Book Review: Kiera's Quest

There's something different about Kiera. Something even she can't put her finger on, but she's about to take off on the adventure of her life time, though Kiera doesn't know that quite yet.
All her young life she's been plagued by dreams of a faraway land. A place as strange as it is familiar to her, where danger awaits around almost every corner. And something else...the comforting presence of someone she was destined for. Kiera must race against time to save Zak, the Prince of Zantar, from the evil Witch Queen, and fight to save the two worlds whose survival rests on her shoulder.
Kristy Brown's debut novel is a fantastic story of adventure and betrayal, cleverly blended with characters that will steal you from the very first page.
When it comes to Kiera and her friends, the author does a brilliant job in letting their story unfold the way it was meant to. Her use of imagery and dialogue make this novel a promising start to what is sure to be an amazing writing career.
i highly recomend this book to both adults and teenagers alike.
But Kiera's Quest on Amazon! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kieras-Quest-Awakenings-ebook/dp/B005WXN1RE/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Guest Blogger Al Lamanda: Rambling Musings of the Mistakes I’ve Made Along the Way to Being Published.

**Please welcome author Al Lamanda, who is this month's guest blogger.**

You’ve sweated, stressed over, lost sleep because of, skipped meals, stood up friends and family, wrote, rewrote, gave up on, went back to, and finally finished the book you started out to write.

Finally, it’s finished. Your book. Now what?

When I first started writing, there weren’t the choices there are today. My choices were traditional publishers and that was it. Today, if you so choose, you can self-publish on a dozen different eBook publishing sites.

Before you try the eBook route, you want to take your best shot at getting you book scooped up by an agent, who will then in turn sell it for the best deal possible to a publisher. Where do you start?

Why, at the beginning, of course, because very little has changed in the world of traditional publishing. Your best chance of selling your work to a publisher is to get an agent who believes in you, and that isn’t easy. In fact, it’s very difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.

So, with that in mind, here are some of the things I did wrong and what I did to correct them along the way.

First, assuming you’ve finished your book, you must write a perfect query letter to an agent. One page or less, preferably less. An agent may receive hundreds of query letters in a week, how much time do you think will be spent on your six page rambler? My first query letter was almost seven pages. I included everything but my height and weight in it, and guess how many responses I got in return?

So what’s in a perfect query letter? Who you are, what your book is about, your contact information and a short bio of your work, if you have one. You can find many good examples of query letters on the sites I will list below. Note they are all one page or less. Practice yours until it’s the best query letter you can make it. Remember your query letter is your face, your introduction and your first impression. Make it a great one.

Now you have a query letter, so what do you do with it? Send it to an agent, of course. I mean, how could they not love it? After all, it’s your book. Right? So what I did was send my query to about five hundred agents. I figured volume query lettering would have to work if you send out enough of them. Of course, that proved to be the exact wrong thing to do.

Here’s why. If you do your homework, you’ll find that most agents represent the type of books they are interested in. So why query an agent looking for women’s fiction and tell them about you great mystery/thriller? Why query an agent looking for action/suspense with you great new western or romance novel? Do you homework and find the agents interested in your genre and query them. If you check the websites I’ve listed below, you can locate the agents interested in your genre. Those are the ones to target.

So you written the perfect query and sent them to your targeted agents and yikes, an agent wants to read your work. What now?

Simple, you do what the agent asks. Some will want to see a synopsis and first three chapters. Others will want a synopsis and the entire manuscript. Most, if not all will request a synopsis. The first time an agent asked me for a synopsis, I sent one nearly the size of my book. I never heard back. A synopsis should be two to six pages and no more. An agent doesn’t have the time to read a twenty page outline. If you had to read twenty or thirty of them a day, would you? Check the websites I list below for samples of some good synopsis writing. Practice writing yours and make sure it’s the best it can be before sending it out.

You’ve gotten this far, but you’re not there yet. When the agent asks to see your manuscript, what is expected is a manuscript formatted to industry standards. Nothing fancy in the least. Just 12 font, double spaced and as mistake free as possible. They don’t expect perfect, but they do expect industry standards and good. If the book is sold, a professional editor will take it from there. Check the websites below for samples of industry standards.

After that, it’s a waiting game. Don’t bug the agent. Normal response time is three months to get back to you, some as much as six months. After all, yours is not the only manuscript they have to read on their desk.

One final note on a doozy of a mistake I made early on. I took rejection personally. It isn’t. Resist the temptation to let that agent know what you think of their rejection notice. Rejection is just part of the business. Every reader won’t love your book and neither will every agent. Keep in mind that the agent who rejected your first book just might love your second one, but they will never read it if you make them an enemy.

Remember, when it comes to agents, it only takes one. If you don’t make the mistakes I did and your book is good enough, you will find that one.

Thanks for letting me share some of my mistakes with you and I hope they help you along your way.

http://www.agentquery.com/
http://www.guidetoliteraryagent.com/
Predators & Editors

Al Lamanda is the author of the books Dunston Falls, Walking Homeless, Running Homeless and Sunset (release date 2012.)

The Invasion of the E-Reader

I’m going to make a general assumption that most people who write also love to read. I know that’s the case with me. I read at the dinner table, and earned spankings for it as a child. (Even having my own children can’t cure me.) I take books to doctor and dentist appointments. You won’t find me at the license branch without one. I read in bed and outside on my deck, whenever and where ever I get a chance. I haunt the library in the summer, and bookstores are my favorite stores at the mall. When I go antique shopping, I end up with books, old favorites to treasure again.

So when I saw the glamorous commercials about the new e-readers, I was torn. I love technology, but I also love the anticipation of putting a new book on my lap. The stiff feel to the spine when you first open it. The colorful (and sometimes hideous) cover art. The smell of fresh pages. The relaxing rhythm of turning those pages. Getting back into those favorite or new characters is such a thrill. How can you get that from a device that’s a combination of plastic and parts? An e-reader lacks the soul of a book, right?

Then my wonderful husband bought one for me for my birthday. It was a complete surprise, but an intriguing one. How would this thing, with its glitzy buttons and screen, compare?

First off, I discovered e-books are cheaper than new hardcover novels. Pleasant shock! A way to save money and justify buying more books! It’s even true of established authors. The most expensive E-books are a good ten dollars cheaper.

Next, I found the e-reader is lighter than the usually vast tombs that make up my fantasy novel selections. Another bonus! I can hold it easily with only one hand, and it fits in my purse. Who knew!

When I set it on the table with my peanut butter sandwich at lunch time, the pages don’t flip closed! I don’t have to turn the book over to keep my place and risk injuring the spine, and I don’t have to fear losing my place if a bookmark falls out. The dang thing remembers exactly where I stop reading. It goes to sleep when I have to stop and attend to a teenage drama fit and wakes up when I’m ready to read again. It plugs into the wall or my laptop and the battery lasts for days. I like this! The thing even gives you pages numbers and shows how many total pages so you know where you stand.

Turning the pages isn’t the hassle I expected. There’s two ways to do it. You can press the button each time or drag a finger across the touch screen almost like turning an actual page. And the time it takes the screen to change isn’t more than turning a real page either.

Then the first drawback greeted me. You have to wait for it to start up. No instant gratification like a true book. Any amount of waiting is too long when you have only twenty minutes to sneak in your lunch break before returning to work. I labored around that by starting it up before my lunch. Problem solved.

To balance that, I don’t have to drive anywhere for a new book. Books download in minutes, and it holds more volumes than I can afford. Hey, I’m saving gas!

Then I learned you have to go through every page to reach where the book actually starts. That means the title page, the copy write page, and all the author thank you and dedications, plus any blank pages and chapter indexes. Well, that not a big deal. I can flip through ten pages or so to find the start. Not a problem, just an annoyance.

The next drawback held more challenges. Say you’re reading along and you forget something and want to flip back to it. In a book, it’s pretty easy to hunt around and find what you’re looking for because you’ve got a general idea based the amount of pages you’ve read. On an e-reader, it’s a bit more difficult. Want to refer to that map at the beginning of the first section? Do you remember the page number? Probably not. Did you think to bookmark it? Call me stupid, but I never do. Run across a name you don’t remember and want to check the glossary? You’ve got to use a search to find it. Not so reader friendly. Okay, so there’s one thing I don’t like about the experience so far, but it does keep me from skipping ahead to get to the good parts. No more indulging my weakness of passing over the boring scenes to see who lives or dies. My stealing a peek at the ending days are over!

Also, I can take it outside and read it in sunlight, unlike my laptop. The screen is not an LCD so glare doesn’t affect the pages. Excellent! I can enjoy my deck and fresh breezes while continuing to read.

On it goes, back and forth and back and forth; is the e-reader plus or minus? I don’t have to find space on my already crowded bookshelves. Big plus! But, on the other hand, I can’t display my new acquisition for visitors as proof of my good taste. (Yes, I’m that shallow.) Minus. If I drop taco sauce on my e-reader, it wipes off without an embarrassing stain on the pages. (This seems to happen a lot.) Plus. Yet, my local library is behind the times and doesn’t have e-books to lend. (Darn, no freebies!) Minus. Hooray, I’m saving paper and not cutting down trees. That’s the ultimate plus of an e-reader for me.

Improvement keeps balancing against setback. Perhaps what I’m complaining about is not the e-reader itself, but the differences it makes in my life. Though I still buy traditional books at times, my reading habits are forever altered. What I saw as drawbacks were simply changes. Changes? Adjustments to welcome and come to treasure like an old friend with a facelift. Reading is still the same friend, who’s just been made fresh with an electronic scalpel. Shouldn’t we all try to stay fresh?

What’s your opinion? Have any of you gone through the e-reader switch? Love it or hate it, want one or shun them? Give me your story.