What made you want to write? I wanted to do something fun with my Mom. How long have you been writing? Two years What is your favorite kind of story? I like action stories that let me go different places and be different people. What grade are you in? Grade Six What is your favorite subject in school? Math and Gym
Where do you get ideas from regarding characters and or plots? Mom helps me a lot. I write about things I'm feeling to help me better understand them. Who helps you with your writing? Mom helps me the most. She's a writer herself. What other interests do you have (sports, art, music, other activities)? Hockey, soccer, video games, swimming. What do you enjoying doing with your family? Hiking, swimming, going on road trips, playing games What are some of your favorite movies? Transformers, Spiderman, Hulk, Real Steel, Pacific Rim, Is there anything else you would like your audience to know about you?What makes you special? No, I'm just your typical 11 year old. Tell us about your new book we are publishing? Timmy the Turtle was a book I started with my mom to help me learn my letters and letter sounds since I was having problems with them.
I've always wanted to write. I used to make up stories to tell my little sisters and brother when we were small. Many nights were spent sitting on my bed, telling stories, and the tradition continued with my own children. I finally found time to do what I've always wanted when I broke my ankle. My doctor told me that I'd be off my feet for quite a while and to find a hobby that I enjoyed, he suggested reading. But, I've always loved to read and our library was running out of books (okay, it's a very small library), and I thought, why not try to write what I wanted to read? I started out writing flash fiction, a very short story that comes to a conclusion quickly. I entered a couple of contests and received an honorable mention, and that blew me away, I was competing with real published authors! From there, I decided to write a full length book and participated in my first NaNoWriMo. That first book will always be special, and one day, I may drag it back out and do a major rewrite, boy have I learned a lot since then.
How long have you been writing fiction?
Well, I've always written, always enjoyed storytelling. But after my injury, I seriously started to apply myself. It's been about five years now.
Do you write anything else?
I've had a blog for years, most of the blogging community know me as Tink from Tink's Place. I've written and posted many articles about things that draw me, I've thought about writing for an online magazine (an ezine) if I ever have the time. I started my blog to review the books that I love and still do, but it's turned into a much bigger venture than I thought it was going to be. I still get between thirty to fifty book review requests per month.
What is your preferred genre and why?
My preferred genre is paranormal romance, I've always loved it. I love all the creatures... vampires, were-creatures, monstrosities, but with real people living their lives. Why? I was one of those little girls who used to dream about what if it's really true?? Through my books, I make the worlds in my imagination come to life.
Where do you get ideas from regarding characters and / or plots?
I've been asked this before, and I wish I had a ready answer, but the truth is I write whatever pops into my head. I'm definitely a pantser and not a plotter. I'm drawn to strong characters, women / girls that don't have to rely on anyone else, guys who know what they want and aren't afraid to show a softer side, but they're rock hard too. I start with an idea, and go from there. I actually had a facebook / blogger friend who asked me, how do you do it? So, we started a discussion on facebook. I threw out an idea and wrote a tiny bit of a story in about five minutes that later turned into a full length novel which I completed during NaNoWriMo. I have to say it's completely different than it started out to be. I've competed in NaNoWriMo for the past four years.
What is your muse?
Hmmm.... my muse.... I have to say my muse is that part of me that keeps prodding me. Some days, whispering in my ear and other days, she dares me to try. On those days when it's a struggle, I write whatever I'm thinking about, even if it's nonsense, and that usually perks my muse up. When I have a story starting to take shape, I see how much of I can write in an hour, and sometimes that hour turns into three or four. I keep challenging myself, it works for me.
What other interests do you have that you would like to share with your audience?
I am totally and completely addicted to facebook, I started out with twitter when it first came on the scene, but facebook lets me connect with far away places as well as the people who I've come to call friends even if I've never actually met them in person. But, facebook is still a time suck, if I allowed myself to be drawn in, it can eat an entire day in what feels like a blink of an eye. I've gotten much better at controlling my habit.
What type of music do you like?
This is going to sound overused, but anything with a rockin beat, my favorites range from the Beatles, the Killers, Fallout Boy, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Elton John, Green Day, Queen, All Time Low and the list goes on and on.
Do you like to dance?
I love to dance! Can I do it? Not well, but I have a good time and I've never lacked partners. With my injured ankle, I can't do it anymore, but I still love it.
What other art forms are you interested in?
I draw, mostly abstracts, and love music. I love the impressionists.Someday, I'd like to write a screenplay for a movie.
What are some of your favorite movies or books?
My all time favorite book and movie is To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, other favorite movies include Dirty Dancing, Oz, The Great and Powerful (and The Wizard of Oz, of course), Star Trek, and gosh, so many more. I'm a movie freak (I'd go all the time if a theater was closer to our home). Favorite books... Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison (the whole series actually), Hildie McQeen's The Protector Series, Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series, Lynn Rush's Wasteland series, anything Dean Koontz... actually I'll read anything paranormal, urban fantasy, chiller and thriller, twisted fairytales along with most YA and NA, almost any genre. I know, I'm eclectic like that. :)
Is there anything else you would like your audience to know about you?
I'm the oldest of seven, I come from a huge extended family, and in our family, we include many of our friends.
What makes you special?
Nothing really, except for my fierce loyalty, the ability to realize my dreams, and the tenacity to never give them up.
What is your next book?
Soul Fire is the next book on my horizon! It's also my first YA novel and a NaNoWriMo manuscript. I can guarantee it won't be my last YA, I really enjoyed writing it.
Tell us about it.
Soul Fire tells Rena Langley's story.
Rena's always suffered from nightmares, but this summer, the nightmares are worse than ever before, monsters fill her dreams. Into her life walks Petrov DeForest, tall, dark, and oh so cute with amazing blue eyes, and he claims to know the reasons for the nightmares. Rena's destiny is as the Soul Seeker, an Earthbound soul to help the lost. The monsters from her nightmares are real, the Soul Eaters, they exist on the plane of Reflection, but have crossed to the Earthbound plane in a bid for her soul energy. They'd have a taste of her, and they're ready to take her again. But, she can bring an end to monsters, the Soul Eaters, if she can learn to control her ability, her Soul Fire. With the help of Petrov, her shepherd named Random, and detective Ben Foster, they seek out those who hope to take her and those close to her. Can they survive the monsters? Or will this lifetime end like so many have before?
I love paranormal books and I am looking forward to reading Soul Fire. The book's name is even alluring to me. Lillie, thank you very much for this opportunity to get to know you and to read your upcoming book. I really enjoyed learning more about you.
Midnight Frost Books introduces James Burnett. He has provided us with a wonderful insight to his interesting life and career. Please enjoy reading as much as I did.
I came to writing through what you might call a rather
different path. I work as a pit boss at what is now Atlantis casino in the
Bahamas. It started life as a long term replacement for the mafia controlled
casinos in Cuba which were closed in 1959 when the revolution came.
Consequently I had tons of rather interesting stories come to me over the years
that I thought were worth keeping as part of local history. Being urged by my
colleagues, I put them on a website. I have enough material for rather an
interesting book too, but my wife doesn’t want me to write it!
Working in casinos has given me a lot of insights to people,
especially when they put themselves under pressure. Having said that, my family
and their friends were anything but typical, and I met with some real
characters. I wrote a few vignettes about them too. Since my pit is located
between two giant glass sculptures by Dale Chihuli of The Sun and The Moon, and
Atlantis is on Paradise Island, I like to tell people that they can find me
‘between the Sun and the Moon in Paradise’.
I have been reading science fiction and fantasy for almost half a century,
having picked up “A Princess of Mars” at an early age. I even went to a few
worldcons when I was young and free. That was when I heard the old saws about
SF fans never throwing books away (My garage is full), and our drive to write
the stuff ourselves. I fit that mould perfectly. Once I had written down all
the casino stories I knew, I started writing fiction. That was about five years
ago.
I guess I prefer fantasy, because it allows me to be more
creative. I tend to start with an off the wall idea, and then run with it to
see where it will take me. I try to find ideas or variations that haven’t been
beaten to death already. In this respect I admire the works of Philip K Dick,
but don’t worry, I don’t use artificial stimuli for my imagination. I Liked his
lesser known Clans of the Alphane Moon, and Solar Lottery (AKA The Game Players
of Titan), as being especially imaginative. I also admire Marian Zimmer
Bradley’s Darkover series. My favorite movie is “A big hand for the little
lady”, starring Henry Fonda. It’s a poker movie, and I have been known to play
the game.
I find it interesting that you asked me about my musical
preferences, which are very eclectic. One book I am working on has the idea
that a character’s witch genes from her father got mixed up with her mother’s
musical talent for perfect pitch, making her magic dependent on the songs her
mother listened to while she was pregnant. That one is still very much a work
in progress. I suppose I gravitate to eighties or early MTV, but The Dubliners
do it for me too.
I went to Gordonstoun school in Scotland. Although this
afforded me several glimpses of Prince Charles naked in the shower, it is of
peripheral interest to the house I lived in there. Shaped to be a perfect
pentacle, the legend said it had been built by a mad magician who was supposed
to have sold his soul to the devil, but wanted a place to hide when his time
was up. It didn’t work. I always thought that spending several years living in
a pentacle affected my outlook on life.
I am British, but have lived in The Bahamas for the majority
of my life. I married late to a Bahamian girl, and have two daughters, now 18
and 20. My grandmothers were American and Australian respectively, and several
family members dabbled in writing, with limited success.
I am very active. I play squash, and used to do triathlons.
I always found that I could detach part of my mind while running, and work on
my plot at the same time. I am a fair pool player, having learned to handle a
cue at a very early age.
I don’t use a pen name, but I picked up a nickname at work
because most of my colleagues didn’t think like me. There I am referred to as
Captain Chaos, or ‘The Captain’. That’s why my website has that name.
When I started on my first novel, my motivation was simply a
challenge to myself to see if I could actually do it. I wasn’t writing for an
audience, or to make money. I was writing for me. I didn’t consider ‘Putting it
out there’ until a work colleague and neighbor went the self publishing route.
After that my wife was pushing me big time. I guess that being in The Bahamas,
where there are virtually no writing groups or circles, and no fiction
publishing, I had a hard time seeing the way forward without the help and
advice of an editor. I am really excited to now be able to get this assistance.
As of now I have completed three
novels and am working on two others. I switch between the two whenever I get
stuck!
My most memorable holiday was the
one when I proposed to my wife. We went to Jersey where I had a cousin, Tom. I
had picked out the spot by the romantic ruins of Grosnez Castle in the
northeast corner of the island. We did the tourist bit most of the day, and
towards the evening, I said, “There is one more place I’d like to show you.”
She was tired and reluctant, but it was a fine evening, the spot was very
picturesque, and a couple of bunnies even came out to gambol around. After I
did the one knee bit, and her screaming and screeching died down, she admitted
that she would have left me at the end of the trip if I hadn’t popped the
question. We had been an item for over four years.
When we got back to Tom’s house,
my fiancée, totally unable to contain her news, immediately blurted out, “James
proposed, and we are getting married.”
The uninspiring reply, “I always
thought you were!” was a bit of a letdown, so she ran to the phone, and called
my mother and aunt in England.
When she gave them the news,
their reply was, inevitably, “I always thought you were.” It may not have been
the sort of vacation you recall for all the fun times, but I will never be able
to forget it.
I had several family members who were writers, but for
various reasons had rather limited success. The first was my Australian
grandmother, Werna Mary Brown, later Gordon-Brown. “Werna” was an aboriginal
name, although she wasn’t. Unsurprisingly she preferred to be known as
‘Queenie’. A journalist by trade, she wrote a novel which the publishers in
Melbourne advised her to take to London as they felt it was quite good, and
would do better there. Taking their advice, she embarked on a liner to London called
the Pericles, which promptly sank. She survived, but the book didn’t. In those
days – it was 1908 or 9 - one manuscript was it.
My father, Robert Burnett, went one better. He wrote a
biography of Gauguin, which was published in 1939. It was quite well received,
and was translated into French and German. The overseas royalties, for some
inexplicable reason, never materialized. After the war, he tried to do the bio
on another artist, but someone else published one on the same man while his
manuscript was in progress. This, on top of his very stressful wartime
experiences as a polyglot interrogator, knocked the stuffing out of him.
My mother, also Werna Mary, (she chose Mary!) wrote
anonymous stories for the magazine The Tatler while my dad was struggling, but
never told him. I believe he thought her to simply be thrifty with the
housekeeping budget.
Her cousin, and my godfather, John Marriner wrote stories
for yachting magazines, which he collected into book form, and followed with
other travel books about yachting. Even though he wrote for a relatively limited
market, he was the most successful. Of course he was the only one who didn’t
need the money.
Having these family members showed me that it was possible
to write a book, and I took encouragement from their achievements.
About The Decision
I can’t remember how I came up with the idea for The
Decision. I do know that I thought it was cool, and wanted to know where it
might take me. The concept of a person who could shift sexes was one which I
immediately realized had the capacity to go downhill atan impressive speed, and I had to be very
careful to keep things from degenerating into a story I did not want to write.
Having a character with two completely different outlooks on
life, but the same talents and memories was a challenge, as keeping them
believable to the reader was very important. I wanted the reader to be able to
identify with both, but not to the extent that either would automatically become
their favorite. After all, the main theme was about which way my protagonist
would jump in the end.
Just as significant was the way I treated each aspect’s love
interest. They had to be people who complemented their respective aspect while
still being retaining individuality.
I really enjoyed designing all the characters in the book.
None are based on anyone in particular, but they are all based in some way or
other on the types of people I have come across during my life, and especially
in the casinos where I have worked. It helps that I come into contact with so
many different people every single day.
I can’t hold a tune to save my life, and I had never tried
to write lyrics, so that was probably the thing I worried about the most.
Nevertheless, I bulled my way through that somehow.
I must admit I had great fun writing The Decision,
and allowed myself to go off script, as it were, when I found a twist I really
liked, and just had to be in the book. I hope the readers will appreciate them
as much as I did.
Once I finished, I started wondering: how weird and twisted
was I?
I would like to thank James for an intriguing insight to his life and writing. We look forward to the publication of The Decision.
Write because you love to. Do it because it is in you. We have had the good fortune to gain the interest of many new and talented authors for both Crimson Frost Books and Midnight Frost Books. We thank you for sharing your art with us. We will be featuring interviews of our new authors soon.
I just wanted to share this inspiration. Sometimes we all need some! Write because you love to. Take a vacation in your head and put it on your computer or paper pad. Share your work with others to bring joy to them.
I write for fun, for the happiness it brings me. I write to invent the worlds I wish were truly real. To breathe life into the people I dream up and wish to bring to life. To solve problems I desire a solution to. Or create conflicts my characters can better handle. Writing can bring joy, reduce stress and make your emotions soar. I invite you to enjoy such joy, write too and share it with others!
Ciara Lake
CANADA DAY IS A NATIONAL DAY OF CANADA. THE DAY CELEBRATES THE ANNIVERSARY OF JULY 1, 1867. THIS DATE MARKS THE JOINING OF THE BIRTISH NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES OF NOVA SCOTIA, NEW BRUNSWICK, AND THE PROVINCE OF CANADA INTO A FEDERATION OF FOUR PROVINCES, THE PROVINCES OF CANADA BEING DIVIDED, IN THE PROCESS, INTO ONTARIO AND QUEBEC ON JULY 1, 1867. THIS IS A DATE OF MUCH SIGNIFICANCE AND A REASON TO CELEBERATE OUR GRAND HISTORY!
WE JOIN IN THIS WITH OUR SISTER NATION, UNITED STATES ON HER BIRTHDAY, JULY 4TH.
HELLO AMERICANS (UNITED STATES), AND WE EXTEND TO ALL PERSONS OF THE AMERICAS, AS WELL AS OTHER'S ALL OVER THE WORLD, TO JOIN IN OUR HAPPINESS! OUR BIRTHDAY! LET'S HAVE A PARTY!
CELEBRATE OUR THE BIRTH OF OUR NATION, REJOICE IN THE UNITED STATES
CONSITUTION! IT'S THE FOURTH OF JULY! HOORAY!
ENJOY OUR FAMILIES, OUR FREEDOMS, THE RIGHT TO SELECT OUR LEADERS,
OUR RIGHT TO TRAVEL FREELY WITHIN OUR BOARDERS, THE RIGHT TO READ AND
SPEAK WHAT WE WISH, AND ALL THE OTHER RIGHTS OUR FOREFATHERS GRANTED TO
US, IN THAT GREAT DOCUMENT.
CRIMSON FROST BOOKS IS A COMPANY MADE UP OF SEVERAL TALENTED
INDIVIDUALS WITH DIVERSE BACKGROUNDS. TOGETHER WE ARE STRONGER. WE
ARE ALL CONNECTED TOGETHER THROUGH OUR HISTORY AND OUR ANCESTORS.
OUR TEAM MEMBERS AND AUTHORS COME FROM THE UNITED STATES,
CANADA, AND BRITAIN. WE HOPE MORE WILL JOIN US IN OUR ARTISTIC
GROWTH. WE WELCOME YOU!
CELESTE (CO-PUBLISHER), WHO RESIDES IN OHIO, UNITED STATES, AND
WHO HAS ANCESTORS FROM BRITAIN, IRELAND, GERMANY, SPAIN, ITALY, NATIVE
AMERICAN, AND MORE (A TRUE PRODUCT OF OUR COUNTRY'S MELTING POT)
SENDS OUT THESE WORDS OF CELEBRATION TO ALL.
"HAVE FUN AND BE SAFE! DON'T FORGET TO WELCOME DIVERSITY,
THAT'S WHAT THE UNITED STATES IS ALL ABOUT AND IT MAKES US GREATER!"
June 22nd, Crimson Frost Books will be at Coffee Time Romance's blog (http://coffeetimeromance.com/CoffeeThoughts) doing another pitch session. Frost Mania will be an all day event!
Simply post your first three lines of your completed manuscript in the comment section and those selected will be notified within 48 hours. We're looking for everything from teasers of 5,000-10,000 words through to our longer works of 15,000 to 60,000 words.
Guidelines: Crimson Frost Books is currently seeking stories in all genres, heat levels, and pairings. The hotter the better. We're specifically looking for holiday teasers for release in Oct through Dec. As well as Valentine stories for release in late 2013 early 2014.
Midnight Frost Books is seeking stories in non-romance genres, though romance elements can be included. These stories can be any genre, we're looking for westerns, horror, thriller, suspence, paranormal, and more. So stop by and give us your best pitch - we're excited to see your books.
Patricia Bates and Celeste Brammer Publisher - Crimson Frost Books
