Guest Post by Andrea Cox – Thoughtful About . . . Ring of Secrets

Guest Post by Andrea Cox – Thoughtful About . . . Ring of Secrets

It’s always a blessing to get to know my readers, of both blog and books. If I remember correctly, Andrea and I began chatting over the summer. She was a frequent visitor during the big month of giveaways, and she’s been stopping by regularly ever since. She recently read Ring of Secrets and asked me if I would consider letting her do a guest post on some things she considered while reading. I’m always happy for an easy blogging day, LOL, so readily agreed. 😉 So now, without further ado, Andrea.

~*~
Previously published on My Book
Therapy’s Weekly Spark, Andrea Renee
Cox (http://writingtoinspire.blogspot.com)
cherishes God, family and writing with a song in heart and a story in mind.
This Texan girl enjoys road trip vacations with her family and trying different
dessert recipes, looking for “keepers.”

THOUGHTFUL
ABOUT . . . Ring of Secrets
Sometimes another author’s book
sparks an idea for a novel of my own. Other times it hatches a plan for a blog
article. Still other times there’s a line on the pages that can be applied to
other parts of my life besides just writing.
Roseanna White’s Ring of Secrets was no exception.
This novel of espionage in the
late 1700s captured my interest from the get-go. What really connected with me,
though, was Bennet Lane’s thoughts from chapter three: “Explore, discover,
document.” He used these three steps to root out a spy hidden among New York
City’s elite aristocratic class.
I use them in my writing.
The first step to writing a
novel is to explore. The setting, time
period, what people were like in the time chosen for my story—all must be
uncovered in order for me to fully understand the time and place and characters
of my novel. It’s a fun process that leads from one resource to another to yet
another. From books to the internet to music and movies, the places to search
and explore are practically endless.
Next comes discovery. This one always surprises me. You never know what neat,
off-the-wall tidbits of information you’ll discover while you’re exploring.
Little treasure troves of trivia wait to be uncovered and put to good use.
These things take my stories to a deeper, more realistic level because the
tidbit was a kernel of truth placed artfully within my work of fiction. Every
fiction piece has some truth to it, and it’s little wonder when these realities
are found during discovery.
Finally, we document everything. This starts with making notes from our
resources. It moves into an outline and other brainstorming techniques.
Eventually, our documentation flows out into the full-length novel we hope will
be published to reach readers’ hands. That’s the day all aspiring authors dream
about. Once it happens, the readers sometimes document their thoughts and send
them to us via Facebook, Twitter and email.
Maybe writers aren’t the only
ones to use Bennet Lane’s “explore, discover, document” method!
 What line from your favorite
book can be applied to another part of your life beyond reading? How do you use
the “explore, discover, document” method?


 

Remember When . . . We Had Pictures?

Remember When . . . We Had Pictures?

Last week, going over edits for Circle of Spies with my editor, she mentioned at one point how she just loved that I made my Marietta match the cover photo so perfectly, especially how I described that single curl at her ear a couple different times. I also describe the dress at one point, which was a lot of fun for me. =) And as I said to her, “Well, it’s easy to make the descriptions match when you already have the cover!” (They got this one to me really early on in the writing process.)

I’m having the same fun with A Soft Breath of Wind. My Zipporah is modeled on the cover model, and I’ve even integrated her belt and necklace into the story–additions I never would have made without the picture as inspiration.

And now that I do some design too, I keep a lightbox at Shutterstock.com and iStockPhoto.com with photos I just like or find inspiring or think might work on some cover someday. That’s actually where the one on Soft Breath came from–I’d had it saved for months, and when I decided to work on the story and design the cover, I went, “Oo, oo, oo!!!”

So today, I thought it might be fun to just look at some pictures from these sites (with the watermarks so you know where they’re from–and the photos are linked if you want to check out the original), and see if you can come up with a story premise for them. (I did this once with my authors at WhiteFire, sent them a picture of a hunky knight and said, “Use this in a story. I dare you.” LOL One of them did!!)

Just tell me which option you’re thinking about and what idea might match it. Go crazy!!

Option 1

Option 2
Option 3
Option 4 (aforementioned knight)
Option 5
Option 6
Option 7
Option 8
Option 9

Word of the Week – Waffle

Word of the Week – Waffle

Last night my poor little Rowyn had a toenail come off (ouch!), and his papa said that that surely deserved as much consideration as losing a tooth. So Rowyn got to pick dinner. Hence how the White family ended up eating waffles, macaroni and cheese, and grapes, LOL.
And hence why I thought to look up waffle this week. 😉 It’s pretty interesting!
The waffle we know, love, and eat comes directly from the Dutch wafel, which comes in turn from a very, very old German word, wabila, which means “web, honeycomb.” It made it into English by 1744–and waffle iron in 1790! I had no idea they were that old.
But then there’s the verb, the one that means “to vacillate.” I’ve always wondered what in the world that had to do with a tasty breakfast food. Turns out, NOTHING. They’re from completely different roots. Waffle, the verb, came around in the 1690s as an imitation of a bark or yelp (like “woof”). By 1701, it meant “to talk foolishly.” That’s the meaning that led, a hundred years later, to the one we use today. It was first used in Scotland and northern England…while the Dutch deliciousness was making 
its way to us from a different direction. 😉
~*~
Now onto some business! The Veterans Day Sale on Ring of Secrets and Whispers from the Shadows will be over on Tuesday, November 12, at 11:59 p.m., so if you’re looking for that perfect time to buy a digital, it’s here!

Digitals of Ring of Secrets are only .99!
Digitals of Whispers from the Shadows are only .99! 

And don’t forget that I’m running a giveaway for a few more days of one of my favoritest books, The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet (or the first book, The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet, if you haven’t read that one yet). These books are amazing! Check out the giveaway here.

The Culper Ring is on Sale!

The Culper Ring is on Sale!

Just a quick announcement to let everyone know that if you’ve been waiting for the right time to buy Ring of Secrets or Whispers from the Shadows, it’s now!

Digitals of Ring of Secrets are only $1.99!
Digitals of Whispers from the Shadows are only $3.99! 

This is a Veterans Day sale, so it’s a limited time only–hurry, hurry! 😉 And feel free to share.

And don’t forget that I have a giveaway running of one of my all-time favorite books, The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet!!

3 Things I Did To Help Me Live a More Honest Life ~ Guest Blog & GIVEAWAY by Stephanie Morrill

3 Things I Did To Help Me Live a More Honest Life ~ Guest Blog & GIVEAWAY by Stephanie Morrill

It’s Sweet-quel time!!

I’m super excited to get to welcome my best friend and critique partner to my blog today to help her celebrate the release of her TOTALLY AMAZING new novel, The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet, the sequel (or Sweet-quel, as I like to call it, LOL) to The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet. There’s a giveaway at the bottom for a digital copy of either of her Ellie books. Once the paperbacks are out, I’ll be hosting another giveaway for one of those. =) And now, drum roll please…

3 Things I Did to Help Me Live a More Honest Life

by Stephanie Morrill


Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website.

I was a liar as a child.
I didn’t mean to be. It
just…kinda…happened. I would be telling my mom about my day at school, or my
friends about something that had happened to me, and I couldn’t seem to resist
spicing it up a bit. Because it just would have been so much
funnier/sweeter/richer an experience if such-and-such had happened instead.
Cue an honesty problem that followed me into
adulthood.
So it was no stretch for me to write about a
teenage girl who has problems with the truth. Who likes to imagine her life
being different, who represents herself in different ways to the different
people in her life…and who has maybe lost touch with what the truth really is anymore.

Read sample chapters of the books on Stephanie’s website
But, obviously, lying is bad. It was hurting my relationships, and I knew I needed to get it under control.
Here are three things that helped me kick my lying
habit:
I’m living a life I love.
There’s no doubt that this has helped
curb the temptation to lie about my life. Those lies I used to tell my friends about conversations I had with the cute neighbor boy who I had never even talked
to? No need. My husband is smokin’. Plus I’m doing the work that I was meant to do – writing – and I’m raising two darling kids.
And still the temptation flares from time-to-time. I wish my house was cleaner. I wish I
had time to do even one of the projects I’ve pinned to my kiddos board. I wish my books
were hitting bestseller lists. It’s still a struggle for me to be vulnerable and authentic.
I invest my day-to-day time well.
I’m currently reading Donald Miller’s acclaimed A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which is about what he learned when editing
his life for a movie and how to live a better life story. I love his author’s note in the beginning where he says, “If what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.”
A friend of mine just went through a Donald Miller workshop thing where you work on the story of your life. She says one of the biggest things she’s taken away from it is how to invest her
days better. She says she now looks at her day and thinks, “What are the three
things I’ll regret having not done when the sun goes down?”
I haven’t started
that exact practice yet, but I do my best to keep my priorities focused on investing
in my husband and kids and my God-given passion of stories.
What does this have to do with honesty? Day to
day, I’m living out what I believe.
Everyday, I’m trying to love well, seek
God, and work passionately. This means I don’t feel the need to create a façade
of what my days are like because I’m proud of what I’m doing.
Social media.
With social media, I feel like all the threads of
my life are woven tightly together. Is that always a comfortable feeling? No.
Is it a good thing for a girl who regularly has to check her desire to
exaggerate? Yes. 
When I post on social media, my posts regularly get liked or
commented on by people from all corners of my life. From my best friend to my
grandfather-in-law to fans of my books to my agent to my Christian friends to
my atheist friends to my elementary school best friend to teen writers who I mentor.
Any fib would likely get detected by someone
on my friends list. And that reins me in real quick!
Ellie Sweet has to get the honesty thing figured out too! You can win your choice of the Ellie Sweet books today
on Writing Roseanna:
Do you ever feel the urge to embellish reality?

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