The best way to shop on Black Friday is from the comfort of your own home! My publisher, Crescent Moon Press, is doing a special Black Friday sale for a lot of their titles. Thief of Hope is on sale for only $.99 for the ebook: http://www.amazon.com/Thief-Hope-Cindy-Young-Turner-ebook/dp/B0051AUCZW/ref=pd_rhf_gw_s_t_1. If you don’t have a copy yet, now is the time to get one! Thief of Hope was a finalist for the 2012 Compton Crook Award, given by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society for the best debut science fiction, fantasy, or horror novel, and it was an EPIC ebook award finalist in fantasy for 2012.
Tag: fiction
CMP Summer Lovin’ Blog Hop
Crescent Moon Press authors are ready for summer! We’ll be blogging about our summer loves, our romances, and how much we love summer! Have you ever had a summer fling? Do you have a favorite book about summer? What’s on your summer reading list? What are some great beach reads? We’re blogging about all of it!
Visit our blogs below and enter to win some great prizes between June 14 -17.
Grand Prize: A Kindle Paperwhite and some of our eBooks to read on it!
1st Prize: A $20 Amazon gift card, and a Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, more eBooks, bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, and more!
Drop by our blogs between June 14 and 17 and enter the Rafflecopter giveaway.
Good luck and hope to see you there!
Participating blogs:
Shawna Romkey Author blog
Constance Phillips, A Writer’s Musings
Katie O’Sullivan
Summer Lovin’ – On Olympus…
Kate’s Blog
Kary Rader
Lindsey R. Loucks
Summer Lovin’, postcards, and maybe bookmarks
Jody A Kessler Summer Lovin’ Mountain Style
Official Website of Maer Wilson
Author Jean Murray ~ Wicked Romance Blog
Summer Lovin’ Heat
Hildie McQueen’s Author Site
Loni Lynne’s Blog Site
Author Avery Olive Blog
Wendy S. Russo
Cindy Young-Turner
Michelle Clay – The Darkside of Romance
the Marvelous Misadventures of Mrs. t
Shannon Eckrich
Author interview: Maer Wilson
I’ve very pleased to have Maer Wilson on the blog today. Maer’s novel, Relics, was just released this month and looks to be another outstanding novel from Crescent Moon Press! Let’s take a look at Relics and then move on to the interview questions.
Blurb:
Most of Thulu and La Fi’s clients are dead. Which is perfect since their detective agency caters to the supernatural. So, a job finding relics for an ancient daemon should be simple.
The daemon needs the relics to keep a dangerous portal closed. His enemy, Gabriel, wants the relics to open the portal and give his people access to a new feeding ground – Earth.
Stunning humanity with their existence, portals to other worlds begin to open and the creatures of magic return to Earth.
When Gabriel threatens their family, Thulu and La Fi’s search becomes personal. The couple will need powerful allies in the race to find the relics before Gabriel does. But maybe that’s what grateful dead, magical allies and daemonic clients are for.
When the creatures of myth and magic return to Earth, they’re nothing like your mother’s fairy tales.
Get your copy today: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Add it to your Goodreads shelf
Watch the book trailer on YouTube
Interview with Maer
Thank you for letting me visit today!
Q: Where were you born? Are you the kind of person who likes to move around a lot, or do you prefer to live in one place?
A: I was born in Kansas, but spent very little time there as my father was in the Air Force and we moved around a lot when I was really young. Maybe that’s why I prefer to stay in the same place, now. I do enjoy traveling, but love coming home to my own house when it’s done.
Q: What sparked your interest in writing? How long have you been writing?
A: Since I was young and in school. I’ve mostly written character studies and things like that. Bad poetry in high school. About twelve years ago I tried my hand at writing a play. It was awful. Five years later I recreated it as a screenplay that was much better. It was only three years ago that I decided to try a novel and here I am.
Q: What provided the inspiration for your newly released novel, Relics?
A: That came out of a gaming experience. I’d had an idea about a married heroine in a Paranormal novel, but hadn’t done anything more than jot down a note. I created the names Thulu and La Fi to give to some gaming friends of mine, but realized the names belonged to my characters instead. And who they were fully formed in my head very quickly.
Q: How long did it take you to finish it? How many drafts did you write before you were satisfied?
A: The first draft took five weeks to write. I revised it, had it beta read, revised some more and started to submit it. After about eight months, I found out that a cliff hanger ending for a first novel was an almost impossible sell, so I ruthless ripped out the second half of the book and completely rewrote it, making it a standalone novel. Again, I wrote that very fast. By the time I revised, rewrote and added more beta readers, it was a little over a year after I first started writing it the first time that it was ready for submission again. I can’t even say how many times I revised, rewrote and tweaked this last version. I’d get an idea and run to add it or change something. I’d probably still be tweaking if I could. J
Q: How would you describe your path toward publication?
A: I did the usual “find an agent” thing for about ten months. Because that’s what we do right? We get an agent. At first, I was hopeful, but as I learned more about the publishing industry, I quickly devised a Plan B: apply to a small press and forget about the agent. The more I found out about the traditional route, the more I realized it wasn’t for me. Mostly due to the time. Being olderish, I didn’t want my book to take two to three years to see print. So, I almost began to look forward to agent rejections. Almost. Once I’d decided I really wanted a small press, I began researching and found a few I liked. Crescent Moon Press was my first choice. Of course, after agent rejections my confidence wasn’t very high and I had no expectations. I was so pleased when I heard from them very quickly to submit and it wasn’t long before they offered a contract. I’m thrilled to be a part of the CMP family.
Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
A: Read everything you can get your hands on, especially in your genre. And make sure your manuscript is the best you can make it. I think too many new writers are in such a hurry that they don’t take advantage of the tweaking and revising that will make their work even better. Revising time is important and the polishing could make the difference between getting published or not.
Q: Name a few authors who have inspired you and describe why.
A: Tim Powers because he encouraged me to write and I adore his style. George R.R. Martin for his ability to surprise me and J.K. Rowling for her storytelling talent.
Q: What are you currently writing?
A: Do interviews and blogs count? J Seriously, I’m doing a final revision of Book 2 in The Thulukan Chronicles, Portals, before I submit it. And I’ve started Book 3 of the series.
Q: You also run the increasingly popular MythBehaving podcast. How did you get involved in podcasting?
A: Thanks for asking about that, Cindy! I began writing for a gaming fansite, Corellian Run Radio about a year and a half ago and they also do a podcast. As one of the staff writers, I’ve participated in many of the podcasts. When I sold my book to CMP, Carla Clifton, who runs CRR suggested doing a literary podcast. It just took off from there.
Q: Coffee, tea, or hard liquor? (or all three?)
A: Herbal tea and hard liquor. Not mixed together.
Q: What books are you currently reading or on your to-be-read list?
A: I’m almost done with Lindsey R. Loucks’ The Grave Winner. I was very lucky and received an Advanced Reader Copy and I love it. Next will be Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza.
Q: And now for the bonus fluff question: If you could be a character in your one of your favorite novels, which character would you be and why?
A: Oh, I love this question! So many to choose from, but I think I’ll go back to one of my early loves and the Anne McCaffrey Dragonrider series. Lessa captured me years ago. Since I love dragons and Lessa bonded with her queen dragon she would have to be the one.
Cindy, thanks so very much for letting me do your interview!
Thanks so much for stopping by!
Bio:
After a successful career being other people, and later teaching others the many tricks of that trade, Maer Wilson has decided to be herself for a while. Turns out she’s a writer. She’s always loved stories, especially fantasy, mystery and sci fi. Maer was born in the Year of the Dragon and has a dragon-themed room in her home, but sadly no dragons in the back yard. When she’s not writing, Maer plays online video games, teaches college and reads. She also co-hosts the literary podcast, “MythBehaving” and writes for two gaming fansites. She lives in the high desert of Southern Nevada with her two dogs, a chihuahua and a poodle. Relics is her first novel and will be released by Crescent Moon Press on May 1, 2013. You can visit her website at maerwilson.com.
A reformed pantser?
I’ve been a proud pantser for a while. No outlines for me. I just write and the story comes out. Sometimes. I do a fair amount of rewriting along the way as things unfold and the plot becomes clearer. It’s a bit scary to write without knowing exactly where I’m going, but it’s worked for me. Every time I’ve tried to write an outline, I’ve failed to follow it. It’s just too constrictive.
Until now, that is.
I think it’s safe to say that Thief of Destiny is a bit more complex than Thief of Hope. The scale is much bigger, the stakes are higher, there are two points of view instead of just one. A big theme is that nothing is black and white and the lines between good and evil are murky. I recently came to a point in the book where I realized I had to come up with a plan for moving forward. There’s a war going on and I couldn’t simply pull a battle strategy out of my head without some planning. I’ve gone through much mulling it over, gnashing of teeth, many emails back and forth with my wonderful critique group for ideas, research, and I think I finally have a plan. I’ve even started working on *gasp* an outline. This time I need an outline if I’m going to sync up certain events in the book. I think it’s going to work.
I still don’t know everything that’s going to happen. I can’t write that detailed of an outline. Am I a reformed pantser? Maybe not quite yet. I’ll let you know how it goes when I get to the end of the book.
Twists and turns of the writing process
Well, here we are in deepest winter and this snow lover is disappointed yet again in the lack of Maryland snowfall. There’s still hope, though. Sometimes February can be our lucky month. The good news is that after a Nov/Dec writing slump/holiday frenzy, I am back to writing and once again excited about working on Thief of Destiny. I’ve had ideas for future scenes flitting through my head, which is exciting and energizing. I hope this will give me the boost to finally finish the book because I really want to find out what’s going to happen. I envy those people who say that when they start writing a book they know how it’s going to end or even the exact last line. I have a general idea of how I think the book should end, but it’s not exact. Right now I’m giving Sydney and Willem a 50-50 chance and I’m not sure what they are going to do when I get to where I think I’m eventually going to end up. All the more reason to hurry up and get there, right?
The interesting thing is that I just wrote one of the few scenes that had been in my head when I began the book. And it turns out this scene was influenced by Journey to Hope, the prequel I wrote that came out last month. It’s nice that Crescent Moon Press has given their authors the opportunity to write short spin-off stories of their novels. At first I wasn’t sure what story I might want to write. I even polled my critique groups to see, as readers, whose story they might like to read about and got some varied answers. The story I ended up writing about Edgar’s past was not what I first had in mind. I wanted to be sure I didn’t have too many spoilers in case someone read the prequel before reading Thief of Hope. I think I mostly succeeded in that, although there are a couple spoilers but I don’t think they would detract from someone’s enjoyment of the novel. But writing this piece about Edgar fleshed out some important bits that show up in book 2 (how’s that for a vague teaser?) and I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t written the prequel. Would book 2 have taken a different course? I’m quite happy with the way things are going, so I think it all happened for a reason. It’s funny how writing works out that way.
I’m hoping to do more reading in 2013 also. I just finished Clash of Kings (thoughts to come soon) and have book 3 of the Dark Tower series waiting on my shelf. I’m currently reading War of the Seasons: The Human, a young adult fantasy by Janine Spendlove, who I met at Balticon last year. What are you all reading so far this year?
Cindy Young-Turner 