Beta-Readers Needed!

· 4 Comments ·

I’m getting really close to finishing The Unfavorable. I’m getting excited so I’m sending out a form for anyone who wants to be a Beta reader for me. The job entails getting an advanced copy of the book; sending me your thoughts, opinions, and suggestions; … Continue reading Beta-Readers Needed!

Guest post!

· Leave a comment ·

Hey everyone – I’ve been trying to reduce a bit of my stress level by taking a short break from editing. Another good lesson: always take a step back when necessary. Don’t ever try to force yourself to write or edit – it will only be harmful to your work.

That wasn’t my lesson for today, though. There is no lesson! That was just something to keep in mind. I’m actually going to make this post be a guest blog. Enjoy some great info from the wonderful author, CJ English!

27935655_1993474017643571_63568233_n

WTF Just Happened?*
When I first started writing, things didn’t go as planned. Hey honey, you okay if I write a book about our affair? Was not exactly the conversation I ever thought I would be having with my husband. I was working on a weight loss book. Not a book disclosing the all the hiding places and bones we’d buried together years earlier.

But my weight loss book was stale; I didn’t even have a good title for it. Every part of it was painful and I struggled to get it right on every page. The flow was all wrong and I just wasn’t feeling it. There was one other big problem too. It. Was. Boring. I nodded off writing it every time I sat down. I knew what I had to do. So I drank a bottle of wine and stuffed all 200 pages through the shredder. After shedding some intoxicated tears I went to bed and hoped for a revelation as to how I could not suck so bad. I vowed I would NEVER write anything boring ever again. I was done writing. I sucked.

Eventually, I worked up the courage to start plunking away again decided to just doodle for a while. No pressure to be good—I only had to just keep sucking. I would write anything that came to mind, set myself free, lubricate my knuckles again with quick short movements. What came out was shocking, even for me.

I never planned on writing AFFAIRYTALE.

I was a weight loss junkie, health food nut, smoothie connoisseur who wanted to write about foodstuff. I did NOT want to write about…having an affair.

A year later I was sitting on a barstool, my husband at my side—we were indulging in Bloody Mary’s. The kind you don’t need to eat a dinner with cause they come with the whole kitchen on a stick.

He looks over to me and says, “Hey, how is your weight loss book coming along, almost finished?”

My eyes focused on the pickle and shrimp on a stick and I held my breath—as I processed how to answer that question. A question I knew, eventually, I’d have to face.
I let out my breath and gritted my teeth. Then I slapped him on one knee and laughed. “It’s kind of a funny story.” I stuttered and let out a few syllables of the stalling kind.

“Yeah, so, funny thing happened when I was writing that book. Um, it sucked. So I stuck it through the shredder.”

Eternally my biggest cheerleader, he gasped at the notion. “What? Of course, it didn’t suck. Honey, why would you do that?”

I slurped down the remaining vodka and signaled for another. “It did suck,” I said, “it was boring and blah. So I started writing something else.”

His deflated look became revived with a new hope. “Oh. That’s great. Tell me about it.”
I drag out my words, not knowing how to tell him I’d just written a 95,000 word manuscript about he and I having an affair—the affair we said we would never tell anyone about. The affair that had turned both of our lives into the most meaningful, whole and happy existence we could have ever hoped for.

“I’ll tell you the title,” I say, “it looks better written than if I just say it out loud.” I grabbed a pen from the bar and a little white square napkin. With one hand covering what I was writing as if to shield him from cheating off my answers, I wrote down the amalgam, AFFAIRYTALE. I pushed it his way, took another large sip and stared straight ahead not wanting to see his response.

Silence hung between us for what felt like a year before I interrupted. “Well?” I said, prompting him to put me out of my misery.

“It’s clever.” He responded.

“It’s about us,” I say, my stomach about to throw up in my mouth from anxiety.

“I kind of figured.” He flashed a slim smile.

“Well, what do you think about that?”

“Even if its fiction once it gets out, people will know.”

“I know. That’s why it won’t be fiction.” I said, forcing a fake confidence. “I’m writing it 100% true to us as non-fiction. Since people will figure it out anyway. ”

He changes the subject. “Honey, don’t you want to get that weight loss book you’ve been talking about out there?”

“Yes and I tried but this book, AFFAIRYTALE kept me up at night, haunted me in my sleep, in the shower, on my walks, in yoga class. I didn’t want to write it I swear.” I pleaded with him to believe me. “I actually tried NOT TO. But it just came out. And…” I let out a deep breath, “Something about it just feels right. I feel some type of I have to thing going on.”

A year or so after that conversation, with his consent and approval, as well as my daughters, I released AFFAIRYTALE. It hit #1 in its genre 30 days after its release on my 35th birthday. It was my first dabbling in writing seriously. Although Diaries and Journals, and Love and Romance in non-fiction are not goliath genres, it was still something. Something that told me, maybe I should keep writing. I had always wanted to, but nothing ever worked. Now, by some unknown measure, I had concluded that AFFAIRYTALE worked. And that maybe, just maybe, I could make something else work, too.

I set out to write that damn weight loss book that had just never felt right, the one I couldn’t give up on even when I wanted to. Now it had become the ghost that haunted my waking hours, snagging my attention and not leaving me alone. But it needed to be different than before. So, I did my old tried and true tactic I do when I need to say fuck it and just go with whatever it is that is plaguing me. I drank a bottle of wine and starting doodling. What came out was shocking, even for me. I mean, I know what a drunken vulgar sailor I can be, but I didn’t expect to put that easily judged side of me out there so publically.

Over the next 6 months, WTF am I supposed to eat? flowed easily and the title just felt right. I already had the knowledge that would make up the content; I just had to let it out in a way that was true to my soul. Which is apparently a very overtly sexual, perpetually sarcastic, foul-mouthed soul.

In 2018, I have 3 fiction books lined up for release. I am as scared of breaking into fiction as I was that day I told my husband I wanted to divulge our secrets to the world. But just like on that day, for reasons I can’t explain or understand, I feel like I have to. And that just maybe, by some unknown measure, it will work.

*Originally Published in Urban Lit Magazine 2018

Here’s a fun little Q and A from CJ English as well:

State of residence: ND

Favorite drink: Cabernet! #DrinkWineEatPlants

Genre you write in: Non Fiction

Favorite dessert: Brownies

What fashion accessory can you not live without? Coats, I love coats.

Name of your first published piece? AFFAIRYTALE

Birth sign (ex: Leo)? Gemini

Favorite movie or tv series? 50 first dates

Favorite day of the week? Friday.. duh

If you have traveled, where did you go recently? Washington DC

If you haven’t traveled anywhere yet, where would you like to go?

Favorite color? pink

Favorite quote? “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. Gloria Steinem

What makeup products do you use/love? Lattice

What’s your clothing style (ex: bohemian)? Yoga pants

Career? Professional dreamer and experimenter of all things

Degree? Several

Advice you would give to others? Never settle for less than you know your worth

Any pets? Golden doodle

Name 3 activities you love doing: Writing, wine drinking, hiking

Find more about CJ English at her website, here!

27907185_1993474054310234_1851764764_o

Guess Blog Tonight!

· Leave a comment ·

I know that everyone has been enjoying my lessons this week, but I’m in need of a break. So, I’ve been lucky enough to have the amazing Joann Rock!!!

9781335971296

For the Sake of His Heir

When a marriage of convenience is the only answer…things get inconvenient 
Gabe McNeill is done being manipulated. By everyone from his ex-wife who abandoned him and their baby to the grandfather forcing him to remarry. Now the only way Gabe can ensure his son’s inheritance is if Brianne Hanson agrees to be his bride. They’ve always kept things strictly business and this is no different…until she falls into his bed and all bets are off!
Purchase Links:

 
9781335971265
Claiming His Secret Heir 
 
Can he win back his wife?
When Caroline McNeill shows up outside her husband’s mansion, she claims to have no memory of the past year…or their passion-filled honeymoon. But faking amnesia is the only way Caroline can find out if Damon was behind her abduction. She needs to trust him—a man she craves but still barely knows—before she can tell him about their infant son. Did the Silicon Valley mogul merely marry to claim an inheritance then dispose of her? Or is what they share real and forever?
 
Purchase Links: