Gillian Andrews, author of 'Ammonite Planets' on writing series

I really didn’t have much say in the matter. Six, Diva and Grace practically sat back and demanded a sequel to Valhai. There was no way I could leave the characters where they were, so I decided to write another. And another, and another ... you can see where this is going, can’t you?

I have finished six books in the series now, and I am working on the second draft of the – hopefully – final book, The Trimorphs. I say hopefully, because it is hard to let go of the series, the characters, the stories, everything. In fact, I haven’t been able to. There is one deliberate loose end left hanging just so that I can dive back in if my withdrawal symptoms are too severe.

So I think I know some of the pros of writing series. You come back to well-loved characters, worlds that you can visualize more clearly than your local coffee shop. You don’t have to rack your brains to come up with new characters. You know where your hero and heroine are going; you can feel it in your bones. It is exciting to delve deeper into their motivations, and fun to put them in new situations. The whole series becomes more and more complicated as it develops, and you love it. In fact, you are so submerged in this universe that you sometimes have to blink, get up from the computer and shake your head, to remind yourself where you really live, that you have to put a load of clothes in the washing machine.

But all that comes at a price, too. You are really only ever selling one book. People aren’t going to dive in to a series at Book Four – you have to introduce them to Book One. And Book One is not new anymore. This makes marketing a bit of a nightmare. I think it would be much, much easier to market individual books.

Because series which progress in time – sagas – really should be read in order. Some writers escape this problem by leaving their characters static, so that you can find exactly the same situation in Book Twenty as in Book One. That makes so much good sense. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wanted each book to be a step further, deeper into the Ammonite Galaxy universe. I wanted it to become more and more complicated and, above all, I wanted time to pass in my series. I wanted my characters to grow older, and to have real lifelines.

If I had had any sense at all, I would probably have written a different sort of series ... but I don’t regret it. I couldn’t have written it any other way.


Young Adult Sci-Fi
Date Published: July 28, 2014

This omnibus edition exclusive to the Kindle bookstore brings you the first three books of the award-winning Ammonite Galaxy series - a thousand pages in one volume!

"Awesome book! I'd give this 6 stars for writing if I could. I stayed up till 5 am last night because I was that enthralled." Rose - Podiobooks reviewer (about Valhai)

Meet Six and Diva for the first time in this special omnibus edition of the first three books in this series, starting with Valhai, which is a Readers Favorite award-winning book and a Parsec Awards finalist.

"It continues to astound me that this author has come up with something so completely original and interesting." Cynikat, Podiobooks reviewer.

Get it on Amazon

About Gillian Andrews

I am English, although I live in Spain now. I've worked at all sorts of things, but have been writing too, on and off, since I was little. I have always been passionate about cosmology and astrophysics, so it was exciting to be able to bring that aspect into the series. I recently finished a masters in astronomy and astrophysics.

Valhai is the book I always wanted to write, but I got so involved with the characters myself that I simply had to go on writing about them, which turned a one-off novel into a series. I hope readers will identify with them and enjoy them too. I myself have been practically living in The Ammonite Galaxy for the last five years. It has become so real to me that I can almost touch it!

The books out so far in the series are:

Book One: Valhai
Book Two: Kwaide
Book Three: Xiantha
Book Four: Pictoria
Book Five: The Lost Animas
Book Six: The Namura Stone (published September2014)
Book Seven: The Trimorphs (to be published 2015)

Ammonite Planets is the omnibus edition of Books #1-3 and is exclusive to the Kindle store, and Ammonite Stars is the omnibus edition of Books #4-5, also exclusive to the Kindle store.

Websites: 

www.gillianandrews.com

www.valhai.com

www.kwaide.com

www.xiantha.com

Google plus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GillianAndrews/

Have you read an Anna book?

 

Young Adult Romance

Play with me & Ryan Hunter are the first two books in the Grover Beach Team Series!. 

Same story but each book in a different POV. The first is the heroine, the second is the hero. 

Blurb:

Ryan Hunter’s parties are legend. And tonight she’s going to be there.

Lisa Matthews has been in love with her best friend since kindergarten. They’re close as can be. They’ve even slept in each other’s bed. But they’ve never kissed. Weeks away from her seventeenth birthday, Lisa hopes that soon things will change between them. But when Tony comes home after summer soccer camp, his mind is focused on someone else. And worse, that new girl is a soccer player.

Fighting for her love, Lisa gets carried away and makes a stupid decision: Without the least bit of talent or any passion for the sport whatsoever, she goes for the co-ed soccer team.

The tryouts are hell, the first match ends bloody, and the morning after the selection party she wakes up in the worst place possible—in the arms of the captain of the soccer team. The hottest guy in school. Ryan Hunter.

Find them on Amazon:

Play With Me / Ryan Hunter

About Anna Katmore

Anna Katmore grew up in Vienna. After she graduated from school at the age of 18, she moved to Austria’s country side.

Apart from traveling around the world, her one big passion is writing. She says about herself that she has been a storyteller all her life. Already in kindergarten, she came up with the most exotic fantasies and tales. Her teacher used to call her a liar. Anna calls it the cornerstone of her writing career.

Inspired by authors such as Lisa Jane Smith, Stepheny Meyer, and Becca Fitzpatrick, she started writing her first novel in 2009. Excessive reading and analyzing the structure and characters of her favorite books helped her develop the necessary skills and her very own voice. Because of her love for the language, she writes stories in English first, and when she finds a few weeks to squeeze into her tight writing schedule, she translates them into German later.

Her preferred genres are YA and fantasy romance.

In late 2012, Anna debuted with her novella PLAY WITH ME and later made this the first book of a series called Grover Beach Team. PLAY WITH ME was a finalist in its category for the RONE (Reward Of Novel Excellence) Awards, hosted by the InD’Tale magazine at the Romance Novel Convention 2013 in Las Vegas.

One funny fact: People always told Anna that she can’t make a living with being a writer. So when PLAY WITH ME came out and sold more than 500 units every day during the first four weeks, she was thunderstruck. It took her a few days to realize what was going on.

Anna is married and has a 12-year-old son. She loves her two cats, Lily and Emma, as much as she loves her family, tries to stay fit with ZUMBA dancing twice a week, and usually spends 86% of her day writing. The remaining time is used up for food and inevitable sleep.

If you still want to know more about me, my FAQ page is the right address for you. http://annakatmore.com/faq/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorannakatmore

Twitter: @AnnaKatmore

Review of 'How to Be Manly' by Maureen O'Leary Wanket

When Fatty Matty Sullivan finds a self-help book by former football great Tad Manly at a yard sale, he secretly starts following the old pro’s advice to get in shape and get the girl. Summer goals: lose the milkshake weight, join the football team, and turn himself into the kind of guy super hot Cassie Bale will love.

But between taking care of his grandfather, trying to pass remedial Algebra, and getting caught up in his friend Jester’s half-baked weed-dealing schemes, Matty’s summer isn’t quite the game-changer he’d planned. When on top of it all his dad moves back in with his own plans to get rich quick, Matty suddenly has much bigger things to worry about than football and whether or not Cassie’s going to call him back. And it turns out that there might be more to being manly than he thought.

Maureen O’Leary Wanket’s debut is a sharp, comic novel about trying to do the right thing… even when you’re not sure what that is.

**My thoughts**

I really liked this book. I felt like I was able to relate to Matty, being an overweight kid, myself. I also could appreciate the confusion, fear, and concern of dealing with his grandfather, who is suffering from some kind of dementia. My mother has Alzheimer's and I have been in some of those situations.

Matty wants to do the right thing. He thinks he is doing the right thing. But sometimes as you are struggling to figure out life, you end up doing the wrong thing. Matty learns so many lessons in his journey about life, friendship, love, and family. He discovers truth and what it means to be genuine. He learns about the old cliche about the grass always being greener. As he tries to learn from Tad Manly, he in turn learns how to be truly manly in his own right. He learns how to take care of himself and those around him. He learns a lot about making the right choices. And he even learns to laugh a bit along the way.

While Matty's personal story may not follow exactly what a lot of of teens are going through, the fundamental issues and intrinsic battles should be familiar to both male and female readers. It may make you reflect on decisions you made back then, as well as ones you are preparing to make right now, even if you are a teenager times two in age. This was worth the read.

Buy on Amazon | B&N

Put How To Be Manly on your TBR list

 

Meet the Author:

Maureen O’Leary Wanket is a writer and teacher living in Sacramento, California with her husband and two daughters. How To Be Manly is inspired by the humor and courage of the students she’s met in her classrooms over the past twenty years. She loves high school football, but only when she happens to teach at least half of the players on the field.

Her short stories have appeared in Esopus, Xenith, Fiction at Work, Blood and Thunder, Musings on the Art of Medicine and Prick of the Spindle.

Maureen writes articles about issues in education for local and national publications. She also muses about inspirations for a writer’s life in Friday Free Topic at http://maureenoleary.wordpress.com.

How To Be Manly is her first novel.

Find Maureen on: Twitter | Blog | Goodreads

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The author is giving away a $15 Amazon Gift Card and a paperback. Fill out the form below to enter a Rafflecopter giveaway

'The Minimum Wage Millionaire: How a Part-Time After School Job Can Change Your Financial Life' by Bill Edgar

Synopsis:

The Minimum Wage Millionaire is a must read for teenagers and parents of teenagers who want to learn about how money works. The book presents a practical approach to accumulating wealth for teenagers who are just starting to earn income with a part time job. Using simple analogies to unravel complex financial concepts allows the young mind to grasp why it is important to invest early and how to start with their first paycheck. Following a simple plan for only six years, they will have a small nest egg that will grow into about one million tax free dollars by the age of 65.

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One
Why Write a Book on Money for Teenagers?

When it comes to building wealth, the most powerful force you have on your side is time. As the days and years pass, the opportunity to build wealth by leveraging time slowly dwindles. The idea for this book came from the realization that often times kids start working their first job at sixteen, likely just a minimum wage, or near-minimum wage, job, but they haven’t been taught how to accumulate wealth. I wasn’t.

In high school, I had some basic accounting, and I learned how to balance a checkbook. We did some stock market games to learn a little about investing, but no class I took ever laid out a plan for success in a capitalist society. No class I took talked about the “Rule of 72,” or compounding return on investment over time, or tax advantaged investment accounts.

But all of those things I just mentioned are critical to understand in a free market capitalist society. They are critical to understand from the moment that you earn your first dollar. It doesn’t matter how wealthy or poor your parents are, it doesn’t matter what background you have, all teenagers in the United States, after reading this book, can set themselves on a path to build a staggering amount of tax-free cash. With just a little bit of knowledge about how money works, and the discipline to follow through, you can be in control of your financial destiny.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have not taken advantage of the time I’ve had to accumulate wealth. Worse than that, I realize that as the years have passed and other financial obligations of adulthood have grown, setting aside extra money becomes more and more elusive. I have to acknowledge some hard facts about my own bad money habits—bad habits that stopped me from building wealth. I have to reflect on wasted opportunities and bad decisions. Finally, I have to draw some tough conclusions about the consequences of not saving and investing.

But it doesn’t have to be that way for you. After reading this book, you will have both knowledge and youth on your side. You will have an action plan on how to start accumulating wealth now. And the possibilities before you will be endless. But let’s talk about where bad money habits start.

Why?

Because I’ve sucked at money. I mean, if blowing a paycheck were a sport, I’d be Muhammad Ali—the greatest of all time. As a kid, I didn’t know any better, but it starts a pattern.

When I got my first job as a paperboy at 12 years old, I immediately took the money from my first paycheck down to the Ben Franklin, a few blocks from my house, and bought a bottle of Coke and tons of baseball cards. On the way home, I stopped at Mickey’s for a Chicago-style hot dog with all the fixings and some fries. By the end of the week, all the money I’d made was gone. Back then, it wasn’t much, but today—if I’d just invested part of that somehow—I’d have enough to buy a small island in the Bahamas. I was too young to know it, but that was my first big missed opportunity.

If that’s not painful enough to look back on, I’m sad to say it didn’t stop there. When I started my first real job in high school (bagging groceries), after work, the arcade ate quarter after quarter. And then there were movies (I thought everyone went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark 20 times!), gas for the car, games for Atari, and the occasional burger, french fries, and Coke. It all added up.

Paycheck after paycheck was burning a hole in my pocket. I wasn’t saving or investing anything, but at least I had to stop when there was no money left. Credit cards would later solve that problem. After college, I moved to California, bought a new car, new furniture, new wardrobe, and lots of new grown-up toys. I started getting my hair cut at a trendy salon with a French name, moved into an apartment in the “hip” part of town with a pool table and a pop-a-shot.

You know what’s truly sad? It took me a LONG time to learn from my mistakes. As I got older, people warned me to start saving. I can remember my dad getting near retirement age and shaking his finger in my face at the dinner table on Thanksgiving, saying “You’d better invest your money for retirement, or you’re gonna end up working until you die!” but I ignored him. The years rushed by, and then, with my net worth still bobbing near zero, my wife and I got pregnant with our first baby.

As I sat in the hospital in Chicago—never again. I must change. I must be a good example. I can’t let them suffer the same mistakes I made. I started saving like crazy in my company retirement plan. And that lasted for a few years, but the economy changed, and I was not prepared. I was unemployed for a while—longer than I ever imagined. The mortgage, the bills, it consumed far more than the unemployment check.

I began working a part-time job for minimum wage at the local big box store, but unlike my teenage years, the meager paychecks didn’t help much with all the bills. As the Great Recession continued, I eventually cashed out the retirement money, penalties and all, so I could keep paying the mortgage. It still wasn’t enough. In the end, I lost it all, the house, the savings, and Best Buy even stopped by to get their TV back. I was sick to my stomach.

Listen. I honestly wasted all my opportunities to build wealth and have the choices, the options, to retire rich, so that I don’t have to work until I die, so that I can spend my time with my family. Now, knowing how easy it is to get there if you start early and seeing the principles in this book work for so many people, I’m ashamed of my past actions. But you don’t have to have my same regrets.

So how does a guy who lost everything know so much about creating wealth? That’s a valid question, and I’m glad you asked. Learn from your mistakes. As you grow up, you’ll likely hear that over and over from your parents, teachers, and coaches. It’s what I’ve had to do myself. Learn from my mistakes. So the rest of this book is about what I’ve learned.

In life, there are no do-overs. I can’t go back and make things better for me. But for every teenager out there, hope springs eternal. If this book can make an impact on just one kid (besides my three beautiful daughters), I’ve accomplished more than I could possibly imagine. I’ve created this book is to help you understand what an amazing opportunity you have right now. Time is on your side, and every day that goes by, you lose a little bit of your opportunity. Don’t make that mistake. Don’t make my mistake. In the following chapters, I will lay out for you exactly what you need to do to build wealth.

I warn you, it won’t come quickly, and it won’t be easy all the time. In fact, there will be moments in your life when you question whether or not what I’ve told you is true. You’ll want to go back to your old ways and you’ll have pressure from friends to spend, spend, spend!

When in doubt, just remember, the tools you’re using are the same principles that thousands of people have used time after time to become the wealthiest people in the world. You’re in good company.

My great hope is that you’ll realize just how incredible an impact a little bit of savings and planning will have on your life. If you can just avoid my mistakes and save smart, you can really, truly become a minimum-wage millionaire.

Available on Amazon

About the Author:

Bill Edgar is the author of The Minimum Wage Millionaire: How a Part Time After School Job Can Change Your Financial Life. He is passionate about helping youth understand how to become wealthy. He lives in Elburn, Illinois, with his three nearly teenage daughters (who will all be required to read his book). Connect with Bill on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/696268.Bill_Edgar) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/AuthorBillEdgar).

'Shadow Dragon (Shapeshifter Dragons Book 2)' by Marc Secchia

Blurb:

Chameleon Shapeshifters, uncontrollable storm powers, and the rise of Sylakia’s Dragon-elite. The battle against evil scales new heights, but the price of victory grows ever dearer.

Once, a Shadow Dragon ravaged the Island-World. Insatiable. Unstoppable. A Dragon-killer. Now the Shadow Dragon has reappeared, on a collision course with Aranya and King Beran’s campaign to liberate the Islands from the scourge of Sylakian tyranny. He is dark, beautiful and deadly, a predator of untold power.

Meantime, Thoralian weaves his web of guile and betrayal right in the hearts of Aranya’s friends and allies. He will bring them to an encounter only he can win.

Incredible aerial battles. An Ancient Dragon bent on enslaving Aranya. The treacherous secrets of Dragon magic. This is the fight for which destiny has shaped a heroine of rare courage–Aranya, Princess of Immadia. Criminal. Shapeshifter Dragon. A woman who will confront evil at any cost. Spite her at your peril.

Series Note

There is a companion series to Aranya, set in the same unique Island-World above the Cloudlands. Aranya is the last of the Dragons - or is she? Find out why the Dragons disappeared in The Pygmy Dragon, now available on Kindle.

Available on Amazon

About the author:

Marc is a South African-born author who lives writing about dragons and Africa, preferably both at the same time. He lives and works in Ethiopia with his wife and 4 children, 2 dogs, a rabbit, and a variable number of marabou storks that roost on the acacia trees out back. On a good night there are also hyenas patrolling the back fence.

When he's not writing about Africa, Marc can be found travelling to remote locations. He thinks there's nothing better than standing on a mountaintop wondering what lies over the next horizon.

Marc is the bestselling author of Aranya and The Pygmy Dragon and is currently working on sequels for both books.