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Showing posts from 2016

Worldbuilders Auction

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It's Worldbuilders time again. Between the edit of Cheating Death and the aftermath of the election, I've had my head down for a couple of weeks. That's how I missed the fact that the Worldbuilders auction for my Tuckerization went live. Here is a fun fact you may not have known. The character of Tam, the mixed-blood captive and green-haired "Leprechaun" that Ava can See in her mind, who was trapped in the tunnel with Archer after the explosion in the ghost station in Waging War - you remember the guy? He was the result of a Worldbuilders Tuckerization auction. The winner of the auction gave me his name, and a couple of characteristics, and then Tam took on a life of his own. There's also a Tuckerization character in Cheating Death from last year's auction, and he was A LOT of fun to create. Here's a hint - he's a Clocker/Monger mix, and boy, is he in trouble. This year, I'm out of Immortal Descendant books to write. Wait, wha

Building an author website

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Being an independent author is not only writing books I hope will appeal to my readers. I'm actually running a business. There's marketing and promotions, strategy and speculation, market analysis, and a whole lot of seat-of-my-trousers guessing. (I spent a summer among Brits. I struggle to say "pants" now without thinking of underwear.) I have also discovered a huge network of authors/business-owners who are incredibly generous with information-sharing and very helpful advice, some of which I've been acting on for the past couple of days. I've been doing a little author housekeeping, if you will, and the following post is probably only useful to other authors and maybe a couple of small-business owners. Fair warning. I signed up for the Amazon Affiliates program back in February. I got the cool little stripe on top of every Amazon page that I visit, and I immediately changed all by book links on my blogspot pages to Affiliate links. (For anyone w

A Month in the Yukon

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I’ve been in Canada for a month – specifically, the Yukon Territory – even more specifically, my family and I have been dividing our time between the town of Dawson City and a mining camp two hours on dirt roads away. It’s been a good month, even great sometimes. The best moments have generally involved good friends, campfires, fascinating conversations, coffee-in-bed mornings, long walks, and the ever-amazing, always-changing Yukon skies. Every photo I’ve taken this month has featured the sky. It is unavoidable and magnificent, and is in a state of constant change. When we arrived at the end of June, there were about two hours of dimness between 2-4am. Now, at the end of July, it’s almost dark by midnight, and in a couple of weeks, the Northern Lights might even be visible. We’ll be gone then. Gone back to the land of Pokemon Go, which, in this country where our cell phones don’t work, has been fabulously impossible. Gone back to the world of effortless in

Update to the Tearjerkers list - A Man Called Ove

It happens sometimes that your heart fills so full that it spills down your face and steals your breath and sounds like sobs. And sometimes tears fill your throat and prickle your nose as you lie in the dark long after the story is done. And the tears are made of joy and hope and love and family, and they leave you feeling full instead of empty - that happens sometimes too. It happened this time.

Book Recommendations - Tearjerkers and Romance

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I was at an author's conference recently where a very high-powered film producer said, during a conversation about a book-pitch, "never, ever call a book a romance." Every timeless story has romantic elements, he said, but if you call a story a romance, even a story in which the central theme is the relationship between two people in love, you will effectively kill all its credibility. Kill all its credibility. Huh. (Insert rant here. It will be the subject of another post.) My book club read Me Before You this month. Now, to be perfectly fair to the book itself, I did read it in a day, I did shed a tear, and it was written well. My primary criticism of the book itself was that I didn't particularly like either of the two main characters (or anyone else in it for that matter) and didn't really care enough about them to heavily invest my emotions in their story. That's a personal opinion and feel free to yell about how much you loved the book. It won&

Show me, don't tell me.

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I don't own this picture, but there's a whole story written in those shoes. I was an English major in college, but I actually suck at punctuation. My editor has taught me more about the rules for punctuation than any teacher in sixteen years of education ever did. Screenwriting taught me how to pare things down to their most visual elements, and to write action scenes with active words. There's a set up to every scene, just so we know who's there and what they're doing, but the story is told through the dialogue between characters. Time spent a character's head does NOT translate into something visible on screen. In my books, its my job to paint the visual picture with words. I need to show readers what my characters see and do with active words that allow the reader to be there with them, and then whenever possible, let interactions with other characters give voice to the narrator's observations. For example, in an early (unedited) scene from Cheat

A Q&A about Writing

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I was interviewed recently for a blog about writing and editing, and because the blogger, who is also an author, took so much time coming up with thoughtful questions, I spent a day writing my answers. It's a good Q&A about the series, my writing habits, and writing in general, so I wanted to share it here for anyone who doesn't already follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks, Rachelle - this was a lot of fun! Click here or on the picture above to go to the Q&A.

Andy Weir

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There is nothing better in the world (okay, maybe one or two things) than starting a book at 5am, getting hooked in three lines - yes, three lines - and then not even feeling a little bit guilty for reading until it's done. The Martian is that book. And I'm a fantasy reader, not science fiction. Seriously. Ender's Game is as close to sci fi as I get, but my friend, Roxi, who must love me very much, gave me The Martian for Christmas, and then I read Nathan Van Koop's fairly spectacular review, so I figured I could always go back to sleep if it didn't hook me. Yeah, that didn't happen. This is not a funny book. The guy gets stranded on Mars - how is that funny? Except, Mark's voice (that's the guy) has exactly the wry snark I hear in my own head, and his irreverent comic timing is perfect while mine is about twenty minutes after the moment of perfection. The crazy thing is, I didn't stop laughing, even when an entire planet of crap could

Cheating Death Inspiration

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Just so we're clear, I don't own ANY of these images - well, except for the cover model photos, which I have a license to use. But I finally finished my notebook cover for book five - Cheating Death - and it's my visual inspiration pin board for the story.  If anyone's interested, you can follow me on Pinterest for more book-inspired images, or on Instagram (I'm AprilWhiteBooks) for life-inspired ones. The enterprising among you might begin to glean a little of the adventures I'm planning for Saira, or you could just wait and be surprised, as I'm sure I will be along the way. The Cheating Death notebook is full of notes, mind you, and I'm already writing, but until now, it was a sad, plain black Moleskine.  Now it's fancy, and I can get back to work.

Books to Read After Harry Potter

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Image Credit to Duet Designs The Harry Potter series was a phenomenon that every author covets, and ever reader seeks - pure, magical storytelling. We feel like we know those characters, like we care what happened to Harry, Ron, and Hermione after the books ended (witness the pure excitement over the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play and book). The stories that JK Rowling created are accessible and captivating to audiences young and old, male and female, of all education levels, and from all walks of life. They are the books people can recommend over and over, to anyone who likes a little magic with their storytelling, and they are utterly timeless. There are other books, some well-known, some obscure, that can capture imaginations and offer readers a world of escapism, magic, adventure, laughter, tears, and joy. Everyone has a list of books like that - the ones that create common ground among readers, the ones that make you say, "You read that book, too? Wasn't