Sondi Warner's Blog

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Author Kyle Perkins

By Sondi Warner

As a ghostwriter for nearly a decade, I’ve worked with major publishing houses, established authors, amateurs and content mills, and along the way I’ve seen the publishing industry from an interesting perspective: The Bottom Up.

Here are the 10 Things You Only Learn by Being a Ghostwriter:

10. You’re a Cheaply Paid Hitman

The job of ghostwriting is mercenary work, and everything happens under the table like hiring a hitman or a prostitute. Often, confidentiality agreements are signed. Think: Christian Grey’s Sex Contract. You’ll agree on the word count, payment and deadlines, but you can’t talk about what you’re doing or for whom, which is totally cool since you often don’t know exactly who’s pulling the purse strings anyway.
You’ll trade services that don’t typically enter polite writer conversation because readers like to believe their favorite authors are truly that prolific; and, frankly, authors aren’t too proud…

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By Sondi Warner, Writer/Blogger for Wrought Iron Reads

Write just for one person. It’s common advice given to writers looking to develop a unique voice and cultivate a relationship with their target audience. Reduce the nameless, faceless mass of potential readers to exactly one person you have to satisfy with your book.

Have you found “The One”?

Let me share how I found mine. I used to write to an imaginary friend in the mid-range of my target audience who happened to be a lot like me—an open-minded liberal female in her late twenties—but that presented a tiny problem.

My imaginary The One didn’t find much wrong with my writing. Dull dialogue, unrealistic characters, purple prose and all kinds of bad writing habits got past her because I was only writing to satisfy myself, and it turns out myself isn’t very discriminatory when it comes to my own work. I needed a critic.

I pictured my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Lenore. I could see her in my head as vividly as the first day of class when she lifted a slender blond brow at my journal entry and gave me a bare half-smile before telling me it needed brushing up. As my The One, I gave Mrs. Lenore more severity than the poor, dear woman probably deserved.

I wound up lacking confidence and second-guessing everything I put to page. I was being too hard on myself and not getting much accomplished.

And, then Goldilocks sat at Baby Bear’s porridge and said, “This is just right!” Just kidding.

It took me years of trial and error to figure out The One (for me) couldn’t be fictitious or over-exaggerated. I met a client we shall call Mr. Perfect Client who was initially skeptical about hiring me. When he reached out with a potential job offer, I jumped at the opportunity to add to my growing list of Elance customers, but he didn’t close the deal. He followed up to tell me he had hired someone else.

The nerve! I was outraged! Okay, not outraged. I already had a lot on my plate at that point. Losing one potential client was almost a godsend. However, a couple of months later he came back to say the other writer hadn’t worked out. Well, naturally, I was determined to show him he should’ve stuck with me in the first place.

From interview to start date, I went in swinging with the intent to impress this guy. If he wanted a story with cowardly lions and flying monkeys, then I’d give him that, PLUS a tornado!

By Sondi Warner, Writer/Blogger for Wrought Iron Reads

Here’s what’s new in our neck of the woods:

With June right around the corner, our excitement meter is in the red! Although a scheduling conflict prevents us from having a pre-order available, Antebellum Soul: Here & Now by Reatha Beauregard is set for official re-release on June 31, 2016. The AS:HN Party is in full effect with a line-up of contests, events and interactive content right at your fingertips as we approach our Book Birthday.

Have you added your support to the Antebellum Soul: Here & Now Thunderclap campaign? With just a few clicks, you can #ShowYourAntebellumSoul.

Here’s how to support our Thunderclap:

Click this link.
Select a platform: Facebook, Twitter and/or Tumblr. You can choose more than one!
Click Add My Support.

And, you’re done! Thunderclap.It is a trusted site that gives authors an amazing new way to spread book news, but we can’t do it without readers like you. Help us reach 100 People by the end of June and let’s make AS:HN a book to remember!

Facebook fans have graciously given us a glimpse into their world with photographs in the #ShowYourAntebellumSoul Photo Contest. There’s still time for you to show us yours! Get in the running to win a digital advanced copy of Antebellum Soul: Here & Now. See what others have shared:

Click to view slideshow.

Are you a poet looking for a cool way to win big? Submit your paranormal poetry to the #ShowYourAntebellumSoul Poetry Contest going on now. It’s easy. Simply post your poem in the comment thread and YOU could win a $50 Amazon gift card, plus a digital advanced copy of Antebellum Soul: Here & Now by Reatha Beauregard. See what others have shared or be the first to share:

Click here to enter!

Mark your calendar for the #ShowYourAntebellumSoul Twitter Blitz on May 27, 2016. Use our hashtag (#ShowYourAntebellumSoul) 3 or more times for your chance to win a free digital advanced copy of the book. We want to know how you tastefully #ShowYourAntebellumSoul, and we look forward to seeing what you have to share. Photos, gifs and statements welcome! Just be sure to use our hashtag all day Friday, May 27, 2016.

Save the Date: May 27, 2016

To find out more about all ongoing contests and competitions, please visit our Raffles, Contests and Competitions page for complete details, rules and regulations.

Ongoing Contests! Find out more here: http://bit.ly/1U6LLC7

Deserving continues to wow readers, and we want to make sure you #GetWhatYouDeserve. Get your copy of the contemporary romance ménage a trois thriller from Sondi Warner today.

Boys will be boys & girls will be better. Two women with hidden motives reunite in a clash of privilege and desperation for the love of one powerful man, but are they on the same team?

Matteo and Angelina Fuentes are trying to rebuild their marriage after Matteo’s history of infidelity, but when he hires sexy Kristi DuPont as his office cleaning lady,  Angelina worries her former classmate will tempt her husband to stray yet again. She lets the other woman into her bedroom in a misguided attempt to keep her marriage intact with a ménage a trois. However, all three are in this for different reasons: Love, Sacrifice and Revenge.

See how their worlds collide in this fast-paced book set in New Orleans, Louisiana. When Kristi’s gritty urban background meets the wealth, glitz and glam of the Fuentes’ sophisticated lifestyle in the Garden District, you won’t believe the dangerous games they play inside and out of the bedroom!

Other readers are saying:

“The premise of this book is sensationally unique. It was an outstanding blend of suspense and sexual heat…Holy Hades HOT!”
“Guaranteed to leave you speechless with jaw dropping moments.”
“The story is immersive. Simplistic storytelling falls beautifully by the wayside in favor of a complex, character-driven exploration… This is an emotional and challenging read. If you’re looking for a social think piece with some truly fiery scenes, you need this book in your life.”

 

#GetWhatYouDeserve

Stay up to date with the latest news from Wrought Iron Reads by visiting our Facebook page daily. There’s so much more in store for you in the coming months, and we want you to be with us as we grow from obscure indie publisher to familiar names on your digital bookshelf. Wrought Iron Reads: Because life’s too short for bad books! #ReadEntertained

By Sondi Warner, Writer/Blogger for Wrought Iron Reads

At any given point, I have no less than two devices at my fingertips—my cellphone and laptop. Sometimes the i-Pad is also within reach. I’m running apps, listening to music and working. If I’m lucky, I’m away from home where the main distractions are people chatting at the next table over in Starbucks. Usually, I’m at home where three preteens and a four-year-old vie for supremacy in the Get Mommy’s Attention Wars.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d say my Distraction Potential is about a 100+.

Of course, begging clients to give me an extension because my kindergartener decided to feed her Baby Alive doll Jello, which required a trip to Wal-Mart for a replacement doll, isn’t exactly the way to keep clients. So, how do I get anything done in my distracted life?

Where my 4-year-old gets her play ideas…

I used to get in a frenzy when projects were due, griping all the way to the finish line about how unfair it was to juggle parenting and writing. It took a while to realize life—parenting or not—simply comes with distractions, and in order to rise above the fray, writers have to be ready to tune in, zone out and go with the flow.

Here are my suggestions for doing exactly that. The first step is realizing it’s not your distractions. It’s you. Kick these five distraction habits, and you’ll be well on your way to accomplishing your word count goals and getting the job done, no matter what life throws at you.

Get on Schedule: You can’t fly by the seat of your pants. You’ll crash.

One of the biggest daily time wasters is figuring out what you should be doing with your time. Instead of setting vague goals like, “I’ll write today,” try establishing a small, medium and large word-count goal for the day and setting a time frame to accomplish the work, such as:

“I’ll write 500, 1,000 or 3,000 words from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. today.”

If you’re like me, and you work on multiple projects at a time, block out what you should be doing with each hour to stay on top of your stuff. For example:

Corresponding from 8 – 9 a.m.
Marketing & Promoting from 9 – 11 a.m.
Lunch from 11 – 12 p.m.
Writing Project 1 from 12 – 2 p.m.
Writing Project 2 from 2 – 4 p.m.

Get off Facebook: As much as you NEED social media…you don’t.

I spend about 18 hours a day checking my phone for updates. That MIGHT be an exaggeration, but it might not be. I never did the math. Imagine a workday where you don’t pause every fifteen minutes to see what everyone else is wasting time doing. Having difficulty with that? Turn your social media alerts off; see how much more you can accomplish.

As a writer, social media outreach is vital. You can’t afford to deactivate your pages just to get some work done. But, you can limit the minutes disappearing into the Facebook vortex by creating Social Media Hours.

Read Here.

Schedule one to two consecutive hours a day to do all your updating, post scheduling, group interaction and inbox chatting. When your time is up, step away from the temptation. Believe it or not, you’ll feel less obligated to keep your finger ready to tap that F-button or little birdie. You’ll also discover the freedom you used to have before social media networking took over your life. You’ll definitely have more time to focus on doing what you do best: writing.

Invest in a Watch: Remember those things?

Here’s another way to keep the phone out of your hand. Invest in a watch. When you look at it to check the time, there won’t be any text messages to draw your attention. No news article to pull you down the rabbit hole. No weather updates to scroll through, as if you care. There will only be time tick-tick-ticking away in reminder you have work to do.

This will also help you stay on schedule. Seeing you’re down to your last fifteen minutes of writing will boost you to get more done. Or, you can set an alarm for each break period so you can know when to stretch your legs and give your eyes a rest.

Get one of those trusty old plastic digital ones before the smart-watches make them obsolete.[image error]

Ditch the Headphones: Write now. Party later.

I like to jam out with earbuds tucked in my ears while I write my super dope contemporary romance masterpieces like Deserving. It makes me look cool. It doesn’t, however, help me get much writing done.

While the body is primed to tune out normal background noise, it hears your favorite song as something to dance or sing along to. You’ll find yourself bobbing your head and humming the melody but doubling back to re-read what you just typed.

Source: YouTube

I recommend ditching the headphones to fully immerse yourself in your world building and character development. I promise you’ll do more writing and less pausing to belt out the lyrics to Justin Bieber’s sweet new hit. (Don’t act like you don’t sing Justin Bieber. Fill in the blank: Is it too late now to say _______?)

Clock-Out on Time: (Note to self.)

Living in a world of distractions makes it easy to forget you actually have a life. In all your getting, get off the clock when it’s time. Whatever you haven’t accomplished for today will have to wait until tomorrow, which will motivate you to stay on task next round so you can get more done.

Do these tips seem helpful to you? Give me your suggestions for cutting down on distractions and getting back to the writing in the comment section below or Tweet me @WIRUniverse, #GluttonForDistractions. Happy writing!

–Sondi Warner, Writer/Blogger for Wrought Iron Reads

Visiting Wrought Iron Reads just for our super informative blog? Then, you’re missing out! There’s a wealth of entertaining content at your fingertips, with an all new Raffles, Contests & Competitions page added to share opportunities for you to win free books and more.

Click here to see the rules & regulations for current and upcoming contests.

We’ve also revamped our home page with a new trailer for your viewing pleasure and new puzzles like the one below to keep your ticker ticking creatively. So, stop in for the reads and stay for the entertainment!

Click to complete this jigsaw puzzle!

Now, it’s time for me to get back to writing interesting new writerly blog posts and for YOU to explore the rest of our website. I look forward to seeing you next week on Writer People Problems. #ReadEntertained

–Sondi Warner, Writer/Blogger for Wrought Iron Reads

Here’s what’s new this week at Wrought Iron Reads! Be the first to see the new book trailer for our soon to be re-released Antebellum Soul: Here & Now by Reatha Beauregard.

They say when you die, you see your whole life flash before your eyes, but that wasn’t my experience. I saw the handful of years I had accumulated from ages nineteen to twenty-one, but the memories weren’t weighty enough to create much of a flash.

I remembered my mother—this shining force of a woman—saying I belonged to her. I remembered her taking me from the hospital where I was listed Jane Doe and giving me a name that felt like mine. The traumatic brain injury I had suffered from being struck by a car the first time had wiped out everything else.

And here I am again, I thought, as I felt my body transferred from the crumpled vehicle to a gurney and shoved into the back of an ambulance. I clung to the details of my life, which had been told to me like folklore.

My name is Myranda Avant. I was born in the middle of July, a summer child. There are so many pictures of me in my parents’ house that you can tell I’m kind of special to them. I think it’s because they were afraid they had lost me for good once.

My first word was “sock.” My dad, William, laughed when I said it because he thought I had actually said the f-word. My mom, Shelly, loves to tell me about this because it’s her favorite way to think of me, the rebel of the bunch. To me, it sums up my life in a nutshell: Not exactly what it seems.

I didn’t learn to walk properly until I was almost two years old because of an Achilles’ tendon problem, and I had surgery when I was three to fix it. I used to have a scar from the procedure, but I don’t anymore.

I was raised in a tight-knit family with my younger siblings—Josh, Greg and Tamara—by our parents William and Shelly Avant. We used to live in Louisiana, but my family moved to Gatlinburg, Tennessee after I went missing. This is where Mom brought me when she found me, and I picked up with my new life as if the nine-year gap wasn’t a gulf between me and who I used to be.

Sometimes I dreamed of places more vivid than any of Myranda’s folklore, had nightmares more real than her fairytale childhood. Yet, I catalogued every story my parents told me as if my own and kept them in a journal tucked within a seam of my mattress so I would never forget again.  In this book were the names of relatives, backgrounds of people I had never met, but should know. The accumulation of a lifetime of memories I should have had, but didn’t.

Now I know why.

I’m not Myranda Avant. She was kidnapped out of her backyard in Louisiana eleven years ago. When I was found fleeing someone in a dark forest, it was assumed I was her based on age progression technology that matched my face to how Myranda might have looked at nineteen. I had no reason to doubt the people who assured me of my identity, but they were wrong.  

At the precise moment the sirens blared in a mad dash to get me to the emergency room in Gatlinburg, hundreds of miles away the lifeless body of a ten-year-old girl was being extracted from a shallow grave in a marshy tract of land in Lafayette, Louisiana. It would take some time to sort out who she was, but the news was destined to make its way to William and Shelly Avant.

I was an unwitting imposter.

As my throbbing head flooded with snatches of memory that could never have belonged to the missing girl, I wondered who on earth I could be. Imagine finding out you’re not who you think you are. I don’t belong here. This isn’t my life.  It was an honest mistake. But, just like that, I ceased to be me.

We can’t wait to share this book with you! Are you as excited as we are? Comment below and let us know!

–Sondi Warner, Writer/Blogger for Wrought Iron Reads, from a guest post I did for Dan Buri of Nothing Any Good

1. Stuck In Your Head

That brilliant book idea will never make it out of your dreams without careful planning and execution. That’s right, it’s a two-step. Whatever is holding you back—whether inexperience, under-confidence or a busy schedule—can be overcome when you plan how, what and when you will write.

For newbies, an outline will be your best friend, helping you answer the how and what, but you need to get acquainted with a calendar so you can pin down an exact ‘when.’ Pencil in dates and times for writing because writing is work. After all, if you didn’t have a scheduled shift at your regular 9-5, would you ever really clock in?

Here’s a tip:

Join Book-In-A-Week for a tiny donation of $3 by PayPal to set and tackle goals alongside other motivated writers. Become a part of a community where you can set word count goals, check-in with your progress and win prizes when you participate. Sometimes all it takes is a deadline to take a book from idea to start.

Read more…

–Sondi Warner, Writer/Blogger for Wrought Iron Reads

You know what time of the week it is, folks! It’s the day I regale you with everything happening here at Wrought Iron Reads. We’ve been some busy bees, trying to make sure this summer you have plenty of hot reads to choose from. Here’s what we’re buzzing about!

ANTEBELLUM SOUL: HERE & NOW by Reatha Beauregard scheduled for re-release May 31, 2016. With all new editing and even more story, you’ll be BLOWN AWAY by how this paranormal romance book brings together voodoo, vampires and werewolves like only Louisiana can.

Get ready to #ShowYourAntebellumSoul with contests and interactive content throughout the month of May! Visit www.facebook.com/wroughtironreads daily to discover what’s new and learn the purpose behind the hashtag.

While we’re talking about characters today, check out this selection from an author buddy, Kyle Perkins!

Author Kyle Perkins

Kyle’s article on character creation!

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–Sondi Warner, Writer/Blogger for Wrought Iron Reads

Particularly in genre fiction, building complex characters can be complicated because of the formulaic nature of the writing. We might be tempted to plug in the typical caricatures—the luckless heroine, the tortured hero. Likewise, readers often expect flat characters in novels and novellas, which are meant to be consumed rapidly and leave no aftertaste.

But, I think we can agree the books that resonate most are those that introduce us to people instead of characters. There’s a reason the world mourned the death of Severus Snape, (the character and the actor who played him.) He was better than a villain; he was human.

You may feel you lack the talent and/or patience to create a world like Harry Potter’s, but you do have what it takes to deliver believable, intriguing characters that will leave readers with a sense of wonder. The key to it is knowing your cast as if they are close friends.

Source: Pinterest

There’s a game that floats around on Facebook that challenges friends and family to prove how well they know you with questions like, “What’s my favorite candy bar?” and “What’s my middle name?” Anyone who has ever played it quickly discovers certain details simply aren’t common knowledge, but often enough someone gets all the answers. In the game of character development, as a writer you want to be the person who gets all the answers.

You’ll need to spend a lot of time with your cast to make them come alive on the page. To illustrate the process of character development, let’s pretend you’re trapped with them in various uncomfortable situations that will force you to dig deeper into their identities. Start by figuring out if the people you’re writing about are worth your time in the first place.

Ready to get trapped with your characters?

Let’s ascend together.

Step with me down the corridor to the elevator straight ahead where you’ll be meeting your main characters of your next book for the first time. You don’t know them; they don’t know you. Now, the group of us are about to squeeze our way into a tiny carriage going up. Obviously, we can’t all fit through the elevator doors at once. (Not with these hips of mine.)

Which of your main characters is quick to issue an apology for bumping into others? Who barrels past the rest to enter the elevator first? Who holds the doors? Are you developing a mental image of these people, yet? If not, don’t worry. We’re inside the elevator together now, so you can be as rude as you like and stare as hard as you need in order to formulate an opinion about them based on how they look and behave.

As we settle in for the long ascent to the top of this steel and glass high-rise building, I want you to pick up as many details about your characters as might be possible in such a scenario. Pay particular attention to their physical traits because elevators are great places to innocuously watch people, but also jot down the scent of their cologne/perfume, what they’re wearing, their manner of speaking. See if you can peg their socioeconomic background. While you’re at it, are they chatty or distant?

There needs to be something about this bunch that immediately piques your interest enough to make you wonder about their inner workings. Chances are, they’re not interesting enough to be your main characters if you can step out of this mental elevator right now and walk away from them without a backwards glance. So, use this time trapped going up to make them uniquely memorable.

Only way to go is up.

Do you want to know more about these people? Would I want to know more about them? Be brutally honest with yourself about your characters. We can stay in this elevator as long as you like until you get them right.

Physical traits like an odd birthmark or a missing thumb might do the trick. Or, you might consider going the other end of the spectrum and making someone strikingly, otherworldly beautiful, which isn’t quite as intriguing as someone perfect but for a chipped tooth. You could give a character stilting, uncertain speech that sounds as if every statement is a question. Or, are they stoic and laconic?

By the time you’re done with this phase of the experiment, you should have a clear idea of your characters’ physical appearance; tone of voice, inflection and pacing of speech; socioeconomic background and a rough idea of their level of education. You may come away with even more details than that, but right now you have a meeting to get to, and you’re late! Who told you to stick around in the elevator for so long? D’ah, well…

Come with me. Right this way. Make a right up ahead. Ah, here we are! Isn’t this a lovely lobby? Now, go check in with the administrative assistant at the front desk, and do be kind. She looks like she’s having a rough day.

Isn’t this lobby the bees-knees?

We’re told to wait. Typical, isn’t it? Luckily, look at who else is in the lobby with us—your characters! Assuming all of them passed the elevator test and made it out without getting chopped, you’ve injected enough attention-grabbing details into their make up to be pleased as punch to discover we’re stuck in another room with them. Let’s chat it up and make their acquaintance.

Don’t be shy. Pretend you have no qualms about being nosy. Ask whatever you like. What’s their sign? (Important thing to note. It’ll save you a heap of time trying to figure out the particulars of their personality later on.) How old are they? Where’d they go to school? What did they study? I’d like to know if they have any pets and what their family is like. Siblings? You know, birth order says a lot about a person. I’m a middle child, myself. Rebellious as hell with the t-shirt to prove it.

You should find out the relationship status of your main characters and how they interact with each other, as well. Remember, you plan to put these people into a book. They should have some chemistry—whether romantic or fricative.

You might wanna take notes.

As you soak in background information, try to ensure the new matches the old. For example, if you’ve envisioned Mr. Tall, Dark & Handsome as the baby of his family, he probably won’t appear quite so mature. Should he maybe be the eldest or an only child? I told you birth order says a lot about a person.