FINISHING

 A girl recognizes the motivating power 

of sibling rivalry

in a society that only values positive emotions. 

Can feeling jealous ever be a good thing?

Find out Yvonne's answer May 2nd

in the HERO LOST Anthology 

Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Hero-Lost-Mysteries-Death-Life/dp/1939844363

Amidst all the increased workload at work and trying to help market the IWSG Anthology, 

I have only finished SEVEN pages of my latest novel! 

As I think these things at my table at Meilori's, I hear gruff words above me: 

"Tarnation, Son!  Let me tell you about two hellions who wrote ...

to each other ... and to the world at large."

It is the ghost of Mark Twain:

"Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald

had a lot in common. They were both drunks ... let's not be PC about it, shall we?"

Mark wrinkled his moustache.

"They both had intense and complicated marriages. They were both deeply committed to their craft.

Most importantly, they were literary giants at a time when the Great American Novel was more than just a myth—it was a real possibility."

"I don't want to write the Great American Novel ...." I began.

Mark laughed, "Shoot for the moon, son.  Anyway, the two of them wrote to each other on how things were going for them."

The ghost of Hemingway sat down beside me, grumbling,

“Scott took LITERATURE so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.”

He lit up a cigar.  "You quit, kid, and I will kick your butt from here to Putin.  He loves you, don't you know?"

He shook his head. 

"I was a believer in self-discipline while Scott depended on his Muse ... and week long benders, scribbling frantically and pushing his lank blonde hair out of his eyes."

Hemingway snorted,

"Me?  I wrote like clock-work -- standing up at the typewriter, at the same time every day -- pushing through even the 'dry' days when the words came slowly."

He jabbed his cigar at me.  "In life, you are either a doer or a dreamer."

Hemingway gruffed, "You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless—

there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.”

Mark lit up his own cigar.  "Sometimes even Hemingway is right."

Lost Souls, Legends, and How to Crawl Out of the Darkness_HERO LOST ANTHOLOGY spotlight

Answers from Fellow HERO LOST author

Erika Beebe

“What makes a person a Lost Soul?”

Let me begin with a reference to one of my all-time favorite movies, Hancock.

There’s a defining scene when John Hancock is confessing his perception of himself 

to big-hearted human Ray at the dinner table.

John Hancock is a lost hero, an alcoholic and tends to try to save people from a deathly fate, 

but often makes the wrong choices

and ends up hurting the situation more than he helps. Back to his confession, 


it went something along these lines:

I woke up in a hospital room with no memory. 


No recollection of myself. 


And after weeks of posting coverage in the paper to anyone who might know the man, 


no one ever showed to claim me.

Hancock’s mind went into a downward spiral. 


During his confession he said something like:

What kind of selfish jerk must I have been 

to wake up alone, no memory, and no one ever coming to claim me? 

No family. Not even a friend.

Thoughts are powerful.

Most times we tell ourselves, 

I will always be unlucky, or unloved, or a selfish jerk who will never get it right. 

What kind of person almost kills his/her child? Or dog? Or spouse?

These types of questions haunt Lost Souls, even when these questions might be far from the truth.

So what happens next?

Lost Souls act in accordance with our mind.

We believe these thoughts whole-heartedly and act in such a way these twisted thoughts become our reality.

This is what I consider the Lost Soul thinking. It’s very real. Hancock is my favorite example.

“What makes a person a Legend?”

A Legend, in my humble opinion, is a value-based term.

 Some people may say famous baseball players Babe Ruth or George Brett are definite Legends.

Former Kansas City Chief’s football player Priest Holmes is one of my own sport’s favorite legends.

Others not of certain athletic ability might be Mother Theresa, Jane Goodall, Audrey Hepburn and most definitely Joan of Arc.

A Legend is not just skill based in my eyes.

A Legend is about heart and action and whether the internal value set

 aligns with the steps and actions taken to give hope to others, including animals, when none seems to be found.

“How do we find our Way back to Ourselves?”

Again, in my honest humble opinion, and as demonstrated in Hancock’s case,

sometimes it takes a firm set of hands on one’s shoulders, an eye to eye contact,

and some sort of rattling speech or action to switch the current thought patterns.

At this phase, a habit has formed, and yes, I am a huge advocate for the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

And back to the habit,

a new thought process must form in conjunction with aggressive and immediate action.

The mindset must be, “There’s no time like the present,” or, “There’s no turning back.”

How to reach me?

Blog: Cloud Nine Girl@erikabeebe.com

Facebook: Cloud Nine Girl and Erika Beebe Author

Twitter:@cloudninegirl1

Instagram: erikabeebe

Tumblr: cloudninegirl

WHEN LIFE HITS YOU HARD

Can Death die? 
Is Death capable of love? 

Can Death despair, condemning the world to a living hell?

Find out May 2nd

with the HERO LOST Anthology

Life as a rare blood courier is a harsh mistress.

How will I market this new anthology?  

How will each of you find the time to work on your dream?  

I don't have any certain answers, but I have reflections:

Those long days when I ran my bookstore, 

visited my mother as she lay dying, 

and walked back and forth to the mall and to the hospital because twice someone had put sugar in my gas tank ...

I still wrote. 

In fact those ______ who destroyed my cars improved my health with all the walking, 

gave me time to reflect on the dying of my mother & to come to grips with it, 

and allowed me the opportunity to put my thoughts into coherent order to write in my journal. 

I do not know what storms hammer at you this season ... 

I just know they are ... or they will soon.  

Life is like that.

You must ask yourself: 

WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?

A SUNSHINE SOUL

OR

ONE FOR ALL SEASONS?

Can you sacrifice who you are for who you will become?  

Can you do with 30 minutes less sleep a day to write one page of your novel?

Can you transform your lunch half-hour into one of sipping Instant Breakfast 

while plotting the page you will write tonight or tomorrow morning?

It's not about how hard you were hit but how hard you can be hit 

and still go forward.

Remember:

1.) PICK YOUR BATTLEGROUND

Choose where you can do the most good.  

You cannot do everything.  Help where it makes sense.  Be flexible.  Be adaptable.  

Pace yourself: running yourself into the ground will not help you or anyone else.


2.) PEOPLE SEE THROUGH THEIR OWN EYES

You are entitled to your boundaries.  

You have the right to say NO.  

You have the right to safeguard your own health or sanity.

Non-writers think we’re not working when we’re plotting or researching or studying how to write better.

 It’s up to you to defend your writing time as strongly as others defend their own pursuits.

Yes, you can be more flexible. 

But writing should stay on your calendar for all but the most critical days.


3.) INVEST IN THE PERSON WHO YOU WILL BECOME

Skill is only achieved by hours and hours and hours of honing your craft.  

If you are not making your life or someone else's better ... then you are wasting your time.

You're already in grief from your dream.  Keep on and get some reward for all that grief.

You want your dream?  Then, go on and get the hits, the disappointments that come with the package.


4.) THE HIT LIST

 Before sleeping, make a list of three important things you intend to accomplish the next day. 

If you’re in the midst of storm and trauma, 

break bigger projects down into tiny steps you know you’ll be able to complete in a day. 

 As the storm eases, you can work with bigger chunks again.


5.) WINNIE THE POOH DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

No one's life is all sunshine and rainbows.  

For most of us, the world is a mean, nasty place ... 

and life will knock you to your knees and keep you there and laugh as it kicks you ...

if you let it.

No one is ever going to hit you as hard as life. 

But it is not about how hard you are hit ... 

but how hard you CAN be hit and get back up and go forward, 

how much you can take and still stumble forward.

That's how you win, how you can stand tall, knowing you gave it your all.


6.) IT'S NOT THE TITLE THAT MAKES YOU

It is not the title AUTHOR or DOCTOR that makes you. It's not success that makes you.

It is your character that makes you.  Character defines success, defines fame, defines YOU.

And you sculpt your character with every resistance to obstacles you make, 

with every sleepless morning as you write, 

with all the early A.M. hours when you run dark streets ...

with doing something right each and every time you do it whether anyone is looking or not ... 

because you refuse to do shabby.


7.) IT'S YOUR DREAM

It's not someone else's.  

Do not expect help or support from someone who has their own dream.  

You must get up early, stay up late to make your dream come true ... no one else will do it for you.


8.) LIFE IS GOING TO SUCKER PUNCH YOU

Murphy was right.  Life is going to blind-side you when you least expect it.

It's all right to show pain, to even unleash a colorful metaphor or two, to suck air.

But those times are when the most growth occurs.  

You can let the tragedy destroy you or you can learn from it.

We all fall down in life.  The question is: who gets back up?

Please, choose to get back up and into the struggle, fighting smarter.

The companion to night is not darkness but light, for every night is followed by the dawn.



9.) YOUR MIND SET

It is not your circumstances or your situations that determine if you are going to be successful or not.

IT IS YOUR MIND SET.

It's the way you see your dream, your writing, how you feel it, how you nourish it.

Your mind is the battleground.  

But it is YOUR mind, sow the soil of it with truths that help not hinder you.

"I may give up one day ... 

BUT IT WILL NOT BE TODAY. 

 I'M GOING ALL IN, ALL THE WAY!  

I'M GOING TO MAKE THE REST OF MY LIFE THE BEST OF MY LIFE."


10.)  LEAN ON YOUR STRENGTHS


What are your personal strengths as a writer? 

Whatever they are, they’re your leverage for hard times.

 If dialogue is your strength, 

you may want to write dialogue for the next few chapters and come back later to fill in the rest of the details.

Or you might want to carry a journal and use spare moments 

to brainstorm character names and answer “What if?” questions to sketch in a story and its conflict.

AND DON'T FORGET TO REWARD YOURSELF EACH DAY YOU KEEP FIGHTING ...

if only an extra ten minutes of sleep the next day or a dessert you reserve for hard times.

Want to know how my own story in the HERO LOST ANTHOLOGY was born?

 https://lostheroanthology.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/why-myths-matter/

HOW BEING IN AN ANTHOLOGY CAN BE A GREAT MARKETING TOOL

It's a hard row to hoe these days for the Indie Author.

A way to get your work out there to be seen by a wider audience 

than your own book can afford is to be accepted into an anthology.

Anthologies collect smaller works and package them into a single volume.

 For fiction, these are collections of short stories sharing a common genre.

Your story will be seen by fans of your fellow authors. 

 And theirs will be seen by yours.

A blog has been started for the IWSG Anthology:   

https://lostheroanthology.wordpress.com/

I cannot claim an atom of credit. 

Renee Cheung has crafted much of it.  Give her a hand, will you?  Better yet, pay the site a visit.

But remember it is a work in progress.  

Roam around and get to know us and our stories.

Yesterday was the cover reveal for most of us 

 Sarah Foster | Hero Lost Cover Reveal!! 
Jen Chandler | Drum Roll Please
L. Diane Wolfe | Hero Lost: Mysteries of Death and Life & The Remnant Book Tour 
Alex J Cavanaugh | Hero Lost Anthology & More
Erika Beebe  | https://erikabeebe.com/
Renee Cheung | The IWSG Anthology Cover Reveal
Yvonne Ventresca | Cover Reveal for Hero Lost 

And Ellen Jacobson who thought of this idea for the roll call of links:
 http://thecynicalsailor.blogspot.com/

(the ghost of Mark Twain is still chuckling over the hot water I landed myself in -- he says it will help keep my reputation clean!)

Cover Reveals are fine but are becoming overdone, don't you think? 

What we anthologists (I made up that name myself though Mark Twain claims credit for it) need

are NEW, ENGAGING, and ENTERTAINING ways 

to get the attention of the larger world of the internet beyond the ghetto of Author Blogs.

Of course like a typical male, I haven't a clue!

Which is why I am writing this post to do what most males hate to do:

Ask for directions!

Can any of you, my friends out there, think of a fun method in which 

my fellow anthologists and I can garner attention for the IWSG ANTHOLOGY?

L. Diane Wolfe is footing the bill for this book, 

so the least we anthologists can do is pull our weight or at least ask for help in tugging the darn rope!

All the old methods are becoming frayed. 

When tugging on ropes stopped helping in the past, the pulley was invented.

What we anthologists need right now is for you to come up with that pulley.

So if any of you out there can think of something, 

write in the comments or in the comments at the IWSG Anthology Blog.

If nothing else, 

please tell all of your friends who like fantasy that a great new fantasy anthology is coming out.

Thanks in advance, Roland

Don't You Hate Cover Reveals? IWSG Anthology Cover Reveal

There is an almost audible groan heard across the internet when you look down your blog list 

and see a dozen cover reveals of the same book.

Sure, you're happy to see your friend(s) have a new book out.

But you fear you will see the same blurb, same hype over and over again.

Not here.

Come the first week of May and this great anthology will be published.  Yay!!

I am so honored and proud to be chosen to stand beside such fantastic authors.  

L. Diane Wolfe is a champion for doing this for Alex and the rest of us.

I am in a company of heroes with our publisher, L. Diane Wolfe and my fellow authors: 

Jen Chandler, L. Nahay, Renee Chung, Elizabeth Seckman, Olga Godim, 

Yvonne Ventresca, Ellen Jacobson, Sean McLachlan, Erica Beebe, Tyrean Martinson, and Sarah Foster.

\

I am very lucky to be under the cover of any anthology, 

much less one filled with such great stories and published by an innovative publisher like Diane Wolfe.

HERO LOST

Have we not all felt lost, from what we once trusted, from the truths we once believed, from ourselves?

Only the lost have the chance to find their way.

As long as you are sure you know the path, you will never find a better road, 

a better destination than you have ever known.

HERO LOST is an anthology of heroes who have lost their way ...

You will meet them as they stand at the crossroads where paths diverge ...

One path will lead to further damnation, the other to a chance at redemption.

Buy this anthology and find yourself immersed in the crucible of their moment of decision.

You won't be disappointed.

Hemingway said, “as you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”

It made me question who my heroes were and what makes a hero today.

Who were your heroes as a child?  Who are they now?

Here are a few of my fellow cohorts, ah, I mean fellow writers:

Sarah Foster | Hero Lost Cover Reveal!! 
Jen Chandler | Drum Roll Please
L. Diane Wolfe | Hero Lost: Mysteries of Death and Life & The Remnant Book Tour 
Alex J Cavanaugh | Hero Lost Anthology & More
Erika Beebe  | https://erikabeebe.com/
Renee Cheung | The IWSG Anthology Cover Reveal
Yvonne Ventresca | Cover Reveal for Hero Lost 

And Ellen Jacobson who thought of this idea for the roll call of links:
 http://thecynicalsailor.blogspot.com/

ABOUT THOSE IWSG ANTHOLOGY QUESTIONS

Earlier I wrote of Olga Godim's great idea 

of asking the main character of our included story 5 questions.


 Some of my fellow anthologists 

(sounds like we are associates of Indiana Jones, doesn't it?)


have voiced concern on just how to do that with their ominous protagonist.


Once I was hood-winked 

(ah, I mean asked) 

to do the same in a blog-hop concerning my then recent novel)


This is how I asked the given questions to my cursed hero, owner of the haunted jazz club, Meilori's.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YTMNRG
 
Vivian Hightower wiggled without moving as she sat across the table from me. 

She was sure of her sex appeal. 

She shouldn't have been.

I was married to an Empress, of whose beauty sonnets had been written by Shakespeare and Keats.

"Captain McCord, I'm surprised you are agreeing to this taped interview. My last one destroyed the career of your policewoman friend."

She cleared her throat at my silence, turning on her tape recorder. 

"They say your jazz club, Meilori's, is haunted."

Vivian narrowed her diamond eyes. "You aren't speaking."

I looked at her from under the wide brim of my Stetson. 

That I had not taken it off when she sat down should have been a warning.

"You haven't asked any questions, Miss Hightower."

"Oh, in that case: What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this, or is it a secret?"

I smiled like the last wolf I was often called.

"Now, my hunch on that might be dead-on, Miss, or it might be full of worms. But Mama McCord didn't raise any sons dippy enough to tell it to a vicious reporter ... on tape."

"Be that way. What do people believe about you that is false?"

"That I am a hero. In all the ways that count, I am a monster."

She wet her lips. "Wh-What would your best friend say is your f-fatal flaw?"

"Father Renfield believes me not believing in God anymore is that. Coming from a vampire priest that is saying something."

Vivian snoted at the word 'vampire.' "What would Father Renfield say is your one redeeming quality?"

I smiled sadly. 

"That while I say I'm agnostic, I act as if I still believed ... which means to him that deep down I still believe, for what we do, we believe."

She outright sneered at that. "What do you want most? And what will you do to get it?"

I bled a sigh. 

"Not a what but a who, Miss Hightower. My wife. And I will do nothing to get her back. Love forced is no love at all. On either side."

She turned off the tape recorder, and I asked her a question.

"When I said that you could come to my table, did I ever say anything about you leaving it alive?"

I tore off my right glove that kept my cursed palm from touching innocent flesh. 

I reached out and grabbed her satin throat tight. She slowly withered before my eyes.


The plus side to that was that she would destroy no more innocents.  

The down side was the flood of her vicious, joyful memories of those cruelties.

"I am a monster, Miss Hightower, in all the ways that count. But I only kill other monsters."

***

If you want to see what McCord looks like: