Cover Reveal and a Giveaway

Today, I'm at my other blog http://www.shellysnovicewritings.blogspot/com doing a cover reveal and a giveaway.

Secondhand Versus Second Hand

Four years ago in my critique group I had to defend my choice of spelling. So here I go again. But I’d like to pose a question first. What if I wanted to be creative with the word or words I use? You know, make up my own thing. I mean fantasy writers make up new worlds, rules, peeps, and even languages. So if I want to dub my title Secondhand Shoes then I should, right?

Since I’ve been more verbal on the blogosphere about the release of Secondhand Shoes, peeps have been leaving comments. They politely let me know something about Second Hand Shoes. I get it. But I want to settle why I spell secondhand the way I do.

Just to let you all know, I own like twenty dictionaries and have been known to read them for fun. When I began my tenure at school, my family learned I was dyslexic. I had issues with reading and spelling in the wee years of my education. Even in college it reared its ugly head but I graduated with double honors. Really. But I have to admit that the first law firm I worked for informed me after three months I would never succeed past the reception desk to paralegal status because of my spelling issues. It was at that time I became obsessed with the dictionary because I wanted to be more than a receptionist.

So I give you the reason for why I spell secondhand as secondhand and not second hand.

Cambridge Dictionary

Secondhand- owned before

Second Hand- a long thin pointer on some clocks and watches that shows how many seconds have passed

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Secondhand

1- received from or through an intermediary: borrowed

2- acquired after being used by another: not new

Second Hand

1- an intermediary person or means: intermediary

2- the hand marking seconds on a time

Okay. So these are the reasons for the title being spelled Secondhand Shoes. Lila’s wedding shoes were bought at a consignment shop and she’s one of those people that never expected the best for her life. In the beginning of her journey she accepts things as they are to keep her controlling mother off her case.

And now for some announcements.

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Lydia Kang over at The World is My Oyster is doing a giveaway in celebration for her birthday. Stop by and wish her well. Leave a comment and you could win a book of your choice.

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Jolene Perry is giving away an Arc of her book, Falling. Check her out at Been Writing.

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Lynda R. Young is also giving away an Arc of her new novel coming out. Check her out at WIP IT.

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E.J. Wesley is doing a Bury the Hatchet Blogtour in celebration of the release of his debut novella, Blood Fugue. Check him out at The Open Vein. You could win a Nook out of this deal. This tour ends October 19th.

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Gwen Gardner and Pal are having a blogtour starting next week through October 31st. Go check them out at Paranorm YA.

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I hope every one has a great weekend. I’m off today. Yay! But will be hair lopping Saturday and Sunday. So I’ll be lurking.

Hugs and chocolate,

Shelly

The Be-otching Blurb

Yes. Folks. The writing of the blurb is the biggest Be-otch I’ve come across as a writer. Putting the novel together and making changes have been easy-peasy. But the blurb creation is making me feel like a total moron. And I thought techi-things could only make me feel that way, not anything-writing.

Here’s my initial blurb…well, one of the many firsts.

Eighteen year old Lila is a psychic/medium who’s been taught not to trust her own instincts. Her dead gram tries to warn her not to marry Max Butz, but her mother, argues, implying she’s delusional and that Max will take good care of her. Hours after the nuptials, Max shows his true colors and Lila escapes through a bathroom window in her wedding dress and the too-small secondhand shoes her mother bought. Following the advice of her dead gram she steals the groom’s car and discovers guns and drugs hidden in the trunk. Max and his creepy friends come after her. To survive she must learn to trust her intuition and the otherworldly help of her dead gram and a past love.

So I posted this in a group I belong to on Facebook.

This reads like a book report a comment read.

Well, I belong to a live critique group that has been guiding me…more like the blind leading the blind. While we’re all pretty good at editing and analyzing each other’s stories, we miss the mark on blurbs. Maybe this explains why one of my critters has been rejected after several agents and publishers have read her query letter. It’s a lot like a book report.

Anyway, I had more comments on my book report.

It should pull people in without giving away too much.

Read the back jackets of other novels.

Read movie advertisements.

Okay. So I did last weekend. I pulled books off my shelf and researched Amazon.

Watchers-Dean Koontz

On his 36th birthday, Travis Lornele hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever, who will let him go no further into the dark woods.

That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life. What he finds is a friend? A dog of alarming intelligence? and a threat that could only have come from the darkest corners of man’s imagination.

Risk of Infection-Tom Conrad

3 billion people were no longer seeing a glimpse of a cool Britannica façade, of Union Jack clad cheerleaders leaping from open top red buses, of athletes using traditional pork sausages as skipping ropes, and William Shakespeare impersonator doing the long jump. 3 billion people were concentrating on infection. Britain was infected!

Desperation-Stephen King

There’s a place along Interstate 50 that some call the loneliest place on Earth. It’s not a very nice place to live. It’s an even worse place to die. It’s known as Desperation, Nevada.

Final Hours- Norma Beishir

Could you live a lifetime in 24 hours? Jaimie Randall thought he had it all, until a close brush with death brought him face-to-face with the one thing that was missing from his life. Now facing his own morality once again, he has two choices. One chance to live, or one to set things right in his troubled life.  

After reading more than these, I wrote this:

Lila should have listened to her dead Gram’s advice the morning of her wedding, “Take off that dress and those shoes. And run.”  When she finally decides to listen, she gets caught up in a deadly run for her life. Will she survive the honeymoon?

So what do you all think. Yes? No? Tweak it more?

I’ll be loppity-lopping 1 to 9 today and 9 to 5 tomorrow. I’ll do my best to keep up with commenting back.

Hugs and chocolate,

Shelly

Dove Chocolate and A Storyboard

“Forget the rules and play by your heart.” That’s what the inside of my Dove chocolate read yesterday. I took that as a sign to keep going forward. I also got an e-mail from an author friend of mine yesterday encouraging me, letting me know she had my back.

Right now, I feel overwhelmed with the whole process of self-publishing. And, too, my MS is in the hands of the proofreader who reported back not long ago that there was a minor problem with my file. It came up in Chinese. Holy schmoly! But I was also informed that the problem has been taken care off recently. Schwoo!

By the time this is over and Secondhand Shoes has been unleashed for public purchase and viewing, I’m sure I will have eaten a ga-zillion bags of Dove Dark chocolate along with cartons of Publix natural peanut butter. I eat a spoonful and one piece a day either after dinner or right at three P.M. Yesterday, though, I ate two. I don’t handle being overwhelmed well.

But I have been busy.

I’ve got a storyboard going on. The ideas are scattered here and there. And I’ve written the second book two times already, but I’m not happy with either one. However, I like a lot of the ideas. Especially the title, Combat Boots. Tonja over at Tonja's Musings inspired me. She left me a comment a few blogs back about what shoes she wore to school in the eighties.

Anyway, in the middle of getting spurts of ideas, I got a another one for a thriller and that one is coming along nicely. I guess you could say, I’ve fallen head over heels with that one for the moment and am working on its fourth draft. It works well.

I’m also working on a short time travel piece for a book of anthologies. If interested, you can go to Three Cents Worth, Martin T. Ingham has put out a call out for short stories.

Also, Gwen Gardner and Pal are putting together a blogtour.

CLICK HERE if you want to be a part of it.

I need to go now. I’ve a got a long day of hair lopping ahead of me. 1:30  to 9 P.M.

Hugs and Chocolate,

Shelly

Mirrors and An Upcoming Blogfest

Within the last couple of weeks, I read some where that opening your scene with your MC in front of a mirror reeks of amateur writing. The article stated it was a bad technique to describe what your MC looks like.

But what if the mirror is used to show the misery the MC is going through and not necessarily what they look like?

The opening chapter to Secondhand Shoes is a mirror scene. To me it clearly shows a miserable girl who hates her wedding day, fears her mother, and doubts herself. Its not about what she looks like on the outside. Its about what her feelings are reflecting.

Here’s a diddy from that first scene:

Except for the hiccups, I stood, softly crying, staring at my reflection in the full length mirror. Black mascara streaked my cheeks. I poked a couple fingers under the high lacey neckline and scratched.

Gram appeared behind me, wearing the lavender chiffon dress she wore in her casket six months ago, not one of her white hairs out of place. It looked like she maintained her weekly shampoo and set. “I’ve seen wrong in my life but this takes the cake,” she said. “Forcing an eighteen-year-old girl to marry any twenty-seven year old, much less a scallywag. Your mother’s crazy.” A frown sagged her jowls.

The tops of my arms itched, too, and I rubbed them, not responding to Gram’s comment, letting the lace do the scratching. My reflection squirmed in the white A-line dress. Its bodice and skirt were taffeta, the sleeves and fabric above the bustline to neck was lace. I hated the dress.

“It’s looking cheap up close but pretty from a distance. More your mother’s taste.” She stepped beside me, standing a foot shorter than me, fingering the lace on my sleeve and tisking. “What did they make this out of? Synthetic? It must itch like crazy.” She looked around the room. “Well, we’ll have to take care of this.”

“How?” I asked.

“The best thing you could do is take off that darned thing and run, child,” she said. “Pay no mind to your mother’s pooh either.”

One More Thing…

Before I go, I ask that you all hop over to Siv’s blog, Been There, Done That. She’s been promoting a very cool blog and bookfest coming on Labor Day, Meylinda’s Labor Day Blogfest and Bookfest. They’re looking for bloggers to help promote this. There will also be drawings for participants to win FREE books.

Click Here for more information.

And Secondhand Shoes is still in the proofreading phase before it goes to formatting.

Hugs and chocolate,

Shelly

Unforgettable Blogfest

 

Click this to visit Siv

Today, Siv from Been There, Done That is holding this special blogfest in celebration. Click the above link to find out what she’s celebrating.

For the Unforgettable Blogfest we are supposed to write about a strange and unusual place or person that we’ve visited. One that left a lasting impression and we’ll never forget 

Oh that won’t be hard. Mine have to do with school. But there are several impressionable moments.

1. Miss Bailey was my kindergarten teacher. She realized that I had some learning issues. One of the things all kindergarteners had to master was writing their name. Mastering it was rather difficult for me so one day for the entire afternoon, Ms. Baily had me say my name, sound out each letter while I drew them out across the chalk board over and over.

2. I went to slow class in second grade. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to read like the other kids. So they sent me to a class with the mentally challenged and one girl with cerebral palsy.

My first day had me wondering why. When I got home that day, I went straight to the bathroom to stare at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t figure out why I was in the class with those kids. I didn’t look or talk  like any of them.

Yes, I’m dyslexic. I confused letters with numbers and vise versa. Letters also danced around, ‘saw’ could be ‘was’. I also had an issue with hearing ‘b’ as ‘d’ and ‘e’ as ‘a’, so forth and so on.

I also had a strange talent for writing words and sentences backwards. To this day when I’m tired or stressed, I will do just that. Write backwards.

3. In the eighth grade, I had the scariest teacher ever but handsome. My class and I watched him slap  wooden tables in two on several occasions.

One day, he threw a whole apple across the room. It splatted across the quietest kid’s forehead. He also took the tallest and muscular eighth grader outside and made him fist fight him. Scary right?

4. I hated high school. I was one of the kids who was bullied. When I walked through the halls, I was saluted with the kids pushing back their noses, snorting at me. They’d chant Miss Piggy. They did other things to me,too, but we won’t go there. But I remember their names and faces.

5. When I was in college, I had the best algebra professor. Professor Papi. He was from India and absolutely hilarious.

When the class talked over him, he would clap his hands and jump around in front of the chalk board and say, “Listen to the board. Let it talk to you. In my class, there is no talking or singing. Only the board is allowed to talk.” I can still hear his thick accent in my head.

Also, toward the end of my final exam, which by the way was like 5 hours long, he came by to take it. I had ten problems left and I was already in tears for fear of failing.

Professor Papi said, “You’re the only one who stuck it out and almost finished. No one else did. You did a good job. Don’t worry.”

I made an ‘A’ in that class and I’ll forever remember Professor Papi.

6. Last but not least, I had the biggest crush on my law professor. Professor Blau. He was sixty back then but he had a beautiful way with words. Everything that came out of his mouth made me melt.

I remember one day going up the escalator, somewhere behind me, he said, “In a another life, Miss So&So. In another life it will be you and me.” The guy gave me goose bumps but I made sure I was never alone with him.

This wraps up my unforgettable places and people.

Secondhand Shoes is still being proofread.

Hugs and chocolate,

Shelly

Back in the Day

Today, I wanted to post car and truck pictures that are mentioned and featured in my novel. But it scares the kaka out me that I could be sued after what happened to one of our fellow bloggy-buddies.

The featured cars and vehicles in the novel are a 1975 Impala, a Bug, and a monster truck. Back in the eighties kids were buying these.They would re-paint them. Put in the baddest speaker systems known to man back then. And hike up their vehicles with  tractor tires. Well…that’s what we did in Manatee County, Florida, a/k/a po-dunkville, which brings me to another topic.

Today’s kids expect their parents to flip the bill for such pleasantries. They expect us to keep giving and to give nothing in return. And they see nothing wrong with it,

The other night, King of the Hill was on for like a split second and the funniest comment was made by the MC, “Are kids so lazy today that they can’t wear out their own jeans?”

You know, back in the day kids worked for their clothes, cars, and stereos. They went to their own wallets for their fun money, not their parents.

If we couldn’t find regular jobs we babysat, mowed lawns, painted fences, washed cars, and cleaned our neighbors’ houses. We didn’t complain that we couldn’t find a job. We found one some how. It was expected of us.

I know the economy sucks but our kids can work even if its keeping their own house clean and their yard mowed for their parents. They need to earn their keep in the world. They need purpose. There’s always volunteer work, of course.

Over the last two years, I’ve had young people sit in my salon chair with no direction. No life. They have no job and no clue what they’re doing. When you ask them how their day is, they give this reply, “I just got out of bed.” I will usually look at my watch seeing that its one o’clock in the afternoon. Then I’ll ask,”So what’re you going to do after your haircut?” They either shrug or say, “Go back to bed.” My inquisitive mind doesn’t stop there.

Me: Do you have a job?

Kid: No.

Me: In college?

Kid: No.

Me: So what are you going to be when you grow up?

I usually get a shrug. And then I’ll ask their age. Can you believe some are thirty still living with mommy and daddy. Oh my…

Where did the eighties go? Where kids UNDERSTOOD what was expected of them. And they didn't have to fill out job applications on-line. How impersonal is that? And what kind of question is, ‘do you ever feel like killing anyone?’ What does this have to do with being employable. Well….okay I get the drift but still…the kids applying for jobs want to work. I doubt they want to kill anyone.

When I was a kid, we filled out paper applications, turned them in on the same day, and got an interview, too. Most times, we were hired right on the spot.

Where did we ever go wrong?

Novel update: It’s still in proofreading.

Hugs and chocolate,

Shelly