Faerie Prince Book Tour: A Guest Post By Rachel Morgan On Writing For An International Audience

Hello, everyone! Today I have the honor of hosting author Rachel Morgan, who is here to talk about writing for people in the connected world of the web. Take it away, Rachel!


Writing for an International Audience

I'm a South African living in South Africa, which means I write and speak British English (we like to add extra letters to our words and use "s" instead of "z". Like neighbour instead of neighbor, and realise instead of realize). I wrote my first novel using British spelling, because that's the way I'd always written words. But when I started writing books that I knew I was going to epublish through Amazon, I figured the majority of my audience would be US readers. (There are people in South Africa who read ebooks, but we're way behind the US in that regard.) So ... I decided to switch to US spelling.

The thing is, the difference doesn't stop at spelling. We use different words as well, and I didn't always realis/ze that while I was writing! Fortunately, my critique partner lives in the US and she pointed out the differences as she went through my manuscript. I remember a particularly confusing email exchange about a plug in a bathroom, because she thought I was referring to an electrical plug (what is your character plugging in?) while I was referring to the plug you put in the bath to stop the water running out (oh, you mean a stopper, she said).

Here are some other examples of words I changed after the first draft:

post = mail
zip = zipper
bath = bathtub (I even asked for suggestions on Facebook about what word to use for the noun bath! People were very helpful.)
icing = frosting (although it seemed to me from my Googling that US writers use both icing and frosting, so I stuck with icing in the end)
sweet = candy

And there are a whole lot of other word differences that I didn't use in this novel but that I have to remember in future writing (like bonnet = hood and chips = fries).

If you're a writer, have you had to consider these spelling/word differences before when thinking about your intended audience? If you're a reader, do you notice whether the book you're reading has US or UK spelling, or do you just read the book?

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Rachel Morgan is the author of the newly released YA paranormal fantasy The Faerie Prince, second novel in the Creepy Hollow series. You can find it at the following online retailers (and if you haven't yet read the first book, The Faerie Guardian, you can find out where to get it on this page):

Amazon US | Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Apple iBookstore

CreateSpace (print)

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Rachel Morgan was born in South Africa and spent a large portion of her childhood living in a fantasy land of her own making. After completing a degree in genetics, she decided science wasn’t for her—after all, they didn’t approve of made-up facts. These days she spends much of her time immersed in fantasy land once more, writing fiction for young adults.

Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Pinterest

Don't forget the giveaway!

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A To Z Challenge: Technology And The Next Big Thing (That Could Invade Your Privacy To Extremes)

Technology is science applied to real-life problems. Physics equations and observations are all well and good--but technology allows the enormous range of scientific fields to play a very large part in people's everyday lives. The term technology has various uses: It can refer to a specific subset of machines (such as space technology) and it can refer to the total knowledge and capability of a society.

To be honest, the second part of this post (the "recent developments" section) came to me before the introduction. Google Glass is a piece of technology I've been wanting to post about for a while and the A to Z Challenge seemed like an ideal spot, seeing as I've already proposed some controversial subjects in previous posts.

Antonio Zugaldia, CC-BY-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Google Glass is a pair of glasses with the capabilities of a smartphone. You give it orders to give you directions, send messages, take photographs and videos, etc., and all while wearing the device as feedback appears in a small screen on one side of the eyeglass frame. While some people (me included) don't like the idea of having multimedia so close to one's actual eyeball, the privacy concerns have to be the most argued-over bit (though there are also concerns about distracted driving and so on).

The problem? There is no way for someone else to tell if a person wearing the glasses is recording--which could mean your face is unwittingly being uploaded to Google's servers and could be played back by the person who recorded the footage, or, perhaps, by governments; facial recognition software could be applied to identify crowds of people just because someone walked through a busy location with Google Glass recording. There aren't any limits to when someone can record, either; imagine all the moments most people would absolutely not want saved for another person to see.

Google Glass is scheduled to arrive some time in 2014, according to the Executive Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt.

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Sources:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/technology
http://techland.time.com/2013/04/23/three-questions-i-hope-google-answers-before-google-glass-is-released/
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google-glass-2014-eric-schmidt-20130423,0,3402891.story
http://www.google.com/glass/start/

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Will you be wearing the new Google Glasses once they're released? If you run across someone wearing them, will you be worried?


-----The Golden Eagle

Blog Tour: Teen Author Boot Camp (+ Giveaway Of An Online Conference Pass)

Hello, blogosphere! This is somewhat of a different post from what I normally blog about. While I know there's a good chance you, dear reader, are an adult and not a teen, I was contacted by the Teen Author Boot Camp and asked if I'd be willing to do some promotion for them.

Since I'm a young adult myself and thought TABC sounded like a really cool event, I thought I'd jump onboard and spread the word. The TABC was also kind enough to offer to giveaway a pass to their live online broadcast (or $5 off the normally-$10 All-Pass, which gives you access to more than just the live broadcast) whose keynote speaker is Shannon Hale.

The Rafflecopter giveaway is below, after this guest post by writer Margie Jordan, of Writers Cubed.

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There is a famous line from a movie that says, “I was always a band geek. I just never joined the band.” I could relate. When I was in high school I was a president of the dance team, a singer in the choir, a hang-out-with-my-boyfriend-until-mom-and-dad-forced-me-home kind of person. But in my heart, I was a writer. This is why I tell people all the time, “I was always a writer. I just always hated English.”

Because I was a closet writer, I didn’t have anyone to bounce ideas off of, no one to tell me when I stank, no one to teach me how to craft a really great story. My teachers were the millions of books I read (not in a closet—but hidden away when my friends were around).  And I WISHED I could have had someone to talk to about my hidden obsession.

If this sounds like you…. Then I’m happy to say there is a solution.

The Teen Author Boot Camp, founded by the Utah-based group Writers Cubed and sponsored by Utah Valley University is one of only a few writing conferences nationwide geared solely for teenagers who have a love for the written word.  For the first time ever, Writers Cubed is offering the conference to anyone who wants to attend through Live Stream.

Interested? Here are the deets!

When: Saturday, March 16, 2013
From: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (MST)
Where: Worldwide via the internet
Who: Teens, teachers, librarians, book lovers
Cost: $4.99 for the Live Broadcast; $9.99 for the All Pass

The keynote address by Newbery Honor Winning Author Shannon Hale will be free for anyone to watch. It will be on March, 16th, 2013 at 9 a.m. MST. A subscription to the Live Broadcast costs $4.99 and includes the following:
9 a.m. to 9:15 a.m.—Writers Cubed: Welcome
9:15 a.m. to 9:55 a.m.—Keynote by Newbery Honor winner Shannon Hale (Princess Academy)
10 a.m to 10:45 a.m.—Tyler Whitesides (Janitors)  Class: Imagine and Create.
10:55 a.m. to 11:40 a.m.—Janette Rallison (My Fair Godmother)  Class: Bad dialogue can kill a story.
12:50 a.m. to 1:35 p.m.—NYT bestseller Kiersten White (Paranormalcy)  Class: Plot Like a Villain.
1:45 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.—J. Scott Savage (Farworld)  Class: Finding Your Voice.

2:50 p.m. to 3:25 p.m.—Journey to Publication Panel: Agent Amy Jameson & authors Chad Morris, Tess Hilmo, J. Scott Savage, Cindy Bennett
3:35 p.m. to 4:20 p.m.—NYT bestseller Aprilynne Pike (Wings)   Class: World-building is the invisible foundation to your book.
4:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.—Writers Cubed: Winner of the First Chapter Contest and closing remarks.

If you just can’t get enough of TABC, there is also an All Pass Subscription to the rest of the conference (including more than fifteen awesome presentations, including mine--haha). That only costs $9.99 and, as if it wasn’t a sweet enough deal already, you can watch the whole conference whenever you want for an entire year.

To register to watch Shannon Hale’s Keynote for free, visit www.teenauthorbootcamp.com and click on Livestream. It only takes a minute. While you’re there, check out the other presenters who will be teaching at the conference under the tab “Drill Sergeants.”

Stay tuned for details on how to win a subscription to the TABC Live Broadcast for FREE on this blog

Margie Jordan is a co-founder of Writers Cubed, a group of Utah writing activists who created
the Teen Author Boot Camp in 2010. In her spare time, like when she isn’t writing, she is a Literacy specialist for her local school district. Please visit her website at www.writerscubed.com.

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And here's the giveaway:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

-----The Golden Eagle

Is Social Media Turning Us Into Narcissists?

I was researching narcissism for a school essay recently and came across several articles about the so-called rise of narcissism due to social media.

I can see why it would be true. Twitter feeds, Facebook timelines, blog posts are all created with the expectation someone out there is going to read them and be interested in what that person has to say; that someone is going to like their photograph or want to know about their personal life. There are billions of voices on the web by now, and most of them feel entitled to some kind of attention. Narcissism is something everyone carries around with them in real life too, of course (you have to have some level of self-esteem and self-interest), but the internet allows for it in different, possibly more insidious ways.

The place where I notice the promotional kind of attention-seeking the most is in book promotions, probably because I follow so many blogs of authors. It's not exclusive to writers, but you can't move around in the blogosphere without bumping into a blog tour or book or cover release. Essentially, a lot of people are calling out "I am awesome!" or "I have something great to sell!". I don't think this is bad, particularly if someone's self-publishing or with a small press, as s/he has to contribute a significant amount of marketing.

That kind of thing does, however, raise some questions: How many promotional profiles built for the sole purpose of selling a product are actually tapping into an individual's narcissism and how many are normal people who just have something they want to share? How many people become more narcissistic over time because of social media? How many people are really all "Me, me, me!" and how many really care about the people they follow and interact with online?

Personally, I'd like to say I'm not more of a narcissist since I started blogging. I'd like to say my almost-three-years of blog posts haven't gone to my head, or that I'm unaffected by the fact people actually read the stuff I throw onto the web, or that I am still surprised when someone leaves a comment.

But I can't say I'm surprised when I receive comments anymore (though I'm still very thankful for them) because I know I have readers, and when real life conversation turns to the web and what people are doing on it, sometimes I feel like pointing out that hey, I have a site with more than 1000 followers and am kind of "established" in this corner of the web (though I never actually have said that). In short, I am proud of this blog. I like posting. I enjoy focusing on my own opinions, which is the whole reason I started The Eagle's Aerial Perspective.


What do you think? Do you believe narcissism is going up because of the internet? Do you see narcissistic traits in social media? Do you think the focused way social networking sites like Facebook and blogs promote the individual is a good or a bad thing?


-----The Golden Eagle

Guest Post by Angela Ackerman: What To Do . . . If You Believe Social Media Isn't For You

Hello, blogosphere. Today I have Angela Ackerman from The Bookshelf Muse (and co-author of The Emotional Thesaurus) here to talk about social networking. Take it away, Angela!

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Everywhere you look there are blog posts, webinars, online courses and websites all shouting the same message: Join Social Media! Engage! Connect! Network! Build Your Audience! Everyone says that in this new world of publishing, authors have to navigate the social waters to be successful. Is this true?
   Unless you happen to be a celebrity or are gifted with a giant promotional push from a publisher...then yes.
   And herein lies the problem. Many writers are introverts. They like having the computer screen between them and the world, thank you very much. They don’t want to get involved in every newfangled social media platform, or blog with no idea what to say, or try to find an 'in' on a site when it seems like everyone knows each other already.
   When it’s been decades since you’ve hadto walk the playground and make friends, the idea of entering a giant onlinecocktail party can be hive inducing. So what is a writer to do when they feel they are not suited for social networking or are simply terrified by the idea of it?

Stay In Your Comfort Zone
If the idea of social networking is overwhelming, pick something contained and more likely to be in your comfort zone. Writing Forums are much less intimidating than the biggies of socialization like Twitter, Google+ or Facebook. In a forum, rather than being bombarded by hundreds of people, interaction is more intimate. Joining conversations in a forum will put you together with only a few people at once, and the topic is focused. You can learn, share and make friends at a slower pace. Some incredibly friendly writing forums are The Critique Circle, My Writer’s Circle, and if you write for Children or Young Adults, Verla Kay’s Blueboard.

Become a Lurker
Rather than be pressured into jumping into the fray, do some lurking. Visit writing blogs (I have a great list here) and blogs on topics that tie into your books. Read the comments so you can understand how people engage. Check out how other writers interact on Twitter by searching up some hashtags like #writersroad #amwriting or #writechat. See what they share and click on some profiles to find people who interest you. Run searches for your interests. If you like cycling, you’re not alone. If your book is for dragon lovers, search for Dragons and you’re sure to find fans. Hang out on Google+ and run a search for writing or writers. Or again, choose a keyword that ties into your book. Put a few people that have interesting profiles in a circle--remember, you can follow them without engaging if you chose to. Or, if you have a Face Book account, check out a few groups! Writer’s Support 4U is one of the most active and friendly ones, but there are many others.

Dip Your Toe In...On A Trial Basis
If you did some lurking and found a social networking medium that seemed like it could be within your comfort zone, then step in, slowly. Reach out and share a bit--it can be things that inspire you, what you find funny or something about writing if you want to connect with other writers. Friend or follow a few people and comment on what they share. If you’re looking to connect with your direct novel audience, then share content that you know they will enjoy that ties right in with your books. Soon, conversations will start and you’ll be off to the races. If you find you enjoy it, great! And if not, then you can walk away, wiser for trying.
There’s a new place for all artisic types that I really would like to give a shout out to, and that is WANA Tribe. This new space is not only for writers, but all Creatives. The mission is collaboration and knowledge sharing and is part of WANA International, the brainchild of Kristen Lamb and Ingrid Schaffenburg.
   Social Networking can seem intimidating at first. Some worry it will chew up all their writing time and that they need to be everywhere to be successful--Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and more. Know right out the gate that it is much better for you to choose one or two of these and do them well than scatter yourself across all networks! And if you do find you enjoy it and are worried about your writing time, just remember YOU are in control. Engage as much or as little as time allows. Writing always must come first!

Are you leery of Social Networking, trying to decide whether (and how) to jump in? Or have you decided to give it a try? I would love to hear your experiences, good or bad, and whether social networking has changed things for you as a writer or author!


About Angela:

Angela Ackerman is a Canadian who writes on the darker side of Middle Grade and Young Adult. A strong believer in writers helping writers, she blogs at the award winning resource, The Bookshelf Muse and is co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression. Angela is represented by Jill Corcoran of The Herman Agency.  

   The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression is a writer’s best friend, helping to navigate the challenging terrain of showing character emotion. This brainstorming tool explores seventy-five emotions and provides a large selection of body language, internal sensations, actions and thoughts associated with each. Written in an easy-to-navigate list format, readers can draw inspiration from character cues that range in intensity to match any emotional moment. 

-----The Golden Eagle

Secret Project Reveal: MY SHINY NEW WEBSITE

For the past year (yes, year) I've been writing, designing, coding, tweaking, debugging, and overall being perfectionist about a project I've only mentioned in passing on my blog.

I published it two days ago, on June 5. After having added a few things I think it's finally ready to be officially announced.

My new website is:

www.eagledirectory.org

I'd tell you what the site is about, but I'll let the homepage explain. You don't have to visit, of course (I'll still love you, dear blog reader) but I will shower you with virtual chocolate if you do. Or if you're one of those strange people--like me--who doesn't enjoy chocolate, then I offer virtual whatever-it-is you crave.

And here, I'll give you a screenshot to pique your interest if the URL isn't intriguing enough:

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So . . . what do you think? 

(Be honest and criticize, if you want. If you hate the design, or can't navigate, or find the content confusing, or have any other problem with the thing, tell me. Please. I want to make this site the best it can possibly be.)

-----The Golden Eagle

The Insecure Writer's Support Group

***In case you are looking for today's book review for Terry Pratchett Month, please see below post!***

As you've probably heard or seen or read somewhere, Alex J. Cavanaugh has started the Insecure Writer's Support Group.

Now, I almost didn't sign up for it. Reasons?

1. I've got Terry Pratchett Month (co-hosted by me and Deepali at Evolving Books), the Third Writer's Platform-Building Campaign (which I shall be posting my entry for on Friday!), Alex's Worst Movies Ever Blogfest later this month, and other miscellaneous things that pop up now and then. I'm posting twice today for the first time since 2010 (I used to do it all the time . . . be glad I don't anymore :P) and it was just going to be a lot of content.

2. I wasn't sure what exactly I would post on. I don't have much writing experience, and I haven't gone through the mill at all compared to some of you (amazing) bloggers. My submissions stand at zero, as do rejections, and writing and being published is not the goal I've been trying to achieve for years and years (only for the past couple/one and a half or so have I seriously considered the idea I might see my book on the shelf).

But I decided I would post anyway. And part of the above paragraph would be a nice opener, I just realized.

Because I haven't submitted anything or received rejections, or even handed my writing over to a beta reader or critique partner. Which is a bit of a source of insecurity for me, since I don't know if my writing is good or bad, or if I should chuck it completely and try something else since my style just doesn't work.

Then again, sending my work off to people I don't know really well (I read so many posts on finding CPs/BRs online) and having it read by new eyes is also a source of insecurity. For while it is a small risk at having my work plagiarized or stolen, or otherwise distastefully handled, it all comes down the people factor:

As far as I understand how it works, you don't know the person at the other end of the line. It's a leap of faith that they'll be reasonable and honest and offer good feedback.

And I don't really like leaps of faith. Especially when it comes to things that are close to me (like my writing), and things that are uncertain (people) and things that are of personal concern (Internet security).

So I have to ask you:

How do you feel about sending your work off to someone you don't know beforehand?

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*****If I disappear and don't get around to your posts, it's probably because we lost electricity again or something. It's been raining steadily all day long, and there's some serious flooding outside (in fact, the neighbors' yards are covered in water right now which makes me even more glad the house is on a small hill). They're even saying it could get worse, so . . . I might be absentee. I'll do my best to catch up later.*****


-----The Golden Eagle