Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Hymns of the West... and Faith Blum as a Secret Agent? ;-)

Hey! Has anybody here read anything by author, and homeschool alumni, Faith Blum? Her latest book is on blog tour, going on now.
(Wow! Doesn't "on blog tour" just sound so much neater then expected?!)


 And.... *drum roll, please,* ...E. Kaiser Writes-A-Blog is part! 

 *Low tones* Here, we speak with Faith about her deepest fears... um, desires... well, more like... some kind of regular writer chit-chat kind of things,  actually. (At first. Stay tuned for delving deeper behind her mask, though.)

E: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
F: Definitely editing. I can edit other people’s books and pick out typos, but with my own stories, I have a hard time doing so.

E: Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?
F: This is like trying to pick your favorite book or the limb or body part you would most like to live without. I guess I’ll say Jaye L. Knight. I don’t typically like fantasy books, so when I heard about her new book, I was a little hesitant to read it. I’m hooked on her books now. She wrote fantasy that works and doesn’t have magic in it. She also manages to mix God into her stories without beating you over the head with Him.

E: Do you have to travel much concerning your books?
F: I wish! I would love to travel to the places I write about, but finances would definitely not allow that at this time.

 E: Okay! Now that those boring questions are out of the way to sort of break the ice, how 'bout we take this up a notch, just 'cause we can do awe-inspiring things like that, hm? Now for some off the wall, shoot from the hip, knock-'em dead 'cause they never saw that coming, sort of Q&A!


E: Since you wish you could travel as part of your job; how 'bout if you were a super-secret-agent-spy type character? Where would your first dangerous mission be to?

F: Awesome question! I love the idea of being a super-secret-agent-spy type character. I’ve always been fascinated by Scotland, Russia, and Israel, so I would love for one of my missions to be there. And since Israel is the current hot spot, I would say either there or Russia. But maybe I could stop in Scotland for a quick sight-seeing trip/training mission? *hopeful grin*
 E: Hmmm... only if the enemy is hot on your tail, and you simply HAVE to unexpectedly change flights last minute at the airport. Then... how could HQ object? Right? And is it your fault if you are spotted as soon as your plane lands in Heathrow, and you are forced to hide on a flight to Scotland? And then you have to lay low for a couple weeks; translate= moving from place to place, disguised as a tourist. What could be more clever? Right?!!! 

  
 F: *laughs* I love it! Sounds like a great idea! That could totally work and totally be feasible!

 E: 2nd Fun Question: Would you be, 1) infiltrating enemy ranks to steal back top-secret data files kept on a chip embedded into a Ming dynasty vase?
 2) Cat burglaring their safe to retrieve the gems they intend to sell and finance their nefarious plans? 
or 3) Planting false documents on the head honcho to make him look like a double agent, so his cohorts no longer trust him, and they all start shooting each other instead?
F: Ze answer, Madamoiselle: Oh wow. That is a hard one. Um… *thinks* I think I would rather do #3 and plant false documents. Although, the second one sounds like something I would enjoy, too.
  Okay! Sounds like a plan... so... the heart of a cat burglar secretly beats behind those ribs, hm? I shall have to go check my valuables... be right back. 


Here's some stuff about Faith's book while I'm gone...


Excerpt & Description:  "The church was empty when I dragged myself out of the pew and headed out the door.  As I opened the door, the corner of my eye caught a flicker of movement which I chose to ignore.  I walked down the steps and was nearly bowled over by two wild boys.  With arms grown strong and quick from man-handling two brothers growing up, I grabbed the two boys before they had a chance to escape me."  ~  Anna Stuart is comfortable with her life.  She may be a 30 year old spinster, but she has her routine and enjoys taking care of her father and older brother.  One letter shatters all her routines, comfort, and enjoyment.  After learning of her brother’s death, Anna feels like her life will never be the same again.  ...  Then she meets two motherless boys.  Did God place them in her life to lead her to a new vision of life?  Can she trust God to give her the desires of her heart before she even knows what they are?

Bio:  An avid reader, Faith Blum started writing at an early age. Whether it was a story about the camping trip that summer or a more creative story about fictional characters, she has always enjoyed writing. When not writing, Miss Blum enjoys reading, crafting, playing piano, moderating on the Holy Worlds Historical Fiction Forum and playing games with her family (canasta, anyone?).  As a history enthusiast who has been fascinated for years with the Old West, Faith has endeavored to create a clean, fun, and challenging Western story. Faith lives with her family on a hobby farm in the Northern Midwest, where she enjoys the many cats they have.

Faith Blum's Website: http://www.faithblum.com/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/HymnsoftheWest
Twitter: www.Twitter.com/Faith_Blum
Google: https://plus.google.com/u/0/102215478367164319526/posts


E: Thanks for stopping by, everybody!!!
 And thanks for chatting with me, Faith! Someday we should go be super-secret-agent-spies together... Hey! Can we free-lance? That way nothing would be safe from us....

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

How would you live with one year left?

I’m participating in the “A Time to Die” Blog Hop!

  This hop is to spread the word about Nadine Brandes’s new dystopian novel, A Time to Die, releasing September 23rd. It is also to encourage myself and others to look deeper into how we would live if we knew how short our time was.
Nadine Brandes "A Time To Die."


 Personally, I’ve actually thought about this subject a lot, ever since I was a little girl. (The Little House books kind of started a fascination with the dreadful, I guess… I used to pretend I was blind Mary, just to see how that would be. ‘Till mom forbade it… ;-) )
 The sudden losses of almost all my extended family didn’t help things, I’m sure. (Grandparents, uncles… my last, and youngest, uncle died in an accident at 30 years of age. I was in my mid teens.)
 I kind of went through each day as if I was only separated from the grave by a hair… which definitely is a realistic view, and kept me concentrating on the important things, such as my spiritual walk, and relationships with my family.
 But it was a rather oppressive life perspective, and I’ve been able to grow into the view of being given an infinite amount of time, who can tell when my time will be up? It could be long and lengthy! ;-)
 Anyway, I kind of put my life on hold even as a teen, I felt unsure of being able to finish any big project, and so just kept “to the ruts in the road” kind of thing.
 So, now, I’ve concentrated on living: I want to take my mom and sis to Florida one winter, and visit the Disney park there. 2016 maybe? (My parents went after they got married, and Mom has always talked about wanting to take us kids there. Now that we’re all grown, I’d like to take her, instead. :-) )
 And I want to finish my books. I’ve got a second series started this year, (3 ms. completed, 2 more to go! ;-) ) and I want to clear out the WIPs on my hard drive from the past ten years. :-) I’ve come to the “finishing season” of my writing career, and so I’m anxious to get those unfinished jewels cut, polished and complete. :-)
 I have a year to live… and many more after that! But if I should wake up one morning and have that be my last, there is nothing I’d regret. I am safe in the hand of a King much more capable and important than anything I could ever do, say or think, so if He’s okay with my going home…. I’m WAY more than okay with it!

Parvin Blackwater believes she has wasted her life. At only seventeen, she has one year left according to the Clock by her bedside. In a last-ditch effort to make a difference, she tries to rescue Radicals from the government’s crooked justice system.
But when the authorities find out about her illegal activity, they cast her through the Wall — her people’s death sentence. What she finds on the other side about the world, about eternity, and about herself changes Parvin forever and might just save her people. But her Clock is running out.
This is the first book in the Out of Time Series. Released September 23rd from Enclave Publishing.

   Nadine's Website: www.nadinebrandes.com



Other blog hoppers! :-)
 9.03.14 – Nadine Brandes
9.08.14 – Ashlee Willis
9.11.14 – Caitlin Schesser
9.15.14 – Jennette Mbewe
9.17.14 – Heather Fitzgerald
9.19.14 – Kristen Stieffel
9.22.14 – Rebekah Gyger
9.25.14 – Lydia Thomas
9.26.14 – Ashley Olson
9.27.14 – Angel Roman
9.28.14 – Rosalie Valentine
9.29.14 – Aubrei Crooke-Adams
9.30.14 - Sarah Grimm
10.01.14 – Jon Del Arroz
10.02.14 – Amy Brandes
10.04.14 – Kathrese McKee
10.07.14 – Karen DeBlieck
10.09.14 – Bethany Jennings
10.10.14 – Angie Brashear
10.13.14 – Adam Collings
10.15.14 – Bree Courtney
10.20.14 – Gretchen Engel
10.24.14 – JC Morrows
10.30.14 – Lisa Gedfries
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Monday, October 13, 2014

October Update: 20k is Down and OUT!!!

Okay, peoples!!!
 
 I'm just as thrilled as pink peaches to announce to the world today that my 20k for October is
Found at FrontPorchCandles; don't they look scrumptious?!
accomplished!!!
 (Post-scriptus: I wrote this on Saturday, but since my poor blog already had a post that day, I set this to post on Monday. Wink)

   I had several thousand words left over in September from that month's 20k goal to "pay forward" towards October's... which was a good start for "Month Before NaNo Crunch Time".

   ...And then I had a good sit down with my main-brain side-kick and plot-planning partner, and we roughed in some timelines and got several sticky details nailed down.

 (P.S. Snapp and Snurr are some long lived reindeer! They're treading 13 years old now, at this point. And still going strong!!! I tell you what,  does Kai really know how to treat his team or what? He's a master herdsman! )

Current Mock-up Cover Art
 (P.P.S. What do you think of those names for a pair of reindeer? Sound reindeer-y enough to you?)

 So, jet-fueled with all the new scene ideas richocheting around in my head I plopped down in the chair and typed madly for the rest of the day! I held out against distractions, against movies being watched in the next room over.
 I even held out against naps and... food. (Kinda. Wink)

 And I did somewhere in the neihgborhood of 5-7k that day!
  
  And then I hit the keyboard in the days that followed, putting in late nights, and middle of the night writing sprints and anything you can imagine to be sure that I
 A) Got these good ideas down, and
 B) got to 20k as soon as possible.

 Now, I have.
   My 20k for October is accomplished, so I don't have to worry about that anymore.

 And most of my good ideas are down, and I'm feeling very confidant in this book's future as NaNo project starting next month.


 So, with those two worries off my mind, I can now concentrate on the one obstacle that remains: Prince of Demarken, Mission Code Word:WRAP-UP.


 Like seriously, Wrap-UP!!! I've been talking about getting that thing finished off for months now, and I'm deadly determined to make sure it happens before November.

 'Cause I can't start on Reindeer King with the clear conscience it will definitely require if Prince of Demarken is STILL lurking unfinished in the background.
 
  Come one, now, WIPs!!! This is NOT funny by now!

 So... that's my plan for the rest of the month.
 
   What about you?

  ( And do you think it is remotely possible that I will actually finish off this long-haunted project at long last??? Wink)

Saturday, October 11, 2014

 FALLING LEAVES, FALLING PRICES

Clean Indie Reads, the home of Flinch-Free Fiction, is having a Fall Sale October 5 thru October 11!

Check out all the sale books here.

To celebrate, we are having a blog hop where you can learn more about some of our authors and their books.

Our bloggers will also be answering the question:

Do the changing seasons influence your writing and/or choice of books to read?

Please join the discussion on the following blogs, and you might win a prize or two!

Happy Hopping!



Hey! I'm participating in the Clean Indie Reads Fall Sale Blog Hop, and so the question I need to answer today is: how do the changing seasons affect my writing?

Well, I can tell you right away that they mostly don't. 
Exept when they kind of do...

Here's the thing. I write whatever season, temperature and landscape my current Work In Progress requires, so that isn't affected much by what's going on outside my window. 

 But, I can also tell you that I hate heat. And also cold. 

 So I really don't want to work on heat-stroke-inducing desert scenes in the middle of August, when heat stroke is a very real option here and I'm trying not to think about it for fear of priming events for it to actually happen.
 (I'm an "attack-first" thinker; not to say that my thinking about something will make it happen, but I have been victim of my powerful imagination before, and find my poor little mind very suggestible to it's influences. So it's best to stay very strictly away from mentally listing "worse case scenarios", unless it's absolutely a state of verifiable crisis and we have to.)

So this also means that in the middle of the blooming cold of winter, I DO NOT want to be imagining myself in the middle of a blizzard, and describing that in vivid detail. (I have been there and done that, and on a hot day in August, recalling all the sensations can actually be enjoyable. In the middle of January...? No. It is not.)

So there you go. I generally try to write opposite to the extreme season I happen to be in... call it a case of authorial wishful thinking. Wink


How about you? Do you "transport" yourself into a different time of the year to escape the current discomforts? Or am I unusually strange? 

(You don't have to answer that!!!! Wink )


Other Hoppers:
October 5:
Linda Covella
Mary Ellen Bramwell
Tina Webb
Logan Crowe
October 6:
Tara Fairfield
Barbara A. Martin
Shanna Hatfield
October 7:
Sally Sue Fleischmann Ember
Chrystal Lynn Miles Gauthier
Zelda Benjamin
October 8:
Kelley Crandall
Jennifer Pitkin
Mari Barnes
October 9:
Sharon Skretting
James DiBenedetto
Melanie Snitker
October 10:
Felicia Rogers
Ruth O’Neil
Debbie Brown
October 11:
Faith Blum
Kristin Wallace
Elizabeth Kaiser