Monday, April 1, 2013

April A to Z, B for Brief Break

Hello! Hola! Ni Hao and Aloha!

The Partners in ParanormYA have been up to plenty of mischief...

Frailties of the Bond released in the last week as just an example.

The month of April will be an extra busy time around the blogosphere. Bloggers from east, west, north and south will be participating in the A to Z blogging challenge. Although PIP Angela Brown will be cave-bound working on the sequel to Neverlove, follow up NEO Chronicles projects, and a sekrit MG project that may no be so sekrit if she keeps talking about it, PIP Gwen Gardner will be participating in the A to Z blogging challenge. Make sure to stop by their blogs to enjoy what Gwen has in store for A to Z and keep up with Angela to see what nonsense - erm - activities she's up to.

PIP's blog will go on a brief break for the month of April. But we'll be back!!

Are you participating in A to Z? If so, have a theme to share?


Thursday, March 21, 2013

Can You Do The Splits?

And the battle continues!
 
Paper Book
 
vs
 
Ebook
 
 
 
 
 
Thank you Debbie Ohi




 
 
If I could draw, I'd illustrate 20K feet in the air and the Ebook battery dies. That'd be one more round for the paperback.
 
I'm thinking the paperback wins this round...
 
I know the paperback is hating on the ebook, but ebook does have good qualities. Like 200 books you can carry around with you every day. Not only that, but a variety of reading material so you can read whatever you're in the mood for.
 
What do you think?
 
Do you prefer paperback or ebook?


Thursday, March 7, 2013

Before NEO...

Network of
Extraordinaires &
Otherworldlies

A group of heroes and heroines living life quietly, day by day, training and such, as needed.

Until they are needed. Which can happen when malcontent humans or jealous gods and godesses decide to take their irritation out on the world. Or say...someone decides it's time for the world to face a reboot of mankind.

Before NEO, many of the members were regular teens - okay, not so regular. But saving mankind wasn't the first thing on their mind.

They loved. They hurt. And they dealt with the obstacles life threw their way.
FRAILTIES OF THE BOND is a story of one such teen couple

Two teens...
Two lies...
Their paths collide when...
One bite changes a life.



After a hiking trip gone wrong, sixteen-year-old Luca should have been dead. Since then, he’s drifted from one school day to the next, annoyed by the looks of suspicion. When a vampire attack claimed his mother and forced his first shift into animal form, Luca set out for Texas, vengeance bound, only to discover so much more when Aimee crossed his path.

Flesh-born of vampire parents sixteen years ago, Aimee shouldn’t exist. Magic, though, made dreams come true for an undead couple desperate for a child all their own. But this magic came with a price, a cost Aimee discovered after one forbidden bite.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Orbs and the Paranormal

What do you know about orbs? 

You know, those little balls of light that show up in your photos? They have a scene in my WiP, a novella called Second Death. What would you think, if you were walking through the cemetery at night (it could happen!) and all of a sudden these little balls of light, called orbs, show up and start swirling around you? What if they were hypnotic? What if....I'll stop there. I don't want to give away the scene yet because it plays an import role in Second Death. But you can see that the paranormal fiction writer can go in so many directions with this, especially if you write about ghosts, as I do.

Here's what some are saying about orbs.

Some claim orbs are the souls of spirits or ghosts. After death, these souls stay on because they're bound to their previous lives for some reason, almost like an obsession-they can't let go or have unfinished business. The premise is that they travel as an orb to conserve energy in their natural forms. They're not as fully developed as ghosts. Ghost hunters actually go out looking for orbs to photograph them - they are quite photogenic.

Scientists say they are particles of dust or water on the lense of your camera. Or maybe light reflecting off gnats or bugs in the air. But what about those orbs seen over swamps, bogs or marshes with the naked eye? What about in the winter time when gnats and bugs aren't flying around?

What do I think?

I have no idea what to think. I believe in ghosts and the afterlife. Why not? Too many people have experienced something supernatural to discount it, including me.

Anyway, at Christmastime I took a photo of my dogs. And so I pulled the photo out to check for orbs. Check it out:


There are at least a couple of orbs...

What do you think?
Do you believe in the supernatural?
Do orbs show up on your photos?

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Love, ParanormYA

The Partners in ParanormYA would like to wish each and everyone a Happy Valentine's Day!

***Love***

It's such a small word for such powerful expressions. From a single red rose...
To intimate moments...
May the love you share with that special someone run deep.

Valentine's Day is a special celebration of love. Enjoy it to bits :-)

Love, ParanormYA

****NOTE: Make sure to click here for details on showing support to our FABULOUS Gwen Gardner this coming Monday with Writers 4 Writers!!!

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Paranormal Mutations and Other Such Fancies

Hello ParanormYA peeps! Since I know you guys are the ParanormYA experts, I want to run my new novella series by you. I'm having doubts and think you can help. If you already saw my IWSG post, then this is pretty much the same.

My new novella series (An Indigo Eady Afterlife novella) is an off-shoot of my first series, the first book being Givin' Up The Ghost. My protag, Indigo, is a teenage ghost whispering psychic who can see and speak to ghosts, which is instrumental in solving the murder of her friend's dad.


My new novella series was actually inspired by the second book in the original series, A Guilty Ghost Surprised (not yet published). There is a scene where Indigo has a conversation with Franny, a Victorian ghost madam (you may remember Franny from our blog tour, where she appears on a talk show with Father Quanon from Angela Brown's Neverlove  HERE and also stages a fashion intervention HERE). Franny reveals to Indigo that there is a whole spirit community in Sabrina Shores (mostly Victorian) that basically is parallel to the living world. They have community meetings, court each other, and socialize as if they're still alive. Franny hints that some of the creatures in the afterlife may not have actually been...human. And of course trouble was brewing on the horizon.

So Second Death, the off-shoot, is...more fanciful, to say the least. It picks up from the conversation between Indigo and Franny in AGGS about the overactive spirit community in Sabrina Shores and takes it a bit over the top. Indigo is basically drafted onto the Missing Paranormals Committee by a ghostly high court judge during court proceedings of the highly active spirit world which takes place in an old dilapidated courthouse. She must serve on the committee alongside other spirits to investigate what happened to the missing spirits/ghosts/paranormal creatures.

The new Afterlife series will also introduce other such afterlife characters that have been mutated by what they had become in previous lives. Add spirits, ghosts, these other paranormal creatures and mix it with sometimes bizarre paranormal happenings, and you get....something more over the top than the original series. But I think it still encompasses the light paranormal characteristics of my first series, and is, in my opinion, just like I said - more fanciful.

The difference between the two series is that Indigo becomes much more active in the spirit world, rather on the periphery, in Second Death. AND there are some pretty off the wall creatures and happenings.

I worry that it may be too over the top and wonder whether it will reflect on my original series in any way because I'm using some of the same characters.

What do you think?

Any thoughts on what's too much?

Will it reflect on my original series?

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Falling Apart or Into Place

Writing and publishing, like life, can often be compared to a big box of jigsaw puzzle pieces.
It's easy to form the lower and upper edges along with the sides by finding the familiar, sticking to what's simpler to identify. With publishing, that often meant trying to follow the sage advice of others with more experience and knowledge, those who'd flourished at the time where only an agent got you where you wanted to be. When guidelines were followed and stuck to. Not so much nowadays. Forming the picture within, the final outcome, can take a lot of trial and error. This includes trying to fit pieces where they're not the best fit.

I tried that with Neverlove. I attempted to fit it into a pitch contest early last year. Seemed like the right thing to do, try and get the attention of a growing small press. It got no interest at all. None. No surprise since I have to admit it wasn't a 100% whole-hearted effort. Instead of being totally bombed about it, I took it as the beginning of a revival. I'd been considering self-publishing for a while. At the same time, I'd gotten back some AWESOME feedback on improving Neverlove and got into some great conversations with Gwen Gardner about self-publishing our novels and promoting them at the same time.

Brilliant!!

Far from falling apart, the puzzle pieces were falling into place, not forced or fitted into something someone else may have thought it would/should belong.

Have you ever experienced something where things seemed not to work but in actuality, they were setting the stepping stones for the path meant for you?