Tuesday 12 August 2014

Happily Ever After Romance Blog Tour


If romance is your game, book your spot to promote your book in September! Only 8 spots available. Drop me an email, SEPTEMBER ROMANCE in the subject line, at blog.tour.info(at)gmail.com and get more exposure - pun intended ;)

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Tuesday 5 August 2014

How long does it take to choose a book title?

How long does it take to choose a book title?
You might rightly wonder why I asked this question. As I had mentioned in a previous post, I had already written book 4 in the Nations of Peace Series, when I got the idea to write Michael's Mystery.
This story's title has been the only one of all that I have written published or not, that baffled me. In fact, I was planning on asking beta readers to help me figure out a title, because for some reason I couldn't get it right.
It went from Exquisite Pleasure to the Future Master, to Adrian's story (dull, huh?) to being Untitled.
Then it struck me this morning at work, while I was thinking about my tasks for the day. An Aha! moment indeed.
When I wrote it down (otherwise I would surely have forgotten) it just made perfect sense. It encompasses the fundamental issue in the whole story.
No, it is not a new 50 Shades (shudders) of anything. It will simply be titled: Waiting for Adrian, the first book of the sub-series The Future Masters.
And the most baffling thing of all - it took me three years to get to this point. Funny how the mind works, but it is the only option so far that not only makes sense, but feels right for the story.
Now I am so excited that I can barely wait to finish Michael's Mystery, so that I can dig into Adrian's story.

I sincerely hope that you have not encountered this problem, but if you had, please me tell how you overcame it so that it doesn't take me another 3 years if it happens again.

Tuesday 29 July 2014

Guest Post on Incantation Paradox by Annamaria Bazzi


Linzé: What inspired you to write the Incantation Paradox?

Annamaria: It was an unusual morning when I slipped out of bed from the wrong side. The innocent act set the stage for the entire day—wacky. The fog lingering in the peripherals of my vision set freaky tone to the day. I looked in the mirror and giggled as acts of mischief crowded my mind.
With my mug of latte I sat before my laptop and sent an email to a good friend. ‘I don’t know why,’ I typed, ‘this morning when I looked in the mirror I saw my young self.’ No I was not crazy, was actually chuckling as I wrote the email because my friend usually takes everything very literally.
His response triggered thoughts of Freaky Friday, the Walt Disney movie starting Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, and other movies where the protagonist ended up in a young body or an older one like Big with Tom Hanks. The world seemed to enjoy such tales—I did too.
The adventure began and I wrote an entire novel in first person to better express the protagonist’s feelings, but when I was done second thoughts crept in my mind. I wanted to get to know Eric, the antagonist, much better. I wanted to know what made him do the things he did?
Now it became a bit more difficult to show all of Dolores’s emotions and internal struggles, but I believe Eric has added a new and mysterious side to the novel.
The next adventure began as I got to know Eric while rewriting the novel in third person limited. It also gave me an opportunity to get to know Jason better and actually let him fall in love with the woman inside Mona’s body.

When the adventure ended and Incantation Paradox became a published reality, like any writer, I turned to the next project to keep me busy.

Linzé: So there you have it. Early morning thoughts that turned into a novel. Writers do get ideas in normal situations too ;) You can find more info about the Incantation Paradox on 
Amazon / smashwords / B&N. Enjoy!

Author Bio
Although born in the United States, Annamaria Bazzi spent a great deal of her childhood in Sicily, Italy, in a town called Sciacca. Italian was the language spoken at home. Therefore, she had no problems when she found herself growing up in a strange country. Upon returning to the states, she promised herself she would speak without an accent. She attended Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan, where she obtained her Bachelor of Science in Computers with a minor in Spanish.
Annamaria spent twenty years programming systems for large corporations, creating innovative solution, and addressing customer problems. During those years, she raised four daughters and one husband. Annamaria lives in Richmond Virginia with her small family where she now dedicates a good part of her day writing.
You can visit Annamaria at:

Sunday 27 July 2014

Feeling disconnected from my story: Is this normal?

Being a writer can sometimes be an odd experience. Case in point: my third novel, Michael's Mystery.
It wasn't planned to be the third novel, in fact I had already written the third novel (untitled thus far) when I came up with the idea for Michael's Mystery.
Aside from publishing STORM, and a few other short stories, I have not done with Michael's Mystery that I had done on the first two, or even the now new number four, five and six. Yes, they are already drafted, and only await the heavy hand of editing before publication.
I didn't sit down and write the story of Michael and Andesine beginning to end, I stopped and did other projects in between. And now it is coming back to bite me.
As a pantser, I don't plan my stories in detail, my "planning" attention goes into my characters and their environment.
Keeping that in mind, I had to go back and reread what I have already written to pick up the trail of my story. Now that is normal practice for me, except that this time I ran into a wall. The internal editor wall.
The more I read, the more I wanted to sit down and fix the plot gaps, the grammatical errors and streamlining it with book 2 and book 4. Being consistent is after all very important in a series.
I have no idea if this ever happened to anyone else, but this is a first for me.
Is the story done and ready for editing? No.
I estimate that it needs about 15k words more. The word count is not that important, but it definitely needs the battle scene that has been threatening for a chapter or two and of course the ending needs to be done too. And knowing my characters, they won't be able to keep their hands off each other either, so a scene with an intimate encounter might also happen somewhere.
What do I do now? Write? Procrastinate? Edit?
For the short term, ie. Camp NaNoWriMo, I am working on another project to keep going on my target.
I have not decided yet on the course of action come August, but the deadline for publication of Michael's Mystery (a novel of the Grandmasters) is coming closer at a rapid rate.

And so I keep plotting ...

A-to-Z blog challenge: Step Y - submission process (part 2: the paperwork)

  No one likes paperwork, that's for sure, but rules are rules. Part of the submission process is to fill out the submission document wh...