Author: ChanAtkins

Author Interview: Karl Beckstrand

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Karl Beckstrand is an American author and public speaker with forty ebooks under his belt. He recently contacted me to see if I would be interested in reading and reviewing his award winning YA novel To Swallow The Earth. I readily agreed, as the book sounded so intriguing;  a suspense filled Western and Winner of the 2016 International Book Award, Literary Classics Seal of Approval, and 2016 Laramie Award Finalist. You can read my Goodreads review here. Having read and enjoyed the book so much, I wanted to know more and Karl kindly agreed to an interview. Here he explains how he came upon the original manuscript for To Swallow The Earth, talks about his journey so far as a writer and offers his advice to others. Enjoy!

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1) To Swallow The Earth is authored by yourself and Ransom Wilcox. Could you tell us more about who Ransom was and how you came to co-author the book with him?
Ransom Wilcox is my grandfather. I inherited his unfinished Y.A. manuscript. It’s suspense set in the Nevada silver rush–and it won a 2016 International Book Award (also a Laramie Award finalist). My grandfather grew up exploring the Sierra Nevada Mountains on horseback nearly a hundred years ago. My challenge was to develop his characters while preserving the action and authentic language.
2) How much work did you need to do in order to prepare the book for release?
Several months’ worth. He had Carson City as the opening scene, but the other communities were fictitious. I had to look up which real cities would fit his descriptions, develop the characters, fill in some gaps, and polish the overall story.
3) Will the story of Wade and Patricia extend into any more books?
I suppose that depends on how much demand there is for sequels!
4) When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
It kind of took me by surprise. In college I would get ideas for books and scribble them down (when I should have been doing my homework).
5) Tell us about your writing and publishing journey so far. For example, which paths you have followed and why?
After college I joined a writer’s group and met a gentleman who wanted to publish one of my juvenile manuscripts. Unfortunately, he died the day we were to print. I got a crash course in publishing/marketing. One other publisher asked me to write a true story about an immigrant child. I knew about a girl in my family history who arrived in the USA alone, not knowing English. I developed the account—and then got hooked on family history. Now I’ve written several stories on immigrants and several multicultural books. I’m also working on a graphic novel and an audio version of To Swallow the Earth.
6) What is your usual writing process? Are you a plotter, or someone who starts writing and waits to see where it will go?
I try to write or research every day in the morning. I usually get most of the plot outlined right away, but twists and extra material often strike me at any odd time. For non-fiction I have to research and get the facts right, as well as create a good beginning, middle, and end. These books are rewarding to me because they preserve true acts of courage/faith for new generations to witness.
7) What advice do you have for a new author about to launch their first book?
To launch means you’re about to embark on a lot of marketing (even if you’re with a large publishing house, authors must do a lot of the publicity). If you’re just starting a book, write every day. Write from your heart—from what you know first-hand. Don’t try to write about something that you think is popular (unless that’s what you know). You don’t have to have an agent but you should always have a professional editor. Have several people critique your work—people who won’t gloss over glitches. These people can help you be your best.
8) Can you tell us anything about your next release? What are you working on right now?
I have a book in the works that teaches how to earn and manage money. It’s called The Bridge of the Golden Wood. It will have illustrations (kind of a parable) but I will market it as a business/how-to book.
9) What would you most like readers to take away from reading To Swallow the Earth?
Pure excitement: What if you came home after a journey and your family was no longer there? What if someone else was living in your house, running what you used to manage—and trying to kill you? Could a beautiful woman be behind it? Wade Forester has to stay in the shadows. His father has disappeared, and his sister won’t speak to anyone. Patricia Laughlin is searching for her family as well. Few people gain her trust or approval. Wade must decide if risking his life to help Patricia means aiding the enemy. And Patricia must choose a killer to trust with her life.
10) Tell us three interesting things about yourself
I was raised in paradise (San Jose/Silicon Valley) —the perfect climate, much like Valparaiso (Chile, where I lived for two years [LDS mission]). I have a bachelor’s in journalism (never planned to be a reporter) and a master’s in International relations. I teach media at a state college in Utah and speak on traditional vs. digital/self-publishing. I’m an arts/media junkie (music, art, films, books, theater—oh, and history!)
Karl Beckstrand
Premio Publishing & Gozo Books
Action & language books with black, white, Asian & Hispanic characters

 

Thanks again to Karl for agreeing to be interviewed! I truly enjoyed To Swallow The Earth and would highly recommend it to anyone who fancies something a little different! It certainly is a page turner, and incredibly visual. Beautiful, in fact. If you want to know more about Karl you can follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. You can find his books on Smashwords and Amazon.

Take What Tortures You And Write About It

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

I’ve got a confession to make. Just lately I’ve been suffering from a strange, and as far as I know, nameless, affliction. The only way I can describe it to you is by asking you to recall the feeling you get in your stomach just before you sit an important exam. You know, that lurch, that turnover, that horrible tightness that takes your breath away for a moment? Yeah, that.

I first noticed it happening whenever I thought about my writing. The things I had planned to do once my littlest child was in bed. I put it down to a sort of nervous excitement, and a borderline panic about how little time there is to write all the things I have in my head.

Then I noticed it happened at other times too. Just randomly. My stomach dropping, lurching and rolling over.

So, then I blamed it on something else. I’ve always been interested and engaged in political thought and debate, but even more so in recent years. This is not a bad thing, but then it gets to the point where you are feeling angry and helpless all of the time. Post Brexit was pretty bad. It’s all pretty bad. Climate change. Inequality. Housing crisis. A rise in racism and hate crime. Endless war. The fact we’re being organised and dictated to by massive corporations hellbent on destroying the world. The fact you cannot trust the media to tell you the truth.

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So, I made the decision to delete Facebook from my phone. Something I never thought I would do! I was getting seriously addicted. Picking it up to check my newsfeed first thing in the morning, and pretty much every chance I got throughout the day after that.

I did feel an immediate sense of relief. That first morning stomach lurch dissipated. I picked up a book instead. I no longer check my phone throughout the day because there is nothing to check. I have a quick scroll through Facebook in the evening, once I have done enough work to deserve a little break, and I’m sad to say it’s still the same. The violence rages  on, the world gets hotter and there seem to be angry and ignorant people everywhere.

I did feel a sense of relief and freedom for a while. But that feeling in my stomach has not gone away. In fact, I am getting it more often. Maybe it is because I’ve become aware of it, nervous of it even? Confused by it, and as a consequence, fixated on it? I don’t know, but it is strange, and  very annoying. Sometimes it takes my breath away. I have to stop, hold onto something and take a very deep and deliberate breath. And then I am okay again.

I can’t blame anything in my personal life. Everything is as it should be. Everyone is in perfect health. Money is tight, but it’s never been any different at any time in my life. We have a lovely home and a huge garden. We grow our own fruit and vegetables and raise chickens and ducks. We’re outside, a lot! I’ve got my four beautiful, intelligent children, and yes they come with their own issues, and yes being a parent is sometimes stressful and exhausting. But I’m a placid, easy going sort of person. I roll with the punches. I look back on the past fondly, I focus on the now, and I don’t look too far ahead,(unless it’s my saving up for a VW Campervan.)

So why the bad feeling? What does it mean? What is it trying to tell me? I just can’t work it out. It takes me by surprise at random times of the day, creeping up and sucking the air out of me, crunching up my guts and making me think I have forgotten something important. Am I about to sit an exam? Am I about to confront some scary, aggressive person? What is it??

I don’t know, and maybe I will never know. Maybe it built up over time and my stomach got so used to being tied up in knots, it just doesn’t know how not to be. All I can do right now is try to make use of it. I wrote a short story you can find in Bird People And Other Stories called She Is… I wrote this story to keep a novel at bay, and I’ve started writing a second short story with the same characters. Basically the story is about teenage girls, bullying and revenge, but the narrator describes this constant heavy feeling in her belly. She wakes up with it, and it comes and goes throughout the day. Of course, this came from me and my own experience, and I’ve carried it on into the next story. In her mind, it’s because something bad is going to happen, she just doesn’t know what or when. It’s a sense of foreboding for her, a warning from her body.

My fears for the way the world is heading, my fight to find hope, my questions about human nature, have all been rolled out and examined in Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature. (On the third draft now) I didn’t even realise I was doing it at first, but I’ve poured so much of my current state of mind into this story-line. Elliot is the child in me, the hopeful innocent looking for the good in people. His mother Laura is the cynic in me, (exaggerated a fair bit! )Through her I get to rant and rave, I get to swear and scream at the cruelty and injustice in the world. I get to indulge myself in misery and cynicism, fearing the worst and totally giving in to it. I get to hide under a duvet and pretend it’s not happening.

In The Mess Of Me Lou is the voice for my own teenage angst and body issues. She is louder and brasher than me, able to say things I was not.

In recent short stories I have released endless frustrations and anxieties. From my utter dismay that people think it’s okay to dump rubbish in the river where I live, to my constant paranoia that one day soon the Earth is just going to snap, just going to cull us all in one bloody swoop, freeing itself at last. I honestly don’t know how I would cope with this world if I were not a writer!

'Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers'Charles Bukowski.jpg

I think this is the best and sometimes the only thing we can do with something that tortures us. Use it, write about it, pass it on to a fictional character. Maybe this is one way to eventually rid yourself of it! Or at least gain a better understanding of it. I think writers do this all the time, often without even realising it. We project our fears and anxieties onto made up people, into made up worlds. So it’s not us with the problem, it’s someone else.

And then, we feel like we have some control. We can direct the proceedings, we can work out what the problem is, we can send the character on a journey and we can even create a happy ending 🙂 I truly think this ability is one of the greatest things about being a writer.

What about you? Please feel free to leave a comment!

Guest Post: Shalaena Medford on why your blog is not about YOU!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

Last Friday I introduced you to my new look blog and explained why I had renamed it and focused it on a theme that connects my writing and reading habits. I promised you a guest post from the indie author Shalaena Medford who inspired and helped me with these changes, so here it is! Over to you, Shalaena…

Hello readers and fans of Chantelle Atkins! Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to read my guest post to this very lovely author’s blog.

You read in her previous blog post about changes she has been making to her website. I also have been making changes to mine according to the things I’ve learned in my New Media course at Southern New Hampshire University. (Yep, you read that right, I’m a darned Yank from the States! Don’t worry, I will not be tossing any tea. I love tea.)

Right off the bat we learned one major thing, which is that this is not about us. Yes, our selfish little scribbler’s hearts, with its ego-centric blinders focused on arguing “But it’s MY book, and MY website about ME!!” Yes, this is true. But when we treat it that way it’s like sitting down with that one friend we all have that somehow makes everything about them.

“Oh, I just bought this lovely book and—”

“Well I saw the movie twice and I don’t think the book is worth picking up.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to hit speaker number two for three reasons. One: don’t interrupt, you egocentric prat! Two: Who cares that you’ve seen it twice? No one asked for your opinion, anyway. Now sit down and let the other person finish telling you about this book! Three: You’re not going to read the book because you saw the movie? That’s the point where I (in the words of Ryan Reynolds) “have trouble listening to the rest of our relationship.” Seriously, you’re going to judge the book by what you saw in the movie? Excuse me. I have to go do…something else.

So reading that MY website isn’t about me was jarring. Then I realized, it’s not that it isn’t about the author, it’s that it isn’t FOR the author. My website isn’t for me. It’s for my fans. It’s for you guys! You fabulous readers who pick up bound sheaves of tree skin with tattoos on them (most wonderfully colorful description of a book I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading) and get lost in the worlds that we, the authors, have created for you. So why wouldn’t our sites be for you? A place where you can sit down and explore all the nooks and crannies and feel right at home.

So then I had to stop and think about not just my steampunk series, but all of my works. What they’re about, who the main characters are and who they speak to. Who are my readers? Chantelle writes about outsiders. I realized my main characters, and my readers, are misfits, or what I call the “socially abstract.” But my characters are at that point where they’re looking for the place where they fit in, or at least still trying to accept that they will always be on the outskirts of most social circles. My characters, like my readers, are still growing and learning to become comfortable in their own skin.

Once the reader type had been established, it was only a matter of finding out what they would like to see and what would engage them. I’ve set up a “share your story” page for those who have triumphed in their own small way (i.e. coming out, standing up to a bully, etc.), and I share their stories in my blog. In their own words. Because we all deserve a voice, no matter how insignificant we feel.

When I had a good grasp on what I was doing for my website, I decided to pass along the information to Chantelle. I’d been reading her articles for ages, which led me to follow her on Facebook, and eventually message her (mostly to ask who does her fantastic covers! I’ve since hired the same artist for one of my upcoming novels) and try to connect. It’s only recently we began talking more, and I am so glad we have. Chantelle is a genuinely wonderful person. While I haven’t had the pleasure of reading more than a page of her works, I think her writing is absolutely wonderful. But I’m sure you already know that!

So, here’s to Chantelle, for gracing us with her words.

And here’s to you, the readers of the world, who give authors like us a purpose. Enjoy Chantelle’s page (or mine if you really want to pop in and see what sort of crazy is going on in there). Because it was made for you.

Thank you for reading!

Remember to always stay abstract!

~Shalaena Medford: Author, Editor, Designer, Weirdo~

(Blushing! Thank you so much to Shalaena for writing this guest post for my blog and for helping me so much lately! I know she would love to connect with you also on her blog Socially Abstract. You can also follow her page on Facebook and link up on Twitter. And if you’d like to check out her work, here is her page on Pronoun.

This is the first guest post I’ve published to my blog and thanks to the wonderful writers I have connected with over the years, there will be many more to come! If you would like to submit something to post on my blog then do get in touch. If writing related, then any topic is fine. If it’s fiction or non fiction then something along the outsiders theme would be brilliantly received. See you on Friday!) Please feel free to comment below! 

New Name, New Blog? Well….

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

If you follow my blog, you may have noticed I’ve been a bit absent lately. Not that I was ever a rigidly regular poster (although that all may be about to change!) I was always more of a write when I have something to say kind of blogger…

So, questions?

Where have I been and what have I been doing?

Why have I changed the name of this blog? What does it all mean?

Stay with me, and all shall be explained.

Firstly, I’ll blame the absence on two things. One, writing books. Or more to the point, struggling with what feels like the millionth draft of one particular pain the arse book…yes, you’ve guessed it, I’m talking about The Tree Of Rebels. Long story short; it still needs more. It needs more detail, more meat, more clarification, and it also needs the sequel to be finished.  (More on this another day!)

The second thing to blame my absence on, is actually a person. The brilliantly quirky indie author Shalaena Medford. We connected recently on social media, and got talking about selling books and building an audience. Luckily for me, Shalaena is currently studying book marketing as part of her Writing and Publishing course, and she was happy to share some articles and some knowledge with me. She showed me how she was updating and revamping her blog, making it appeal to the type of readers who would enjoy her work. (Don’t worry, I have roped her in to write a guest post explaining how and why authors should build an author platform. She’ll be able to explain much better than me!) There are many strands to this, and lots of advice to take on board, but the one I’ve been concentrating on is re-branding the blog.

Now, I know that all sounds rather cold and corporate, but it’s actually very sensible and even quite fun! So, why have I re-branded my blog and what does that actually mean?

When I started this blog I hadn’t published any books. I simply wanted a way to share my works in progress with my Facebook friends. I called it Life In Words as a temporary name while I tried to think of something better. A few years later, with published books under my belt, I started to put more effort into the blog, listening to the advice of others, and adding pages and blogging more often.

Anyway, after chatting to Shalaena, I realised that another blog overhaul was badly needed. And this time it had to be serious. I needed to think about what my books had in common. Who were they about? Who were they aimed at? Who would like them and why? It slowly dawned on me that they all had a common theme, which was the main characters being outsiders. They are all, in one way or another, rebels and non-conformists, individuals who aren’t bothered about fitting in. I then had a further revelation. The kind of books I like reading are the same! A whole list sprang to mind, and I realised that it’s always the characters I am looking for, and it’s the quirky, the weird and the rebellious that draw me in. So my work and my reading list had a common theme! It was time to think up a new name for the blog and gear it towards that theme. Now this is not a rigid thing. Just an acknowledgement of a theme that runs through my work, and through the books I read, the politics I believe in, life experiences and so on. It was all already there. I just needed help to see it.

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So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks. Revamping the blog. Re-branding it! Helping to streamline and focus it, with the intention of attracting the kind of people who will genuinely want to read my work and hear what I have to say. I’ve added some new pages! I now have a Recommended Reading page, where you can find my favourite books, old and new. I also have a brand new Character Bios page, where you can find out more about the characters in my books.

And I have goals and intentions!

I aim to blog once a week, every Friday in fact. I’ve been too lazy about this in the past, and of course, it goes without saying, that if you want people to engage with you, you’ve got to show up regularly and put the work in. Every Friday I will post something. It might be about my week, my writing, books I’ve read, thoughts I’ve had, who knows? But I will be here!

There will be guest posts! These will be mostly from writers, but also other people with something to say. There may be extracts from novels, works in progress, and opinions on writing, publishing and marketing.

And I am asking for submissions! I need you too! I need your input. Your book recommendations, your favourite authors, your own thoughts, your own stories. I am open to anything, so just contact me. As long as it is somewhat in keeping with the outsiders theme, OR is generally writing related, then I am interested!

My guest posts will run on Mondays from now on, starting with the wonderful Shalaena explaining how  and why she has been working on her own blog identity.

But for now, it’s over to you. Do you have a blog for your writing and if so, how did you choose the name? Does it have a theme that relates to your own writing or not? If you’re a reader who follows blogs, which ones attract you and why? Please feel free to comment below! See you next time!