Guest Post: Top 5 Ways to Kill Your Love of Reading

This is a guest post by Emlyn Chand, author of Farsighted

Did you resolve to read more this year?  Maybe you've dubbed this year as the year you finally start your own book club.  To be successful with either of these goals, you'll need to keep that all-consuming passion for reading alive.  Here are five examples of what NOT to do.

I have been guilty of each and every one of these bibliophile misdeeds. To avoid making these mistakes, it helps to be cognizant of what they are and how they may put-off your love of reading. My list is, of course, not exhaustive. Please feel free to add other ways in which your enthusiasm for the written word has been destroyed or derailed.

1. By taking too long to finish reading a particular book - many a decent book have been utterly destroyed for me simply because I took too long to get through them. Sometimes this is because of a busy work or personal life that interferes with my time that is generally allotted to reading; others it is because I am reading the wrong book.

2. Because of reading the wrong book—what makes a book wrong? Some people say that if a book does not grab you in the first 50 pages that you should give up reading it. I don’t know if I, however, subscribe to an exact number of pages that must be read before giving up. Sometimes books get started a bit late. Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything is Illuminated” for example takes a while to get heated up, but once it’s there, this is one of the most incredible books.

3. Through turning your leisure activity into a chore—if reading as a hobby is very important to you, it’s best not to subject yourself to reading materials that can be deemed more as work than pleasure. A classic example of this phenomenon is graduate school. I am not suggesting that you forego higher education to maintain your zeal for the written word; rather i’d like you to understand that you may undergo a 2-, 3- or even 5- year hiatus in this instance.

4. In choosing to miss out on other activities to sit at home and read—so you’re a book-worm that probably means you, like many others who share your passion, are an introvert. That’s great, but don’t use reading as an excuse to miss out on some of the other things life has to offer, like a social life. Don’t get too caught up in the fictional realm that you forget that life exists outside of the pages of a novel!

5. Upon assigning too much meaning to fictional characters—Loved ‘Twilight’ and now find yourself pining for a boyfriend just like Edward Cullen? No man even comes close? Surprise, surprise. Never measure real people up to invented ones, everybody loses. Similarly, if you find a glimmer of someone you know in a villainous character, you may start subconsciously assigning some of the fictional player’s deeds to your real-life loved one. Don’t do it!

Blog Tour Notes

THE BOOK:  Alex Kosmitoras may be blind, but he can still “see” things others can’t.  When his unwanted visions of the future begin to suggest that the girl he likes could be in danger, he has no choice but to take on destiny and demand it reconsider. Get your copy today by visiting Amazon.com’s Kindle store or the eBook retailer of your choice. The paperback edition will be available on November 24 (for the author’s birthday).

THE AUTHOR:  Emlyn Chand has always loved to hear and tell stories, having emerged from the womb with a fountain pen grasped firmly in her left hand (true story). When she’s not writing, she runs a large book club in Ann Arbor and is the president of author PR firm, Novel Publicity. Emlyn loves to connect with readers and is available throughout the social media interweb. Visit http://www.emlynchand.com/ for more info. Don’t forget to say “hi” to her sun conure Ducky!

MORE FUN: There's more fun below. Watch the live action Farsighted book trailer and take the quiz to find out which character is most like you!

Guest Post: David Porteous, Author of Singular

Who Are You Writing For?

I never give advice. Or at least I never give advice I don’t regret later, when an older, wiser me looks at my advice, shakes his head and chuckles. But I’m going to opine in this case and with the full knowledge that I’ll regret it later.

If you want to make a living out of ‘How-To’, Idiots’ Guides, news and textbooks then you must write for your audience. If you’re writing fiction, to hell with your audience; write for yourself.

When I was writing Singular, a friend asked me, casually and as if it were a question I must know the answer to, “Who are you writing for?” I wish I had bellowed, “Get thee hence! I place no chains on my wit!” (In retrospect I always imagine myself as Lord Byron – with the frock coat, but without the syphilis).

What I actually said was: men, aged 25 to 34, probably university graduates. Market and customer research is my day job; it was exactly what years of training had taught me to say. And it wasn’t true. I was writing Singular for the best, though often the least financially rewarding, of reasons: I hadn’t read it.

A story about death, isolation and the self – that is also a comedy? You won’t be the first person to think that’s a pretty small niche I’m clinging to. But isn’t that what we want writers to do; to take us and show us and reveal new ways of seeing familiar things? Doesn’t that demand that the writer care more about the story and the telling than about anything else? And isn’t an arbitrary demand that your work conform to a selection of tropes unfair to the story, the reader and the writer?

Do you have anything new to say about love affairs between vampires and teens? Can you put a different slant on women who want it all and get it? Are you the writer who can captivate the world with a tough spy who risks lives to save more? Then film needs you – desperately. But books can probably do without.

That was rather a long list of rhetorical questions, but what it comes down to is that genre itself is an avoidable cliché. One of my favourite writers, Ursala K Le Guin, wrote, “The story is not in the plot, but in the telling. It is the telling that moves”.

If I can pay Ursala the insult of grouping her thoughts with my own, my point is this: write, in the best way you can, something you haven’t read. If you can do that, the people who can appreciate what you’ve written will appear.

Hopefully.

Thanks for having me guest blog as part of the Singular book tour, which runs until the end of June 2011. You can follow the tour’s progress on my website www.dfpiii.com or follow me on Twitter @dfpiii or using the hashtag #SVBT. Also, at the end of the book tour, one lucky person who “likes” Singular on Facebook will receive the signed proof copy of the US print edition of Singular – a one-of-a-kind, never-be-another prize.

Guest Post: Ami Blackwelder, Author of The Shifters of 2040

Eloquent Enraptures and author Ami Blackwelder proudly presents the six part science fiction/paranormal romance saga! Like nothing you have ever experienced!

Shifters of 2040:

“I’m pregnant. Her eyes peered over the edge of the cloth and confronted her mirrored reflection with that truth. I’m pregnant…by a SHIFTER. Oh, god!”

In “The Shifters of 2040,” Scientist Melissa Marn finds her world swirling on its axis with that one revelation. Shifters — a sentient alien species of light — look to Earth for refuge. In doing so, both shifters and humans are forced to confront prejudice, betrayal, adversity and oppression.

Methodical scientist, Melissa Marn, and her coworker, Dr. Bruce Wilder, conduct experiments on the shifters. Through her pregnancy, she becomes more compassionate and humane and finds herself defending the very species she’s supposed to eradicate.

One of the hybrids, Diamond, falls in love with Keenan, a soldier trained to kill her. Between the four, the reader is led from conflict to resolution, from despair to hope, from loneliness to love.

Much of the book’s originality lies in the shifters, common characters in science fiction, but whose origins are rarely explained. In this series, their alien DNA allows them to metamorphose into not just wolves, but a variety of animals. As the plot unfolds, the shifters discover they can have children with humans — hybrids.

Strengths of the novel include the complex characters, its writing style of poetic prose and rich description, and the well developed, thought-provoking, yet highly entertaining plot.

This fast paced book will appeal to the young adult and adult market. It fits nicely into the paranormal romance and science fiction romance genres and would make a great movie, a captivating TV series and an intriguing video game.

Readers will enjoy the fresh approach and original concept of the world thirty years from now, and will find the characters come to life in their minds long after they read “The End.”

Shifter Evolutions video and purchase options at her website.

http://amiblackwelder.com/

The Shifters of 2040

Character Interview: This interview will be conducted for the characters of the Shifters of 2040. Scientist Melissa Marn and the hybrid Diamond.

Do you always love what you can’t have?
Melissa Marn: The Smithsonian, Bruce Wilder. I guess I do. But my life is controlled by the SCM now, by my father and General Raul. They decided this fate for me. If I had my way, I’d run off with Bruce somewhere far away...
Diamond: I fell in love with the enemy on accident. I didn’t plan to love Keenan, the military soldier sworn to kill me and my kind. He didn’t plan to love me. We just happened.

If you were a quality?
Melissa Marn: The River. I am methodical like waves. I do the job needed to be done, whatever the cost of erosion, and flow continually. Close to the Earth, but I am cold, because the SCM coaxed me since fifteen, and trained me since twenty-five.
Diamond: The Hawk. This is my other half, the beast inside of me, that the humans fear. I fly above the world and watch. Silent, and steady, but strong.

If you were a flaw?
Melissa Marn: Ice. I am cold, and hard. And too easily I melt and conform to the shape I am enclosed in, that prisoner the SCM has built around my life.
Diamond: The Heart. I feel too much. Emotions explode inside of me, and I sense my heart will be the end of me one day. If I could only feel less...

Do you always walk on the moral slippery slope?
Melissa Marn: It’s my job! It’s all I know. And if I didn’t do it, someone else would. What then? I know the shifters are more than the SCM tells us they are. They must feel something. But what? My curiosity and scientific training drives me. I have to find answers to my questions. I have to perform my duty!
Diamond: But I love him! I know being with him draws danger to my kind, to my family. My sister. But he would never betray me, willingly. I know he loves me too. And though I am sworn to stay away from him, from all SCM, my heart dominates my head.

Favorite food?
Melissa Marn: The Italian restaurant Little Milan. Bruce and I have shared many discussions, heated arguments, and romantic memories there.
Diamond: Mice...I am half hawk.

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