Musings of Two Creative Minds

Okay gang, I have a special treat for you all today.  My good friend and fabulous author Keira Kroft has agreed to talk to you all about building a fan base for your writing.   Now, a little about Keira before I unleash her on you all.   Keira carries a vet assistance degree; her love for animals is as great as her love of people. She gives a percentage of her personal book sale profits to the animal welfare league. Residing in a quiet suburb in the outskirts Chicago with her husband, she manages their comic book store fulltime, spending any spare time that she has working with her cats Scamper and Sawyer to achieve total world domination, one shared Twinkie at a time. Her passions include reading, writing, football, comic books and family.  And now, without further ado.  Here is Keira...  remember to take notes, there may be a quiz afterwards. Building a fan base... If you follow a few simple steps, you can be in paradise within day...

Yesterday, against my better judgement, I started writing a second book.  Now I'm still working on "The Ship" which is the sequel to my first novel "The Bridge".  But I was having troubles with "The Ship".  I was making progress, but it was so slow I was going crazy at times.  I would write over a 1000 words in one day and then dump about half of them because they weren't moving the plot along or really helping develop the characters as much.  I kept what did seem to be working and built on that the next day.  Sometimes this is one way of dealing with Writer's Block for me. Then yesterday, something else happened.  An idea for a different book that is part of my Para-Earth series started gelling like no one's business.  It had sat on the back-burner for so long now it was boiling over.  Scenes and characters started coming to life to such an extent I had only one of three options: A) Start writing the book B) Leave it alone and hope I ...

      I have another treat for you all today.  Allow me to introduce author and blogger, Brandy Nacole:  Why book covers are so important.           There’s this saying, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ but let’s face it, it happens.  When searching for a book the first thing someone is going to notice is the cover.  The cover can then draw that person into reading the synopsis.  If the synopsis and the cover draw the reader in, they could possibly buy it or put it on their to-be-read list.                              My own personal experience with a cover design came with Uniquely Unwelcome.  The first edition cover was a hand drawing of a girl looking up at an eagle.  While it was a nice drawing, it just wasn’t up to par with other Fantasy covers.  It became v...

This took me totally by surprise and I'm very flattered and honored.  I hadn't thought my blogging was having such an effect on people.  I want to thank Red and Flame at  http://firestone2012.wordpress.com/  for nominating me in the first place.    Now in accordance with the rules of the award I'm supposed to reveal 7 facts about myself so here goes. 1 - Was a foster child at the age of 8 months and adopted at the age of 4 years by the Krummenackers. 2 - I studied and performed magic illusions in my teens and still have a lot of my equipment and skills. 3 - I've been taking dance lessons (mostly in Ballroom and Improvisational Dance) since I turned 41. 4 - I played violin in grade school and a little guitar in high school. 5 - Studied to be a Physical Therapist back in 1982 only to drop out, I was getting too emotionally overwrought over the people I couldn't help. 6 - Went back to college 2 years ago and got my A. S. in Human Services 7 - M...