This Week: Giveaway and Interview Time

This week begins with a giveaway and interview at Every Free Chance. There will be 5 e-copies of Fadeout and 4 e-copies of The White Lilac available, but you'll have to act fast. This giveaway only lasts until this Sunday, July 21.

In other news I have several Read for Reviews coming up in Goodreads groups. If you're on Goodreads look me up. I love meeting new people and making friends. The same goes for Twitter and Facebook.

Update on Remembered: I'm still working toward a late-August publication date, but the timing might be tight. We'll see.

Writing Exercises 4

Since my writers group had gone through the basic elements of a scene's structure, its beginning, middle and end. We moved on to chapter 7 in Make a Scene by Jordan E. Rosenfeld, a writing book you should check out, on character motivation and development. There were several aspects of character motivation and development that should be included in every scene. Some of these include the motivation from personal history, intention the character has in the scene and making the end of the scene either more or less complicated.

Scene information: Write a story about a girl named Susi (or however you want to spell it) who is going skydiving and include all the elements of character development.

In this one I focused on making it More Complicated.

The rumble of the plane's duel engines shook every atom of Susi's body and the roar of the wind from the open door made her both deaf and blind. Clutching her phone tightly she almost snapped it in half when her instructor, a dark-haired 19-year-old guy tapped her should and pulled the strap of her goggles. She quickly slipped them on and rushed a panicked hand over her hair for any lumps. The guy gave her a thumbs up and began tightening the straps that connected her to him and him to the parachute.

A lurch of wind made the plane bounce and Susi fell back onto him, but he didn't seem to notice. She wondered if he was dating anyone, then she quickly shoved the thought out. Even though it wasn't official yet she fully expected to go to the prom with Logan. Something she'd been waiting six grades for and never thought would come true until he noticed her doing a flip on the bleachers.

"Wow, you're adventurous!" he'd said and he'd say it again when he saw these pictures she'd take with her phone.

The plane jerked even worse and then one of the engines puttered. An alarm flashed in the back of the plan. The guy patter her should and motioned that he had to talk to the pilot. Susi shook her head. They were so close. But he unhooked himself anyway. He hadn't gone two steps when one of the engines caught fire. The bump threw Susi into the wall and her instructor was sucked out the open door.


Scene information: Write a story about a boy named Karlheinz who is stuck in a tree and include all the elements of character development.

In this one I focused on making it Less Complicated.

Going up the pine tree had been much easier for 12-year-old Karlheinz than it was gong down. His fingers were coated in drying sap and stuck to the branches when he didn't want them to. Carefully he reached out with his leather dress shoes searching for the branch he'd seen, but he couldn't find it. His arms shook from the strain but his other shoe slipped on the loose bark.

With sweat dripping into his eyes he pulled himself up onto the bigger branch and rested with one arm around the thinning trunk. It'd been a mistake to wear his dress shoes and now he was stuck.

This was all Frau. Shubbert's fault. She'd told him the answer to his father's identity was at the top of the pine tree. He'd ran straight tot he tree and leaped from branch to branch until he'd reached the top, but his father's name was not there. Karlheinz wasn't sure what he expected but there was no treasure box or plaque. Nothing that would give him the closure he wanted. A name. Was it really to much to ask?

His fingers tightened against the bark, but as they did he felt a smooth section of bark, not at all the crumbly pine bark he expected. Finding strength he didn't think he had he pulled himself around to the other side. There in the center of a warn but deeply etched heart were the names Karl and Louisa. Louisa was his mother's name. His heart began to beat faster. His father was named Karl. Just like he was. The burden he'd carried for so long slipped away and he knew he could go home.

Your turn. Write the same scene and then toy with the development of your characters and making the elements of the scene either more or less complicated.

The Hunt is Still On

Last week we had a treasure hunt and although I don't know how many people participated I do know that the prize is as of now still unclaimed. The rules still apply and if you want a free e-book copy of one of my books, either for you or a friend, now's the chance! Follow the trail! Don't get lost. :)

Foolish Optimism?

I read an article recently that discussed the difference between hope and optimism that I found most interesting, especially since my post The End of Happy Endings. The article was called Why Hope isn't Just Optimism and it basically touched on how trusting in hope and trusting in optimism are really two different things.

Now it can be foolish to blindly trust in optimism. That's a great way to become cynical fast.
If you just believe that things will get better because...things get better, you are likely to discover disappointment. Being optimistic for the sake of being optimistic is not based on a solid reasoning or fact or even probability. Note: I'm not talking about optimism that is based on those things. There are many reasons to be optimistic, but blindly trusting that because you are optimistic everything will turn out for the best isn't a good reason.

Hope on the other hand, has to have an object to be placed on. You hope in a person, a decision, a dream, a future. I suppose it's possible to hope in hope, but I'm not even sure what that would look like. You can place your hope in something that is not worth of it. I can hope a chair will hold me and sit in it, but if it collapses then I placed my hope in something that I shouldn't have. Sometimes these unworthy things are obvious. I'm not going to walk across a river on a bridge made of spider silk. It won't hold me even if I'm optimistic. If I have found a way to combine spider silk into rope and have watch that silk hold the weight of a car, then it is reasonable to think and hope it might hold me too. Yet I am placing more hope in the technic used to turn spider silk into rope than I am the silk itself.

There's nothing wrong with optimism and hope isn't actually better than optimism. Both are important to a healthy lifestyle, because if you don't think things will turn out for the best and you don't have anything to hope in, your life will be hard and miserable. The danger comes when either of these are used excessively without a smidgen of realism. Optimism just needs to be grounded in the realm of things that are possible and hope needs to be placed on things that can see that hope realized. So what do you hope in? How optimistic are you?

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July! I'm going to be spending the day with my family celebrating the independence of the American colonies from England, with some great food and light displays. And I'd like to share the celebration with you!

 

As a little holiday fun/treasure hunt. I've posted the cover for Breakthrough, the 3rd book in And Carillians for the Machine series. But it's hidden on my Facebook page. The first person to find it and e-mail me with the correct location of this cover, along with the answer to "What appears 7 times on the cover?" will get a free e-book from Smashwords, your choice The White Lilac, Fadeout or Remembered (when it is released).

So here's the 4 steps:

1. Go to my Facebook page. If you want to like it that would be great, but not necessary, although I do post information there that I don't here.

2. Search for the Breakthrough cover.

3. Look at the cover and identify the 7 things that appear across it.

4. Send me an e-mail including where the cover is located, your answer to what appears 7 times on the cover and which book you would like to: adamschristinawriter@yahoo.com.

Enjoy the hunt! :)

On Barnes & Noble

I don't normally post today, but I said I would post when The Compound finally made it to Barnes & Noble and it arrived in the last few hours. It's free on Barnes & Noble and I've also now added it to Amazon where it is .99. (Yep, I'm going to be rolling in dough.)

If you've ever wondered how long it takes for a story to be distributed from Smashwords to B&N, now you know that at least in The Compound's case it took a lucky 13 days from publication or 9 days from when it hit their premium status. I just know I'm going to have to come back to this post often to see how my next books and stories compare. Now that I'm actually paying attention to this. :)

Remembered Update

Now that The Compound is out I've returned my focus on Remembered (ACFTM Book 2). The problem is that it took me longer to get The Compound done then I planned and now I am not going to be able to make my overly optimistic hope of publishing Remembered by July 20th. I still plan to have it out this summer, but late-August is looking more like reality.

All this will be dependent upon me working fast and hitting no surprising bumps. Which doesn't seem likely not, but that's why they have the element of surprise attached to them. If I knew when I would have problems I'd be able to start fixing them today. If anyone knows how to predict such things please let me know! adamschristinawriter (at) yahoo. com or via Twitter or Facebook. Yep, I'm desperate. :)