Future Tour: Meeting Miss Mollie by Di Jones

Di will be on tour June 3-24 with her chick lit novel Meeting Miss Mollie

She’s the Agony Aunt who has it all. Except for one small problem – her life is a disaster.

Annabelle is a hard nosed writer with a good marriage, a nice flat, a thriving career at Adorn magazine and a busy social life. She has only one ambition – to be the best known Agony Aunt in the UK.

When her world is turned upside down by her husband’s infidelity she strikes out on her own and goes flatting with a jet setting businessman. But things in her new house aren’t quite what they seem and her problems mount.

Through her ups and downs, Annabelle forges a relationship with the strangest of friends and discovers the best things in life are those she always avoided.

Meeting Miss Mollie is a story about lies, loss, loyalty, love and laughter, and will appeal to anyone who loves chicklit or romantic comedy. You’ll laugh as you read this book, and perhaps even shed a tear.

Please visit CLP Blog Tours for the full tour schedule! **Anyone who purchases their copy of Meeting Miss Mollie before June 24 and sends their receipt to Samantha (at) ChickLitPlus (dot) com, will get five entries in a drawing to win a $20 Amazon gift card!!**

Future Tour: Princess of Park Avenue by Daniella Brodsky

Daniella will be on tour January 16- February 6 with her novel Princess of Park Avenue

Anyone can see Lorraine Machuchi is no ordinary Brooklyn girl.  Anyone except for Lorraine, that is.  She’s been too busy obsessing over Tommy Lupo to notice.  Living day to day on his confusing midnight phone calls and big-haired memories of their relationship in the early nineties, she’s given up any opportunity of leaving Brooklyn.  And though she never saw the home she loves as a failure, there’re a lot of folks she’s pissed off by staying put—her mother, her dead grandmother’s ghost, not to mention the old Italian ladies who shake their heads at her in the pork store.  And what’s worse, the very guy she tossed everything away for just told her he’ll never wind up with her—a girl who’s not going anywhere.

…Okay, so you might disapprove of her motive—changing for a guy.  But then you probably haven’t seen Tommy with three shirt buttons undone.  Besides, when Lorraine crosses the bridge to Manhattan she begins to realize she’s got a lot to offer.  She starts coloring hair at a swank salon where they actually appreciate a little talent, even if you have to bend some rules to use it.  She gets a fabulous Park Avenue sublet, even if it does involve chasing around a dog/horse named Pooh-Pooh.  She meets a guy who’s actually…perfect, even if she might be too hung up on Mr. Wrong to notice.  She’s asked to become the newest member of the Princesses, an elite group of Park Avenue’s most powerful socialites, even if the reasoning behind it might be a little fishy.  Sure, their $400 cashmere sweaters, charity balls for poor girls with small boobs, and ‘sexy’ yoga are a bit over-the-top, but a Brooklyn girl can learn a lot by discovering her own inner princess…

Please visit CLP Blog Tours for the full tour calendar! **Anyone who purchases their copy of Princess of Park Avenue between December 11-February 6 and sends their receipt to Samantha (at) ChickLitPlus (dot) com, will get five entries in a drawing to win a $10 Amazon gift card!!**

 

 

Guest Post by Ella Slayne

 From One Writer To Another…

(I admit that a lot of this is easier to say rather than do but the tips below are things I try to work towards.  I don’t always achieve it but they serve as reminders and hopefully keep me on a relatively sane track – LOL!)

 

Believe in yourself.

Writing takes guts.  So if you’re already doing it on a regular basis, or even on and off, you should give yourself a pat on the back right now!  As writers, we expose our creative selves and that can leave us feeling vulnerable.  We take part in critique sessions and submit query letters, always hoping for some positive feedback, for some praise, ultimately a publishing contract!

And if we get a rejection or some negative criticism, we try and suck it up and move on from it.  But somewhere in between taking the feedback and pushing forward we may find that our self-esteem take a little knock, and over time those knocks create a bit of a chip or dent which can get bigger and bigger until it seems that although we keep writing, we begin to doubt ourselves and the worth of our work.

So I say this: don’t look to others for validation that your work is worth something.  Criticism is vital, yes but don’t make the mistake of thinking that a rejection for example, somehow means your work is not valuable or that you have nothing to offer.  You do!  And the biggest trap you can fall into is self-doubt.  So take a moment to give yourself self-worth because after all your own self-belief is the most important.  Without that, you have nothing to offer the rest of us!

 

Don’t be stubborn though.

Believing in your work doesn’t mean that you should be stubborn or a stick in the mud!  It’s easy to be attached to the manuscript you’ve written and you should be, I mean if you don’t care about what you’ve written, why should anyone else right?   We all have paragraphs, descriptions, character development or a plot twist that we’re proud of and that’s great, but if you are consistently given the critique that something’s not working or that you should cut a significant section of text, don’t just flap it away as irrelevant because you particularly like that bit, or it took you hours to write it. You won’t learn anything by simply disregarding feedback you disagree with.

Instead I try to be flexible (and this is not always easy I admit).  I take time to explore why the reader may not have felt the same way. Usually there is a reason and it may just be that I need to rewrite it or move a piece of text to a different place in my book (maybe even save it for a different book altogether).

Ultimately a writer’s goal is to communicate efficiently and to as many people as possible.  We don’t always get it right and that’s why the opinion of others is imperative in helping us hone our craft.

 

Network by all means, but do it your way!

This is a real problem area for me because I’m naturally quite shy, even in cyberspace, so ideally I would prefer just to publish my books and then shut-up!  And I could do that, it’s true, but in reality very few people would know about my book, let alone read it.

We all know it’s out there, the new-age of social networking: Facebook, Twitter, blogging etc. Even if they are not your thing, you can’t avoid them, so it seems to me the best option is to embrace them.

I started a blog, signed up on Twitter and created an author Facebook page in an online networking frenzy!  It felt great at first, I was tweeting and updating my status all the time and doing a lot of online socializing!

Then I read articles and blogs about the do’s and don’ts from writers and the publishing world and I became frustrated and confused. Because just like many aspects of writing, it’s all subjective; when one agent says they don’t like to connect via twitter, another will happily do so, when one writer says they welcome all comments on their blog, another will say don’t bother to comment unless you have something meaty to offer. What’s the famous phrase? “You can’t please all of the people all of the time….” 

These online forums can be a brilliant resource, but they are not without pitfalls because it can be a nightmare trying to navigate around online networking etiquette.  You can drive yourself crazy trying to worrying about whether you should return every Twitter follow or comment on every blog you come across.

I think the key here is to do what feels right for you; create your own networking style and be true to yourself.

Find High-Heels and Slippers and connect with Ella at:

 www.smashwords.com , www.barnesandnoble.com and in paperback at www.amazon.com.  For more info please stop by her website: www.highheelsandslippers.com or leave a comment on her blog: http://ellaslayne.wordpress.com/.  You can follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/EllaSlayne or check out her Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Ella-Slayne-Author/268625979835390  Stop by and say hi, she would love to hear from you!

 

 

 

 

 

GIVEAWAY: The What if Guy by Brooke Moss

After losing her job at a swanky Seattle art gallery and finding out her father has been hospitalized, single mother Autumn Cole reluctantly returns to her tiny hometown of Fairfield, Washington to put the pieces of her life back together.

Her disgruntled twelve-year old son isn’t thrilled about going from hip to hick, but Autumn’s got it worse. She resumes her role as the daughter of the town drunk, promptly facing a crisis with her father that’s been decades in the making.

Running into Henry Tobler, and nearly breaking his nose, is almost more than she can handle, but can rediscovering love–and herself–with her “what if” guy teach Autumn to forgive before it’s too late?

I have one paperback copy of The “What If” Guy by Brooke Moss for giveaway! To enter, please leave a comment below. Please note this is for US/Canada residents only. The winner will be chosen on Wednesday, August 10. Thank you to Danielle at Entangled Publishing for sponsoring this giveaway!

Update:

The winner is Jeryl. Thank you to everyone who entered!