Showing posts with label senior year bites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label senior year bites. Show all posts

J.A. Campbell - Guest Blog - The Journey

Today I'd delighted to welcome back J.A. Campbell (aka Julie) whose fab YA book

Senior Year Bites 

came out last week. Julie's guest blog is about the journey of writing a book.

Thanks for being here, Julie, and take it away!


***

The Journey – Part 2 (Part 1 is here)

Suzanne thank you so much for having me here.

It begins, sometimes with an idea, sometimes with a word or a phrase, or a flash of a beautiful smile. It sets out with a letter on a page. Just one, single, solitary letter. Then another letter, and another until there is a word. Then many words, then paragraphs that lead to pages and chapters then finally to a completed story.

But that’s just the beginning of the Journey.

As part of my blog tour to celebrate the release of my first Young Adult novel, Senior Year Bites, I’m going to do a series on my perceptions of the adventure of writing a novel. Obviously there are many different ways to get inspiration and write a novel. It has happened to me in many different ways. This is just one way. Here’s part two. If you’d like to read other blog posts in this series, links are on my blog tour page here.

As in part 1, our would-be novelist’s name is Kira. Kira’s idea has turned into about ten thousand words. She’s super excited about her idea but now she needs to do a little background work. Some people outline, let’s just say that Kira (and myself) consider the word outline to be a dirty word. Instead she builds character sheets and background notes on the world (she’s a fantasy author so she needs to set the rules down). The character sheets have the character’s physical description and any important notes. For example, Alexander’s character sheet in Senior Year Bites has notes on his parentage. It’s important to keep small details straight, and unless you have an uber memory, writing down the little things makes it easier when you get further into the series. World notes include rules on magic, politics, land layout, anything that might be important. Then Kira writes down notes on what happens in each chapter she’s written so far to use as a reference. To some this would be an outline, but since outline is a dirty word, she calls it a chapter reference. She also creates a synopsis about what she thinks will happen in the novel. Synopsis is also a dirty word to many, but she finds it to be a useful reference tool.

Then she goes back to the fun part, writing the novel. She’s still in the early stages when the idea is fresh and new and exciting.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the beginning stages of writing. What do you do that is helpful for you?

***
Thanks so much for stopping by, Julie!

Bio: Julie writes fantasy novels. When she’s not out riding her horse, she can usually be found sitting in front of her computer with a cat on her lap and her dog at her side.

Senior Year Bites

Fight supernatural crime, it’s what superheros do. Only I’m a vampire, not a superhero. That hasn’t deterred my best friend Steph though, so while I’m trying to survive my last year of high school as a blood-sucking non-hero, she’s dragging me and our other friend around looking for crime. Only there isn’t any, at least not until the murders start.

Buy from
Amazon UK
Amazon.US

Decadent:

Senior Year Bites: J.A. Campbell - Happy Book Birthday!

Happy Book Birthday!

Senior Year Bites 

Yay! Congratulations to J.A. Campbell


Senior year is supposed to be fun: boys, dances and graduation.

It's significantly harder to enjoy it when you’re dead.

Truth or Dare is supposed to be fun too. It’s not even close to dangerous, so playing at Steph's house didn't seem like a bad idea. My dare? Spend the rest of the night in the graveyard next to her house. It was only a couple of hours until false dawn, my proscribed return time, so no big deal right? Right.

I survived the attack, but it took me a few days to figure out what was going on. I mean vampires might stalk pop culture, but they're just myths. Yeah. Not so much.

School is a lot more difficult when you're a nocturnal creature of the night. I was managing, but I couldn't keep it hidden from my friends for long. After I managed to accidentally save one of our cheerleaders from her drunk and ill-intentioned boyfriend. Steph decided that we should be cool, like superheroes, and fight crime.

Only I’m a vampire, not a hero, and we live in a sleepy New England town, so crime's a little harder to come by. At least it is until a serial killer moves into the area. He’s got the authorities stumped, but then again, the cops don't have a teenage, blood-sucking, non-hero on their team.


Genre: YA, urban fantasy, mainstream fantasy, action/adventure, horror
Word count – 54k

Senior Year Bites is available at
Decadent
Amazon
Amazon UK
Smashwords

Into the West by J. A . Campbell (Guest post + Giveaway)

Today, I’d like to welcome J. A. Campbell (a.k.a. Julie). Julie is a wonderful young adult author, whose debut novel Senior Year Bites will be out later this year. Senior Year Bites is about Megan Taylor, a senior in high school, and her misadventures after being turned into a vampire.You can read more about it here. But today, Julie's going to tell us about her fantastic new short story series (the second of which releases today! Yay! Congrats, Julie!), and to celebrate, Julie's offering one lucky commentator an e-copy of both her short stories! Take it away, Julie!

Suzanne, thank you so much for having me here today and letting me talk a little bit about my new short story series, Into the West. It’s part of an exciting new project by Quake, the young adult division of Echelon Press. The project, called the Electric Shorts are ebooks geared towards ages seven to seventeen (though mine are in the slightly older age range of 10 to 17 or so). Several authors with Echelon Press agreed to be guinea pigs and give it a try. The idea was to write some very entertaining stories at a very easy reading level, that way even teens who might be reluctant to read would find these engaging and enjoyable. There will be six shorts total (all about 15,000 words give or take) in this series. They are all interconnected like TV episodes in a season of a show.

So far the project has been a ton of fun. It has also been extremely challenging. None of us had stories written ahead of time, so we’re all writing on a month-to-month deadline. Combining that with the day job, life, and the edits for other projects that I have coming out this year have kept me very busy. That’s ok though, that’s what being a writer is all about. Writing, even when you don’t really have the time.

The Into the West series is full of Wild West adventures, including horses, cute cowboys, real gunslingers, silver mines and a paranormal twist (because I wrote it and I can’t write anything without a hint of fantasy in it.)

Westward, Yo! came out on March 8th and Range Feud will be out today, the 12th. They are available in the US and the UK from Amazon and other ebook retailers. You can find the descriptions of both below.

And because I’m super excited that Suzanne had me here, I’d like to give away a copy of both Westward, Yo! and Range Feud to one lucky commenter. Please leave us some way to contact you. We’ll draw a winner on the 19th. Contest open internationally.

Into the West
Tina Harker is a typical teenager. She loves hanging with her friends at the malls, shoes, and manicures. More than that, she loves horses. Life is everything she wants it to be, until her father packs their family up and drags them across the world to Arizona. Does he really think she’ll be happy living in a ghost town in the middle of the desert? It’s a million miles to the nearest shopping center, not even a real mall. Her only hope for survival is finding a new horse.

Tina is no quitter. She prepares herself for western saddles, rattlesnakes, the horrible desert heat, and limited shopping. However, nothing can prepare her for Wild West bandits, cattle thieves, and a really cute cowboy. Maybe things won’t be so bad—or will they?

#1Westward, Yo! (Into the West)
Trying to make the best of her horrible situation, Tina agrees to go on her first cattle drive. When one of the calves wanders off, Tina, in true cowgirl fashion and looking for excitement, rides off to rescue the poor little thing and gets a lot more adventure than she ever expected. A cowboy she’s never met accuses her of stealing cows, bandits kidnap her, and that’s not even the exciting part.

#2 Range Feud
Tina Harker is a typical teenager. She loves hanging with her friends at the malls, shoes, and manicures. More than that, she loves horses. Life is everything she wants it to be, until her father packs their family up and drags them across the world to Arizona. Does he really think she’ll be happy living in a ghost town in the middle of the desert? It’s a million miles to the nearest shopping center, not even a real mall. Her only hope for survival is finding a new horse.

Anxious for more adventure, Tina agrees to inspect the fence line for the Taggarts like a real cowgirl. She gets what she wished for. This time she has to rescue the cute cowboy, and she finds out people will kill over water. Especially in the desert. Tina is determined to help her cowboy, but she has no idea how a Jersey girl can stand up to real gunslingers.

Bio
Julie writes fantasy novels. When she’s not out riding her horse, she can usually be found sitting in front of her computer with a cat on her lap and her dog at her side. You can find out at her website www.writerjacampbell.com

How to enter:

Leave a comment for Julie!

Please leave a way to contact you (email in comment: Please remember to replace @ with [at] to forestall spam - or your twitter name - no way to contact you - no entry).

Giveaway is international, chosen by Random.org, and closes end of day (GMT time) 19th April 2011.

And while you're here, don't forget to go enter this week's celebratory giveaway on the blog for Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris.

Please note: My usual blog policy is that I try to reply to all comments on the blog, but for ease of admin I won't be replying to any comments made on any of the giveaway posts during the 16 weeks. Sorry, but it makes it much harder to sort out the winner. However I do read and enjoy all the comments, and will, of course, continue to reply to comments on any other post, so if you have a question for me, leave it on one of those, thank you :-)


x/posted to LJ. Comment here or there. One entry per person.
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