I am running across more and more articles that talk about writing being a solitary endeavor. I see how it CAN be lonely… but really, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Yes, to an extent you need to write on your own (Unless two or more authors write a book together, but I’m not talking about that.)
Anyway, you write on your own, but if you find yourself a great group of writing friends, they are always there to bounce ideas off of, or to rant with when the words aren’t flowing, and to celebrate with when those worlds are flying like dandelion seeds in the spring breeze.
Also – and this is the most important and fun part for me – when you are done writing your fourth or fifth draft… after you have taken the story as far as it can possibly go… you get to hand your baby over to these trusted friends and they can tell you all the wonderful things wrong with it!
And yes, they will be wonderful things, because every comment is an opportunity to make your great manuscript even better! And then you revise, and send it to someone else, and if you are lucky enough, they find even more wrong with it.
Plot hole? Really? Bring it!
Police in rural North Carolina don’t ride on horses? I did not know that!
You can’t see the Aurora Borealis in Florida? Wow! Good catch!
Okay, I made some of that up, but my beta readers find tiny little things like that all the time. Silly little things that read perfectly fine to me, but shout “No way” to someone else. Different life experiences bring something new to the read. It’s those little tweaks that excite me!
So yes, in the end my name is on the cover of the book, but it is really a team effort.
I am nothing without my beta readers. They way I look at it, the more eyes the better.
Don’t write in a little box all by yourself.
Find yourself a team.
It’s fun!
hello out there!
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This book is about a realm called Fallhollow in a parallel universe to earth where there is a dragon called Einar that attacks the good kingdom of Hirth.
J. Keller Ford (known to all as Jenny) is a scribbler of Young Adult and New Adult speculative fiction. As a young Army brat, she traveled the world and wandered the halls of some of Germany’s most extraordinary castles in hopes of finding snarky dragons, chivalrous knights and wondrous magic that permeated her imagination. What she found remains etched in her topsy-turvy mind and oozes out in sweeping tales of courage, sacrifice, honor and everlasting love.
Wow. What a journey! First of all, I have NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, to thank for finally getting me to write this novel, and many more. After writing and revising this novel for three years, I decided to query the manuscript to agents. It was a long process with many revisions and rejection letters. At the end of the day, I realized that I may have let my impatience and excitement get the better of me, and I sent out the project before it was ready. It was a learning experience.
Even though my series, The Watcher Saga, is about angels and fallen angels, can honestly say I didn’t specifically approach this series as a fantasy. I had a story in my head that I had to get out.
As I ask questions of my characters, I take into account what kind of species the character is and what special qualities they would have. For instance, if you’re working with angels, or fallen ones, there are certain traits they all have. They have wings and can fly. They are also immortal and may serve a higher being (or not. In some cases, they may do the opposite). How would that affect their world view? If they are immortal, were they born? How would it feel to live for thousands of years? How would flying affect their view of traffic? That sort of thing.
All characters exist within a setting of some sort. As you ask questions about your character, you start to get ideas of how their direct surroundings have affected them.
Lisa is also a technical writer, a meditation teacher with the Training in Power Academy, and the leader of the Young Writer’s Club, a local writing group for teens in her home town. A self-proclaimed coffee lover, she can usually be found writing in a local café. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her meditating or hiking in the mountains to counteract the side effects of drinking too much caffeine!
In the world of The Selection, the USA is now a dystopian country ruled by a monarchy. The future queen is chosen from the ranks of commoners. If you are old enough when the prince comes of age, you can enter the lottery, and if you are picked for your state, you go to the capital with the 60 other “winners” and end up in something akin to a bachelor/Miss America competition—winner gets the prince, and the crown. America (Yes, the heroine has this incredibly cheezy name) does not want to be in the competition, but she tries to stay as long as possible, because each day she stays, her family is compensated handsomely, and they are very poor (so this is a pretty good gig for her.)
I’m super excited to have Julie Reece hanging out with us! 
And more recently she authored the hit Beauty and the Beast retelling called “The Artisans” and the sequel out this week, “The Paladins.” 
The characters that I write are often brave. That’s in direct opposition to my knee-jerk reaction to any challenge, which is more like—cut bait and RUN! Every book I’ve written up to this point were stand-alones. One and done. That was my motto. When I sold my first story (THE ARTISANS) to my publisher, I was confident they’d see the novel the same way I did. A single title. They didn’t. They asked for more books in the series.
Talon is told from three different points of view. 1: a teenage soldier, part of a secret order whose sole goal is to destroy every dragon before they can take over the world. 2: A teenage dragon-shifting girl, who is fresh out of school and has to learn to blend in to normal human society for a few months in the summer before becoming an active member of Talon, a dragon organization built to help dragons survive. And 3: A young rogue dragon who has left Talon and is struggling to free other dragons from their rule. 
In this book, a prominent, famous religious leader is murdered, and we watch through the investigator’s eyes, and through the eyes of the sister and former love interest of the victim. It took me a long time, but this book did interest me at the end. 
Jennifer M Eaton 