YA Review of Lauren McLaughlin's CYCLER, by DL Larson

The cover caught my attention. The front has a young woman in a pretty pink bra and boy's boxers, while the back cover is a young man wearing said boxers. The two look as if they could be twins. They are not ... they are the same person. Four days of the month Jill turns into Jack, a full fledged male, with male thoughts, male actions and a male temper for being confined in Jill's girly bedroom with nothing to do but think about his own miserable life that only exists four days every month.

Cycler is a unique book and a fast read. Jack squeezes into Jill's thoughts but Jill self-hynotizes herself so she doesn't remember his thoughts. It's a dangerous game she plays and pretends her world is normal as any teenage girls. McLaughlin does a superb job creating her main characters Jill and Jack and she brings Jill's BFF, Ramie, in to make a tangled triangle of friendship and love. Jack loves Ramie while Jill doesn't realize he knows her BFF.

Wanting to be normal is a strong thread for all the characters in this book. Each character struggles with awkward situations, many darn right humorous and something all of us can relate to. Some graphic sex talk may raise a few eyebrows but it also comes across as natural just as the strong ties of friendship between Ramie and Jill.
Secondary characters seem a bit cardboardish. Jill's parents have a hint of creepy about them; the mom is overbearing and robotic while the dad is a limp noodle hiding out in his basement in inappropriate clothes for any generation. Perhaps her sequel will explain the weird parents.

For those who are looking for a diversion from vampire fever, I recommend Cycler. It's a good first book and could be an interesting topic for discussion at a teen book club. The sequel, (re)cylcler, came out in 2009 to great reviews, and Scored will be out in October 2011. I'll probably purchase both books since I enjoyed the first so much.

Til next time ~

DL Larson

Any day can be a tag day by Morgan Mandel

Our own Acme member, Robert W. Walker, mentioned the importance of tagging our own books on Amazon..com. I agree it's very important to put those tags on. If you've set it up yourself, make sure to include the tags. If your publisher put your book up, you can still add tags.

It's one of the best means of free publicity you can get. Another thing, after reading someone else's book, even if you don't do a review, tagging can also help a books' ranking, and is a lot easier and faster to do.

I go to the tag section of the book and check the boxes I agree with about the book. Afterwards, I always click the letter "t" twice and a box comes up which can easily besaved. It's that easy to tag.

Whether you do it for yourself, or someone else, it helps get a book noticed at Amazon, so remember to tag, even if it's not a tag day in your neighborhood.

Morgan Mandel

Killer Career is
99 cents on
Kindle.

And the Results Are In....

I have to say, it's been a productive week. I set a whole bunch of goals, and I am proud to say I've accomplished nearly all of them. Below find my list of goals from last week. In bold you'll find how I fared with each of them.

*Write everyday. I need to get back to my WIP which is the third in my series for Wild Rose. I'd taken a little break from this to finish a Christmas novella I had an idea for. (As a sidenote, the novella manuscript was just requested by an editor at TWRP, so keep your fingers crossed!) Yes. Yes. Yes. I did over 30 pages and I'm up to just over 42,000 words. AND, the editor at TWRP who has my novella said she'd be reading it in the next couple of weeks and if I don't hear back from her by next Friday to shoot her an e-mail. So, things are rolling!

* Finish my 'Birthday at Disney' scrapbook. We took this trip two years ago. Yep. Hauled everything out on Thursday and worked until I finished.

* Do my taxes. Promised myself I'd get them done in February. Ooops. Done, and getting a refund from both the state and the Feds!

* Organize my sock drawer. Exciting stuff, I know, but seriously, it's a disaster in there. Check.

* Spend some quality time with a friend. By quality I mean watch a movie featuring Edward, our favorite vampire. Well, we didn't watch our favorite vampire, but I had lunch with a couple of friends on Tuesday. Even better.

* Tweak my website. I want to add some pictures and such. Did some updating and figured out how to add pictures, but I didn't add any yet.

* Get my nails done and get a haircut. Done.

* Finish judging contest entries for my RWA chapter's contest. Yep.

So, now that I'm heading back into the real world this week, I'm sure things will slow down in the realm of getting things done, but it was nice to have some time to accomplish some things.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

Goals by Margot Justes

Goals are set and meant to be accomplished, at least that is my understanding. I looked up the word in the dictionary. A goal is 'the result or achievement toward which effort is directed'

Simple enough, set the goal and achieve it-assuming the goal is realistic, it is all well and good, until life intervenes and set goals go out the window faster than hot air in winter.

Last week, I set goals to edit 50 pages of Blood Art, send out 3 query letters, and make a tiny dent in A Hotel in Venice. Not exceptionally difficult tasks and easily accomplished, or so I thought.

I did none of those things, and more to the point I have no idea where the time went.

One reason, I thought might because I'm on the CN RWA board, I get so many more e-mails, but then so do the other board members, and I won't even mention the Spring Fling committee, who are working incredibly long hours so that we can have a terrific 2012 conference. Well, maybe I will mention them after all, their efforts are amazing.

So where did the time go? I have no idea, but I thought about the catastrophe and incredible destruction in Japan, how many lives were lost? Will be lost, how many sacrifices will be made to secure the safety of the Japanese people? How many people will work in certain death to make sure that happens? How dare I complain I didn't meet a few writing goals.

That on-going tragedy in Japan really put things in perspective. Just what am I complaining about? I feel blessed and grateful for what I have.

Till next time.
Margot Justes
www.mjustes.com
A Hotel in Paris

Patience & Persistence Makes a Writer

MARK TWAIN, my spiritual mentor since beginning my long journey as an author and the guy I stole more from than anyone else I have stolen from, he has a great many great quotes but this one I purely love: "KEEP AWAY from people who try to belittle your ambitions. SMALL PEOPLE always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too, can be great."

I have had my collegaues in the teaching profession say to me, "Rob, you actually think anyone can do what you do, don't you?"

"Of course and why not? When it comes to writing fiction, guess what? Doing of it is the teacher, and I pretty much taught myself, set up my own curriculum and went at it. So why not another? Why not my students?"

Of course not all students succeed, and not all great young writers prevail. It is a myth to believe that well crafted writing alone will lift an author to the top of his profession. Most never get past all the frustration and need for patience, the time it takes to evolve into a talented writer who can actually make shapely fiction. For it takes years, and for most of us, a lifetime as truly, there are few things in life that require as much self-teaching and practice and skill-building as crafting solid fiction.

Dearn R. Koontz once advised me to slow down, adding, "Robert, you don't do your best work until you turn 50 anyway."  He was right of course but at the time I was teetering on 50, and very frustrated and feeling I had put in way too much time on a dying propostion to begin with...contemplating quitting altogether. Who needed the headaches and the heartaches and the belly aches from hunger and depression at not achieving the gold ring?

What Koontz meant and what I know now is that it has taken me 30 years of continuous writing to get to the level of proficiency I am at currently. Sure there are those amazing wonders among us out who careen to the top of the bestseller list with their first publicaiton but scratch the surface and 99 percent of the time, you will learn that first publicaiton came only after six, seven or even ten previously written UNpublished novels.

I feel indeed I am doing my BEST work in a checkered career now, that my more recent titles -- all of which have been written within the last few years as Kindle Originals are my best to date works, books I could not have written when I was young and full of eager impatience to be published. 

With each book I have written, I have gotten better over these many years, and to get so good as to be speed writing with confidence, most of us have to go through the harrowing period I call the Valley of Death thorugh whch Job himself must suffer...that it takes the patience of the biblical Job to prosper in any of the major arts - be it film, sculpting, painting, computer graphics, poetry, biography, fiction. Whatever your addiction craves to create.

Frightfully now, up on Kindle bookshelves, my readers can go wayyyy back in time, look over my early works, and see how terribly weak they are compared to my latest works. What a difference; it is like when Martin Cruse Smith went from doing a schlocky vampire vs. Native American horror novel to writing such as Gorky Park, not that any of my books are Gorky Park. But I began writing thin books, thin in size and in depth, lacking setting and character but with a lot of plot. Only over time and with experience(s), did my novels fatten up completely to the point they turn some folks off due to sheer page numbers.

My newer work, however, are character-driven, filled with fully realized characters rather than the thin shadows of my early, past creations.It is instructive even for me to go back in time and read the kid's early stuff--and to realize that while the kid had something on the ball and a lot of gall, hutzpah, smarts...that the work was thin by comparison to the old gent's stuff.

Don't believe me? Look at my first published novel alongside Children of Salem or Titanic 2012. There simply is no comparison. While the kid I was had sparks of passion, perhaps even a bic lighter flame of smartness, the depth of all the elements coming together in the later works is just so much more of...of everything readers want and need..In orther words, Dean Koontz knows of what he speaks. It takes a life devoted to writing to reach par.

I am soon to be 63 and I began writing as a kid, maybe around fourth grade, and wrote my first short stories as a child, my first novel as a high schooler, modeling it on Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn-- a sequel!  The arrogance of youth, but in tracking Twain so closely as to "write Twain", well the genius became my spiritual mentor, and I never forgot what he taught me about writing.

Still it was I who unearthed Twain; he did not come to me in a drean or a zombie state. It takes a powerful yearning to want to imitate and emulate a writer of Twain's caliber. So when the Chicago Tribune review of City for Ransom compared my work favorably to Twain, Dickens, Doyle, and Poe I felt in great company. I began to feel I was getting pretty good at what I chose to devote my life to.

It takes enormous patience, the sort of infinite patience required of a teacher these days, the sort that requires a higher PQ than IQ...a high Persistence Quotient.

Thanks for visiting and do leave a cogent comment; would love to cogently respond to you as well or simply to hear from you.

Robert W. Walker
"What Moves Kindle Bks. off Shelves" -- Kindle Community forums
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

Inspiration! by DL Larson

Our guest blogger this week, F.M. Meredith, has the energy and know-how to get things done. If you have not read her blog at Acme Authors (Wednesday, March 23) please take a moment to do so. Her schedule is full and she has the capacity to be in several places at once! Perhaps she's a magician, a juggler at least. She is a great-grandmother! She is a wonderful author.

Since I just put my grandson down for his morning nap, I understand a bit about juggling a schedule. My daughter is getting married in two weeks, my husband and son have ventured into a business expansion and just two days ago I made a plethora of food for their Open House. I had a polka-dot party for my preschoolers at the library and judged our 2011, two day, Chess Tournament. Our Teen Book Club met and chatted about Dear America Books and our Teen Advisory Board has decided to send books to Taiwan. I was several days behind on my Bible Study, but went to our gathering anyway. I have yet to buy anything for my daughter's two bridal showers this weekend and I haven't a clue on what I might wear. And it's only Thursday!

Writing has been not only nudged off my plate, it's been dropped off the table of things to do. So, why did I wake last night at 1:15 and go downstairs and work on my writing for two and a half hours? I need my sleep. I'm exhausted, I need a mom to clean my house. I have guests coming in two weeks to stay at our home. Messy is the kindest word I can think of when I glance at the various rooms in my house. Okay, dirty too! I can see where I stopped cleaning when I attempted to put up Spring/Easter decorations. Three tubs sit in my dining room, half empty and taking up space. Yet, I woke with the urge to write!

The sensible me says, "Get a grip! You do NOT have time to write!" The writer sasses back by saying, "You've gone without sleep before. And besides, I need to do this!" Then I read Meredith's blog awhile ago and I feel energized, ready to trade sleep for writing production. Writing is part of who and what I am. When I don't make time in the day for writing, insomnia always sneaks in and makes me pay. I will write. One way or another I must write.

Thank you F.M. Meredith for sharing your insights with us this week. I know it takes determination and tenacity to become a successful author. You have proven hard work pays off.

Til next time ~

DL Larson

Please Welcome Morgan Mandel's Guest, F.M. Meredith, Prolific Mystery Author

F.M. Meredith

F.M. Meredith, also known as Marilyn Meredith, is the author of nearly thirty published novels. Her latest in the Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series, from Oak Tree Press, is Angel Lost. Marilyn is a member of EPIC, Four chapters of Sisters in Crime, including the Internet chapter, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Visit her at http://fictionforyou.com and her blog at http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/

Today, you can catch a glimpse of what F.M. is doing to promote her latest book. First, here's a little bit about that book.

Angel Lost by F.M. Meredith

As plans for her perfect wedding fill her mind, Officer Stacey Wilbur is sent out to trap a flasher, the new hire realizes Rocky Bluff P.D. is not the answer to his problems, Abel Navarro’s can’t concentrate on the job because of worry about his mother, Officer Gordon Butler has his usual upsets, the sudden appearance of an angel in the window of a furniture store captures everyone’s imagination and causes problems for RBPD, and then the worst possible happens—will Stacey and Doug’s wedding take place?


My Promotion for Angel Lost
by F.M. Meredith
I do a lot of the same things as everyone else, Facebook and Twitter, and I’m on a blog tour through the month of March and will be visiting a few other blogs in April.

About Blog Tours: I host authors on my own blog http://marilynmeredith.blogpost.com and I’ve found that some of my guests don’t really have a clue about what they ought to be doing. Oh, they send me exactly what I ask for, and usually write great blogs, but they don’t do a thing to promote (I do) and they don’t come back and visit to see if anyone has left a comment or a question that they can answer.

The champion promoter on Facebook is Rob Walker and I can’t really add anything to what he’s doing, in fact I’ve copied some of his strategies. Just know, Facebook is there and it’s great way to reach a lot of people. Facebook and Twitter are other ways to steer people to your blog posts. And if you use http://iPing.com you can connect with most of the social networks you’re on with one post.

Though I love promoting on the Net I do a lot of in-person events too.

The only mystery con I’m going to this year is Mayhem in the Midlands in Omaha. This is one of my favorites because I’ve made a lot of friends who attend every year and are also my fans. Attending is much like going to a family reunion.

I only have two bookstores where I make regular appearances; one is our local used book store and I’ll be doing the launch for Angel Lost there. I’m also going to an independent, Willow Bridge Books, in the foothills to give a talk to their writers’ group. I love going there and I always sell a lot of books. This year though, I’m traveling to Sedona AZ and will be speaking at the Well-Red Coyote Book Store http://www.wellredcoyote.com/ because my hubby and I and our daughter and her husband are going there on vacation. I spoke there about three years ago and it’s wonderful bookstore. (Another tip, combine your speaking engagements with your vacations.)

Writing conferences are another favorite, though I don’t attend them anymore unless I can be a speaker. (Don’t get me wrong, I always learn something new at a writing conference and they are always great for recharging my battery, it’s just that I have so little time I have to choose what works best for me. So, having said that, this year I’ll be heading to Public Safety Writers Association http://www.policewriter.com where I’ll learn from the experts and know I’ll be on panels because anyone who wants to be on one will. ( Plus I’m the program chairperson and because my sister lives in Vegas where the conference is I’ll visit her while I’m there.)

I’m also one of the instructors for the Cuesta College Writing Conference http://www.communityprograms.net/wc/wcindex.htm  which leads me right to Book Festivals.

The Sunday following the conference is the Central Coast Book and Author Festival in San Luis Obispo. This is an event I never miss. Craft Fairs are also great venues for authors to sell books and this year I’m going to the Jane Austen Festival in Fresno—yes, I know my books are not historical or about Jane Austen, but I was well-received last year and invited back this year. My point here would be to look for places where you can sell your books.

I’m also going to be talking about what gave me the ideas for my books at a college in Southern California. Check out your nearby colleges and see if they’d like to have you as a speaker. Some pay a speaker’s fee and some will let you sell your books after the talk.

If you belong to a Sisters in Crime chapter or more than one like I do, you could offer to be a speaker at their meeting, or perhaps they have a speakers’ bureau like the LA Chapter of Sisters in Crime that arranges for panels at local libraries.

The potential for speaking engagements and selling opportunities is only limited by your imagination and time. I hope I’ve give you some ideas.

Please leave a comment to welcome F. M. Meredith, author of Angel Lost the latest in the Rocky Bluff P.D. series.