Guest Post--Nick Wilford

Thanks for having me over as part of my blog tour today, Sandra. Today, one of the young characters from my book would like to take you on a tour around his hometown.

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Hi! Mallinger here, but you can call me Mal. I’d like to show you around a bit of my hometown, Fusterbury. It’s a big place, lots of people live here, but we all get along and rub along OK. Let’s start off with my lovely home. Some great work on the mud walls there – when it comes to repairs, we all have to muck in and do our bit. I’ve got a nice pile of straw just over at the side there, really comfy. It’s a bit cramped in here, with me, my dad, and three brothers and four sisters. But it used to be four brothers and six sisters. And my mum. She died when my littlest sister was born. Yeah, we’ve got a problem with this disease we’ve got here, can’t seem to get rid of it. But it makes us appreciate the time we get together even more. Looks like the kids are playing a nice game of noughts and crosses with sticks and leaves. Let’s go and have a walk around outside.

So I’ve got all my neighbours here. They all live in pretty similar huts, but we like to think ours is the best. Just a little joke, though. We all help each other where we can. Lots of kids running around today, looks like the rain’s off for a bit. Everyone has big families here, means there’s a better chance of the family name carrying on. There’s a few kids making a big castle out of the mud. Looks great! Come on, let’s see some more of the town. Watch out for the river. I know it’s a bit brown, but it’s where we get our water. We try to boil as much of it as we can.

Just a few streets up this way, we’ve got the town square. A good few shops round here, we can get our clothes patched up and there’s a cobbler’s too. It helps if you’ve got something to trade, like a good juicy rat. There’s also a medicine man who deals in these creams, they relieve some of the physical symptoms of the disease but we all know they don’t do anything to cure it. Oh well, whatever helps. Then of course, we’ve got the centrepiece of the city – the Monument of the Dead. It’s not morbid or grim or anything, it’s our way of keeping a part of our loved ones here with us when they pass on. A bit of them gets added to the pile, sometimes just a finger bone or a whole skull. It’s a big pile, so we often have to shore it up if we get a landslip somewhere.

Apart from that, we’ve got outlying villages in the countryside, dotted all around. They might have their own monuments, but I haven’t visited. Everything I need is right here. We haven’t got much, I know, but we’ve got each other. That’s what counts.

Title: Black & White

Author: Nick Wilford

Genre: YA dystopian Series #: 1 of 3

Release date: 18th September 2017

Publisher: Superstar Peanut Publishing

Blurb:

What is the price paid for the creation of a perfect society?

In Whitopolis, a gleamingly white city of the future where illness has been eradicated, shock waves run through the populace when a bedraggled, dirt-stricken boy materialises in the main street. Led by government propaganda, most citizens shun him as a demon, except for Wellesbury Noon – a high school student the same age as the boy.

Upon befriending the boy, Wellesbury feels a connection that he can’t explain – as well as discovering that his new friend comes from a land that is stricken by disease and only has two weeks to live. Why do he and a girl named Ezmerelda Dontible appear to be the only ones who want to help?

As they dig deeper, everything they know is turned on its head – and a race to save one boy becomes a struggle to redeem humanity.

Purchase Links:

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Smashwords / Barnes & Noble / Kobo / iBooks

Add it on Goodreads

Meet the author:

Nick Wilford is a writer and stay-at-home dad. Once a journalist, he now makes use of those early morning times when the house is quiet to explore the realms of fiction, with a little freelance editing and formatting thrown in. When not working he can usually be found spending time with his family or cleaning something. He has four short stories published in Writer’s Muse magazine. Nick is also the editor of Overcoming Adversity: An Anthology for Andrew. Visit him at his blog or connect with him on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, or Amazon.

Enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy of my collection A Change of Mind and Other Stories or a $10 giftcard! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Guest Post: The Audio Book Process

When I offered to host other writers on this blog, Alex J Cavanaugh was one of the first to respond. Read below to learn how his popular books became audio books.

Over a year ago, my publisher announced they would be moving into audio books. During the next two years, the most successful titles would convert to audio. I had no idea what to expect. Even scarier – my Cassa trilogy would be first!

Now, I can only tell this story from the viewpoint of an author with a publisher taking care of the audio. Self-published authors will take on a lot more work than I did during the process. But many of the steps will be the same.

Once my first book began receiving auditions, my publisher passed along the best ones. This is where my input mattered. I was warned that the narrator wouldn’t read my book exactly the way I’d envisioned it. I was just to select the best of the lot, the one who not only got the voices right but captured the essence of the story. My favorite was Michael Burnette – and fortunately, he was also my publisher’s favorite.

The narrator selected, my next task was to make a list. Since I write science fiction, the first part was to list all of the potentially challenging words and their pronunciations. I had to search through my manuscript for names, places, and things that might cause confusion. I had to type out the word and its correct pronunciation. (To the best of my ability – Ernx is easy to pronounce but tough to describe how to pronounce.)

I was also asked to list all of the main characters and describe them. What did they sound like? What was their personality like? The narrator would take a lot from what I’d written, but it helped him to know up front a bit about the characters.

After that, the narrator went to work. I received a chapter now and then, just to be sure the narrator was on track with everything. (Michael Burnette narrated all four of my books and put together the Cassa boxed set for audio, and only once during that time did he pronounce something wrong that had to be changed.) There was one instance where he selected a different pronunciation than what I’d envisioned. But you know what? His was better. So I let it go.

And I think that’s the biggest thing with audio books. As authors, we have this vision in our head of how everything looks and sounds. But so do our readers. And every one of those visions is different. Our narrators will also see our story in a different light. We have to accept that. No matter what, as long as the narrator is good, it will be all right.

I’m fortunate that all four of my books – and one boxed set – are available as audio books now. It blows my mind to see them offered in three different formats – print, eBook, and audio. Plus hearing them, especially with all the layers of special effects my narrator added – well, I can hardly believe I wrote those stories. (The last two in particular. Really, I wrote that?)

Even more fun – my publisher has been running a giveaway the past couple months on Twitter for all of their audio books. (And I believe one of mine is the current giveaway!) https://twitter.com/DancingLemurPre

So, if you get the chance to get into audio books, I highly recommend it. Just keep an open mind and work with your narrator. Let that person bring your books to life!

Alex J. Cavanaugh

http://alexjcavanaugh.com/

http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/

http://twitter.com/AlexJCavanaugh    

Alex J. Cavanaugh has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and works in web design, graphics, and technical editing. A fan of all things science fiction, his interests range from books and movies to music and games. Online he is the Ninja Captain and founder of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. He’s the author of Amazon Best-Sellers CassaStar, CassaFire, CassaStorm, and Dragon of the Stars. The author lives in the Carolinas with his wife.

Audio Links:

Dragon of the Stars

Amazon

ITunes

Audible 

CassaStar

Amazon

ITunes

Audible 

CassaFire

Amazon

ITunes

Audible 

 

CassaStorm

Amazon

ITunes

Audible 

CassaSeries boxed set

Amazon

ITunes

Audible

Dancing Lemur Press LLC - http://www.dancinglemurpressllc.com/

Got a Guest Post or Something to Promote?

Remember how last week I blogged about outlining my next urban fantasy series before starting to write it? Well, I do have some notes on the final book, but I couldn't resist diving into the first book, currently called Dryads to Discover. I'm not very far into it, as I haven't got much writing done at home the last few evenings. Still, it's a start. I'm also working on three crochet projects (I need to finish two Star Wars characters by this Saturday and a blanket by Labor Day weekend) and going through Summon the Seasons again for another round of edits. All of this sure keeps me busy, though it doesn't necessarily inspire me with interesting material for the blog. So...anyone else want to propose topic for a guest post? Or do you have a science fiction/fantasy book you'd like to promote? Please let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I have some writing and crocheting to do.

Guest Post by Aviva Rothschild

  My friend Aviva Rothschild recently published a sequel to her Beatles/gaming novel With Strings Attached. It's called The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. She's here to discuss some of the themes in Keys. Take it away, Aviva!

            Many thanks to Sandra for giving me this space today!

            Almost six years ago I finished what turned out to be a 29-year project: the Beatles fanfic fantasy novel, With Strings Attached, or The Big Pink Job. I'd always had sequels in mind, and I had gotten started on the first one while finishing up Strings. It went through several name changes (not to mention plot changes), but I settled on The Keys Stand Alone. Because it's turning out to be longer than Strings, I decided to split it into two volumes; hence, the first volume is now The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. (The second volume will be Keys: The Hard World.) It is currently available in a Kindle version on Amazon, and I intend to have the hard copy version done within a few days.

            Strings followed our heroes in 1980, when they suddenly found themselves thrown together on a planet called C'hou, sixteen years younger and terrified out of their minds. One thing led to another, and by the end of the book they'd been considerably empowered and had accomplished a universe-spanning quest to remove a curse from a continent... though their actions resulted in even greater changes to the entirety of C'hou, as well as changes to themselves and their peace of mind. Changes that they would confront ten weeks later in Keys, after having been sent back to Earth in their original bodies. While those days had been slipping by here, C'hou saw almost six years go by, and our heroes quickly discover that now nearly everything is different, including the landscape and the inhabitants.

            Not to mention the war that had broken out in the interim between the newly established White and Black Towers. And the huge swarm of outworlders who had been imported by the enfeebled White Tower gods to fight for them, but who tended to fight one another more than the Black Tower and its minions.

            So here come our peace-minded heroes, more powerful than nearly everyone else but absolutely opposed to the violence around them. Imagine their horror when they're told by the gods that they must help one of the outworlder Power Groups defeat the Black Tower, or they'll never get home!

             Strings touched upon a lot of the themes in Keys, but with more time to mull everything over, I did my best to more fully examine certain problems inherent in both the situation and in the kind of empowerment that our heroes experienced. For example, what is good? What is evil? How contextual are they? What happens when people, especially powerful people rubbing up against one another, have very different definitions of good and evil? Is pacifism always good, or are there times when it could be considered evil?  I do not and cannot provide answers, but hopefully I convey how complicated such questions are, and how seeing things in simple black-and-white terms is fairly useless in real-world situations.

            Keys is also sort of a parallel to the middle part of the Beatles experience, in that what they once found fun and exciting in Strings has now become much more toxic, if not outright deadly. Again, the toxicity is both internal and external to them. Not only must they deal with magic that can be dangerously unreliable—or worse, dangerously seductive—but they find that nearly everyone wants something from them. And quite often, what people want is not something that our heroes want to give....

            At least, though, they have each other. At least they can trust one another. If Keys does nothing else, it reestablishes what a tight unit the four can be, and had been at their peak. It reminds readers that whatever their differences, the four loved one another deeply and shared something that no one else can really fully comprehend.

The Kindle edition of The Keys Stand Alone is here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MROVWSZ

Curious about With Strings Attached, or want to buy a copy in one of several different formats? http://www.rationalmagic.com/Strings/Strings.html

 

The Facebook page for Strings, which includes some artwork not in the book or on the website: https://www.facebook.com/With-Strings-Attached-Fan-Page-111118925586155/

Aviva's Bio: Aviva Rothschild is the world's most overeducated fanfic writer. In the past she worked as a book editor, technical writer, and (briefly) website designer. Currently she writes, makes soap, and sells stuff on eBay in the store “Gatsby's Great Stuff.” Besides her Beatles writing, she's known for having written the very first bibliography of graphic novels, Graphic Novels: A Bibliographic Guide to Book-Length Comics. Naturally, she collects graphic novels. She also collects musical theatre recordings on CDs and other musical formats.