NBTM Virtual Tour + #Giveaway: A is for Author by Shayla McBride @GoddessFish

A is for Author

by Shayla McBride

GENRE:  help for early writers; non-fiction

BLURB:

Want to write a book of your own? A is for Author can jump-start you on the path to success. Friendly and candid, and a touch curmudgeonly, Shayla gives you the basics on 333-plus must-know subjects that many how-to-write books overlook. Industry jargon is clarified, technique explained, branding and promotion examined, and sex (sort of) illuminated. Easy to read, A is for Author is not only an essential for the new writer, but the perfect holiday gift.

Excerpt:

It’s estimated that over ninety percent of Americans think they have a book in them. You may be one of those hopeful 290,000,000 citizens. Or maybe you live outside the U.S. Either way, welcome to the great  rarely-discussed dream of  writing your own original work of fiction.

It’ll be a piece of cake, right? After all, you use a lot of words every day. You’ve written reports, essays, shopping lists, holiday family updates, e-mails, tweets. You read, everything from check-out line trash to print and e-books. After you finished a recent work of fiction, you thought: I could do better than this. In fact, I think I will.

A dozen starts later, you realize it’s not quite that easy. You can see the story, but everything’s gauzy. You can’t find the words. It takes a lot of words to make a novel, the right words, in the right order. Your initial effort is disorganized, repetitive, and meandering. Why’s it such a mess? You’d never realized books had to be edited. Can yours be saved? Should it be saved?

When you begin writing, you don’t know what to look for. You don’t know the basics of construction, the techniques, the terminology or reader expectations. You simply do not realize what you don’t know.

So many questions, so few easily accessible answers. You’re not alone. Everyone who’s ever embarked on the journey of creating genre fiction from their own imagination follows the same basic path and has the same questions.

Genre fiction is commercial fiction: adventures, fantasies, Mysteries, paranormals, Romances, sci-fi, thrillers. That’s what we’re talking about here.

What you write, your style, will be unique to you. The process itself isn’t. Your questions about writing are neither stupid nor unusual. Every person who writes, including me, has had them. I’ve tried to answer a lot of them—333-plus, but who’s counting?—to make the mysterious world of fiction writing more explicable. My aim is to answer many of your questions in this book.

As with most writing advice, nothing in here is one hundred percent true for all situations or all writers. Almost nothing is absolute. This book is based on my experience in laboring to attain a publishable level of writing skill.

Through teaching classes, counseling writers, and being part of critique groups, I know newer writers pretty much do the same things, and most do the same things in the same order. All wonder how they’re doing without knowing how or where to find the answer.

Most of the subjects addressed are available in expanded form on-line, in other books on writing and through classes, both on-line and in person. Check the back matter for any authors mentioned, plus digital and hard copy sources.

This is a demanding gig with a long learning curve. It’s fair to state that you will never stop learning, no matter how much success you attain. Even New York Times best-selling authors have said they’re ready to take their craft “to the next level”. The information in here is mostly for beginners, although those of you working farther along the continuum may find items of interest.

My first suggestion: read this book in sips, not gulps. There’s nuggets in here that took me years to internalize and you’ll probably travel the same route (hopefully quicker). Because you don’t have to read in order, and I don’t know how you’ll consume this, there’s some unavoidable repetition. I’ve added blank pages; feel free to scribble.

As with ballroom dancing, gymnastics, or oil painting, there are baby steps to take. Any craft has basics to master before moving forward, and writing is one of the most demanding of crafts. As Ernest Hemingway once wrote,

“We are all apprentices in a craft we will never master.”

Interview with Shayla McBride

Hello Nancy, thanks for hosting me. As A is for Author is non-fiction, I’ll be addressing your questions from a different perspective.

What inspired you to write A is for Author ?

When my five year-old daughter April was given a two-wheeler for her birthday, she personally removed the training wheels and taught herself to ride in one bloody-kneed, heart-breaking day. (The scars have faded but she’s still stubborn.) Watching people try to do new things and not being able to help has always brought out my protective, hope-I-can-help side. This how-to book will make a big difference in would-be writers lives. Rather than critique, coach, or counsel one-on-one, A is for Author can reach an unlimited audience.

Writing genre fiction is, for most would-be writers, amazingly difficult. Attaining competency can be long and frustrating. I’ve taught and critiqued and coached a lot of newbies and their questions are often the same. The learning process is usually the same, too.

Most how-to-write books assume a certain level of knowledge which is generally lacking in the entry-level writer. A s for Author remedies that lack. It’ll kick-start a writer’s development.

I used “How am I doing? “ and “Am I on the right track? “ as springboards. Initially, I figured ninety-nine questions. Then one hundred fifty-two. Two hundred. Then I vowed I’d stop at three hundred. I could’ve gone to four hundred topics. Or more. But you gotta stop someplace. 333 has a nice ring to it. And it covers just about every subject a learning writer would want to know

Can you tell us a little bit about the next books in (Name of book or series) or what you have planned for the future?

The next book in this non-fiction series, a shorter work I hope, is F is for Fight, and will take a look at action scenes and how to make them real. Too many times, action and reaction and downstream effects are way off the mark. New writers often shy away from conflict, so the book should increase their comfort levels and make them more focused. It should be out in early 2018.

For fiction, It Could be Fun, a Carl Tanner romantic suspense novella, comes out in early December as part of the Omega Team series in Kindle World. Carl’s retired military, lucky in a firefight but not so lucky in love. He’s undercover in a ladies strip club when he meets January Jones, the hottest woman, and the worst liar, he’s ever met.  But January has a secret that leads them to a deadly confrontation that will test even Tanner's off-the-chartsskills.

Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in A is for Author?

Poor, put-upon Amelia, my worst-case heroine.  I have no negative feelings about the name, don’t ask me why Amelia came to mind. She gets threatened, she’s kind of a dimwit (TSTL, look that up), she gets all sorts of crap thrown at her. She is every character and as such is terribly abused by her creator (me). As  with nearly all fictional characters, the author must take care to put her through the wringer.

You know I think we all have a favorite author. Who is your favorite author and why?

I guess I’m the oddball. I have too many favorites to list. Nicci French: superb psychology, great characters, great editing; the Frieda Klein series (Blue Monday) is excellent. Amy Bloom: all round superb. In alphabetical order: Harlan Coben, Jamie Freveletti, Elizabeth George, Martha Grimes, Robert Hellenga, Elmore Leonard, Elizabeth Peters, Michael Robotham, and about fifty romance authors.

If you could time-travel would you travel to the future or the past? Where would you like to go and why would you like to visit this particular time period?

I totally believe that the unexamined past leads to a chaotic present and an uncertain future. Sadly, those “in charge" rarely heed the mistakes of the past. I’m a closet historian, and have set a historical adventure-romance series in various sites during the long run-up to World War One, the “War to End all Wars”. The stupidity, short-sightedness, and hubris of elected leaders is amazing, and the early 1900s was particularly terrible. Finding Victoria is the first book, and is set in India, England and Morocco.
It’s out on queries now.

Coincidentally, I do cover creating believable worlds in A is for Author, as well as character development and genre requirements. Getting the genre right is more important than new writers usually think.

Do you have any little fuzzy friends? Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?

Princess CooCoo, the world’s most unsatisfactory feline. Long-haired, black with green eyes, semi-feral, paranoid and possibly schizoid. Bites the hand that feeds her. Independent, even up a tree or in a hurricane. She showed up in my yard years ago and stayed, and we have developed a sort-of relationship. She’s so shy some of my friends doubt she exists. But when I travel, I have to arrange a cat-sitter.

Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit with us today.

Delighted. Hope your followers enjoyed the visit.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Think of the worst photo you’ve ever had taken. End-of-binge candid, strawpile hair, baggy eyes even Photoshop couldn’t erase, an Autumn shirt and you’re absolutely a Spring. Multiply that by ten. That’s how much the camera likes Shayla. So...no photo.

I’m a native of New York. Now I live in Florida, on the edge of Irma’s path. We’re fine, thanks, although Princess CooCoo refused to come inside while canines were in emergency residence. Before Florida, I lived in Maryland and Morocco. Two years in southern Morocco, in a small town near the Atlantic coast where I was a Peace Corps volunteer, convinced me we can all get along, but we have to try a lot harder than we are now. The previous twenty years in Annapolis, MD convinced me that “Crabtown” is the best, prettiest, funnest state capitol in the US.

At the end of Peace Corps, the idea was I’d move to Paris and become an expat. It was all about the food, of course. And the wine. But my kids are in Florida...so here I am drinking French wine while hurricanes roar instead of drinking it while sitting in a café on the Champs Elysées.

But I wouldn’t be a writer if I’d gone to France, and A is for Author would never have been written. Think of all the new writers who would’ve suffered without that book! And don’t forget the ever-enduring hero Carl Tanner, Key West’s Jake Baron and Margo Hollander, and hilltown Italy’s Marco McCabe and Laura Walter (and all the others) who would never have seen the light of day. Or the black and white of your e-reader or paperback. So it’s all to the good. But...I sure do miss a decent baguette...

I write, on average, seven hours a weekday. Obviously I have no time for housework; fine by me. I do have time for gardening, cooking, painting (house and fabric), my kids and friends, the Florida Symphony, and my fave, travel. I love exploring third world countries, especially their food and music. Street food: yum! Any ancient ruin is on my to-do list, as is any colonial town regardless of age. One of my favorites? Trinidad, Cuba (founded 1514). I do have a photo of Trinidad, and of a delicious garbanzo-ham-chorizo dish I had there. Find it on my website.

Thanks for visiting...Shayla

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Buy Link:

Amazon

Giveaway:

$25 Amazon or B/N GC

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