Over the past weeks, I have been giving you little tidbits about my new novel Coming Out Of Egypt, the first book in the Egypt series. Today I’m giving you the opening scene to the novel. Read, enjoy and please leave a comment below.

~CHAPTER ONE~
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Marva Garcia looked through the window at the tall trees silhouetted against the sky. On a clear day, she could identify most of the trees by name, but with the growing darkness she couldn’t tell which was cedar or mango, breadfruit or samaan or any of the stately trees that flanked the estate. It was as if they had all banded together to disguise themselves against the threatening storm. Only the coconut and gru – gru palms were distinguishable by their long, slender trunks and fringed branches.
Nearer the house, the smaller fruit trees were still visible, but their leaves hung down as if bracing for what was to come. The door of the storage shed where they stored their produce – grapefruit, oranges and bananas – rattled as the wind blew through it. Marva had heard it multiple times, but tonight the sound grated on her nerves. She looked at her younger sister, June, sitting huddled on a stool, head buried in her arms like a sleeping chicken. Occasionally, a sob escaped from beneath the bush of hair. If only she didn’t have to experience any of this.
Marva cast another anxious glance at the heavy rain clouds hanging like wet sheets on a clothesline. Might as well do it now before the storm hit.
She tugged at June’s arms. “Come on. It’s time.”
The girl raised her head, showing eyes reddened and wide like those of a frightened deer. She opened her mouth as if to speak then closed it and stumbled to her feet.
Marva softened her tone. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
June nodded, indicating she would go.
Marva closed the window. Steeling herself, she opened the bedroom door and crept forward, June following right behind her.
He lay on his stomach on the floor in the same position in which he’d fallen, head at a
rakish angle, arms flung out in front him, one knee slightly bent. June gasped, and Marva glanced over her shoulder. June’s lower lip trembled, her face pale, arms crossed over her bosom. Marva hesitated before turning back to the body on the floor.
Her heart pounded so hard, it sounded in her ears, and for one frightening moment she thought she would faint. But fainting was a luxury she couldn’t afford right now. She leaned against the wall for a second to quiet her heart then with a grimace, bent low and spread her arms. Something swelled in his back pocket. She pulled out the wallet, flung it on the bed, then straightened and looked back at June, peeking from behind her fingers. Lord, I can’t do it.

Now, if you would like to read more, why not click on the image below?

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With January just half-way through, you may still be trying to refine your resolutions, craft new ones or just reflect on what improvements you can make to your life this year. I haven’t made any resolutions. I simply prefer to reexamine my values and set my goals  based on those values.  And one of my values as a writer, and I daresay, that of most writers, whether you are a veteran or a newbie, is to grow and improve. How you translate that depends on what stage you are in in your writing life.

I have been writing for as long as I can remember, and have been fortunate to have some short stories and articles published. However, I still have not realized my dream of having my novel Coming Out Of Egypt published. And it’s not for want of trying. I have queried agents and publishers, attended conferences, pitched to agents and editors, obtained paid critiques as well as having my work  critiqued by my writers’ group. Most of the feedback I received has been positive, but still no contracts.

So this year I’ve decided to take the plunge and self-publish.  I know, most people say it’s always too soon to give up. I am not giving up. I am simply using a viable option available to me in this brave new world of publishing. I think my book is as good as, or even better than, some of the traditionally- published ones, and I expect it to do well in the marketplace. Meanwhile, I’ll be editing and pitching the second book in the series, In The Wilderness. So please follow me on my novel journey. Maybe you’ll pick up a few tips, and if you see me going the wrong way, please advise me to make a U turn.

Why not share your novel journey with us in the comments box below?

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Today it is my pleasure to host Author Mayra Calvani on day four of her virtual book tour. Mayra is the author of Dark Lullaby, a horror novel.  In this post, Mayra tells us a little bit about her book and what she is doing to promote it. Please leave a comment below for Mayra and you can also visit her at the links posted.

Since Dark Lullaby is only available as an ebook, I haven’t done any in-person events or signings so far. But there are many opportunities on the Internet, and October is the perfect month to promote a horror novel.

Besides this virtual book tour with the Working Writer’s Club, I’ve also been touring with PumpUpYourBook, Enchanted Book Tours, and I.O. Book Tours. I bought an ad on Goodreads and also on BookGorilla. I also hired someone to re-design my website (www.MayraCalvani.com) last month.

Reviews have been added to my Amazon purchase page and at one point the book’s rank went from the 400,000s to the 15,000s.

Have I earned back my investment?

No. Not yet, at least.

Horror is, in general, a tough sell, and book promotion is an ongoing process. To see results, one must be persistent and consistent.

However, I’d advise writers to never let book promotion stand in the way of their writing. As authors, our most valuable time is spent producing that next book.

About the Book:

At a tavern one Friday night, astrophysicist Gabriel Diaz meets a mysterious young woman. Captivated by her beauty as well as her views on good and evil, he spends the next several days with her. But soon he begins to notice a strangeness in her…especially the way she seems to take pleasure in toying with his conscience. 

The young woman, Kamilah, invites him to Rize, Turkey, where she claims her family owns a cottage in the woods. In spite of his heavy workload and the disturbing visions and nightmares about his sister’s baby that is due to be born soon, Gabriel agrees to go with her. 

But nothing, not even the stunning beauty of the Black Sea, can disguise the horror of her nature… In a place where death dwells and illusion and reality seem as one, Gabriel must now come to terms with his own demons in order to save his sister’s unborn child, and ultimately, his own soul.

BIO:

Mayra Calvani writes fiction and nonfiction for children and adults and has authored over a dozen books, some of which have won awards. Her stories, reviews, interviews and articles have appeared on numerous publications such as The Writer, Writer’s Journal, Multicultural Review, and Bloomsbury Review, among many others. When she’s not writing, reading, editing or reviewing, she enjoys walking her dog, traveling, and spending time with her family.

ONLINE LINKS:

·         Website www.MayraCalvani.com

·         Blog www.thedarkphantom.wordpress.com

·         Facebook https://www.facebook.com/mayra.calvani

·         Twitter https://twitter.com/mcalvani

·         Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/272703.Mayra_Calvani

Check out Mayra’s supernatural thriller, Dark Lullaby:http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Lullaby-ebook/dp/B005UI7FOG

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I am working on my second book in the Egypt series, and I have to confess this book is causing me some bother, not so much with the plot, or the setting or even the characterization, but with the protagonist. There seems to be some kind of competition going on between my protagonist and her sister, who is also a main character in the book.

Just to give you an idea of my dilemma, here is the plot in a nutshell. My protag Marva is a twenty-one year young woman who suffers major guilt feelings over having killed her father years ago on account of incest. She was never brought to trial, although the detective on the case suspected she was guilty. And she knew he suspected her. This happened in Book 1. In Book 2 she desperately wants to get the burden off her conscience by confessing to someone, but has no one to confess to.  June is now 17, and Marva feels she is no longer needed in her sister’s life. Marva thinks her only solution lies in killing herself – something she attempted in Book 1.

Now this is where the competition arises. As the protag slips deeper into depression, June seems to take over, warning Marva not to confess to anyone as this would disrupt the comfortable new life they have made for themselves. June is beautiful, bright, vivacious and always part of a group. She would be an ideal YA protag. Marva, though attractive, is a loner, introverted and uncomfortable around others because of her guilt feelings.

I chose Marva to be the protagonist because, to my mind, the story centers around her.  She has the most at stake. According to Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress, Marva seems to fit the profile of a villain protagonist, even though she is not a villain in this book. According to Nancy, the villain should  be:

• tenacious
• a loner
• resourceful
• not loquacious and
• idealistic – this, Ms. Kress says is the most important. Whatever she does, lie, steal or even kill, must be done in the service of her country, her family (as in Marva’s case) or for the sake of right.

Some time ago I featured a blog post by Yvonne Anderson, my friend and critique partner, on the subject of protagonists. Yvonne is the author of the Gannah series. You can read her post here: http://angelasfreelancewriting.com/y-is-for-ys-words/, and after you have read it leave a comment and let me know who you think deserves the star role – June or Marva.

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• Why Do Protagonists Have to Be Male?
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• What makes a protagonist?

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Even though the month ended yesterday, I am scratching my head trying to remember what happened in February. Where did the days go? Will March vanish in the same way, with hardly a whisper, leaving no trace of its journey here on earth? Well, I do remember some things. For one, it was my birth month, which meant I’m one year older and have one year less to do the things I want to do. My oldest son also had a birthday in February and my car, which has never given me any trouble in the eleven years I’ve had it, broke down. And after months of talking to a travel agent, my plans to cruise the Mediterranean finally went into high gear.

Also in February I continued to work at my day job as an occupational therapist and at home I plodded away at the second in my Egypt novel series. In addition, I’ve been updating this blog and my Christian devotional blog while posting to my church’s website. I’ve also started writing again for Hubpages and participating in a little social media here and there. And, I almost forgot, I worked on a synopsis for someone. Not bad for someone with an almost full-time job. Now I don’t feel so guilty after all.

So here we are in March. A new month with new opportunities. I’m going to try my best to spice up my blog, work on my About page and make a better effort to get myself on the road to retirement. Oh, I also want to read more. I find that when I read good books my writing flows better. How about you? Have you started on your 2013 goals? Are things going according to plan? Don’t beat yourself up if you find you are not accomplishing things as fast as you would like. Just keep your goals in front of you and keep working on them. You may be slowed by other things, but try to do a little every day. Remember, the race is not for the swiftest, but he who endures to the end. Keep at it!

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Do you agonize over the opening of your novel? Do you rewrite and rewrite until you barely recognize the first paragraph you wrote just minutes ago? With all the emphasis on captivating or hooking your readers, moreso your agent, most writers really sweat over that first paragraph.

To get some idea as to what the experts consider captivating, I took Leads and Story Openings by Robert Walker off my bookshelf. It’s a book I purchased when I first began writing seriously. According to Walker, your lead should

Get Attention
Set tone of the piece
Create an interest factor

In other words, make you want to read the book. Let’s look at two examples Walker gave. The first of each is a poor to average attention getter; the second is the better one.

The last flight to Cuzco was due to leave in an hour and a half. Yet our tickets had not yet arrived. What were we to do?

Here’s the better lead according to Walker:

“No tickets!There are no tickets, no reservation under your name. Please step aside for the next customer,” she said.

Here’s another example:

One night while I was working late at the church office, a man knocked on the door. He appeared distressed and had a woman with him whom I recognized as a member of our congregation.

The better one:
“I’ve just kidnapped this girl,” the man shouted. Waving a gun he stood before me with his captive, a young woman I recognized as Delissa, a member of our church.

From these two examples, Walker seems to favor a lead that begins with some type of dialog. In his own words: Note the techniques: direct quotes, narrative-type lead, clear description of the scene and its people. However, if you take a look at some of the most famous opening paragraphs, you will see that none of these elements are present.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
“A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens (1859)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.
“The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger (1951)

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.
“The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner (1929)

These are three of the more famous openers that have remained on the iconic list throughout the ages. What do you think of them? Do they really spur you to read the book, or does the opening impress you after you have read the last line? Drop me a line and share your thoughts. Next post I will deal with a few contemporary opening paragraphs.

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You have worked for months, maybe years, on your novel and now you are faced with the daunting task of writing the synopsis. Writers dread the work of condensing a 300-page manuscript into one page. Knowing what to include and how to include it is crucial to writing a compelling synopsis.

What a synopsis is not

It is not an author’s bio, nor the reason why you wrote the book. You can state this briefly in your query letter, but only briefly. It is not a character sketch, neither is it a list of plot points. Having said that, let’s take a look at what a synopsis is:

It is a summary of your book

Plain and simple. It contains the beginning andthe end with the high points of your story sandwiched between them.

It is compelling

Notice I use the word compelling because your synopsis should be as compelling as the story itself. And in order to do that you have to first start with a hook, just as you did at the beginning of your book. You want the editor to continue reading, right? Then in the body of your synopsis you write the salient points of your story in chronological order. This may not happen in your book, but for the sake of clarity, events should follow each other in order.

It uses strong verbs

Just as when you wrote the book, you chose strong verbs, used the active voice rather than passive and used adjectives and adverbs sparingly, do the same with your synopsis. And always write in the present tense.

It is concise

Leave out details that don’t matter. For example, if Anne confides in her friend, Susie, that she’s thinking of divorcing Jim, it’s not necessary to say Ann picked up the phone and called Susie and invited her to dinner and over a steak and lobster dinner … No, you are choking the details. Simply say what Anne tells Susie.

It includes action and reaction

Be careful to state how major characters react to events in the story – if their reaction helps to drive the plot. Let’s say Susie is thrilled at Anne’s news because she has had her eyes on Jim for a long time – then you must include that.

It follows the agent’s/editor’s guidelines

Some agents may ask for a one-page synopsis, some may simply say “short.” If they do not specify, limit your synopsis to two or three pages.

I heard someone say it’s a good idea to write the synopsis first. I don’t think that would work for me. My characters tend to change direction midway. But if you have carefully plotted your novel before you started writing your story, then you can give it a try. Either way, the more you practice, the better you will become. Why not try writing a synopsis for a story you have read?
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Is marijuana harmless?

A few weeks ago a young man in Miami, Florida was shot and killed by police after he chewed off the face of a homeless man. Only in Florida, right? Anyway, the story made international news. It was first rumored that the man might have used bath salts to get high. Bath salts? However, when doctors examined the dead man’s system for drugs, all they found was marijuana. This has prompted researchers to want to conduct more research into the effects of marijuana. For those of you who think marijuana is just a herb that has gotten a bad rap, think again. Marijuana (which comes from the cannabis plant) is a hallucinogen. Got it? A stuff that makes you hallucinate. If I ever get an update on the research I’ll pass it along.

Fifty shades of gray

By now you have heard of it. Everyone has heard of it, but just to make sure, a London hotel recently removed the Bible from its rooms and replaced it with that book. A publicity stunt, some said. Maybe, but I haven’t seen their occupancy rate.

Legitimate rape?

As a writer I’m always looking for ideas for my next breakout novel. This week I think I may have stumbled on one. Picture this scenario: Young woman walking through dark alley hears footsteps behind her. She stops and so do the footsteps. She starts again and the footsteps sound once more. Scared, she begins to run. Footsteps pound closer and before long, the young woman’s neck is held in a vise-like grip and something pointed sticks her between the shoulder blades. A bone-chilling voice says, “What kind of rape do you prefer? Legitimate or ill-legitimate?”

A few months later a judge faces the rapist. “You have been found not guilty because you raped the woman legitimately.” The rapist pumps his attorney’s hand and scuttles out of the courtroom to find his next legitimate victim. In other courtrooms similar scenes are played out. A judge pounds his gavel. “The defendant is found not guilty of legitimate theft.” “This was a legitimate murder. Case dismissed.” And somewhere in Missouri a senator sits sobbing over his tea: “it’s not the words … but the heart that I hold.”

I have to hurry and write this thing before John Grisham does. It could be the next Oscar-award movie.

More laughs

Phyllis Diller died yesterday at the age of 95. She was one of the earliest successful female comedians and, get this, an ad copywriter. She attributed her long life to laughter. Here are a few of her popular lines:

You know you’re getting old when –

Your rocker comes with an airbag
Your birth certificate is written on a scroll
Someone compliments you on your alligator shoes and you are barefooted.

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We live in an age where new words keep popping up faster than microwave popped corn. A lot of this has to do with the internet. Words such as blog, webinar, branding, social media were either not known, little used or meant something entirely different before the turn of the century. Now I’ve come across another one: blovel. This means a blog that has been turned into a novel or vice versa, I’m not sure which. However, some people think that writing a blovel can help an author build a platform, leading to a book deal with a major publisher. After all, that’s the reason many of us write, isn’t it?

One advocate of book blogging says it’s very easy to turn your blog into a book. Simply write a short blog post every day starting from the beginning of your book and at the end of a year you should have a book, er, blook. I’m sure you can figure what that is. While she admits that blogging your book lends itself best to non-fiction, she thinks it is also possible to turn out a good blovel. She advises that you
a) plan your story arc well,
b) divide your chapter into mini-scenes,
c)decide how you will weave your posts into a manuscript that flows.

These all sound plausible, however Jane Friedman, professor, media professional and former publisher of Writer’s Digest pleads, “Please don’t blog your book.” While Jane agrees that some blogs may make for excellent books, these are the ones that fall in the information category or are memoirs, like Julia and Julia. Jane’s reasons for not blogging your book are also straightforward and plausible. They are:
a) Blog writing is not like book writing. Think SEO, keyword etc.
b) Blogs can make for very bad books – unless it’s an e-book or an illustrated book.
c)If a book sounds like a series of blog posts, she considers it a failure.

In some of the forums I visited on the subject, one author brought up the very important of original work. Publishers tend to shy away from anything that’s considered already published, and if it appeared on your blog then it qualifies as published work. Another person said he has been blogging scenes from his book, but he has yet to acquire a readership.

I’ll continue this discussion in another post. Meanwhile, drop me a line and let me know if you think blogging your book is a good idea, or if you have done it what kind of results have you had.

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My T in the A – Z challenge is for Theme. I remember when my literature teacher in high school asked us to find the theme of a story we were studying, a collective sigh went up in the room like if a gas line had burst. Ask us to summarize the plot, we could do that, describe the characters, that was easy, but find the theme? We could sooner find the Holy Grail.

Nowadays, we hear the word “theme” used a lot. There are theme parks, theme parties, theme restaurants. What the designers have done is to build the setting or occasion around a central point that no one can miss. The theme of your novel is not much different. It is that common thread that runs through your plot, and impacts your characterization and sometimes even your setting. It is a necessary element of the literary novel.

As an aspiring novelist, you may not consciously set out to create a theme, but if your story flows logically, you will have a theme. Sometimes a theme could be a place, a time period or a metaphor that adds depth to the story. Some common themes used in novels are: loss of innocence, coming of age, losing hope, pride, danges of materialism, good versus evil, lost love and many others. The next time you read a novel, try to identify the theme. If you have written a novel, what is its theme?

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