John W. Mefford's #WriteTip on Coping With the Dreaded Blank Screen @JWMefford #Suspense

A blank screen morphs into a visual version of white noise. You begin to hear your heartbeat thumping, wondering if it will match the cadence of the blinking cursor. Before you know it, thirty minutes have drifted by, then an hour. You awake from your mental stupor and ponder how you can ever re-capture time wasted, your mind grasping for a coherent thought. Not just any coherent thought, but the next great sentence of the greatest novel in the twenty first century.

We’ve all been there. So, how do you cope with it?

Writer’s block. Okay, I said it. The elephant in the room. Honestly, I rarely use the term. Because I just don’t give in to suffering from it. Ever.

Why? For the most part—this is my own personal way of addressing life’s ups and downs—I think it’s more of a crutch. If I allowed myself to go there, I could find many excuses to not write. We’re not robots or a manufacturing plant. We’re eating, breathing, mind-straying humans, who, at times, can lose our focus, or our groove. That’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t pound your fist in frustration, or dig a trench in the floor from pacing yourself to death. It’s counter-productive.

For starters, I’m a believer that we’re all as unique as snowflakes. Many of us are writers in some form or fashion, while a few of us create in other ways, music, painting, sculpture. But we’re all going to respond to bumps in our journey to share our creative endeavors in different manners.

Back in the day, I cranked out story after story as a newspaper reporter. At times, I’d have no more than thirty minutes to whip out a twenty-inch story. Early on in my journalism career, I’d let the pressure get to me. Finally, in an attempt to free myself from the mental torture and inevitable stress, I thought through the deadline scenario while I was jogging one day. There was a correlation, I could see, to my running workouts. If I was tense, my breath was shortened, I’d have a miserable run, my time would suck and I simply wasn’t going to get better.

I learned to prepare myself for those deadline stories. I quickly understood that you perform your best when your mind is calm, free of clutter, and your body relaxed. Focused, yes, tense, not so much.

I realized I didn’t want to be my own worst enemy. Countless other things in life either purposely or coincidentally create hurdles for us to overcome. I was determined—and still am—to not let my mental psyche be on the enemy side of the ledger. In other words, I want my stride over the hurdle to be as smooth as I can make it. And I will make it. Every time.

Expressing your creative self is one of life’s greatest gifts. You deserve an honest, but encouraging signal from within your own mind. Be real, be productive. Be true to yourself. But if you have a brief period of time when you’re not feeling the mojo, don’t sweat it. Let confidence flow through your bloodstream, cut yourself a break and come back to it refreshed and ready to establish yourself as the greatest author of this decade. Just don’t blame…you know, it.

Behind the façade of every corporate takeover executives pull levers this way and that, squeezing the last profitable nickel out of the deal. But no one knows the true intent of every so-called merger. 

No one knows the secret bonds that exist. 

An Indian technology giant swallows up another private company that has deep roots in North Texas. For one unassuming man the thought of layoffs, of losing his own job to a bunch of arrogant assholes feels like a kick to the jewels. 

Until the day Michael’s life changes forever.   

Perverse alliances. An affair of the heart. A grisly murder. A spiraling string of events thrusts Michael into a life-or-death fight to save a tortured soul and hunt down a brutal killer…one who lurks closer than he ever imagined. 

Greed knows no boundaries.

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Genre – Suspense, Thriller

Rating – R

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Website http://www.johnwmefford.com

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Lazar’s Mission by Kevin Sterling @ksterlingwriter #Mystery #Suspense #AmReading

Excerpt from Chapter Four

It was eleven fifteen, and there was no sign of Melati. She could have been late for a number of reasons, or a complete no-show for that matter, and Jack hoped it was the former. No doubt, fraternizing with the passengers was forbidden, or at least frowned upon. So the question was whether she had been sufficiently lured by Jack’s charm to break the rules. His stomach was in knots from the anticipation of seeing her, and he paced the floor of his suite like a caged animal.
Part of him was over-the-top excited to see her, play with her. But a voice of reason in the depths of his consciousness couldn’t help but speculate whether he was getting himself into trouble again. He just couldn’t see how.

Perhaps Jack was just channeling his Eastern mentor, Tasagi, who had not only been his private jujitsu and karate instructor for several years now, but over time had become a valuable spiritual guide as well. According to Tasagi, Jack was bringing dangerous situations to himself through a process called the Law of Attraction, and it was tied to his internal belief system. That meant Jack consciously believed he had chosen to involve himself with certain people or situations because of their reasonable appearance on the surface, whereas in reality his energy had attracted an underlying issue or conflict, and he didn’t recognize it until it was too late.

The problem was that Tasagi had him questioning everything now, including sweet Balinese girls, and he knew he had finally taken it too far. He knew there was nothing at all wrong with Melati, and he prayed he would soon hear her knock on the door.

In the meantime, he forced himself to stop pacing, and he reclined on the couch with a bottle of water to hydrate himself for what he hoped to be a spirited night.

To get more comfortable, he had changed into a loose-fitting pair of white drawstring linen pants with an aquamarine linen shirt and brown woven leather loafers sans the socks. After all, the ship was traversing the Mediterranean Sea toward the north coast of Africa, so an outfit leaning toward the tropical seemed most fitting.

Also, despite his earlier wine-opening announcement of eleven o’clock, he chose to uncork the bottle of Caymus Special Selection Napa Cab at ten and empty it into a decanter to let it breathe. The wine steward had thoughtfully included a pair of Spiegelau vinovino Cabernet wineglasses, and Jack knew the large, appellation-designed bowls would let the wine open up to its full potential.

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Genre – Action, Mystery, Suspense

Rating – R

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Rik Stone on How to Sell Your First #Novel @stone_rik #Crime #Thriller #Suspense

How to Sell Your First Novel

Every writer needs an author platform and that starts with social networking… it’s important because readers need to know you exist before they can buy your book. Don’t wait, start now. Use Twitter; weave into your tweets without labouring the point that you’re working on a novel. Tell them its title and what it’s about. Make the Tweets interesting and you have a number of potential customers who might also tell their friends to look out for your work. I mention Twitter, but there are plenty of other networks out there.

Okay, you’ve built a social group and your book is written. Do you aim at the traditional publishers or go indie? Well, the traditional hill is a difficult one to climb and I feel agents and publishing editors might sit back to see which products appeal to the audience, EL James is a good example. If I’m right a successful indie campaign will give you every chance of getting that elusive traditional publisher, if that’s what will make you happy.

But is the indie option an easy one? Far from it, going down this route means you have to do the promotion and marketing yourself, so if you’re not willing to sign over your life completely, think again... Okay, you’re happy to do it, good, but you’ll soon learn that when you wrote ‘The End’ it was the biggest piece of fiction in the book; it’s actually the beginning. First base, you need a publicist. First question, can you afford one? No, go to second base. Yes, then research the prospective business partners thoroughly, there’s a lot of snake oil out there. Oh, if you do use a publicist you’ll need to publish in paperback as well as eBook. Second base, virtual tours, you’re reading this so you’re seeing part of one of them, I hope you’re impressed. Other than paying out for TV adverts, these tours seem to attract the most eyes.

I won’t go on too much, as I don’t want to take advantage of my kind host, but there is one statement I must make before you get your book out there: The presentation of text, the cover, and the quality of the work is of paramount importance to sales. The indie path is a medium that allows anyone to publish anything, don’t subscribe to ‘that will do’ if you want to gain public respect and retain their interest, you’d only be letting yourself down. Even if it nips at your budget give your work every chance by having professionals improve the quality and presentation. Editing, format of text, creation of cover picture and uploading the work onto your chosen medium is not overly expensive and you want a book to be proud of.

One final comment, Monty Hall wasn’t a writer, he was a TV celebrity, but his words are relevant: “Actually, I’m an overnight success, but it took 20 years.” So whatever you learn and whatever strategies you might want to use, the real secret is to keep at it, and never give up!

Set against the backdrop of Soviet, post-war Russia, Birth of an Assassin follows the transformation of Jez Kornfeld from wide-eyed recruit to avenging outlaw. Amidst a murky underworld of flesh-trafficking, prostitution and institutionalized corruption, the elite Jewish soldier is thrown into a world where nothing is what it seems, nobody can be trusted, and everything can be violently torn from him.

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Genre - Thriller, Crime, Suspense

Rating – R

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Connect with Rik Stone on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://rik-stone.simdif.com