into the depths.  There are many reasons why people belittle artists.  I am well aware that writing is not the only art form that suffers from the “that is a cute little hobby” remarks. I think every art does.

Art isn’t the Focus

We don’t live in an art based world anymore.  Wait, that is not entirely true. Art is all around us.  We don’t live in an art focused society.  At least not here in the United States.  We cut art from schools, we close museums, we cut music performances, and we close the local theaters.  When money is tight, we cut from the arts first.  Because our society see’s it as more important to get “real jobs” in the corporate world. If you like to write, perhaps you should get a job writing training documents for a major HR company.  If you like art, perhaps you should get a job designing advertising.  If you have a glorious imagination, you should be an inventor.  Better yet, just learn Math and get a job as an executive that will never use those math computations.  Schools, here is my idea.  Just cut math, give every kid a calculator, and bring back art.

No teacher, that I have seen, has told my oldest son, who has a very active imagination, that he should consider a career in writing, acting, or art.  Instead they tell me he has ADD. Or they have the nerve to say, “If he would focus that energy on math he could be a great scientist or inventor some day.”  I say, how about you… Teacher… realize your personality won’t match every student.  How about you foster his imagination and recommend he find an outlet for it?  They didn’t make those recommendations.  Instead my wife and I are seeking out art and acting classes for him.  How about the fact that you admit he knows the material, so clearly he must have paid some type of attention.  And if he knows the material, put your pride aside and stop worrying about if he paid attention to you.

Wait… breath…. I am ranting again.

The point is this.  Our world see’s art, music, writing, and all other art forms, as hobbies.  They are something to be done when you have time around your 60 hour work week.  Writing is not a career.  Photography, never.  You want to draw pictures all day?  You’re lazy.  You want to be a painter, no way.  You want to act? This isn’t Hollywood.  This is one reason people bring you down as an artist.  They just don’t see the arts as a realistic career.

Jealousy

There is a lot of talent in all of the arts.  And well, we don’t all have that talent.  I can hardly color within the lines, let along draw a realistic human form.  The best photographer I can ever be is with my Android phone and I don’t pretend to even know how to use that.

Could I learn any of those things?  I think so.  There is an amount of natural talent needed to do any of the arts.  Some are just not that into art.  Others, they simply wish to do what you do.  They are jealous of the fact that you are doing what they want to do.  Why don’t they do it?  Well they either don’t think they can, or they don’t make the time to do it. Others still, are simply jealous that you’re reaching for a dream while they accepted they’d never reach theirs.

We all get jealous from time to time.   The same is true with artists.  You are making a dream of yours come true, and to others that is a symbol of dreams they never accomplished.  I’d argue that Jealousy is one of the most powerful human emotions.

Misunderstandings

The last of the three main reasons people bring you down, is misunderstanding.  This is a two way street folks.

They misunderstand what you are trying to do with your life.  They may not think that your writing is anything more than a hobby to you.  They may think that writing is an easy, leisurely activity.  They may not understand just how important a “share” or a “like” from them is to you and your career.  They may not understand that adding their Amazon review would mean the world to you and your career.  They don’t know that for a writer, their recommendation to their friends is the life blood of your success.  They could think they don’t have the time to help you out, not realizing that the simple two second share on social media means a lot. This list can go on and on.

But you could also misunderstand.  You could assume that they don’t share your stuff because they think you are just “messing around.” But it could really be that they don’t read.  Or it could be that they didn’t see your post.  You could assume they hate your writing, but they have just been too busy to read one line.  Even though they have been dying to read it and write you a review, they just haven’t had a chance.  Or you could be assuming they never pay attention, but in actuality they are reading everyone of your blog posts, publications, and social media posts.  They just never said so.

So, Stop letting them drag you down.

This sounds easier than it really is.  When you find out someone you care about, and follow their career closely, doesn’t do the same for you.  Well it is soul crushing.  But it is also a downer when you find that others just don’t care about what you do.  Naturally you will get a little down.  And the critics.  Those that bash you just to bash you.  Or, those that simply don’t understand what you want to do for a living.  They are the hardest to deal with.

But you can’t let them pull you all the way down to depths.  These people have had me doubt myself more than I can admit.  These people have made me give up on a number of my dreams in life.  I can’t let them win this round. I have to rise above them and achieve my dream for a change.

Prove them Wrong

This is a powerful motivator for many people.  It is the old, I’ll show them.  It works for me in many ways.  I’ll be honest I even fantasize about becoming famous and snubbing those people when they come calling for something.  Sure, that sounds cruel. But when I am really ready to quit, the idea of being able to shove someone’s nose into their own… well let’s just say it works.  I feel a burst of motivation.  It is also perfectly natural to want to show someone you did what they said you can’t do.

But more so, you have to realize that in many cases they are wrong.  So show them they are wrong.  If they say you can’t do it because you’re too old, show them you are never too old to learn.  If they tell you you can’t because you’re not the right “type of person”, show them that art takes all types of people.  If they tell you that there are too many other people out there trying to do the same thing, show them that there is room for you.  As I have aged, I have quickly learned that nine times out of ten, the people telling you you can’t do something are wrong.  So don’t let them be right.  Show them you can, you will, and you have.

Make them Jealous

While I had said Jealously is the reason so many hate, or say you can’t, you can use it to help you too.  If they are jealous, well that means you are doing something right.  You are succeeding someway to warrant their jealousy.  Rather then let that work against you, let that be something that raises you up.  People envy that you can make time for your art.  They envy that you can work forty hours, run a business, have a family, and still tell great stories.

Get Rid of the Negative

Rid yourself of the negative people.  This may not always be something that can be done.  I’m not about to cut off my family over something simple like, they won’t share my books with others.  But if they are trashing me, perhaps I will be done with them.

But friends are a different thing.  With sites like Facebook, we throw the word friend around a little too much.  My wife has some 300 plus “friends” on Facebook, but I bet she really only knows about 15-25% of them.  The same is true of me.  Though I only have a 150 or so.  Even fewer are actually my friends.  I doubt again that I would get rid of any of them because they don’t actively support my writing.  Though I actively seek their approval, I’ve also come to realize they likely won’t give it.  By recognizing that and trying to move on from it, I lose the negative without getting rid of the person.  Same is true of family.

But those that are actually dragging you down are a different story.  The ones that don’t support you are one thing.  But the ones that drag you down, bash you, and down right don’t care.  Get rid of them.  You don’t need them around you.  I don’t care if they are friends or family.  If they are dragging me down, they are not really good at being a friend or family.

Rise Up

The artists of the world are what have kept books around, entrain us with movies, provide us with stunning photographs, and mesmerize the world with their drawings.  You need to ignore that fact that society seems to shun artists, because in fact they need us.  If the artist disappeared tomorrow, there would be nothing on TV.  There would be nothing to read.  Music would fall silent.  The corporate world would have no one to design their ads, write their jingles, and they wouldn’t be able to sell.  All the people would have is sleep and the corporate life.  And the corporate world wouldn’t last long. The world needs us, even if they don’t see it.

Take a moment to remember that.  Take a moment to see the art that is all around you and such a instrumental part of your lives.  Look deeper and you will see the arts all around you.  That means someone else ignored what everyone had to say and rose up.  They succeeded and so can you.  When the negative seems to eat you up, focus on the positive.

I’m a pessimist at heart.  I always see the negative first.  But I can’t let people drag me down.  You can’t either.  Sometimes all it takes is a slight adjustment of how you view the world to set you back on track.

I write it.

I self edit it.

I send it to Beta Readers.

I self edit it (again).

I send it to a professional editor.

I fix it.

I have it published.

When I list it all out like this it seems very simple.  But anyone who has ever put words on paper knows it isn’t so simple.  Most writers understand the first part.  Write it.  And most writers are capable of sending it to a professional editor and changing what they mark up.  But many writers miss the middle parts.  And, like a sandwich, the meaty parts are in the middle.

Self Editing

If you’re going to send this off to professional editor, why is self editing so important?  Well, two things.  Editors are humans too, they won’t catch everything.  Especially if your manuscript is error plagued. Second, you will quickly find that you discover a lot about what doesn’t work in your story’s plot by doing a self edit.

When I self edit, I find that I still miss a lot.  So I learned a little trick, and tried it out for the first time with the Volition Agent manuscript. I printed the entire manuscript and went over it, using a red pen to mark up what changes I needed.  I use the red pen because it stands out.  So when I went back to make changes, I could find them quickly and fix them quickly.  I print it out because it gives me a chance to read my words in a different way than I did on a computer screen.  When you look at your words in a different way, things stick out that you would otherwise miss.

When I self edit, I look for the following things:

Grammar mistakes.  This is the first thing I look for, though I am also the first to admit I am very bad at catching them.  Though I did find that having the manuscript printed in front of me (versus on my computer screen) was much easier at seeing these things.  But still, I recognize that grammar is not my strong suit so I do my best with checking for this stuff.

Punctuation errors. For me, this is most often missing punctuation.  No period.  Using a period when I meant for a question mark. The other thing that I have a habit of doing is putting a quotation mark at the end of the paragraphs during multiple paragraph dialogue (by one speaker). So I have to remove those.

Typos. I type at 60 words a minute with no errors.  But when I write my stories, I typed at 80-90 words per minute with a lot of errors.  Some have told me to just slow down.  But when I type from my mind, my mind goes much faster then 60 words a minute.  Probably much faster then 90 words per minute.  So I often find a lot of typos, missing words, or added words.  Easy to fix, and really easy to spot when you read it.

Plot Errors. I’m not an outline writer, so I ofter find things in the early chapters that I missed or didn’t need to continue the story for the later chapters.  I’d say 90% of my red marks on my manuscript this time around were for plot and prose issues.  Either to remove something or to add something.  In fact, I reworked the entire ending and will be going back to add 5 new chapters throughout the book.  Some will say this is why outlines work.  But I also know many outline writers.  They too say the bulk of their self editing goes to the plot.  The most important part of your story is the plot, followed by how you tell it.  Remember this doesn’t just include missing or extra plot points.  This includes all aspects of your story not related to the above topics.

Said Tag.  English teachers love to tell you about the 1,000 different way to say ‘said’ or now I think they want to make it a million ways.  It is all a bunch of bull. It is made up by English teachers (just like the author’s message). Said is the simplest (and most over looked) word to describe dialogue.  Since I write a lot of official reports at work, I am am trained to write “stated” on most dialogue in my reports.  So I often find my stories are loaded with “stated” instead of “said”. So I have to fix those.  But the best way to break up dialogue is not with “said” but with some type of action.  For example: “I’m writing my blog,” Richard didn’t even look away from what he was doing.  His fingers still clicked on the keyboard. “I’ll take care of the garbage when I am done.”  So where applicable, I avoid using any dialogue tag and use action.

Repeated words.  My characters like to look at each other a lot.  They also love to smile.  So I often over use those two words.  Repeated words are not always bad, sometimes it is required to make a point.  But overuse of any word will be noticed by a reader and can become jarring.  So I look for those.  I also look for repeated phrases and dialogue points through out my story.

What are Beta Readers?

I’m having a heck of a time finding beta readers for Volition Agent. I think this is largely because people don’t understand what a beta reader is.  If you know video games, beta testers get their hands on an early copy (not finished) of a game.  They get to play it and in return they provide feedback to the game developer.  They let them know about glitches in the game, issues with game play, story elements that seem out of place, and an overall opinion of the game.  The developers take that information consider it all and then make changes where they think they should.

Beta readers do the same thing.  They get an early copy of the book.  They read over it, point out mistakes, things that confused them, story issues, grammar mistakes, and provide an overall opinion of the story.  The writer takes all this information and uses it to make the book better.  Just as a developer won’t change everything the testers complain about, an author won’t change everything.  But they will make the story better as a result of the Beta Readers’ input.

Authors need a cross section of beta readers.  I recommend you get a few who don’t read your genre.  I recommend a few that are writers.  Also a few that are editors.  And then a few that are just readers of your genre.  Can you have too many beta readers?  Yes.  If you get overloaded with information it won’t do you any good.  But if you have too few readers, then you won’t get a good sampling for your book.  The number is up to you.  Somewhere between not enough and too much is what I recommend.

Beta Reading shouldn’t be confused with Advanced Reader Copies (ARC).  Typically ARCs are finished.  They are handed out to reviewers in exchange to get review quotes to hopefully use on the book itself. That’s how all those review quotes wind up on the book the day it is published.  Sometimes review quotes are gathered from Beta copies, but that isn’t the purpose of a beta reader.  The beta reader is there to improve the work so the author can put out the best story possible.  Advanced Readers are there so the author can better market their work.

Why self edit again?

If you took all the information from beta readers, and did nothing with it.  Well that would be a complete waste of everyone’s time.  While you might not change everything the beta readers point out.  If the majority of them say that a certain scene doesn’t work.  It would be best if you made it work.  Once you make significant changes you need to review those changes for yourself, the same way you did the first time.  That will involve a whole rereading.  But it is worth it to put out the best book you can.

Once you’ve got the meat together in you sandwich, it’s time for the top piece of bread.  Get a professional editor and have them review it.  Then your sandwich, um I mean story, will be ready for the masses.

I am going on a blog book tour with Dissolution of Peace.  The book and I will be traveling through the virtual world to attend various blogs to spread the word about my book.  I’m excited about this since it will allow me to share a little bit about me and the book with a new audience.  You can visit these blogs and see interviews, guest posts, and book reviews.  I will be on tour from April 8th until May 13th this year!

Dates:

As I mentioned above I will be traveling blog to blog from April 8th until May 13th.  There are still a number of dates available so if you would like to get in on the tour, it isn’t too late.  There are still several open dates available.  If you want one, just go here (link) and pick a date.  Then scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see “Would you like to host this author on your blog?“  Click the link and sign up.

The folks over at Orangeberry Book Tours are hosting this tour for me.  They’ve taken a ton of the work out of it so I just get to hang out at various blogs.  While I will try to keep the listed dates below updated, for the most current dates and locations visit my Tour page.

While I hope you will go check out each blog host before and after my posts, I will be posting links to blog tour posts throughout the tour on my Facebook and Twitter pages.  So if you don’t follow me there, please do.

Terms:

Book Feature: A quick feature just announcing the basics about Dissolution of Peace

Twitter View: A interview with me over Twitter.  I’ll be off work so I am going to do my best to answer these questions live.

Twitter Blast: A collection of book quotes sent out via Twitter.  Please RT the heck out of those.

Book Review:  Just that, a review of Dissolution of Peace

Author Interview: An interview with me, posted on their blog.

Guest Post: This is a post I write for their blog, as a guest.

Tour Dates and Locations:

8th April – Book Feature at Peace from Pieces

9th April – Twitter View with OB Book Tours

10th April – Twitter Blast with OB Book Tours

11th April – Author Interview at Mommy Adventures

12th April - Guest Post at The Bunny’s Review

13th April - Twitter Blast with OB Book Tours

14th April - Book Feature & Author Interview at The Reading Cat

15th April - Guest Post at Blog-A-Licious Authors 

16th April - Book Feature & Author Interview at Author’s Friend

17th April – Guest Post at Kindle Nook Books

18th April – Book Feature at Paws on Books

19th April – Guest Post & Book Feature at Anya Breton‘s blog

20th April – Book Feature at Book Professor

21st April – Author Interview & Book Feature at Michael R McDuffee‘s blog

22nd April – Guest Post at Books Are Magic

23rd April – Author Interview & Book Review at Pages 2 Pages

24th April – Guest Post  at Disincentive Reviews

25th April – Book Feature at Book Professor

26th April – Guest Post at Quality Reads

27th April – Author Interview at Fantasy Books

28th April – Book Feature at eInk Reviews

29th April – Book Feature at My Love for Books

30th April -Book Feature at Brainy Reads

1st May – Book Feature at Pages to Chapters

2nd May – Book Feature at Living for Books

3rd May – Orangeberry Pick of the Week & Sidebar

3rd May – Guest Post, Author Interview & Book Feature at Talisman Book Publishing

4th May – Book Feature at Gentleman Reads

5th May – Book Feature at Working For Books

6th May – Book Feature at My Love for Books

7th May – Book Feature at Aspiring Book Reviews

8th May – Book Feature at Reading My Addiction

9th May – Book Feature at Imagination in Books

10th May - Orangeberry Book of the Day – Gentleman Reads – Excerpt /

11th May – Author Interview at Up In Smoke

12th May – Guest Post at Richard Stephenson‘s blog

13th May – End of Tour Celebration post! at Flores Factor.

Blog Tour Giveaway!

This book tour will include the largest giveaway I’ve done to date.  There will be some great prizes including: Signed Paperbacks, Free Paperbacks, Free eBooks, and an Amazon Gift card.  This is hosted by Rafflecopter and there are multiple ways to enter.  The giveaway will end on May 19th.  Check back with the giveaway often because as more blogs post, more entries will be possible.  In fact, you get five entries just by entering this GIVEAWAY CODE: “E.S.S. Australia”

You can find the Giveaway on my Facebook page: CLICK HERE FOR A DIRECT LINK

I can’t wait to see you all on the tour!

Rejection from readers, well I hadn’t really prepared myself for that.  Sure, I had heard about it from other authors. Sometimes readers won’t like what you do.  They won’t like what you write.  They just won’t enjoy the stories you have to tell.  Rejection makes it sound harsher than that.  I’m certain people have read my stories and not liked them.

But the other day I got my first real hate email.  I use the term hate, because it wasn’t my story they hated, it was one aspect.  A small part of the story really.  Truthfully, I hadn’t even given much thought to the element of the story.  It was just there.

This person wrote me an email, roughly three pages long, insulting me because one of the main characters in Dissolution of Peace is a homosexual.   If you haven’t read the book, you might not know what I am talking about.  But one of the main characters discovers she is a lesbian through the course of the novel.  The email writer went on to call me the “devil” and that I was a “demon” at several points.  She clearly read the whole book, as she referenced parts from throughout the novel, but she just wasn’t happy it included a lesbian couple.  She told me, “I can’t believe you ruined this excellent story by putting homosexuals into it.” and “You could have just as easily made one of those characters male and kept the book clean.” and “You just used this story to push your pro gay agenda.”

Frankly, the email shocked me.  It shocked me for several reasons.  First, I never gave a second thought to Janice’s relationship with Willard.  Second, I just never had anyone so upset with something I had wrote.  And the best part, she never even mentioned the scene in which Carlson walked in on Willard and Janice during sex.

Typically I don’t respond to negative comments about my work, but since many will see this blog as a form of response, I must say a few things.  First, I am very happy to hear that this person thought my story was “excellent”.  Several times she told me how great the book was, in between the other points she had to make.  I have no “pro gay agenda”.  I am not opposed to homosexual relationships, and I am not opposed to gay marriage.  But, Dissolution of Peace is not about that.  If you only find a “pro gay” message in that book, well each reader will see the message that calls to them.  Finally, I couldn’t have made Willard or Janice a male character, because that is not who they are.  Writer’s know that their characters become real people.  Janice became who she became, regardless of what I wanted (or didn’t want) her to be.  I couldn’t have changed her any more than I could change the person who emailed me’s mind.

As a writer, you may never want to put a homosexual person in your stories simply to play it safe.  But where do you draw the line?  Will you never have any discussion or mention of politics?  What about feminism, social commentary, or even humor?  If you sterilize your writing to try to keep everyone happy, you will wind up with a story that few will want to read.  Even if you can write an excellent story that walks the line and avoids hot button issues, someone won’t like it because of your style, plot, or for no real reason at all.  We are a vast and diverse world.  It is a beautiful thing.  But is also means that eventually someone will read something written and simply not like it.

Should you go out of your way to offend?  No.  Shock value rarely works either.  Write the story you want to write with the characters, world, and plot that you want.  Writers want people to enjoy their stories.  But not everyone will.  You just can’t please everyone.  Don’t try to.  Just write the story you want to tell and let the chips fall where they may.

And for the readers out there, please understand something about writers.  To build worlds and create believable elements we must include people of all types regardless of our personal beliefs.  Writers have to include murders, corrupt people, evil people, and bigots in our worlds.  Why?  These people exist and will likely exist for all time.  I don’t condone murder, but the antagonist of Dissolution of Peace is a murder.  A writer might write a racist character, that doesn’t mean the writer has an “agenda” against a particular race.  Most readers know this, and see a story for what it means to them.

I appreciate the readers, and the feedback.  Even the negative feedback helps me as a writer (even the feedback I don’t agree with).

My next novel, titled Volition Agent, is a fast paced SciFi Thriller set in the near future.  The highly secretive Agency has a Volition program.  They take everyday people who are physically fit and recruit them as Volition Agents.  They are implanted with a control chip so that a highly trained “handler” can control their every action.  If a Agent is captured the loss to the Agency in minimal.  Agents are sent on missions from intelligence gatherings to assassinations.  Volition Agent followed Lexia, one of the agents.

Here is a tentative blurb:

Lexia Santarelli is part of a top secret group of Volition Agents.  These untrained, unremarkable, everyday people are recruited by the agency to be literally controlled by their “handler” through a device implanted in their necks.  It is an exciting life, and despite some of the annoyances, Lexia enjoys it.

That is until the Agency decides to let Lexia take the fall for a mission gone wrong.  Her link with her handler, Lance is severed.  Suddenly Lexia finds herself alone, unprepared, and hunted by the very people she trusted.

With few clues, minimal training, and an unlikely ally Lexia sets out to discover what really happened on that botched assignment.  Determined to set right the wrong she created, nothing can stand in her way.  Not even the Agency itself.

I have some great cover art for this novel, and I can’t wait to share it with you all.  So here it is:

Copyright 2013 Kristin Irons Photography

The cover art is shot and designed by Kristin Irons (website).  I’ve worked with Kristin before, she designed the logo for Plasma Spyglass Press. Kristin is a very talented photographer and when I explained what I was looking for she said she had an idea.  The next week was a bit of a whirlwind.  Kristin found a model, the very beautiful and talented Joy Anna, to play Lexia in a photo shoot.  She then teased me relentlessly with images from that photo shoot before showing me the image she had in mind for the cover art.  I am a very picky and hard to work with person when it comes to cover art, but she kept taking my ideas and reworking them until we came up with the cover above.  And I couldn’t be more thrilled by it.

Let me tell you why this cover is so special to me.  This is the first time I’ve had anyone “play” one of my character in any way.  Joy Anna, whose modeling pictures I had only seen briefly before this, jumped into this project head first.  I understand they captured a ton of images and I’ve only seen a few of them. As a writer, I was excited to see what might come from this.  I’ve never met, or even talked to Joy Anna but I thank her for her time because the results are absolutely amazing.

A big heartfelt thanks to Joy Anna, Kristin, and her assistant William Harris.  So many folks use stock art, or stock photos to make custom cover art.  But I have a real custom cover for this novel.  Please take a moment to check out the people that helped with this cover, give them a like, follow, or whatever else to show them some support.  Kristin Irons: Facebook, Twitter, Website  Joy Anna: Facebook William Harris: Flickr

This is the first story I have written where it had a title before I ever wrote it.  The whole idea came from hearing the word volition and it’s meaning; the ability to make a choice or decision.  So Volition Agent was an easy enough title for me to come up with.  I think it works well given the themes in this novel.

So when is the release date for Volition Agent?  One hasn’t been set just yet.  But I have a deadline of the first week of June 2013.  So expect to see it no later than this.  I hope to have it out a little sooner, but you can’t rush these things.  I’ll be sending it out for Beta Readers in the first two weeks of April.  Then my editor will get this.  I’ll be working with a new editor this time, since Robert is booked up for the foreseeable future.  As always, watch this blog, my Twitter and Facebook for updates.

I’ll leave you with a few other images from the photo shoot:

Copyright 2013 Kristin Irons

Copyright 2013 Kristin Irons

Copyright 2013 Kristin Irons

Working.

Oh how I love and hate my day job at the same time.  The last two weeks I worked sixteen hours of overtime.  They have decided to unveil a new system at work, and I was chosen to be one of the trainers on this new system.  While the system will make one aspect of our job so much easier, it takes time to teach everyone.  Work already takes over 40 hours a week of my life.  It would be great to make my writing and editing my day job.

Plasma Frequency. 

Now here is one project I love to do.  But let me tell you how much work it takes.  Issue 4 has been one of our best and most highly read issues to date.  That is great news.  But the talent submitting to us has become so good that picking just eight to ten stories every two months has become very difficult.  Even my earlier reading editors are finding it harder to reject stories.  I think it is great to see so much talent coming to our magazine.  As a writer, I love to see other writers succeed.  As a business man, I love to see some of these big names seeing my publication as worthy of their work.  As an editor, well my work has become a lot harder.  For issue five I had to narrow down 25 great stories to just the eight that would fit in our issue.  That is hard work, and very time consuming.  I debated for a long time on many of those stories.

Speaking of Business.

I had two magazines approach my company, Plasma Spyglass, and ask if we would be interested in taking over their magazine’s production.  I won’t name the magazines, but I will say I think they are great publications.  So I had to make some tough business choices over the last few weeks.  While Plasma Spyglass does have every intention of putting out more magazines, I had not expected to do it so soon.  Plasma Frequency is not even one year old yet.  And for the time being we are going to focus on growing that publication first.  We still have the goal of advancing our pay rates to pro-rates, and I want to follow through on that.  Plus we have our year one anthology coming soon.  And we will be announcing more about that in Issue 5.  So much is going on, or about to go on, with Plasma Frequency that I had to pass on these other two great offers.  But don’t count us out.  I think Plasma Spyglass will be publishing a number of different publications by 2014.  And by 2018, I suspect we will be doing very well in the short fiction market place.

We do have plans for a charitable anthology coming soon.  Once I have heard back from the charitable organization, more details will come.  We are also considering many other great things.  So, needless to say business has taken up a lot of my time outside of work.

Writing.

Just last week I finally got more written into my next novel.  I plan to make an announcement on that one very soon.  The first draft should be completed by next week (fingers crossed).  After which I will begin rereading and editing.  And, I plan to contact a cover artist soon.  So I am thinking that I will announce the release date with the cover art in April.  Get ready for this one, it promises to be a great one.

Speaking of great books, the sales for Dissolution of Peace have faltered a bit.  I think this is because all of my great followers now own a copy.  So it is time I branch out and reach some new followers.  I am planning on doing a blog tour.  Perhaps in May?  Maybe sooner.  I would really love one in April.  But scheduling these things takes time (as I am am learning).  So I plan to get that underway soon.  Watch for more details on that.  Make sure to share some love with those blogs that host my tour.

Chores.

I thought I was a grown up now and work was my chore.  Well the front and back lawns seem to disagree.  There is a ton of yard work to do around here, and I get stuck doing it.  Some people love that stuff.  Time in the yard pulling weeds, mowing the grass, that is fun for them.  For me, not so much.  I’d much prefer to hire a landscaper and just admire how great it looks when they are done.  But writers can’t afford landscapers, and besides my wife would insist we got a maid first.

Family time.

My family and I don’t see each other much right now.  My wife works on the days I am off, and I work when she is off.  My hours don’t lend well to having school age kids, as I am at work all afternoon and evening when they are home.  When I get home, they are in bed.  So I have been trying to make some extra time for them around all this other madness.  I took my kids to their first professional hockey game, actually their first ever hockey game.  My middle child was so overly excited, it was a great thing to see.  Besides that, I try to make some time for TV, movies, and other activities with them.  Family is important.  More important than everything else I’ve listed here.  So I make time for them and I hope someday my kids will really appreciate the fact that their dad pursued his dream to publish novels.  I also hope that one day, I’ll make just enough money on my dream that I don’t have to “work” any more.  Ah, the good life.

But in all seriousness, I loved the idea. First, supporting our post office and keeping them sending letters is important. Those are jobs that could be lost if we continue down the path we are on. I like the post office. I use them for all my package shipping, and besides it would be nice to get something in my mailbox other than a bill and pizza coupons.

But there really is more to this for me. I am a fan of the letter. I have been since back in high school when I would write them on sheets of binder paper, fold them up into all different crazy types of shapes and then write SECRET on it. There was something about the written correspondence back then, and the waiting for a response was even better. Nothing was cooler then knowing someone took time to write to you, most likely when they should have been doing something else.

I’m not some old man either. Though I have been out of High School for nearly fourteen years, we had email and instant messenger back then. What we didn’t have was texts, we used pager code. And email, we actually used that to send letters. We used instant messenger back then to meet people, I met my only two serious loves via the internet.

Let’s face it; messenger wasn’t a substitute for the letter back then. We still mailed letters, we still sent birthday cards, we even hand wrote things back then. Slowly we stopped sending letters and began sending emails. But emails were still long, and talked about everything going on with us that week. At first, email was simply letters we could get faster.

And now, well now we don’t email anyone. We don’t have time to email anyone, let alone write a letter and send it in the “snail mail”. We’ve resorted to texts, Facebook statuses, Tweets, and private messages.

Yet, as we are able to instantly communicate with each other so easily, we seem to be drifting farther and farther apart. I hardly talk to my closest friends anymore. One tells me; sorry I haven’t emailed you back I’ve been too busy. I can’t even get a text from her. The other sends me a few texts once a month when I have to contact her about something else. Three live in the same city as me, yet we never seem to catch up. And another one is in another country so chatting sometimes doesn’t work out so well.

And there is the beauty of the letter. You can write it at three am when you can’t sleep, and I can read it at four pm when I have a free minute at work. You can tell me some of the best things about you, and I can share them with you. We can go back to writing questions like: What kind of food to do you like? What is our favorite color? What sports do you like? And much more. You can really find out something about someone. So much more than the fact that they like to post mad cat pictures.

In a time where I can find out so much about a person simply from a Facebook page or a blog, the art of conversation is really becoming lost, the written word even more so. But there is more to it than that.

There is no greater feeling in the world then seeing that I got some letters from a friend, even an email from friend. There is a little bit of excitement when you open the mailbox and there is something there other than junk. You feel like you mattered to someone. Someone cared enough to take the time to really connect with you. I’m a social person, and I am a person that needs to be appreciated. I need to know that people care about me. Letters, even emails, show that.

So that is why I was excited about Letter Writing month, or LetterMo as others say. It means that I get to send out 28 letters and hopefully they will send me something back. Who knows, maybe I will even meet a few more people and we can exchange letters year round.

I miss the days of long letters and emails. I miss really connecting with people and learning more about them. I don’t want to see letters go the way of so many other things. We live in an age where we have each other literally at our fingertips, yet we are so distant from each other in any real way.

It is only the fourth of the month. So go over to LetterMo.com and join the challenge. Fill a few mailboxes with affection and make a real connection with someone. You will probably find you like it a little bit better than the text message.