Through the Flames

Welcome to my blog and Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, all those good feeling things...

Through the Flames by Denise Bartlett

*Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (Work In Progress) It's so recently NOT a WIP, I have nothing else in process but the sequel, Burning Embers.

*Tag up to five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them. It’s that simple.

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:
What is the working title of your book? The working title for Through the Flames was Larry.

Where did the idea come from for the book? Athletes are dedicated to their teams and to the game. They grow up with No Pain No Gain drilled into them. Football players and others are 'dinged' or 'have their bell rung' with horrifying consistency. The public needs to think about this phenomena, especially those who are the parents or family members of athletes at the high school and middle school age.
I recently listened to a video online which shows a 40-year veteran football coach at the high school level saying (and I paraphrase): Football is not a contact sport - dancing is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport.
My novel is about a high school football player with multiple concussions and a huge chip on his shoulder to want to 'show them how it's done' - to become the best quarterback the game has ever seen.

What genre does your book fall under? Young adult, sports novels, mainstream fiction

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? I have no idea!

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Football - the Allen family plays it - who would image a series of average hits could change everything for quarterback Larry Allen, his family, and his girlfriend?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? My book was published by Gypsy Shadow Publishing late last week.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? More than a year.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? I haven't found any like it - as a high school young adult novel, it has lots of interaction between brothers, team members and the family.

Who or What inspired you to write this book? Traumatic Brain Injury survivors and athletes  who have suffered injuries which changed their lives forever. My sports related back injury changed my future and preserving your brain is even more vital than being able to walk and function normally physically.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Athletes hear No Pain No Gain - Tough it Out - Suck it Up - they don't want to be seen as wimps. Head injuries are being lumped in the same category as a broken leg. We have to wake up and teach them differently. It's a story about growing up as an athlete, a family member, a boyfriend, a team member.

 

Through the Flames

Through the Flames is a novel about a promising high school quarterback with a bright future in football. He has the adoration of his team, his school and his girl. Who could ask for more? True, Larry Allen's family is a shade on the dysfunctional side, but who has a perfect home life these days, right? His dad is away playing pro ball and training half of the year, his mother is a basket case since his older sister died (Book One: Into the Fire) and his older brother has lost his drive to go anywhere in life. But Larry has it all together and is determined to be a success and take his team to the championships one more time before he graduates and signs with the college of his choice.

Things are just great . . . until Dad gets badly injured in play and Larry gets taken out by a member of the opposing team who has it in for him. The plot thickens from there and Larry finds himself suddenly uncertain what the future will hold for him.

Denise Bartlett has worked with folks with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) over the years and has seen some of the devastating effects of TBI. Her experience with TBI survivors is what fueled this story, and she has done her homework to make this tale a realistic, gripping glimpse of the sports arena. The hope is that Through the Flames can help raise awareness about concussion in contact sports, particularly for young athletes, and the consequences of the No Pain No Gain attitude—not taking head injuries seriously enough.

This blog entry was written by Charlotte Holley of Gypsy Shadow Publishing.

Devil's Alibi

 

Devil's Alibi

now available in print and ebook formats

Jezebel Jorge's review of Devil's Alibi

Len Dawson paints a lush portrait of a beautiful city tainted by a kidnapping and murder. Andy Lee often has to decide what is the lesser of two evils when he is assigned to defend a man who’s guilty of a lot of things other than the crime he’s accused of committing. He and his wife go out on a limb, risking their own lives to solve this case.

The Devil’s Alibi is full of intriguing plot twist that will leave you hanging right up until the end. Andy is a likable character that draws you into his story. You feel his struggle with misconceptions about his hometown and the sometimes questionable ethics of working through the legal system. The story takes the reader through Andy’s journey in a way that forever impacts his life. This book is both an interesting and through provoking reading experience.

Indie Publishing and the age of the ebook

One of the hardest thing for us as authors is advertising - marketing - tooting our own horns! We want someone else to do it. Eons ago, it seems, the trick was to get a publisher to notice you and print your book. Traditional publishers were picky, picky, picky! They only published 8 to 10 books a year and the cost of putting the books into print and publicizing required them to be sure for certain they would sell. Well, as sure as they could be.

They began using formulas and certain stringent requirements and really pretty much decided what the public was allowed to read. The book had to fit into a genre and the formula. Ex: girl meets boy, girl breaks up with boy, girl and boy get back together - Voila! - happily every after. Authors were regularly asked to pretty much scrap the manuscript they sent in favor of getting published. The book often didn't resemble the original submission much.

Enter ebooks and the age of computers, iPads, readers and even cellphone readers! Indie publishers have always thought outside the box, but now there are 50,000 small publishing companies and many of them do not put books into print. Many of the traditional publishers are going to POD for their book printing - McMillan among them. Times they are a-changing, as they say.

So, what does that mean to the reader? Lucky us! We are now able to drive the market. No longer can the publisher limit what we read. We can choose from millions of ebooks. We are challenged by this; thousands of ebooks are not very good. Quality is a problem and Kindle and others are opening up the book for you to look at - to read the first chapter or so and decide if you want to buy. It's like standing in the bookstore and reading the covers, but a little deeper.

And what does that mean to the writer? Lucky us, too! We are now able to publish what we write. Writer-friendly publishers like Gypsy Shadow and editors like me will work with the author to produce the best book we can from the manuscript submitted. The challenges are many, but the rewards are off the scale! Authors are free to advertise - market - blog - toot their own horns, or join with other authors and even other publishers to get the word out and sell their books.

It's a new age of book publishing. We are still shaping it. It feels great to be part of a tremendous recognition of the basic talent of scads of authors!

Getting the Words Right

Our Third Year! It's October, 2011!

Many of us strive to be conscientious writers. It is truly interesting what a difference it makes to read a lot of other work and come back to a manuscript means. One of the books I value for teaching me this is Getting the Words Right
by Theodore Cheney.

If you go over to Amazon and read the first pages, you will get the urgency and flow of his message. He says professionals will attend to the quality of the work, rather than the number of words they can put out.

It's not easy, but for me, it has always been fun. I read through my own and other's manuscripts and look for little places the conversation don't match and find the treasure of what the speaker didn't say. I 'look' at their expressions while they speak and try to convey what they mean in beautiful words which mean exactly what they want to say. I don't even mind if I send them trundling off to the dictionary, but when they go I want them to find something special.

appropriate in the thesaurus:

characteristic in the index sent me to the heading of Particularity:
characteristic, peculiar, singular, single, quintessential, intrinsic, unique, distinctive, marked, distinguished, appropriate, proper, idiosyncratic, idiocratic, in character, true to form

Well-chosen in the index sent me to the heading of Elegance (of language):
fit, fitting, just [archaic], proper, correct, seemly, comely; felicitous, happy, apt, well-chosen, well-put, well-expressed, inspired.

One of my characters might make the appropriate comment and it might be unique, another's might be well-chosen. I have a few characters who are blurters - their comment would never be well-chosen, but it could be true to form!

I love English. We have a tangle of threads leading down to us and it is proper and quintessential we select the exquisite term to convey our meaning.

We at Gypsy Shadow Publishing want authors and writers who come our way to feel they have learned something from the experience of being published by us and take away a little more finesse at self-expression after the editing and production is over. We want to help you share your dreams and nightmares with the world!