Welcome Riptide Press Author Peter Hansen/Contest

 CONTEST INFORMATION: Leave a comment to be entered to win one of the following: First Wave Winner’s Choice: Pick any one backlist book from Rachel Haimowitz, Aleksandr Voinov, L.A. Witt, Brita Addams, or Cat Grant (“Frontlist” books, i.e. Riptide releases and newest non-Riptide release, are excluded, as are the Courtland Chronicles). Make sure to  leave your emaila ddress so in case you win, we can contact you.

What one event in your past had the greatest effect on your writing career?

Visions and Revisions: A Writer Gets Schooled

When I was in college, I had a lot of pretty typical college-kid writing foibles. I thought critical feedback spoiled my vision, I thought imitating Jack Kerouac was cool, and I thought I was going to be above petty little things like "genre." (For the record, I still think imitating Jack Kerouac is cool, but I know better than to do it in public.)

My sophomore year of college, I had the gall to trot that business out in a workshop writing class, where I listened to the other students explain the difficulties they'd had with my stories. I gave them very grave little nodes when they debated the physics of my fight scenes, and I manfully restrained my rolling eyes when they collapsed into a writhing mass of folklore over my four-page zombie story. I wanted to be on my best behavior, because it was a class and not a pro wrestling arena, but frankly I fantasized about thwapping the lot of them upside the head with a folding chair. They didn't get my vision—and I was maybe nineteen years old, so of course I had a vision.

"Do you realize that you've written a romance?" the professor asked me, while we were workshopping my story about a pair of queer college kids hunting ghosts and finding each other. "I think this is the first romance we've had in this class." I cocked my head at that like an excessively obtuse Jack Russell terrier, because of course it wasn't a romance. I wrote it; I didn't write romance; thus, it wasn't a romance. QED, or some other Latin abbreviation. Clearly the woman was delusional.

In short, my first creative writing class kicked my ass.

You have to understand, it was kind of a delayed ass-kicking. An ass-kicking deferred, if you will. I got out of that class with my asshole notions of my own superiority still intact, still pretty damn sure I didn't write romance and didn't need critique and couldn't get better if I tried. I didn't actually realize how thoroughly I'd been schooled until I started teaching writing, when I got a chance to rip kids' papers and stories apart the way my teacher had ripped mine apart. I got the same asshole responses from my kids that I gave my teacher, all "This is good the way it is" and "That's just my style" and "Stop trying to box me into your stupid little categories." The pupil has become the master, and the master wondered what the fuck the pupil had been thinking.

Over the years since that class, I've come to understand what I was missing when I walked into the classroom—and part of it was humility, sure, but the bigger part was self-awareness. I went in thinking that writing was this sort of magical process where the author would go into a semi-conscious, energy-drink-fueled trance and then THE WORD would appear. Any failures in my fiction couldn't be failures on my part; they were obviously failures of the magic.

I wrote a lot faster in those days, channeling pure inspiration onto the page, but I had only a little control and not even a smidgeon of self-awareness. If I couldn't watch myself writing and see why I made each choice, then I couldn't see those choices as choices that I could un-choose at will.

Just because I wasn't aware, though, doesn't mean I wasn't watching. Some part of me—the real, writerly part—had its eyes open as I glugged cans of Amp and had WWF-related workshop fantasies. When I finally pulled my head out of my ass and got ready to be an active agent in the creative process, that open-eyed part of me unfolded my choices for me and showed me where and how I could intervene.

No, of course that zombie story didn't work; it was structured all wrong. No, the kind of gun my character was using was really fucking heavy; I should've used a lighter, more maneuverable one. Yes, that ghost-hunter story was totally a romance. Thus, I was the kind of person who wrote romances. QED.

I could revise. I could rewrite the fabric of the universe and transform dreck into gold.  I could make the magic happen.

That long-delayed boot to the ass finally connected.

 

Here's a blurb from First Watch, to be released on October 30:

What price would you pay to survive?

Do you want to live? In the darkness of a WWI battlefield, young Legionnaire Edouard Montreuil lies dying. As teeth nibble his flesh, a voice whispers, Do you want to live? Frightened and desperate, Edouard bargains his freedom for a second chance.

Aboard the Flèche, a grim submarine captained by the nightmare who granted Edouard new life, Edouard pays the price for his survival. Each night, he gives his body to his captain as the bells sound first watch. But surviving is not living, and as the days stretch into months beneath the waves, Edouard grows desperate for escape.

Can Edouard’s old comrade Farid Ruiz help him break this devil's bargain, or will Ruiz fall to the same fate, trapped beneath the waves at the mercy of a monster whose hunger knows no bounds? Edouard and Ruiz served together once before, and slept together too, but courage and passion failed to save them from the eldritch beasts who roamed the night. This time, the cost of failure is nothing so clean or simple as death, and the spoilof victory are not just life, but love.

First Watch, is available for pre-sale at this link: http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/first-watch

Email address: peter.hansen.writes@gmail.com

Website URL: http://peterhansenfiction.weebly.com/

Blog URL: http://peterhansenfiction.weebly.com/blog.html

Twitter: P_HansenWrites ( http://twitter.com/#!/P_HansenWrites )

Facebook: N/A

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Goodreads Page: http://www.goodreads.com/peterhansen

Guest Author Day with GG Royale

Writing for the Holidays

by G.G. Royale

Every year I try to write one holiday-themed release. Last year, it was a short, romantic fairy tale based on Norse mythology, “The Longest Night.” I ended up self-publishing that for Kindle, because I didn’t get it ready in time for the publishers.

From a writer’s perspective, making the choice to write a story set around the holiday season can be difficult. It has it pros and cons. Cons? Well, you definitely have to stick to a stricter publishing schedule. You can’t miss deadlines or procrastinate in the least. Another con is that you may only sell the book for the length of the holiday season. Just think of how the Christmas movies are on TV. We all gather round to watch Elf and A Christmas Story over and over again leading up to Christmas, but as soon as the holiday is gone, we forget those movies for the next eleven months. I think people feel the same way about romances set around the holiday season.

The major plus for writing a holiday story is the a potential for a new audience. Some readers will buy into the promotions publishers have during the holidays and purchase holiday-themed books from writers with whom they are unfamiliar. This could win the author a new reader who will come back for book after book. Not to mention it’s fun to write holiday stories, getting to play with all those traditions and trappings of the season.

This year, I wrote The Adoration of Addana, which releases 14 December with Loose Id. This story is special to me. Most of my readers know I live in New Orleans, and I have for nearly a decade now. I am fiercely proud of my city and its citizens. I love setting my stories here, not just because my familiarity with the area makes it easy to write and gives a sense of realism to the details, but also because it possesses such vibrance and diversity. It’s a setting rich with possibility and promise. Much of that grows from the suffering that comes from living here: the hot-as-hell summers, the mosquitoes, the floods... But the town and its people are resilient, resourceful, and joyful. We have to be.

What better time of year to feature those qualities than the holiday season? This story really came about because of my own experiences during those first few months after Hurricane Katrina, just about five years ago now. After the evacuation, we weren’t allowed back into the city until October. Luckily, since I live in “the sliver by the river,” my house didn’t flood, but going into the holiday season of 2005, my coworkers, students, and friends were dealing with rebuilding, Thanksgiving dinner cooked on FEMA trailer stoves, and all the mess that came with the clean-up after the hurricane.

I wanted to write a story about those hard times and fill it with hope. The National Guard troops stationed here did bring hope, and safety, to a lot of people, so it seemed fitting to have a sergeant serve as my hero. Even though I don’t live in Holy Cross -- a neighborhood just to the east of the Industrial Canal -- I’ve always loved its unique qualities, so I decided to set the story there. My heroine, well... She had to be a strong black woman who was fighting the battle of her life to keep her family together through very hard times. The people in this story are true, though they may not actually exist outside the virtual pages of the ebook. All the bits and pieces that make up The Adoration of Addana come from reality. I know people who felt these feelings, who did this work.

I hope you, readers, will take the time out this holiday season to read The Adoration of Addana. It’s probably a little more emotional than my other books, but I think it’s well worth it. In addition, I’ve pledged to donate 20 percent of my own royalties to two local charities who are still helping to rebuild Holy Cross, the Ninth Ward, and other neighborhoods throughout the city: Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding Together. Many people are still trying to come home, and there are many historical homes in need of renovation and loving families. If you have a little extra left this season, I hope you will donate too.

Happy Holidays!

Blurb about The Adoration of Addana:

It just doesn’t feel like the holiday season with her young boys still evacuated in Houston, but Addana Carmouche will make the best of it as she works to rebuild the home Hurricane Katrina destroyed only a few months earlier. When Sergeant Aleister Colmes sees her on the street one day, he’s intrigued by the small, determined woman clearly living by herself in a place little better than a war zone. He takes it upon himself to look after her, and from that, something more develops. Love grows as Christmas approaches and the neighborhood shows signs of a slow, painful rebirth. But will their relationship survive Colmes’s retirement? His old farm house in Nebraska beckons, but so does the fiery woman who’s spirit and heart he’s come to adore. Addana will never leave Holy Cross. Can Colmes learn to love the neighborhood as much as he does her so they can stay together?

Purchase link: http://www.loose-id.com/The-Adoration-of-Addana.aspx

Bitten By Books Guest Author Day with Maggie Shayne/Contest

Bitten By Books is hosting author Maggie Shayne today as she celebrates her newest re-release of her 'Twilight' or Wings of the Night Series. She has some great prizes to give away and more. Come on over to Bitten By Books and see what Ms. Shayne has to say about her very successful vampire series.

http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=32575



I remember starting this series and falling in love with the characters. Ms. Shayne has a great way in creating memorable characters, a fast paced storyline that keeps you on the edge of your seat and she has three more coming to the series making it a total of 20 books in all. WOW! 


With each book, the reader will be drawn into a world that this author lovingly created and one that will never grow old, IMHO.

So what are you waiting for? RUN to Bitten by books and check out this author's guest day there and enter to win some wonderful prizes.