Melanie Hooyenga - FIVE THINGS LEARNED

Author Melanie (Swiftney) Hooyenga talks about

Five Things Learned Writing Her Trilogy

FLICKER, FRACTURE and FADED

and Her Writing Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've learned a lot about myself as a writer since I wrote my first novel eight years ago.

 

1. I Can't Force Words.

 

But I can insist very strongly that I write at least 100 words. While writing my first novel, I was part of an online group that had to write 100 words a day. 100 words is nothing. It's a paragraph. You can write it in five minutes. Coming up with an excuse for why I can't write for FIVE minutes was nearly impossible, so I would sit my butt down and write. More times than not I wrote more, but even that minimum word count keeps the story moving forward.

 

2. I Can't Force a Long Writing Session.

 

I've participated in NaNoWriMo three times (talk about forcing words!) and it's taught me that a) I can write 1000 words in 45 minutes when I'm on a roll but it's rare for me to write more than that. On days when it's not coming easily, I've learned to recognize when my body and mind can't handle sitting in front of the computer any longer. When I first started writing I'd force myself to sit there for another hour, but all that happened is I'd end my writing session feeling discouraged—no matter how much I wrote. Now I stop when I'm feeling antsy.

 

3. First Person Present Tense CAN Work.

 

And it's what I love to write. The first two novels I wrote were third person past tense and while it worked, it didn't ROCK. For me, being RIGHT INSIDE my character's head is where I prefer to be.

 

4. Seeing Your Manuscript Turn Into a Book is AMAZING.

 

If you're a writer, I don't need to tell you this, but seeing your book in published form is awesome. Finishing a first draft is a huge accomplishment, then editing, editing, editing.... so when you finally get to that point where others can BUY it, it's like a dream come true. But by the time it's published you're already writing the next one, so that awesomeness continues. It's like a book-bliss cycle!

 

5. The Writing Community Makes It All Worthwhile.

 

Writing is a solitary endeavor, but you can't write in a bubble. When I first started out, I joined Absolute Write and in between learning about the publishing industry and writing in general, I met the people who are my best friends today. Some people have supportive friends and family in their everyday lives, but not all writers are that lucky. Having a community—even if you rarely or never see each other in person—is crucial. Besides, who else will tell the world about your book?

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melanie Hooyenga is the author of the YA trilogy, the Flicker Effect, about a teen who uses sunlight to travel back to yesterday. When not at her day job as a writer/graphic designer, you can find her wrangling her 6-year old Miniature Schnauzer Owen and playing every sport imaginable with her husband Jeremy.

 

 

 

 

SOCIAL MEDIA

melaniehooyenga@gmail.com
http://www.melaniehoo.com
https://www.facebook.com/MelanieHooyenga
https://twitter.com/MelanieHoo
https://instagram.com/melaniehoo/

 

 

ABOUT HER BOOKS

FLICKER

Biz is a perfectly normal teenager except for one minor detail: she uses sunlight to jump back to yesterday. She takes advantage of flickering by retaking Trig tests, fixing fights with her boyfriend (or reliving the making up), and repeating pretty much anything that could be done better. Trouble is, flickering makes her head explode from the inside. Or feel like it anyway.

 

No one knows about her freakish ability and she’s content to keep it that way. Guys don't stick around because she refuses to let them in, but all that changes when Cameron, her best friend, starts looking oh-so-yummy. Suddenly she's noticing his biceps, his smile, and the cute way his eyes crinkle when he—gah! This is her friend!

 

But the butterflies come to a screeching halt when little girls start disappearing, then take a nosedive when the police link the kidnappings to Cameron's sister, who vanished years earlier. As the police grasp for clues, Biz photographs a strange man lurking in the shadows and realizes that her flickering can help more than just herself.

 

 

FRACTURE

When seventeen-year old Biz wakes up from surgery after helping catch a kidnapper, she thinks she’s lost her ability to flicker—travel back in time eighteen hours—but she soon discovers her ability is stronger than ever. And so are the mind-blowing headaches.

 

But flickering isn’t the only thing giving Biz headaches. Her newly shaved head brings out the bullies, her boyfriend Cameron is getting a little too chummy with a girl from the kidnap support group, and Cameron’s formerly kidnapped sister is having some serious adjustment issues.

 

When her dad’s health takes a turn for the worse, she turns to her neurosurgeon who operated on her. If she tells him the truth, he could figure out why she and her dad flicker and save her before her entire world—and her own health—crumbles. But can Biz trust him with her secret?

 

FADED

Biz didn’t think life could get worse after the tragic events that surrounded her last flicker, but when she accidentally flickers on her eighteenth birthday after doing shots of vodka—she’s forced to face the consequences of her actions in a way she never imagined.

 

When an anonymous email threatens to reveal her secret, Biz must decide if flickering is all it’s cracked up to be, or if she needs to stop. Forever.

Aaron Rocheleau KAJA STAR - Five Things Learned Writing

Aaron Rocheleau discusses

five things learned writing

 

KAJA STAR

No Place Like Home

 

 

 

On the day Titus Markava plans to propose, he is horrified to discover that the love of his life is actually a shape-shifting alien man.  Before he can recover from the unfortunate news, he is quite literally thrown from Earth onto a completely different world in a completely different solar system.

 

It is a world where a person might conduct himself almost as well as he conducts electricity.  It is a world on the brink of an interplanetary conflict.  It is a world of dinosoids, insectavores, and even a cyborg or two.  It is a world with CNN… just not quite the same CNN we’re used to.

 

Yet even though it is a world where entire planets can be traversed instantly by portals called gates, Titus can’t find even one to take him back home.

 

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1. If you have a good idea, use it sooner rather than later.  As I was writing Kaja Star I would get a great idea and write it down to use later in the story, but I get kept getting ideas faster than I was putting them into the book.  It made more sense to put say, all thirty awesome things into the book rather than use only two of them in between filler and not have room for any more.

2. Network. The old saying, ‘It’s not what you know, but who you know’ is true.  I knew I needed an editor, but I didn’t know who to work with.  I asked a fellow author for some help and he recommended some awesome editors I would have never found if I hadn’t asked.

3. Marketing is hard work.  Down below you’re going to run into links for my website and social media stuff.  You’ll see that I write things, develop new illustrations, and sometimes I even interview chickens on Youtube.  The point is that all this stuff takes up time that I could be using to finish my next book.  People are fickle.  If I don’t give them something to remember me by then they’re going to go back to doing something other than getting my book to read.

4. You can’t please everybody.  You are selling a product that you want as many people to buy and enjoy as possible, but not everybody is the same.  Some people will never buy your book.  Don’t take it personally.

5. Fight choreography is fun to watch, not fun to read.  I put way too much detail into fight scenes at first.  I didn’t want them to feel anti-climactic yet when I would go back and read them later, I immediately become lost and bored.  Some things are just more exciting on the big screen.  Tightening the action description made the parts more exciting.

 

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About the Author
Aaron Rocheleau lives in West Michigan with his family.  He writes stories, because exciting adventures are way more fun than call centers and insurance.  His stories are fast paced and fun (gotta be able to compete with those newfangled video games, and movies).  When he's not writing, he's taking swims in Lake Michigan, playing those newfangled video games, and geocaching, which is like treasure hunting, only safer. His house is perpetually surrounded by free range attack chickens that viciously consume everything in their path. Chickens are nature’s zombies.

 

Social Media:

Website: www.spazsticstories.com
Facebook 

Youtube Channel 

Twitter @ SpazsticAaron

 

Book Links:

Amazon

B&N

iBooks

Smashwords

 

 

What people are saying about KAJA STAR

 

"A new, unique tale with action, comedy and drama. One could make the comparisons to Star Wars and Avatar: The Last Airbender, but this is one hundred percent unique."

 

"If you are a SciFi fanatic, a teenager at home with nothing to do, or even an older person at work (when on break or nothing else to do of course), I would recommend this book to you."

 

"...found this book very imaginative with lots of action and great descriptions of the characters and surroundings."

 

 

 

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