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Free On-Line Blog Conference offered through Muse It Up Publishiing

5/31/2011

Beginning June 1st until the 30th, Muse authors will be hosting a month long Muse Blog Conference.

PRICE: FREE

DETAILS: To register please send an email to: museitupeditor@yahoo.ca

Place MUSE BLOG CONFERENCE on the subject heading and your name and email address within the body of your post. Why? Because those that register and participate get a chance to win one of several ebooks offered throughout the month.

CONFERENCE SITE: http://museituppublishing.blogspot.com/

FOR READERS: Every day beginning on June 1st at noon, a Featured 99cent E-book of the day will be offered for purchase. An incredible discount just for readers for participating and supporting the Blog Conference.

Each Muse Blog Conference workshop will run for one day, where attendees are invited to post their questions, and/or exercises the presenters will be posting during their daily workshops.

Below are the workshops. Come once, twice, every day! Enjoy!
C.K. Volnek

Conference Schedule

JUNE 1
Using Online Media to Build Your Author Brand
Learn how to tweet, facebook, blog, and build your website to sell your product-YOU!
    Presented by Amy McCorkle

JUNE 2
Developing Characters- How Do I Make My Characters Unique?
    presented by Barbara Ehrentreu

JUNE 3
Research, Research, Research
    Presented by Nancy M. Bell

JUNE 4
EDITORS and YOU
    Presented by J. Rose Knight

JUNE 5
WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW.
    Presented by Wendy Laharnar

JUNE 6
UNLEASH YOUR IMAGINATION
    presented by Lawna Mackie

JUNE 7
"Getting Into Character: Can you fill your Hero's Shoes?"
    Presented by Lady Rosalie Skinner.

JUNE 8
Writing in scenes.
    presented by David J. Normoyle

JUNE 9
Writing Memoirs
    presented by J. Q. Rose

JUNE 10
“Can you give as good as you get?”
    Presented by Christopher Hoare

JUNE 11
How to get your book to Film.
    Presented by AP Miller

JUNE 12
Steampunk
    Presented by AP Miller

JUNE 13
Harnessing the full potential of blogs.
    presented by Brian Knight

JUNE 14
The Four P's Approach to Writing: How My Sports Coaching Career Gave My Writing Career a Boost.
    presented by Mike Hays

JUNE 15
New Worlds?
    Presented by Rhobin L. Courtright

JUNE 16
To pen or not to pen.
     presented by Karen Cote

JUNE 17
Go back to school and remember your persuasive essay techniques as we discuss the Art of Reviewing
    with paranormal author and online critic Kristin Battestella!

JUNE 18
TRICKS OF THE TRADE WORKSHOP
    Presented by Mary Andrews

JUNE 19
BIG CONCEPTS: HOW TO PUT MIND-STRETCHING (AND DANGEROUS)
IDEAS IN YOUR FICTION
    presented by John B. Rosenman

JUNE 20
Who is that character?
    By Christine Verstraete

JUNE 21
Don't let them put your book down! Creating Page-turning Chapter Endings.
    Presented by C.K. Volnek

JUNE 22
Building the Paranormal Character –
    Presented by Kay Dee Royal

JUNE 23
Writing From Unique Points of View
    Presented by Arlene Webb

JUNE 24
How to Write the Perfect Mystery
    Presented by Heather Haven

JUNE 25
Romancing the Beast: Beyond vampires and werewolves.
    presented by Lisa Blackwood

JUNE 26
The Power of Allusion
    Presented by Anne Duguid with Hugh Fox

JUNE 27
Summer ToDo List...Write a Book with Your Kids.
    presented by Shellie Neumeier

JUNE 28
From Science to Science Fiction
    presented by Terri Main

JUNE 29
Differences Between Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature
    Presented by Rebecca Ryals Russell

4 Comments

Trailer for Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island

5/27/2011

1 Comment

Hi Gang,
It's Jack Dahlgren again. C.K. has been busy this week. After receiving her cover for her upcoming book, Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island, she then finished her trailer for the book. It's got great creepy music and gives you just enough information to make you want to read the book. I love the image of the dog she put in it. That Mastiff saved my butt so many times...I owe him a lot. So take a peek at C.K.'s trailer for Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island on YouTube. She'd love to hear what you think.

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbJEF9TjZzo
Thanks!
Jack Dahlgren

1 Comment

Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island

5/24/2011

19 Comments

Hi, my name is Jack Dahlgren and I’m doing a guest post for C.K. Volnek today. She’s not in any shape to blog. I can’t get her to quit jumping up and down and staring at the new cover of our book, Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island. Geesh, you’d wonder which one of us is the kid. I guess I can’t blame her. It is pretty exciting. It’s fun to see a cover to my story. Yeah, I’m the main character of C.K.’s ghost story.

If you like action, adventure and mystery with some Indian folklore and history thrown in, you’ll love Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island. C.K. got the idea to write the story when she read an article about the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. Some think the people that came over on the Mayflower to Plymouth were the first colonists, but they weren’t. Roanoke Island was the very first colony.

In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched a group of colonists to Roanoke Island to set up a colony in the new world. A few short months later the colonists sent their Governor, John White, back to England for supplies and help. With the start of the Spanish war, White was not able to return right away. And when he did return to Roanoke Island three years later, the colonists were gone. Completely vanished. No one knows what happened to them. Did they die of starvation or disease? Were they killed? There weren’t any bodies. Did they get blown away by a hurricane? If they had, then why weren’t the buildings destroyed? Many questions surround this never-solved mystery. And so C.K. decided to come up with her own explanation.

When I saw C.K. working on the book, I realized I had to help. After all, I'm almost 13 and it is my story. I didn’t want to move to Roanoke Island. But my dad had lost his job and I heard him and mom whispering about the bank taking our house in Ohio. So, when Great-grandma Ellis left us this beach house on Roanoke Island, Dad went to check it out. He got a job right away and it was a done deal, we were moving. Great-grandma’s house is said to be haunted. At least that’s what the kids at school say. They didn’t have a clue what was really haunting the island.

C.K has created some nice friends for me. There’s this really neat Old English Mastiff and Manny, he’s a cool Native American guy. He can whittle and has a bag of powders that send me on a vision quest to help solve the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Mrs. Grundel is a nice grandmotherly-kind of lady. She treats me like a guy wants to be treated, not like a baby…like my dad. Dad doesn’t think I can do anything right. Especially since my sister, Kimmy, fell off the cliff next to our house. I didn’t know she’d followed me up there, but he blames me for it.

C.K. also created this wicked creepy monster from some Indian folklore. He’s big and ugly and smelly. If it weren’t for the Mastiff, I would have been monster meat several times.

I hope you’ll look for me and my friends when Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island comes out in September. It’s one great ghostly adventure.

Thanks for stopping by.

Jack Dahlgren

Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island, by C.K. Volnek. Due out September, 2011 by MuseItUp Publishing.

19 Comments

Author Marva Dasef and 'Missing, Assumed Dead'

5/16/2011

10 Comments

Today I have a special guest, author and friend, Ms. Marva Dasef. She is excited to announce her book birthday coming up for Missing, Assumed Dead in July, 2011. Marva is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a fat white cat. Retired from thirty-five years in the software industry, she has now turned her energies to writing fiction and finds it a much more satisfying occupation. Marva has published more than thirty-five stories in a number of on-line and print magazines, with her stories included in several Best of anthologies. She has several already published books and more scheduled for 2011 and 2012 from her publisher, MuseItUp Publishing.

With a teasing insight into Missing, Assumed Dead, Marva offers this blurb:

When Kameron McBride receives notice she’s the last living relative of a missing man she’s never even heard of, the last thing she wants to do is head to some half-baked Oregon town to settle his affairs. But since she’s the only one available, she grudgingly agrees.

En route, she runs afoul of a couple of hillbillies and their pickup in an accident that doesn’t seem . . . accidental. Especially when they keep showing up wherever she goes. Lucky for her, gorgeous Deputy Mitch Caldwell lends her a hand, among other things. Her suspicions increase when the probate Judge tries a little too hard to buy the dead man’s worthless property.

Working on a hunch and trying to avoid the Judge’s henchmen, Kam probes deeper into the town’s secrets and finds almost no one she can trust. With Mitch’s help, she peels away the layers of prejudice, suicide, murder, and insanity. But someone in town doesn’t like her poking around, and when they show their intentions by shooting her through the police chief’s office window, the stakes are raised. Kam must find out what really happened to her dead relative before someone in this backward little town sends her to join him.

And she thought Oregon was going to be boring.
****************

Hungry for more? Heh, heh, heh. Here is an edited excerpt of Missing, Assumed Dead:

Kam gasped and jumped down the embankment toward the creek, stumbling through the underbrush. She heard the pickup tires screech and glanced back. Scruffy had gotten out and headed down the slope behind her. She moved faster, gripping her hair spray. A strap broke on her sandal, and she kicked it off. Ignoring the brambles poking into her legs through her jeans, she moved as fast as she could, the terrain preventing her from flat out running.

She heard the crashing of bushes behind her and put on more steam. She knew the pickup would have reached her car by now, but she’d be coming up on the passenger door, slightly downhill from the driver’s side. She switched the hair spray to her left hand and pawed into her purse for the keys. Finding them, she dropped the bag on the ground to free her hands and kept moving.

When she reached the Chrysler, the driver had already skidded down the embankment and was standing on the driver’s side. Thin compared to the other man, but his arms were solid muscle under the tats. She rushed to the passenger side, jerked open the heavy door, dived in, slammed the door and hit the lock button on the key fob.

The driver pounded the window with his fist. The scruffy one had caught up and pulled on the passenger side door handle. Kam hit the panic button on the fob. The deep and seriously loud Chrysler horn went off with honking bursts. Both men jumped back from the car.

The driver yelled, “I’ll fetch the rifle.” He scrambled to climb up the embankment.

Kam’s heart almost stopped. Even the shatterproof windows wouldn’t stand up against a hunting rifle. She looked around the car wildly, her breath coming in sharp rasps, and then launched herself over the console and into the rear. Sweat ran from her armpits, soaking her blouse. She ran her shaking hands across the top of the seat back hunting for the latch. She hoped the Chrysler had fold down back seats. If she could just reach the tire iron, she’d have a weapon. If this stupid car even had one that is.

She felt the latch pin, grasped it and pulled it up. It clicked. She grasped the seat back in both hands and pulled it down. On her belly, she crawled halfway into the trunk searching for the spare tire well.

Thanks so much for joining me today, Marva. Best of luck on your book birthday! You can find Marva at the following locations on the internet.

Marva Dasef http://marvadasef.com

MuseItUp Author page: http://tinyurl.com/MIU-MarvaDasef

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDa0LT7EhZg

10 Comments

Introducing YA Author Jan Fischer Wade

5/10/2011

4 Comments

Hello everyone. Today I would like to introduce YA Author Jan Fischer Wade. I’m excited to have Jan join us and share her upcoming title. Welcome Jan!

Thank you for joining us today, Jan. As we begin, why don’t you tell everyone a bit about your book?

Hi Charlie, thank you so much for having me. My new book, VEILED VIRTUES, is scheduled to be published in February 2012 by MIU Publishing. It is a young adult light fantasy novel, but has plenty of mystery, romance, and paranormal/supernatural aspects as well. VEILED VIRTUES is set in modern day England, where our heroine, American teen Paige Stewart, finds herself pulling house sitting duty for family friends.

While in England, Paige meets Nathaniel Brightmore, a young, handsome shopkeeper who owns a store in town that sells an eclectic mix of products, including crystals, tarot cards, amulets, Wiccan items and books on paranormal and extrasensory phenomena. The word around town is that Nathaniel is not as angelic as he looks, and the more macabre items in the shop, like pentagrams, swords and books on Satanism and demons, seem to support the notion.

Paige runs into Nathaniel a little too often for it to be a mere coincidence, and Paige wonders what dark side Nathaniel may be harbouring. However, the odd paranormal occurrences at the home where Paige is staying lead her to Nathaniel for answers. She soon becomes aware that she is not your average teen, and that a dark group, the Brotherhood of Cerberus, wants her for their own devices. Luckily for Paige, the Rosetta Guard, a group of modern day English knights, has her back.

You’ll have to read Veiled Virtues to find out why modern day knights still exist and how the Rosetta Guard and the Brotherhood of Cerberus become involved in Paige's life.

Ohhh, Sounds lovely! Where did the concept for your book come about?

I was somewhat tired of vampires and tried to think of something fresh I could write about. I asked myself what type of fantasy guy would draw me in like no other. Since I’ve always been a bit of an anglophile, I thought about those knights in shining armour with their massive horses. It was intriguing, but I wanted a modern story. So, I came up with the mantra, “Yes, modern day English knights do exist,” and proceeded to roll with it!

How long did it take you to finish VEILED VIRTUES, from concept to final product?

The first complete draft of the book took me about six months to write. Once I found an agent, I worked on it with her for about another year.

Are there any authors that have influenced your own writing?

I swear, I am the most mainstream reader you’ll meet. I completely admit that I love JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer and I’ll take a pass on Shakespeare! Sorry, it’s true!

Do you have any favourite place where you feel your Muse is more apt to come and play while you write? Or perhaps you listen to music? If so, what do you listen to?

I normally have to have total peace and quiet when I write. Having two small children and two feisty Irish Setters made the atmosphere at home difficult to concentrate in, so I would often sneak off to the grocery store parking lot and write in my car (my husband staying with the kids of course)! Half the time I write on my laptop and half of the time in a plain old notebook, then transcribe later.

When I am driving in my car, I do listen to lots of music to help me think of ideas for the VEILED VIRTUES series. Some examples:

I can visualize the knights sparring to Rob Zombie’s “Feel So Numb.”

Metallica’s “Hero of the Day” from their S&M CD is what I picture as the Rosetta Guard’s theme song. I just love that song – its slow beginning and then the thundering parts where you can picture the group racing out on horseback to save the day.

Nickelback’s “Kick Out Every Light” has become the song I associate with the Brotherhood of Cerberus members – the evil group. I can picture them going to the pubs, doing shots, smashing windows and terrorizing others to this song.

As a writer, what is your greatest fear?

Failure is an obvious answer, but I think another fear I have had lately is that when I am working on book number two or three in the series, that I’ll have messed up a great plot line for myself in the first book after it has been released! Or, maybe it is the fear that once my book is released there is no ‘going back’ – no more changes, no more fixes, etc. It’s done!

What normally occupies your desk while writing? Silly question but mine is always littered with pop cans and post-it notes.

A Diet Pepsi, black and red pens, a laptop or my trusty paper notebook, and a print copy of the manuscript I am currently working on – for easy hard copy reference. I am pretty utilitarian! I have to put my cell phone and ipad away, otherwise they easily distract me.

Do you have any new projects that you are working on?

I am currently working on the next book in the VEILED VIRTUES series, and starting an outline for the third. I also have about 35 pages of a screenplay written, but that is going on the back burner for awhile.

What tip would you offer to a new writer who is just beginning their submission journey?

Once you have your final draft, create the perfect synopsis and query. These represent your manuscript and must grab the reader before they will even look at the first chapter of your work. Draft them and then recruit some friends and family to review the pieces and offer suggestions of what they want to see that would grab their attention. I feel a strong title is also key.

Please tell our readers where they can find you.
www.veiledvirtues.com and www.janfischerwade.com

You can follow me on Twitter @VeiledVirtues

Visit Jan at MuseItUp Publishing
http://museituppublishing.com/musepub/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=212&Itemid=82

4 Comments

NaPiBoWriWee - 7 Picture Books in 7 Days!

5/4/2011

2 Comments

To Write a Picture Book

This week finds me in the middle of a great challenge… NaPiBoWriWee! This is Paula Yoo’s challenge to write 7 picture books in 7 days. Some people may scoff and say, ‘how hard can that be?’

Sure, picture books are short. Picture books are simple. Picture books are fun. But, it’s not as easy as you think to write them. Picture books are tough because they have to be simple and yet so layered. ‘Every word is like a haiku poem – not one word can be wasted,’ as Paula shared with me in a personal note. To me it’s like dancing, you have to put your foot in the right place at the right time, or else the timing and flow is off. One misstep and you could end up on the floor on your face. But if you get your foot in the right place, at the right time, the book pirouettes and waltzes about you like the most beautiful of dances.

So far I've written two 'stinky' PB manuscripts and one that I'm pretty happy with. But the goal is to get the words down and refine, refine, refine. Ju

If you’re interested in the great PB challenge, visit Paula at http://paulayoo.com/napi/. Her blog is full of encouraging words, great information and wonderful author/illustrator interviews. Accolades to Paula for her tremendous venture!

Paula also opened my eyes to a couple of new software programs I am definitely going to have to check out. I’m pulling the following directly from Paula’s site… http://paulayoo.com/napi/?p=221...

COOL WRITING SOFTWARE PROGRAMS - - SCRIVENER: ttp://www.literatureandlatte.com/

I have a few writer pals who recently joined the Scrivener cult. They insist this writing software program is PERFECT for fiction writers.

I was curious, so I checked out their website. Here’s how they explain their program:

“Your Infinite Desk. The main interface features everything you need to organise, write, edit and locate the different parts of your text. On the left, the “binder” provides the main navigation tool, displaying everything in the project in an easy-to-organise hierarchy. You can now also maintain and view separate lists of documents here by creating Collections, which appear as tabs at the top of the binder. Search results can be saved as Collections, too, giving you quick access to your most frequent searches. To the right of the binder, the outliner presents selected portions of your structure in more detail, showing a synopsis of each document. The rows can be assigned label colours, helping you see related documents at a glance. The standard editor interface occupies the right side of the split. This rich text editor features many tools for writing, formatting, and annotating your work. The inspector on the right shows the selected document’s notes, along with its meta-data and synopsis index card. The inspector also houses a document’s keywords, reference links, snapshots and comments and footnotes. Finally, a PDF has been opened in the foreground using Scrivener 2.0’s QuickReference feature.”

In a nutshell, instead of creating a lot of separate folders to hold all your Word files, you can have everything in one document. You can store your research, your website links, your photos, your notes, sketches, etc. in a Scrivener document along with the actual manuscript and different versions of your manuscript (original draft, revisions etc.). Think of it like a giant Trapper Keeper binder. LOL! (That’s a Gen X reference. For those of you who do not know what a Trapper Keeper binder is, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_Keeper)

For more information on Scrivener and to download or test out an app, go here: SCRIVENER: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/

######

OMM WRITER: http://www.ommwriter.com/

OMM WRITER is a new software program that I found out about recently from my awesome website designer/creator Greg (he’s the genius behind paulayoo.com!).

Turns out OMM WRITER Is a very simple program. Basically, it just takes over your entire computer screen so all you see are these spare, wintry trees against a snowy zen landscape. (Or you can choose among other equally zen-like landscape backgrounds). You can’t check your email or surf the Internet or play Solitaire. All you can do is WRITE. It provides a simple text file so you can write undisturbed for as long as you want. They also have fun sounds you can choose for how your keyboard clicks sound (I like the little bell glass sounds) and a variety of ambient sounds and New Age type music (my favorites are the cello and piano tunes). The ambient sounds include things like a heartbeat in the womb and the sounds of turning the pages of a book in a library.

OMM WRITER’s website describes their software like this:

“A wise man once said “We are all at the mercy of our wild monkey minds. Incessantly swinging from branch to branch.” With multiple windows and applications all vying for our attention, we have sadly adapted our working habits to that of the computer and not the other way around.OmmWriter Dana is a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.OmmWriter is a simple text processor that firmly believes in making writing a pleasure once again, vindicating the close relationship between writer and paper. The more intimate the relation, the smoother the flow of inspiration.If you are a scriptwriter, blogger, journalist, copywriter, poet or just someone who enjoys writing, welcome back to concentrating.”

Cool, huh? I tried this program out and OMG. It totally worked. I was able to write 1000 words a day just using this program. I then would transfer the text into SCRIVENER. I use OMM WRITER for first drafts and SCRIVENER for the research, outlining, and revision process. I also started taking yoga (more on that in another post), so OMM WRITER is totally blissing me out, man! LOL!

For more info on OMM WRITER, go here: OMM WRITER: http://www.ommwriter.com/
*************************************************************************************************************

Thanks for stopping by and happy writing.
C.K. Volnek

2 Comments

Free On-Line Blog Conference offered through Muse It Up Publishiing

Trailer for Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island

Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island

Author Marva Dasef and 'Missing, Assumed Dead'

Introducing YA Author Jan Fischer Wade

NaPiBoWriWee - 7 Picture Books in 7 Days!

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