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Welcome back to Show Me The $$$ Monday. Each week I'll be giving away either a $10 Amazon Gift Card (if you're a resident of the US) or a book worth up to $10 from the Book Depository (if you live outside of the US).
The contest will run from Monday ~ Friday each week with the winner announced on Saturday. Then the following Monday a new contest will start.
This isn't just about entering a contest for a chance to win. (Although of course who wouldn't want to win?) It's also a chance to get to know other bloggers and blog followers out there. Most of us have one "type" of blog that we typically visit all the time - book blogs, product review blogs, mommy type blogs, etc. This will be a way for us to all come together and take the chance to explore other types of blogs we may not have checked out before. Who knows - you might even find a new restaurant in your area to try, a way to make homemade baby food or a review for a book you've been dying to read.
The RULES for entering are simple.
1. Enter your blog OR email address in the Linky List below.
Put the name of your blog and what type of blog you have. Ex ~ Lori's Book Blog (book reviews, contests). Then the link to the home page of your blog. You don't have to list everything that your blog covers, just one or two items so that other bloggers will get a chance to know what you're about. You don't need to post about this on your blog, but it would be a nice way of spreading the word. If you don't have a blog, you can still enter, but there must be a way in which I can get in touch with you left in the link in case you win. You can enter your email address in the top line and then any website address in the linky line (amazon, yahoo, etc)
2. You must post your info in the Linky Form. If you post it in the comments, it will not count.
Visit other blogs on the list to find new sites and meet new friends.
The winner will be chosen by Random.org. Whatever number the randomizer picks will be matched up to the number on the linky list and VIOLA - a winner is chosen :)
Poisoned Pen Press Announces the Release of Did Not Survive by Ann Littlewood
One of the best-known quotes about the craft of writing is “write what you know.” Novelist Ann Littlewood, who worked as a zookeeper for the Oregon Zoo for over a decade, does just that in her latest mystery, Did Not Survive. An intriguing and suspenseful tale set against the backdrop of a fictional zoo, Did Not Survive is the story of a violent death, an elephant with means and opportunity but no motive, and a zookeeper driven to find the truth.
Pregnant and still reeling from her husband’s murder, protagonist Iris Oakley wants only to carry on as a keeper at Finley Memorial Zoo in Vancouver, Washington. But Iris is forced into extraordinary—and extraordinarily terrifying—circumstances when she must try to rescue her boss, Kevin Wallace, from being mauled to death by Damrey, a reliable old elephant. No one understands why Damrey attacked—or even if Damrey attacked.
Nominated by her coworkers to investigate, Iris soon uncovers a number of motives to kill Kevin—and a long list of potential suspects. The elephant keepers are locked in a bitter feud; the zoo’s new veterinarian has something to hide; and an old flame’s passion has boiled down to a simmering rage. Adding to the chaos, animal rights activists who want the elephants sent to a sanctuary are picketing the zoo. The police keep dropping by. A new foreman shows up with alarming ideas. And then the animals begin to disappear into thin air. . . .
Determined to get answers, Iris launches a pulse-racing quest that will put her job, her baby, and even her life on the line. But the closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she gets to a killer—a killer who will stop at nothing to keep Iris from piecing together this deadly puzzle.
A chilling and inventive tale that explores the promise of new birth juxtaposed against the trauma of murder, Did Not Survive is a complex and captivating mystery. Rich with insights about modern zoos and the incredible bond between humans and animals drawn from Littlewood’s experience, Did Not Survive is an exhilarating novel with an exotic setting, an enchanting heroine, and a storyline to die for.
Ann Littlewood worked as a zookeeper at the Oregon Zoo for 12 years before launching a career in business writing with Kaiser Permanente. Ann lives in Portland, Oregon. A life-long environmentalist, Ann is an active volunteer with the Audubon Society of Portland. She is also the author of Night Kill.
Ever since I signed the contract with New Hope Publishers for my four-book fiction series, I’ve been hearing variations of the same question: What’s the genre?
Tough one to answer. I suppose contemporary international fiction sums it up best, since each book is set in a different country and takes place in modern times. But New Hope, which is known for its passion for missions, has opted to call it “Fiction with a Mission,” and I couldn’t be more pleased with that label.
The first two books of the series, No Greater Love, which is set in South Africa in 1989 during the violence and upheaval preceding the overthrow of Apartheid, and More than Conquerors, set in Mexico and dealing with the Mayan culture and influence, released April 5, 2010. Book three, Red Ink, is set in China and just released in October, and the final one, People of the Book, set in Saudi Arabia, releases in April 2011.
The writing and production of this series has been an exciting shared adventure, as I partner with New Hope Publishers in their first fiction launch, while I learn about the unique aspects of writing fiction in international settings. Of the four countries highlighted in the books, I have been to only one—Mexico—but I have never set foot in the area where the Mayan culture is so strong and where much of book two takes place. Can anyone say RESEARCH? Online research, library research, books and videos and movies—and people. My greatest resource for authentic research has been connecting with people who either currently live in the countries where my stories occur or have recently lived there. Though I began the writing of the stories based on much of my online and book research, the majority of personal touches that make readers say, “Wow, it’s like I’m right there!” came about as a result of feedback from those who know the areas and culture firsthand.
As an author of Christian books, this is my way of “going into all the world” to fulfill the Great Commission—and calling others to do the same. I pray my venture into international fiction will truly prove to be “fiction with a mission” for all who read it—and who may find themselves called to expand their own writing into this exciting and growing genre.
About the author ~
Kathi is a multi-award winning writer who has authored nearly 30 books and ghostwritten several others. A former newspaper columnist and string reporter, Kathi has taught creative and business writing in various venues and has been a guest on many radio and television programs. Kathi is a popular speaker at churches, women’s clubs and retreats, and writers’ conferences, and recently won the prestigious 2008 member of the year award from AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association) at the annual Golden Scrolls award banquet. Kathi “Easy Writer” Macias lives in Homeland, CA, with her husband, Al, where the two of them spend their free time riding their Harley.
Yang Zhen-Li defies not only her Communist parents but the government as well when she marries a poor Christian peasant and converts to his faith. When she begins to distribute Christian materials, particularly to children, she is arrested and sentenced to ten years of hard labor. Will her husband and son wait for her and support her throughout their long separation? Will she even survive to return to them once again? Or will the evil guard Tai Tong, who has taken a personal dislike to Zhen-Li, convince her to deny her faith? Two elderly saints halfway around the world are determined to pray her through, though they’ve never met her and don’t even know her name. God’s faithfulness in the midst of unimaginable trials will bring about an ending that could never be anticipated—but will never be forgotten.
Read an excerpt ~
Prologue
Yang Zhen-Li was nearing thirty but at times felt twice that old. Her back was becoming permanently bent forward from the heavy pails she carried daily, one attached on each end of the thick bamboo rod that stretched across her shoulders, mirroring the heaviness of her heart. There had been a time when she’d been acclaimed as a beauty, but she could scarcely remember why…or imagine that it would matter.
She tried to fight the encroaching darkness, tried to hold fast to what she knew was true, but the constant lies and propaganda were taking a greater toll even than the physical labor and abuse or the burning, gnawing hunger. If her situation didn’t change soon, she knew she would never live long enough to see her husband or son again. And with nearly eight years of her ten-year sentence left to serve, the possibilities of her emerging from prison alive grew dimmer by the day. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. She forced herself to focus on one of the many scripture verses she’d had opportunity to memorize between the time she accepted Zhu Yesu as her Savior and her arrest by members of the Public Security Bureau (PSB) on charges of teaching religion to children, including giving them papers containing religious writings. Even before her arrest, her parents had written to her—warned her, begged her, threatened her—and finally had her kidnapped in an attempt to convince her to go along with the government rules, especially the one limiting each family to one child. After all, she already had a healthy son. Why would she want another baby when they could scarcely afford to feed the first one? But though her abductors had forcibly aborted her second child, they had not succeeded in convincing Yang Zhen-Li to abandon the faith she had adopted before marrying her Christian husband. If anything, the ordeal had only strengthened her resolve to take a stand for the meaning of her name—Zhen-Li, “Truth,”—and spurred her to begin actively sharing the Good News of Yesu every chance she got. As a trained teacher, that quite naturally included talking with children about the gospel, a practice expressly forbidden by the government.
And now she was paying the price. Separated from her family and sentenced to ten years of hard labor and “re-education,” Zhen-Li struggled to survive against pain, exhaustion, and bitter loneliness. Worst of all were the times she felt God had abandoned her. It wasn’t enough to know in her mind that He promised never to leave or forsake her. She needed a visible reminder—soon—if she was to continue to remain faithful behind these prison walls.
My good friend often talks about her wealthy 80-year-old uncle who may or may not have dementia. Dementia isn’t usually a grey area (you either remember your children or you don’t) but her uncle sits right on the corner of Wise and Worldly and Cute and Clueless. For example, last Christmas he gave everyone in the family a beautifully, red and green wrapped, dented, label-less can of some unknown type of food. Every single person, including the fifteen nieces and nephews got one, each with their names spelled right and no earthly idea what was inside. It was quite the topic of conversation behind closed doors. Is Uncle Rodney the ultimate Go-Green gift giver (Wise and Worldly) or is Uncle Rodney one step away from assisted living (Cute and Clueless)?
Recently, Uncle Rodney saw that motor home living was the future and he was going to ride that wave to the end. At an auction, he had his eye on a sweet little number deliciously called The Pleasure Wagon—I wish I’d made that part up because it’s almost too good to be true.
My friend accompanied her uncle and it was a beautiful fall day, I’m told. Uncle Rodney brought his lunch pail,
“A dollar and-a-half for a hot dog! Ridiculous!”
After a morning with thoughts of the open road on his mind, he began bidding for a future where wheels and beds are one and no one cares if you,
“Whiz on the side of the road.”
Imagine his excitement when his competitors exited the bidding frenzy, when he watched his rivals give up and walk away.
“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the Pleasure Wagon,” he said triumphantly.
With check in hand he marched up to the auctioneer, ready to receive the wagon-of-pleasure for only $3000. (!)
Imagine his dismay when he discovered that he had mistakenly bid on the much less desirable fork lift, sitting in the shadow of the RV of the future. In his zest for the bid, his zeal for the future he’d purchased a fork lift where wheels and cutlery are one. *sigh*
After some over-the-top-of the eye glasses discussions with those in charge, my friend was able to return the forklift but not in time for Uncle Rodney to bid on The Pleasure Wagon. The Wagon went to an elderly couple who, as Uncle Rodney put it,
“Don’t look like they know their heads from a hand basket,” adding with disdain, “What the Hay.”
After a nap in the sun, my friend asked Uncle Rodney how he was doing.
“Well, hell,” he said, “It’s kinda like Christmas morning when all ya’ get are socks.”
“Speaking of Christmas,” my friend said, (hoping to spend a nice day shopping and do a quick mini-mental assessment on the side). “What was with the cans you gave for Christmas last year?”
Uncle Rodney sat bolt up-right and said, “What’d ya get?”
“Green beans,” said my friend (but of course, she had thrown away the can without looking).
“Green beans,” he nodded with deep appreciation. “That’s what I love about that gift. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
So with that, I hope you find yourself on the street corner of Wise and Worldly and Cute and Clueless this holiday season because we’ve gotten both green beans and a forklift (metaphorically speaking) this year and just once I’d like to nod, smile, and take a nap in the sun because of it.
About the author ~
Ann Wertz Garvin is a full professor at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, where she teaches courses on nutrition and stress management. On Maggie's Watch is her first novel.
Maggie Finley has returned with her husband from the big city to her Wisconsin hometown, where she reunites with her best friend and awaits the any-minute-now birth of her baby. She's determined to create a safe haven on Hemlock Road, a neighborhood that has always meant security, community, and love. One way to do that: resurrect the defunct Neighborhood Watch program.
The Watch folks are mostly concerned with dog poop and litterbugs. But Maggie's done some digging and discovered a potential threat living just around the corner-a threat that must be eradicated. And the more Maggie tries to take control, the more out of control she gets...
Thanks to Penguin, I have two (2) copies of this book to give away.
GIVEAWAY Rules for entering:
This contest is open to residents of USA only!
Please complete the form below - do not leave information in the comments - it will not count.
The contest will end on December 30, 2010 at 11:59PM EST; 2 winners will be selected and contacted thereafter.
Once the winners are contacted, they will have 48 hours to respond to my email or another winner will be chosen (make sure to check your spam filters!).
Unfortunately it appears that the site I use to collect all you wonderful entrants is down. I would appreciate your patience as I work to create new google documents for my contests. If by some chance the site continues to have issues I will extend the contest deadlines to allow everyone the chance to re-enter each contest.
Thank you.
Looks like the site is fixed. If you filled out the google form yesterday I manually entered your info into the other form. You can double check to make sure your name is there by clicking on the "view entries" tab. The latest ones will be at the top.
A computer is essential. Notebooks aren’t bad. In a pinch, scribbling on a napkin will suffice. I sometimes prefer to write in my head. The where is important. I can write in my head while staring out a window or riding on a train (but not on the subway). Crowded streets are iffy. To the degree possible in the limited horizons of my New York City habitat, outdoors is best, especially if I’m in motion.
Central Park is my favorite place for writing in my head. Before the winter cold settles in, turtles line up on the boulders bordering the Lake. Brilliant yellow leaves carpet the trails near the Boat House. Jugglers and musicians practice at the Bethesda Fountain. In a hidden pond, I count five large orange carp swimming, while above water, pond-skimmers skim and dragonflies fly. My walk is accompanied by birdcalls and crunching leaves, the smell of dirt, dried grass, wet rocks, fallen leaves. I scramble to the top of boulders, pretending that I’m on the Appalachian Trail, rather than in the middle of Manhattan.
Signs at trailheads designate The Ramble, a wooded area of the park, as Forever Wild—albeit a loose definition of wild. Central Park is a carefully landscaped illusion of nature, designed in 1858 by Frederick Law Olmstead, and maintained these days by the Central Park Conservancy. The purported “Wild” parts are fenced in. Obedient tourists and locals stay on the paved paths. A man-made waterfall flows into the man-made lake. I wonder about the boulders. I’m sure the multi-ton behemoths were deposited here by retreating glaciers in the last Ice Age. But what about that gorgeous gray slab of stone, perched on an expanse of granite, artfully silhouetted against the lake? Was that the work of glaciers or of Olmstead’s imagination?
I’m amused by the sleight of hand, the trompe l'oeils effect. I buy it. I like being tricked into thinking I’m in nature, when this park is as carefully contrived as Disneyland. But the thing about Central Park is that, in the balance of real and make-believe, nature trumps artifice. The trees don’t give a damn that they were planted by a landscape designer. The ducks don’t care that the lake is an elaborate ruse, fed by an underground plumbing system. To the thousands of migratory birds that land in Central Park each spring and fall, Central Park is an oasis of forest and ponds, not an elaborate stage set. They have no argument with the human landscaping, or with humans for that matter. I figure if birds are tricked by Central Park, there’s no shame in being tricked myself
I’ve been mulling over questions of artifice and illusion for a new book I’m writing. My walk through Central Park has clarified some ideas and fueled more questions. I walk back to my apartment, in hopes of translating the writing in my head onto my computer.
About the author ~
Alice Eve Cohen is a solo theatre artist, playwright, and memoirist. Her memoir, What I Thought I Knew (Viking / Penguin, 2009) won the Elle's Lettres 2009 Grand Prix for Nonfiction, it was selected as one of Oprah Magazine’s 25 Best Books of Summer, and has been optioned for a television movie by Lifetime. She has written for Nickelodeon, PBS, and CBS. Her plays have been presented at theatres throughout the country, and she has toured her solo theatre works internationally. Her writing about arts in education has been published in nine languages. The recipient of fellowships and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, she holds a BA from Princeton University and an MFA from The New School. She teaches at The New School in New York City.
In her unflinchingly honest and ruefully witty voice, Alice nimbly carries us through her metamorphosis from a woman who has come to terms with infertility to one who struggles to love a heartbeat found in her womb - six months into a high-risk pregnancy.
What I Thought I Knew is a page-turner filled with vivid characters, humor, and many surprises and twists of fate. With the suspense of a thriller and the intimacy of a diary, Cohen describes her unexpected journey through doubt, a broken medical system, and the hotly contested terrain of motherhood and family in today's society. Timely and compelling, What I Thought I Knew will capture readers of memoirs such as Eat, Pray, Love; The Glass Castle; and A Three Dog Life.
Josie is the heroine of my mystery shopper series. Mystery shoppers, also known as secret shoppers, are suburban spies. They’re hired by the big chains to go undercover as ordinary customers and report back to headquarters. Mystery shoppers find out if the store’s stock is displayed well, the restrooms are clean and customers are treated with courtesy.
Josie sees herself as the protector of Mrs. Minivan, her name for the American shopper who suffers the rudeness and indifference of bad sales persons. Mrs. Minivan helps keep the economy going, but rarely gets respect. In some stores, she’s downright invisible.
Josie makes sure that Mrs. Minivan gets the treatment she deserves.
The holidays are the height of the shoplifting season. As a mall moll, Josie knows that shoplifters cost stores – and consumers – billions every year. One survey said that $6 billion was stolen from 25 major retailers by shoppers and light-fingered employees in 2009. You read that right. Six billion dollars.
Shoplifters wallop Mrs. Minivan in the wallet. But Josie has personal reasons for tracking down the shoplifter in “An Uplifting Murder.” She wants to stop the woman who tried to get to Josie by threatening her ten-year-old daughter, Amelia. When Josie went to the police, the wily shoplifter turned the tables and threatened to arrest Josie as a stalker. Josie wants this woman in jail.
She has no proof that the woman is a shoplifter. But Josie knows it. She also knows if she watches long enough, she could bring the shoplifter to justice – unless her tormenter gets Josie arrested first.
Their cat-and-mouse game goes on in “An Uplifting Murder” while Josie hunts a killer. The victim is a high school mean girl, who grew up to be a mean woman. Josie mystery-shops a lingerie store and sees her favorite high school teacher after more than twenty years. The teacher is now working as the shop manager. She calls herself a C-cup counselor. The teacher has a secret in her past and when the mean girl is found strangled, the teacher is the main suspect. Her alibi is flimsier than the lingerie she sells, but Josie believes she’s innocent. Josie learns the lesson we all know – we never get out of high school.
Shoplifting is part of the retail world and was a natural subplot for “An Uplifting Murder.”
I’ve seen many shoplifting scams when I worked retail. I was a bookseller at a large chain store to research “Murder Between the Covers.” The most stolen book at the store was the Bible. Thieves believed we wouldn’t think they’d steal the Good Book. Too bad they never opened the Bible and read the part about “Thou shalt not steal.”
Other shoplifters took advantage of clerks gabbing to each other or shops with overworked staff to give themselves five-finger discounts. They’d slip into dressing rooms and wear stolen clothes out of the stores – or rip open CD cases in the restroom and take out the alarm tags.
The worst shoplifter I encountered was at a St. Louis mall dress shop. Our dresses cost between $100 and $500. The staff was alert for shoplifters, but we never suspected a new mother with a baby.
As this woman wheeled her stroller through our shop door, her baby started crying. The kid had powerful lungs. The saleswomen tried to soothe the poor baby so Mom could shop. When the baby stopped crying, Mom thanked us and left.
Later, Mom was arrested at the mall. Security found her baby stroller and diaper bag were packed with stolen merchandise, including a coat dress from our shop.
Mom used the baby has her accomplice. She would pinch the child when she entered the shop. While the staff comforted the wailing baby, Mom would stuff the diaper bag with stolen goods.
The awful mom was arrested. She no longer pinches clothes – or babies.
About the author ~
It’s midnight on a moonless night in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. From my office window I see boats with no running lights slipping down the Intracoastal Waterway. What illegal cargo are they carrying: drugs, guns, people? I’ve used them all in my Dead-End Job mysteries.
Across a canal, my window overlooks a million-dollar condo where mysterious neighbors hold parties in the dead of night. Everyone dresses in black evening clothes. They became the inspiration for my short story, “Vampire Hours.”
South Florida is the setting for my Dead-End Job mysteries and many short stories. It’s the inspiration that feeds my dark side.
My roots are in the Midwest, where I set my Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper series. St. Louis is very different from Fort Lauderdale. Its people have pasts, families and neighborhoods. If someone new moves into a community, a St. Louisan can make a few calls and find out where the newcomer went to school, if he has a drinking problem, if she’s divorced, and where the person works. It’s a big small town.
Not so in South Florida, where one of my snowbird neighbors turned out to be a drug dealer. I should have known that a pilot didn’t make enough money to own a Porsche, a Harley, a state-of-the-art sound system and a beachside condo unless he was flying in a very special cargo. Florida’s rootlessness and St. Louis’s structured life are important facets of my series.
These two locations drive my mysteries and occasional fictional forays into other worlds. My vampire short stories take place in Fort Lauderdale. My paranormal story, “The Bedroom Door,” is set in St. Louis and features a woman based on my Grandmother Vierling, who swore she had second sight.
Josie Marcus is a St. Louis woman. She’s connected to her community, the suburb of Maplewood. She has a mother, a daughter, and a job, where she fights for better treatment for the mythical Mrs. Minivan, the American shopper.
“An Uplifting Murder” is my sixth Josie Marcus mystery. The tenth Dead-End Job mystery, “Pumped for Murder,” will be out in May 2011. In a good series – and I hope mine fit that description – the characters grow and change.
Josie, a single mother with a ten-year-old daughter, has a talent for friendship as well as solving mysteries. She tries to help her daughter develop into an independent young woman. She fights her own tendency to fall in love with the wrong men. As a member of the sandwich generation, Josie has to care for her mother as well as her daughter.
Helen Hawthorne is a St. Louis woman on the run in South Florida. After nine Dead-End Jobs, she changed the course of her life. Helen and I both worked those same awful jobs from salesclerk to telemarketer. In her tenth adventure, Helen and Phil, her new husband, open a private eye agency called Coronado Investigations and open new possibilities to keep the series fresh.
Don’t worry, Dead-End Job fans. Helen is still working those low-paying jobs, only now she goes undercover as part of her private eye investigation. I’m going to classes at private investigators conferences and asking private eyes I know for their help. I also took the Death Investigators course at St. Louis University to give the series authenticity.
I promise you that some things will not change. Both series will still be as entertaining as I can make them.
On Josie's latest assignment, her former teacher-now working in a lingerie shop-is in need of some serious support when a customer is found murdered. Unfortunately, the teacher's alibi is flimsier than the camisoles she sells, so Josie will need to bust out her sleuthing skills to expose the real killer...
Thanks to Penguin, I have two (2) copies of this book to give away.
GIVEAWAY Rules for entering:
This contest is open to residents of USA only!
Please complete the form below - do not leave information in the comments - it will not count.
The contest will end on December 28, 2010 at 11:59PM EST; 2 winners will be selected and contacted thereafter.
Once the winners are contacted, they will have 48 hours to respond to my email or another winner will be chosen (make sure to check your spam filters!).
How Do Writers Bring Characters to Life?
By VS Grenier
Do you remember wanting to go on an adventure with Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit? How about longing to escape into the wizarding world with Harry Potter? Or solving a mystery with Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys? These characters became your friends. You felt you could see what was happening in the story through their eyes. So how does a writer do this?
A writer uses the world around them to see potential characters. They can be walking to school, shopping in the mall, riding a bike or skating down the street. Some writers use people from their memories—the child they once were, friends from childhood, current friends, family members and so on. A good writer takes and uses traits from these potential characters to make their story life like.
For me, I start with the physical traits. I need to know how my character looks to understand how they feel, act, or see themselves in their own flesh. For example, let’s say I am writing a young adult book. My main character is going to be a girl. I want character to be someone who blends into the crowd. I decide to use a person from my past. I close my eyes, I see the person and here is what I come up with:
She has straight blonde shoulder length hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes are small, close together and dark midnight blue, with dark brown eyebrows perfectly plucked. She’s average height and a bit wide in the hips. Her lips are a bit dry and she wears braces with purple rubber bands. Three earrings are in her left ear with two in the right. She has on a t-shirt with ¾ length sleeves (Ringer style), jeans with the hem slightly frayed, plain white tennis shoes and ankle socks.
From this description, you may think this person is a tomboy and maybe even a loner. The person I used was . . . me! I was an average student, kept to myself outside of school, was in the drama club, and yes, I was a big tomboy.
Now I have a round, plump, fleshy character I need to give her a name. Picking a name can be one of the hardest things for any writer. I tend to look at names in a stereotypical way.
For example: My name happens to be Virginia Ann, which sounds very southern, but I was born and raised in California. This is something you need to keep in mind when naming your characters. Parents cannot see who their children are going to be or what their personalities are. But a writer can with their characters! This means picking a name is very important. Okay, back to my character. I feel she needs a boyish name. Something like Sam, which is short for Samantha.
Now it’s time to make my character real in my reader’s mind. I do this by interviewing my character. Writers do this so they can understand why their characters act, feel and do the things they will do in the story. I like to ask my characters any question from what their favorite color is to the most embarrassing moment in their life. After I interview my characters, I then put them in situations with each other. This could be a scene I end up using in my story, but mostly it’s just an exercise to see how the characters relate to each other. Then I take each character and put them in a scene with a stranger. This gives me a better idea of how they talk, act and feel about different environments.
As a writer develops each character, we begin to trust them to let us know how they feel about situations and use their dialogue, thoughts and actions to express their feelings in the story. As a character becomes more real in my mind, they become real in my reader’s mind. Making my character a “real person” when in my story.
About the author ~
VS Grenier is an award-winning children’s author, founder & owner of Stories for Children Publishing, LLC., award-winning editor-in-chief of Stories for Children Magazine and chief editor for Halo Publishing, Int.; in addition, to running her own editorial and critique services.
In 2007 & 2008, VS Grenier was voted one of the Top Ten Editors in the Preditors and Editors Reader’s Poll, won 2nd place for her article on, “Yes, Virginia, There IS a Santa Claus” in the Preditors and Editors Reader’s Poll for Best Nonfiction of 2007, and won 7th place for her article, “Dinosaur Tracks in My Backyard” in the Preditors and Editors Reader’s Poll for Best Nonfiction of 2008.
VS Grenier learned how to hone her writing skills at the Institute of Children’s Literature and is a member of the League of Utah Writers (HWG), Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and Musing Our Children.
Her works include: Babysitting SugarPaw, the Best of Stories for Children Magazine Volume 1 anthology, and over 30 short stories, articles and crafts for children along with newsletter articles for writers.
“Having others read what you have written and giving feedback not only makes you a better writer, but you start to understand how a well written story’s voice captures the reader, drawing them into your world of ink,” states VS Grenier.
A California girl at heart, she currently lives in Southren Utah with her supportive husband, their three children, and the family’s big fat cat Speed Bump and miniature schnauzer Taz.
A little bear named SugarPaw hopes to get rid of his babysitter, Bonnie Whiskers, by getting her into trouble after making changes to his rules chart. As this fun loving story unfolds, SugarPaw learns about honesty and friendship.
This book will delight three-to-eight-year-old readers, especially those who like to create mischief.
An excerpt ~
Bonnie Whiskers never babysat for the Bears before. Hearing SugarPaw cry out, “Don’t go!” made her worry. She took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
by Ann Littlewood
opportunity but no motive, and a zookeeper driven to find the truth.
