S.J. Lomas's Blog

On October 4, Winter Chills vol. 2 will no longer be available. I am so honored to have shared this anthology with A.Q. Hart, Layne Adamsson, and Dan MacDonald and I'm proud of what we created together.
If you want to have it for yourself, before it's gone forever, head to https://books2read.com/u/bPL91x and get your print or ebook copy.
Also, if you have a free Hoopla account from your library, you can check it out from there too.
Happy reading!

Dream Girl is on sale for .99 on Kindle, Apple Books, and Kobo. Now through Nov. 4, 2021 you can try the first book in the Dream Duology for this low price.
I hope you'll give it a try and leave a review when you're done.

I'm going to be a guest on the web series, Hot Topics with Cecil and Sureg'ay this evening, March 18, 2021 at 9:30pm EST. If you enjoy seeing authors on irreverent interactive comedy web series, this is your night! Prize wheel involved. You may even win a book!

Tune in via YouTube or Facebook Live:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsL...

FBLive: https://www.facebook.com/HotTopicsCSWB

In honor of the re-release of Dream Girl, I'm offering the book free from Instafreebie now through Halloween, Oct. 31, 2017. If you haven't read the book yet, please get your copy here: https://instafreebie.com/free/qu018
Enjoy your free book! Happy Halloween!

This Thursday, I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Dave Congalton Show on 920 KVEC in San Luis Obispo, CA.
If you missed the interview, you can check out the podcast here

I hope you'll give it a listen. It was a lot of fun talking with Dave!

Happy New Year everyone! 2016 was a rough year for a lot of people, but I have nothing but hope, optimism, and excitement for 2017. Why might that be?

For starters, I'm in the final stages of getting the Dream Girl sequel ready for publication. I have received editorial notes from my incredible editor. I am also working with an insanely talented graphic designer to get the cover together. (That will be coming soon and you are going to love it!) I will also being getting edits from another trusted editor. Then I'll revise based on their notes, send to my all star proofreader, and then it's off for typesetting and voila! A new book is born! This is the year!

Now that the release year is here, I thought it'd be the perfect time to finally tell you some things.

1. The book is not called Dream Girl 2. It has its own name. With the cover artwork in production as we speak, the whole endeavor has become very real to me. I know what this beauty is going to look like. It isn't final, so I can't reveal that today (soon, I promise!) but I wanted to share my excitement by announcing to you, my loyal readers, friends, and family. The sequel, and conclusion, to Dream Girl is called Dream Frequency!

2. At this point, the release date is this April. While that might sound like forever to you, it's frighteningly close for all the work that still has to happen to get it into production.

3. You may wonder why I'm talking about doing all this stuff. In case you are, the answer is this. The publisher of Dream Girl, has decided to take a hiatus from publishing fiction. (Yes, that's kind of a bummer.) However, I didn't want to leave you guys hanging. I didn't want to leave Christine and Gabriel hanging either. So I completed the book and through the magic of the modern publishing landscape, I'll be offering a print and ebook version of Dream Frequency. It will have the same availability as Dream Girl, so you'll find it at Amazon, BN.com, iBooks, etc. It's a big undertaking to self-publish a book, which is part of why I'm making this announcement today. I'm going to need your help! Dream Frequency now has an entry on Goodreads. It would be so incredibly helpful if you could add it to your Goodreads shelf and share it with your friends who might enjoy it. There is no better way to get the word out than word of mouth, so if you enjoyed Dream Girl, please tell your friends and let them know the sequel is almost here!

4. Thank you. Seriously. Thank you so very much. Dream Frequency would not exist without you. I have to admit, when I found out my publisher wasn't going to do fiction anymore, I lost all enthusiasm for writing this book. I started writing another book and figured I'd start fresh with that. But your comments and support kept coming. You kept asking what happens next? When will the sequel come out? And then Gabriel and Christine started whispering in my head again. I realized that you guys were out there, waiting for the end of the story, and I couldn't leave you hanging. I couldn't leave Gabriel and Christine hanging either! Even if I had to figure out how to publish it myself, this was something that needed to be done. You kept me going, whether you realize it or not, and I'm so grateful for that.

I hope your new year is starting out with magic and excitement too. Let's make it an incredible year!

It's not okay.

Even if you don't watch the news or read newspapers, you know that terrible things are going on in our world every day. It seems like an endless litany of shootings every time we turn around. And it's terrible, but more than these evil actions, I am seriously concerned and unnerved by the level of blatant hatred that's circulating these days. Social media is a horrifying wake up call to what's happening to our citizens. (And by "our" I mean the world's.) It seems that with all of us, with our own tiny social media platforms, we suddenly believe that our personal viewpoints are more valid than anyone else's and that it's okay to spew violence and hatred on anyone who dares to have a different opinion. It's very disturbing to me the level of cruelty that people give in to over these viewpoint clashes. God forbid a person support Hillary Clinton and another support Donald Trump. I see people actually proclaiming that the person supporting a different candidate than them does not deserve to live. Did you catch that? If people's political ideologies don't align, then the other person's life has no value. Folks, this is bone chillingly not okay. This kind of devaluing of the lives of others seems to be rampant in modern society. And the lives of "others" are meaningless based on many criteria. Wrong religion, wrong country of origin, wrong sexual preferences, wrong sexual identity, wrong political allegiance, wrong gender, wrong dietary patterns, wrong parenting practices, wrong skin color and so on.

Anyone questioning the value of someone's life because of their skin color is so inherently wrong and ridiculous, this shouldn't even be a topic of conversation. And yet it is. The fact that it is 2016 and we have a campaign called #BlackLivesMatter is not okay.

I, like many of us, have been hearing news reports with an increasingly heavy heart. How many people have to die? How many people have to suffer violence? I know we want things to change. We don't want to hear these stories anymore. We call for gun reform. We call for mental health reform. We call for something to happen. But what is happening? It seems like just more violence. And we shake our heads and hope someone will do something to stop it. We feel powerless to do anything that can tackle these seemingly insurmountable problems in our world. I know that's how I've been feeling. And then something changed.

A friend's post showed up in my Facebook newsfeed:


"I’m working in these streets so any protesters, officers, friends, family or whoever, if you see me and need a hug or want to say a prayer. I got you.”
Officer Montrell L. Jackson,
Facebook post 7/8/16
killed today in Baton Rouge


And that was the last straw for me. Something in me finally changed. I can't sit here and wait for something to change anymore. You know why? Because it isn't going to. Sitting around being impotently outraged behind our computer screens isn't going to change anything. I spent all morning thinking about what I can do about it. I can't make terrorists stop attacking people. I can't make people stop rioting. I can't stop crooked cops from profiling African Americans. But you know what I can do? I can actively try to spread love instead of hate. And you can too.

St. Francis's Peace Prayer has been on my mind lately. I'd like to share it with you:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

What strikes me about this is the selflessness. My opinion is not the center of the world. What I think is right is secondary to how I can be a blessing to someone else. That is in direct opposition to the message from today's media, where my happiness is the only thing that matters, no matter the cost.

I've also been struck by a line from a Passenger song, Scare Away the Dark. (There are some F bombs.) "Well, sing, sing at the top of your voice / Love without fear in your heart / Feel, feel like you still have a choice / If we all light up we can scare away the dark"

I decided the singer is right. If more of us would just light up, there would be fewer places for the darkness to hide.

That's what spurred this uncharacteristic blog post. It's the outlet I have and I'm using it to voice how unhappy I am with the world our children are inheriting. I want kids to know that we aren't powerless. We don't have to be sad about the news and wait for someone to do something about it. We don't even have to do something huge and far-reaching. We can only do our own part, no matter how small, and at least know that we are trying to be the solution.

So, I have a proposition for everyone. I'd like to create the hashtag #HealTheWorld to inspire each other. To invigorate people who might need a little nudge to do something different. It doesn't have to be huge, but I'd like to suggest that we all start spreading kindness and inclusion. Similar to random acts of kindness, I want to propose a different kind of "random." I'd like to replace the randomness with purpose driven kindness. I'd like for all of us to actively approach people who make us uncomfortable. Who we have prejudices toward. Who we don't agree with. Who don't look like us. And light up for that person. You don't have to spend money. You don't have to be their best friend. Heck, I think it'd be great if we just wrote out little slips of paper that said, "I'm glad you're here." Think about what that would mean to you if you're hurting. I mean it. Think about that right now.
What if a young black man walked up to an elderly white woman and handed her a little note that says, "I'm glad you're here."
What if a middle class white man walked up to a man in a turban and said, "Good to see you today. How's it going?"
What if an overwhelmed mother in the grocery store was approached by a teenager with a mohawk and sincerely asked if there was anything they could help with.
What if you smiled at someone you would normally turn away from?
What if someone stopped focusing on what annoys them or scares them about you and reached out to a part they liked?

It might just be idealism, but I like to think it would help change hearts. Like it might just jar us out of our comfortable routine and make us really see the people around us. Not as stereotypes, not as "other" but human beings.

So, I'm proposing this little movement. Let's challenge ourselves to do better. To interact positively with people we judge without understanding. To stop letting the hurtful and scared parts of ourselves have control. Let's do what Passenger says. "Love without fear in your heart." Let's do what St. Francis prayed, "not so much seek to be consoled as to console." We have to do something. It isn't okay to keep locking everyone out. It isn't okay to say that people who look or behave differently than us or who disagree with us don't matter. That's a lie. We're all here and we all matter. And it's time we all start acting like it.

This is the second book in the series The Maisy Files. The first book is available for only 99 cents! Both books are available for free as part of a Kindle Unlimited subscription or the Kindle Owners Lending Library programs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:

Maisy is back! Lunch money has been stolen at West Valley Elementary, and everyone's favorite fourth-grade detective in on the case. With a cherry lollipop in hand, her fedora, and her trusty notebook, Maisy steps into her black and white mystery world to search for clues. Join Maisy on her quest to unmask a thief in Maisy and the Money Marauder.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt :

Shadows danced across Maisy’s face in the dim light. Dramatic music filled her bedroom, and she reached for the popcorn bowl without moving her eyes from her little TV screen. It was a tense moment in one of her favorite old mystery movies. The villain was about to be caught. Maisy knew that the detective would soon march out from a shadowy corner and catch the bad guy. He would be wearing a long trench coat and a fedora hat. He’d sound so impressive when he demanded that the villain, a sneaky looking robber named Vinny, turn himself in, that Vinny would have no choice but to give up. But, Maisy was still on edge while she watched the scene unfold.

She was curled up with her favorite pup, Reesie, snuggled under the blanket beside her. As soon as Maisy had turned off the lights and started the movie, the little dog had nudged the pillows with her nose to show that she wanted under the covers. Maisy had complied with her request and tossed the pillows to the floor, so that she could scurry under the fluffy, purple comforter. Now, Maisy reached over and patted the lump that was the tiny dog.

The movie wasn’t very scary. After all, it was old and in black and white. Movies like that were not scary at all compared to some movies made today. But, still, Maisy loved the stories and detectives in the old movies so much that she couldn’t help but be drawn into them every time she watched one. She felt a little better having her dog there with her.

Suddenly, the moment she had been anticipating was on the screen. The detective smoothly arrived on the scene and, after a little scuffle, took control. Vinny gave in and put his hands up to show he would go quietly. Maisy relaxed and munched the last bits of her popcorn. As she sighed in relief, a little nose popped out from under the purple covers. It was soon followed by the sweet face of a little black and brown terrier-mix. One of her ears was flopped over, and she stretched her mouth wide in a huge yawn. Apparently, Maisy had disturbed Reesie’s slumber. The pup crawled around and finally settled herself on Maisy’s lap. She plopped her head down with a sigh and fell back asleep. She didn’t even notice as Maisy shook her head and laughed.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Elizabeth Woodrum has been a teacher for thirteen years. She came to love writing when she was in elementary school, but more recently began writing material for use in her classroom. From that writing, grew the desire to write books for the general population of children and adults alike. The Maisy Files, a children's series, is the first series that she has published.

As a reader, Elizabeth prefers the fantasy genre, but she enjoys realistic fiction as well. Some of her favorite authors include JK Rowling, Rick Riordan, Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins, and Nicholas Sparks.

Originally from Indiana, Elizabeth currently lives in Ohio with her two pets: a cat named Butterscotch and a dog named Reese Cup.

Amazon Buy Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00S...
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/xMbq9vVV7As
Website/Blog: www.elizabethwoodrum.com
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Woodr...
Facebook: www.facebook.com/elizabethwoodrumauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ewoodrumauthor
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ewoodrumaut...
Maisy and the Money Marauder

Happy Valentine's Day! First, my valentine to you is that I'm giving away my YA short story, Kiss of Death,for free today through the 16th. Be sure to get your copy now! Hope you love it! But that's not your only Valentine treat today. USA Today bestselling author Tonya Kappes is here and she's generously offered to give away a copy of her brand new YA novel, Tag. . .You're IT
(details at the end of the post)

It is my pleasure to introduce you to super talented author and marketing whiz, Tonya Kappes. If you aren't familiar with her, you're in for a treat! If you want to have some fun, you need to connect with Tonya. Seriously. Like her Facebook page and join her Street Time. It's a riot! So much positive energy and fun and she does the coolest events for her readers. Don't take my word for it. Sign up!

Become a member of Tonya’s STREET TEAM! It’s a gathering place of readers who love Tonya Kappes novels and Tonya gives away monthly prizes! To sign up for Tonya’s STREET TEAM, newsletter, view book trailer, and upcoming news, check out Tonya’s website, Tonyakappes.com.

And be sure to stalk her on Facebook and Twitter!

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USA Today Bestselling Author, Tonya Kappes writes humorous cozy mystery and women’s fiction that involves quirky characters in quirky situations. Not only have her novels made the USA Today bestsellers list, but they are an Amazon Top 100 author, Amazon Movers and Shakers, and International bestsellers.

Strung Out To Die and A Charming Crime are USA Today bestselling novels.

Splitsville.com, the first novel in the Olivia Davis Mystery Series, is a double finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the Mystery and Humorous Categories.

Carpe Bead ‘em is 2012 winner in Amazon’s eFestival of Words in the Women’s Fiction Category.

A Charming Crime, the first novel in the Magical Cures, is the 2013 eFestival of Words in the Fantasy Category Winner.

A New Tradition the Indie Romance Convention 2013 novella of the year.

When not being the princess, queen, and jester of her family of three teenage boys, an adoring husband, and three fury kids, she travels to various writing groups as guest speaker on “How to Market and Promote Your Novels Effectively,” where she is known as a marketing guru.

Now, without further ado, I present Tonya Kappes!
Restless Writer: (RW) I am in awe of the vibrant and fun street team of fans you've assembled. How did you go about getting it off the ground and how long did it take until it became the thriving community it is today?
Tonya Kappes: (TK) A few years ago I started receiving a ton of reader mail, which I love. They continually asked what they could do to help spread the words about my novels. I decided to start a street team on yahoo loop and it was a place where we talked about EVERYTHING...not just my books. We became a little family. I knew I wanted to give back to them so I started to have Facebook street team parties, which no other authors were doing at the time and it took off like a rocket. BUT we have continued to be a close group. I show up every single day! I am personal with them! I LOVE them. That is what this writing gig is all about.

RW: More and more authors are choosing the indie path to publishing. How did you reach the decision to do this with your books?
TK: When my first publisher thought they knew what the best marketing was for ME, I knew they were wrong. I could not let someone take me down a road I knew was not going to help me. So...we parted ways only two weeks away from publication. After I cried my eyes out, I got my head screwed on straight and took a look at self publishing. Self publishing was such a taboo at the time, this was four years ago, and writers were telling me I was crazy and I was going to burn my writing career. I rolled my eyes because NO ONE tells me I can't do something. I took the bull by the horns and had that book, Carpe Bead 'em, out on the day of the release. READERS have no clue how a book is published. They don't care as long as the book is good.

RW: It seems like you have an awesome new book out every few months! You are a wife and mother, what is your writing schedule like?
TK: I write every single day at least 2-5k words a day. They might not be GREAT words, but they are words that I can go back and change. I write full time so my kids and hubby are at school/work. I get up at 5:30 when my hubby leaves for work. I do all my business stuff until 8 am. My three teenagers can get themselves off to school by themselves now ;) 8-10 am I write and write. Around ten, I eat breakfast and shower only to sit back down by 11 and stay there until 1 pm. Then I grab my dogs and take a 2-3 mile walk, eat lunch, catch up on Days of Our Lives and back at the computer by 2. From 2-4 pm I write. I turn off the computer around 4 because my hubby and kids are home, plus I love to watch the Wendy Williams Show at 4 :) There are times in there where I jump on my Facebook to check in with readers or email.

RW: Your book with Melissa Bourbon Ramirez, The Tricked-Out Toolbox: Promotion and Marketing Tools Every Writer Needs, is full of great marketing strategies for authors. What do you think is the most valuable thing a writer can do to give them the best chance at success?
TK: Write, write, and write.

RW: In this day and age, social media seems like a holy grail of (free) marketing possibilities. Authors seem to rise to stardom overnight because of social media. There has to be more to the story. Can you offer a reality check on your experiences with social media marketing and the effort and/or costs it takes to achieve success?
TK: You have to show up every day. That's it. Be present. Be relatable. You have to have a presence. If you only do one social media~DO IT WELL!

RW: You just published your first YA novel, Tag, You're It!. It's right up my alley, a teen girl who loses her best friend in a car crash but becomes connected to, and annoyed by, her friend's ghost. What made you decide to try YA and can readers expect more in this genre? (I hope so!)
TK: I have three teenage boys who are all in high school. I'm around so many girls...not by choice ;) Of course they all like to talk and hang out with me and I hear all sorts of drama (I'm soooo glad I have all boys!). I'm pretty good at relating to them and easy to talk to. I understand the young adult mind. So many writers ask me why I haven't written a YA and my standard reply was, "I live it...why would I write it?" Then I started to think...hmmmm....Low and behold Tag. . .You're IT was written and given to some of those teenage girls to read. They loved it so here it is :)

YES! There will be more in the series.

RW: What kind of writer are you, a planner or a pantser?
TK: Panster!

RW: Name some of your favorite authors who really inspire you.
TK: EECK....I can't do that.

RW: I absolutely adore your book covers! Who designs them?
TK: I have several designers for each series. Tag was done by two different designers.

RW: Can you tell us what you're working on now?
TK: I'm working on a new mystery series called Yellow Cab Capers where my sleuth drives a taxi. It's fuuuuunny!!!!!

RW: You do a lot of cool reader events. Where will you be next?
TK: I love my readers! I travel at least once a month. Check out my events page on my website at www.tonyakappes.com to check out my next event.
Thank you so much, Tonya!

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