If you love cats and books about magical cats...

My book is out!

~~~~~

If you love cats.....you'll love Marco, a tabby cat who dreams of being a hero, like ones in the books he reads. Life's harsh realities strike, however, when he finds he is not able to rescue his own humans from tragedy. He is left homeless—with no street skills.
Things begin to look up when he discovers the public library where he takes refuge and settles in with a good book. But the elder library cat is also Guardian of a powerful mystical book and challenges Marco to leave his safe adventure stories and follow him on a true journey.

The Book of Motion, hidden deep within the library, remains safe from all who would misuse its power. But one man, a professor who discovers the legend of the Lost Books contains hints at their possible existence, imagines the Book is his 'spear of destiny'. He will stop at nothing in his quest to find the book, the tool he believes he must have to fulfill his vision of ruling his own perfect society.

When he tracks down the extraordinary Book at an ordinary public library, he finds the last obstacle to achieving his dark dream is an unlikely opponent in the form of a young tabby cat.

GUARDIAN CATS AND THE LOST BOOKS OF ALEXANDRIA is now available in formats for all e-readers, including .mobi for Kindle, ePub for Nook & Stanza, Sony and Palm readers, as well as pdf for printing.

Follow Marco on his incredible adventure. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE.

Writers and their cats

ALL WRITERS SHOULD HAVE A CAT

Here are five short, sweet reasons why I make this bold statement and chose a cat to be today's awesome tool:


1. Muses love cats. What did you think your cat was staring at when you saw nothing but thin air?

2. Many famous authors have cats, so you know 1. is true. (see author photos below)

3. You'll look cooler in a bio photo with your cat and people instantly love you for it (well, maybe not dog people).

4. With proper training, your cat will read your WIP, offering valuable feedback before presenting it to your human critique partners.

5. Cats are there for you when you're feeling blue or sick. They soothe your soul and help heal your body, offering inspiration, comfort and companionship.

"I put down my book, The Meaning of Zen, and see the cat smiling into her fur as she delicately combs it with her rough pink tongue. Cat, I would lend you this book to study but it appears you have already read it. She looks up and gives me her full gaze. Don't be ridiculous, she purrs, I wrote it."~ from "Miao" by Dilys Laing

Have a great weekend!
Join me at my new author site.

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One good reason for Persistence | Tools for writers

Learning to write is like learning to play the violin.

The first tentative scratches on a violin rend the atmosphere like a love-sick cat. The violinist must learn to survive the caterwauling and not succumb to jeers and taunts from her inner critic.

After a jillion hours of practice, the violinist is no longer separate from the violin and her very pores are filled with the vibration of sound.  In her waking hours, when she is not playing, she feels the curve of her wrist around the instrument, and her head inclines toward her shoulder. Waking or sleeping, music haunts her with the bittersweet longing of a lover. She has lost all perspective. Is she the musician or the instrument? She seeks every opportunity to slip free from the ties of normal life and rejoin her soul mate.

Going too long without her instrument leaves her gasping for air. The violin, the music and the violinist breathe as one.



 

Tools for Writers | How to organize notes from your 'napkin moments'

Are you looking for ways to organize your writing projects? Does your creative write right brain strike at all hours of the day and night. Do you have sticky notes, scraps of yellow pads and pages ripped from spirals produced from what I call 'napkin moments'.

Writing is a messy business. Ideas often come when you're not sitting conveniently at your computer. You could be on your way to the dentist when you suddenly discover your Antagonist's mother was a gypsy. Or you're making spaghetti and you realize your Protagonist, unbeknownst to you, has befriended someone most people would consider a scoundrel. You must write these things on the closest piece of paper available or take the risk of having them float forever off into the aethers.

So I was cleaning up all those paper bits of flotsam and jetsam, trying to figure out what to salvage and how in the world I could avoid the time-sucking job of entering them on my computer. TaDa! A brilliant flash of light appeared, proving that my right and left brain occasionally cooperate.

The answer? Clear poly folders. They're wonderfully low tech and the method involves absolutely no organizational skills, other than deciding what color tab to use for which project. I've been using these in my non-writing life, so I don't know why I hadn't thought to use them like this. It was one of those, I hate to say it, 'duh' moments.

Here's what I'm talking about. This particular design has color strips extending on the side with a writing strip for labeling. They're sealed on two sides only, easily accessible and feel nice in a heavy duty, but see-through kind of way.

They're only $5.99 for a 10 pack from Staples. I think Office Depot carries them too, but they like to hide them at the stores so I'm ordering the next batch online.

How about you? Do you have 'napkin moments' and a lot of messy scraps of paper that are just too good to throw away? What do you do with them?

Tools for writers: Choosing your book title

 After careful consideration and a short consultation with my advisory board, I've decided to alter the title of my book. Nothing too drastic, but I thought I would make it official here and use this chance to share a useful Google tool.



Advisory board

For the last year, the title of my book has been Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Iskandriyah. The story is based on a mystical book saved from the burning of Alexandria's legendary library.

'Iskandriyah' is Arabic for Alexandria and I had originally decided to use that version, because I liked the exotic-ness of the word and it fit well with the fantasy genre. But for a long time, something has bothered me about it, so I stopped to analyze it.

1. First of all, although I love the word 'Iskandriyah', it's really hard to spell. More importantly,  Alexandria is a real city and the Library is a real place. The burning of the library was a famous historic event, so although my book is fantasy, it has a reality base. 
2. There's also city in Iraq named Iskandariyah and I thought that would add to the confusion. 
3. This next part has to do with very practical considerations, that of searchability. There is a cool Google Insights Tool that lets you enter keywords and compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. You can tweak this or use the simple results for a quick check. Here's what I found for my search terms:
• 'Alexandria' yielded 87 out of a possible 100.
• 'Library of Alexandria' yielded 51 out of a possible 100.
• 'Iskandariyah' yielded 20, but they all had to do with Iraq
• 'Iskandriyah' yielded 0

If I was still had any attachment to the exotic name, this pretty much decided it for me. Besides, if I could never quite get the spelling of Iskandria Iskandriyah down, I certainly didn't want to burden my readers with such a cumbersome name.

Thanks, I feel  better now.

Have book titles been an issue for you?

Need help visualizing your story? 8 tips to kickstart your imagination



Searching for the right words?


Writers have good imaginations, but sometimes we need help visualizing details if we've never been there or done that. Here's a few tips which can help you take it up a notch as a writer creating fictionalized reality.

1. Give your stories interesting settings. Think outside the box. Take your readers places they'd probably never get a chance to see. Imagine for a moment that your Protagonist and Antagonist meet unexpectedly at the World Egg Throwing Contest. Who knows where that could lead? Need a whole slew of odd events? Try odditycentral.com 
2. Is your antagonist a car thief? You don't have to go out and steal a car anymore to make it real. Most of you know you can learn how to steal one on YouTube, but maybe not like this. 
3. A great boost for describing places you haven't been to can be found on Virtual Tourist. Photos and user reviews give you first person descriptions of their experience. No one will know you haven't been there.
4. My favorite site for settings is Panoramic Earth which is an amazing tool that gives you 360 degree up-close views of thousands of places, including people who happen to be present at the time. I have a character who works at the British Museum and I was able to get a real sense of his daily environment by using this tool. It is highly searchable and maneuverable, as opposed to Google streets views can be good, but often seem to have a mind of their own.
5. How do you visualize your characters? There are lots of lists that help you create their personality, but can you see them? Here's a site that lets you choose facial profiles in a drawing format. Nicer than it sounds, http://www.pimptheface.com/create/  you don't end up with a Zwinky cartoon. There's another site which allows you to make alterations to facial photos called Face of the Future.
6. Have you thought about what your Protagonist wears? Is there one item you can dress them in that helps create an instant impression in your readers mind? Something distinctive that identifies him. Most of my characters wear cat fur, but one of my human characters is a natty dresser, who spends his entire paycheck just to make a good impression. He always wears a full length Harris Tweed coat, but I actually like this sporty one better.
7. Don't forget the audio aspect of your story? Give your writing an extra boost by including more auditory senses. Is it the 4th of July and you need to describe fireworks? Need a barn owl sound? Got a scene that could use a little extra drama with some thunder and lightning? Listen to these and more at: FindSounds.com
8. But my favorite place for great images is Flickr. Your search on Flickr will yield high quality photos that beat a Google image search all to pieces. I always link back to the image if I use it in my blog or FB page. But another way to use it is by creating a collection of pictures that evoke the people, places and moods in your book. For an example, here's my Flickr folder I created for Guardian Cats.

What tools do you use to boost your writing?

The interconnectedness of all things

It was at The Brick, while eating Southwestern fajita wraps, we were discussing The Forgetting Room which lead to a discussion of the interconnectedness of all things. We were down to the level of molecules. Not just any molecules, but really old particles. The ancient ones that never go away and hang out in old buildings, bookstores and libraries.

Sparks flew in my brain, synapses synapsed. A plot I'd scribbled down last year emerged out of the recesses of my brain and fused with my new being, the one who looked like she was just eating a fajita, but was a year older and thousands of words wiser.

It was time to dig out that notebook and pay a visit to the character I'd left in the drawer, a sleeping beauty. The prince had arrived. The kiss had been placed.

A writer's workspace is all in the mind

There's writing and then . . . there's 'writing it down'. So much of our work is more than the actual crafting of words. Plot ideas, character development, research -- it doesn't all need to take place in front of a computer. A writer's true workspace is all in the mind. I proved this to myself yesterday at the dentist office.

There I was, pinned to a dentist's chair. I knew if I didn't find something to focus on, my brain would flip through a thousand frivolous ideas worth about as much as used dental floss and I hate wasting a good hour like that.

So I thought about my new MC, a young woman in her early twenties. I needed to know what events in her childhood were significant, what she is passionate about, what are her inner conflicts? While the dental hygenist did her work, I was happily engaged character development and my MC revealed a lot of new details about her life.

The longer I write, the more amazed at how portable my workspace has become.

What about you? Do you need to write in a specific environment? Or can you write 'on the fly'?  Do you have any odd places or moments where you've worked on some aspect of your writing?

KitLit Writers Conference you can attend in your jammies

Thanks to Karsten who I met Twittering, I discovered a writer's conference especially for kidlit writers. The only price of admission is having your MC be under 18 years of age.

WriteOnCon is a project that was started by seven writers who wanted to 'pay it forward' for other writers. Just like a 'real' conference, there will be keynote speakers, agent panels and lectures but they will presented in the form of blogs, vlogs, moderated chats, webinars, podcasts and livestreaming.

What's really awesome about this conference is their growing list of  industrial strength professionals who will be the presenters. There are also critique forums which will allow writers to receive feedback and exposure for their work, and the entire program has been designed to be both informative and entertaining.

From what I've seen of their vlogs, this looks to be a very fun and interesting event. Did I mention this is a 3-day conference?
And if you haven't seen Karsten dance, you don't know what you missing.

When: Tuesday – Thursday, August 10 – 12, 2010
Where: http://www.writeoncon.com/
Cost: Free!
Who: it’s for EVERYONE!

What the bleep is a writer's platform?

Greetings friends, both old and new. I'm kicking this blog into gear again and the first thing I want to address is this thing called a writer's platform. You can't go anywhere without reading about it. Type it into Google and you have over 4 million pieces of advice on this matter. But first, I have to get this off my chest. The name 'platform' just bugs the heck out of me. Who came up with this generic, dull term for authors online 'presence'?

'Platform' evokes all the visual imagery of a piece of plywood. Come on, we're writers. We can come up with something better than this! Bandstand, auction block, podium, launching pad. A thesaurus is a wonderful thing.

The other thing that's bugging me is that everyone seems to be regurgitating pretty much the same advice, although I confess I haven't read all four million postings. Get a blog, Twitter, and Facebook. Ok. Got it.

But hey, I'm not making these complaining noises for nothing. I did listen and obey. My Guardian Cats are on Facebook, I have a couple of blogs and just recently started tweeting and guess what? What sounded like a lot of work is pretty fun. Too much, if you know what I mean. If I'm blogging, FBing, twittering, then I'm not really working on my book. But I'm connecting with people and that's got to be a good thing for a hermit. Right?

I'd just like to add a couple of things to the platform, and that is GoodReads and Google Friend Connect, which allows you to turn your website or blog into a social hall, which is why I'm back here at my Blogger blog rather than WordPress.

What are you doing to build a platform? Do you have a Facebook page strictly for your writing or a particular book? Do you Twitter? What part of the platform do you enjoy the most?