Lara’s Comments (group member since Feb 25, 2018)

Lara’s comments from the Christian Speculative Fiction group.

My newest novel, The Secrets of Cinnamon Cinderguard was released October 1st and is now available as ebook, paperback, and hardback. It is on Kindle Unlimited (all my books are there now).


Book overview
A new stand-alone adventure and love story within the same faerie world of Gryphendale.

Seventeen year old Cinnamon Cinderguard has secrets, tons of them that she hides under a mask of wit and humor. Her greatest desire is to have a safe, new life as a servant to the royal family of Samodivas...and a real bed...and drink tea. When a plot to murder the newly returned mad prince and the assassination of an Undine Ambassador threatens the stability of the Huldra kingdom, Cinnamon tells all she knows about her past as the daughter of the leader of a secret society. She discovers that her secrets are only the tip of the iceberg of what is really going on. When the ancient Seraphim get involved, smuggled jewels become the last fashion trend, and the entire Huldra nation faces extinction, she must untangle the mysteries armed with only her cleverness and a bit of music before it is too late.

The Secrets of Cinnamon Cinderguard is a story about abuse, real love (both romantic and familial), and healing that asks hard questions in a light fantasy world. The novel uses Agatha Christie's mystery, a hint of Dave Barry's humor, and Jane Austen's focus on colorful characters to create an engaging and tangled adventure. A hint of steampunk in a traditional fantasy setting is added to the brew to create a unique story that has readers glued to the book until the very last page.

The Secrets of Cinnamon Cinderguard (The Legends of Gryphendale Book 5) https://a.co/d/apZUYcI


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Hi all!

There comes a time when you are knocking on all the doors of opportunity when lots of doors suddenly open simultaneously. That is this year for me.

I published my first book in 2016, and since that time, I have never had a year of opportunity as this year. Not only have I had lots of enthusiasm from various places to have me sell books there, but bookstores have asked for multiple copies of my books for their shelves. Look at this year’s lineup!

My In-Person Events so far:

Book signing at Half-Priced Books (March 18th)
Book signing at The Twig Bookstore (April 22nd)
Comicpaloosa in Houston, TX (May 26th-29th)
Austin Comic Con (June 24th-25th)
Superhero Comic Con (July 7-9)
Book Release Party (September)
Big Texas Comicon (October 6th-8th)
GHNO Winter Bazzar (November)
Sunshine Cottage Market (November)

This surge of opportunity has had some consequences. First, I am running out of books (great news!), but I won’t get the profits from those books to order more until they sell (yikes!). This lack of capital is making it tough to launch my next book.

A solution is to launch a Kickstarter for 60 days. This fundraising platform will help me accomplish all I need for this year and get the ball rolling for the future. Check out the Kickstarter and the rewards for donations here:

https://kickstarter.com/projects/lara...

Even if you can’t help financially, please share this Kickstarter on your social media and help me get the word out. People want these books because they are fun, encouraging, and optimistic. Don’t just share all the negative news, politics, and economics, but share something that will make you and your friends smile and feel like you can defeat your own monsters!

Thank you so much for your help and support!

I sent you a friend request because I can’t message you without it.

I do review specifically Christian fiction as well. I have a couple of indie authors from a couple of years ago that I reviewed and I do Christian devotionals an my blog as well. Books for high schoolers and older are fine as long as that is explicitly explained in the review. I will message you my email.

Good suggestions! I’m trying to get back into my writing as well after a couple of years. Rereading and editing one of my old projects has been helpful. It wasn’t as a bad as what I feared it had been when I left it. Lol!

That sounds great! Do you still have my email? You can email me an article whenever you’re ready. I don’t have a firm blog schedule.

Awesome! Let me know if you would like to guest blog.

It should be all up to date and I am still getting visitors and views. Here is the link again in case I typed it wrong above:

laraswanderings.wordpress.com

Hey everyone! I hope it has been a great season or reading and writing. I know it’s been long time no see, but I am lurking about some. I am putting out another shout for guest bloggers for my blog. This is an opportunity to shamelessly talk about how awesome your book is, what inspired you to write it, and why young adults (my audience) should read it. I am looking for posts that are around a thousand words and includes a picture of you and your book. The books on my blog must be clean (no sex or extensive detailed violence), but they don’t have to be explicitly Christian. You can reply to this post or message me for more details and where to submit your articles.

I personally use a lot of dialogue tags because I get very confused about who is talking without them. I have read a few books about writing from famous authors and then tend to error on the side of more tags. Also, there is a debate about whether you have to always use "said." Don't go too weird, but changing it to "mumbled," "shouted," "repeated," or "stated" can make it a bit more interesting.

Concerning writing unique tones of voice, this is a struggle many authors have. It is very hard to write different accents, but I try to play with that at times. My editors go nuts over the spelling though. Another option is to think of the education level of your characters. They do not need to speak in correct grammar if they have no education. A person with lots of education would use longer, Latin-based vocabulary and very correct grammar. Also, consider how people express themselves. A very chattery person says lots of unnecessary things. A quiet person may say things in extremely short phrases. The younger characters will have simpler sentence structures. Then there is the formal language of royalty and vulgar language of the street person. Playing with the way someone says something is a great task for your second or third draft and can be extremely fun to experiment with. For me, this is what makes classic literature pop.

As a mother of 2 special needs kids (one with autism and one deaf), we need books like this! Technology is part of my kids daily lives to live. My deaf son has cochlear implants to help him hear. I one asked my husband what would happen if they ever came out with implants fpr him to hear sounds that humans couldn't hear? My son with autism uses a tablet to write and magnify things. Technology is part of who they are and they need heros who are like them. promote the snot out of that book! I would love a copy to review as well.

Thanks Sean! I'll advertise on my social media and blog.

Not that I am saying my experience compares to Malaysia or Nigeria. My experience is relatively mild.

Wow! It sounds like you have an incredible set of experiences. My main international experience was living in Europe, specifically Scotland with lots of travel through the other EU countries. It felt like a bubble of safety and security that I had never experienced before or after. We were broke college students doing stupid stuff and catching trains to anywhere. For me, the US has been my dystopia. I have personally lived though multiple natutal disasters such as living in Orlando during Hurricane Andrew, living in Houston during Hurricane Harvey, and recently living in Texas during this freeze in which the electric company turned off the power to million of people, including us, as temperatures here got to 8 degrees Fahrenheit during our Covid spike. I have been think about the prophets a lot lately.

Yikes! I have definately felt like Covid is going to lead to other issues gobally from financial to supply issues. Perhaps we actually NEED Christian dystopian fiction to address where God fits into all this. Amos and some of the prophets have some good thought to use as a starting point.

Hi Everyone! I thought I would throw out a topic I have been pondering over. Do you think the Covid pandemic will put a damper on dystopian fiction for a while? I have felt like I was living a dystopian life this year. Dystopian is on the bottom of my reading list for a while, but perhaps you all think that the opposite will be true for the overall market. Will dystopian fiction have a new boom? Then again, maybe the pandemic doesn't change anything. For me, this year has permanently changed my reading and writing interest. How about you?

I think that there needs to be a clarification between wordiness and descriptive writing. Overwriting is often a problem with using too many words to convey a specific idea. Classic literature is extremely descriptive, but they tend to pack a lot of power into as few words as possible.

I once had a heated discussion about how long Tolkien spent on a battle scene. The person I was talking with was convinced it was multiple chapters. It turned out to be 5 pages. In just a sentence, Tolkien can give the feel of an epic conflict:

"Now Bard was fighting to defend the Eastern spur, and yet giving slowly back: and the elf-lords were at bay about their king upon the southern arm, near to the watch-post on Ravenhill."

It isn't the adjective, but the specifics of the conflict in so few words that give it so much power. Most writers do know this is good writing, but it's very hard to accomplish. I try, but I tend to have more complaints about people not being able to imagine what I am describing than complaints about wordiness.

Thanks, Nicole and C.S.! I'll look into it. I am just now emerging from my year-long hibernation. I'm in the middle of a Master's degree, so I am mostly reading things out loud to my kids right now. I'll check out the books and put them on my wish list.

Technically, they are different, but why not add them to our discussion? Old stories such as fairy tales, folklore, myths, and legends stick around because there is something of value in them. They observe aspects of our human nature in fantastic ways. I think it fits!

Hey Sean! Sorry I've been missing in action this year. How many more authors and readers do you need? I'll help get the word out.