Guest Post: How I became an Author by Sheldon Greene

Please welcome, Sheldon Greene, the author of After the Parch to the blog!

How I became an author

Probably the first factor was an early love of reading. It stimulated my imagination, helped it to flower. I developed the capacity to look into sites and visualize what was going on behind the window. I saw people and imagined their motivation, their back story.

 I was never one to escape into my own private fantasy world. Rather I suppose that the novelist in me needed to create an external world of my own, one that was public, for others to see and experience. Over a period of time it became a habit, an onanistic form of gratification. It was also an exercise in problem solving, a way of sorting out and making order out of the complexities of life.

Writing was never an obsession, just something that I do, much like eating when I'm hungry. I read about some event and it triggers a story in my mind. A few years later it's a manuscript and the characters are compressed on the pages looking for an audience, a chance to inhabit a reader's imagination. I do it because it's cathartic and in the end pleasurable. And it's a form of orderly, enduring communication, one that transcends my finite life.

-Sheldon Greene

About the Author

Sheldon Greene has been called "a born storyteller" by the Los Angeles Times for his book Lost and Found (Random House). This is his fifth novel. "I felt the need to describe our country as what it might become if we continue on the current trajectory." He is a lawyer and an executive in a wind energy development company, and has a background of high impact public interest litigation in health care, labor law, land policy, and immigration. He also sings in the Oakland Symphony Chorus and serves on several boards. 

Thanks for sharing your story with us, Sheldon! 

Author Q&A with Sheldon Greene

Please welcome Sheldon Greene, author of After The Parch to the blog!

 It's 2075. California is nothing like we know it. The USA has broken up and California has become an independent refuge dominated by a single omnipotent corporation. Eighteen-year-old Bran, a shepherd, is given a mission to traverse the California republic in ten days, in order to save his rural community from forfeiting its land. On the way, he teams up with a seventeen-year-old girl who has the skills and prowess of a warrior, an eleven-year-old wild boy with uncanny survival skills, and a wandering musician with a secret revolutionary agenda. After the Parch is a fast-paced, vivid, dystopian fantasy with a chilling resemblance to the way we are, and a vision of what we might become. It's a well-crafted story and the plot flows naturally from one crisis to another, with three-dimensional characters right up to the taut and positive climax.

About the Author

Sheldon Greene has been called "a born storyteller" by the Los Angeles Times for his book Lost and Found (Random House). This is his fifth novel. "I felt the need to describe our country as what it might become if we continue on the current trajectory." He is a lawyer and an executive in a wind energy development company, and has a background of high impact public interest litigation in health care, labor law, land policy, and immigration. He also sings in the Oakland Symphony Chorus and serves on several boards.

Author Interview


1. Tell us something about yourself.

I am an executive in Oak Creek Energy, a wind energy development company, and serve on two other boards, Great Lakes Energy Institute, and Berkeley Art Center. As a lawyer I have a background of high impact public interest litigation in health care, labor law, land policy, and immigration. I have published five critically acclaimed novels, Lost and Found, (Random House), Burnt Umber (Leap Frog) Prodigal Sons (Book Surge), Pursuit of Happiness (Create Space) and now, After the Parch. (Strategic Publishing).

2. What can you say about your latest novel, After the Parch?

It’s the only one that is set in the future, 2075, in California Republic, after the break-up of the United States and after a long drought. The novel is much simpler than the others. It’s linear, and takes place over just ten days. A shepherd, think of Candide, must travel the length of California to save his rural commune. On the way he encounters, a tricky magician, a runaway girl, a wild boy, and an itinerant musician with a secret agenda. He learns something about reliance on strangers and trust.

5. How do you develop your novels?

I start with an idea, maybe the seed of a story, and let it grow. For example the idea for, Burnt Umber came from noticing a sculpture in an Italian Restaurant. When I have a story, I expand it into an outline, develop bios of characters, and do a lot of research related to time and place. Then I start to write and let the characters interact and engage. It’s kind of mystical given that once the characters are alive in my head they do much of the work. They sometimes even take unpredictable turns. The settings, landscapes, interiors, incidental characters simply appear all out of the imagination. Then when the work is done, I revise and revise again until I am satisfied with it.

6. What do you like and don’t like about the process?

I enjoy the conceptualization, and the writing. I find revision tedious, but necessary. And I hate punctuation.

7. How long does it take?

Years.

8. Do you have a routine?

No. I write when the spirit moves me and stop when I feel that I’ve done enough or have nothing more to get on paper.

9. Is there anything unusual about writing fiction, from your standpoint?

Yes. The process of characters, events, places, blossoming in the imagination. Sometimes it feels as if they are coming from somewhere else. But of course it’s my imagination wandering the pathways of my brain.

Win The Rings Virtual Book Tour + Author Interview

Hello! Welcome to my stop of the Win The Rings Virtual Book tour. Scroll down to see an excerpt of Win The Rings, an author interview, and then comment.  One randomly chosen commenter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card. Good luck! :)

Jace has been the property of the U.S. Army since they found out about her when she was five, and now she has become one of its most valuable weapons. But Jace is not the only one of her kind. Gray is one too, but with the help of his sister, he has spent most of his sixteen years hiding from the Army.

Now, the Army has found out about Gray and they cannot allow him to roam free. Operating on the theory that it takes one to catch one, Jace is send out with a special ops squad to hunt Gray down. But Jace is not the only one pursuing Gray, and the competition is after her too. What ensues is a desperate chase through city after city as duty and honor collide with love and sacrifice.

Amazon * Goodreads*  Video Trailer

Excerpt:

Chapter 7

Jace

I’m standing outside the boy’s lounge, out of sight, waiting for Max to signal to me. The dorms conveniently have two TV lounges, which long ago were apportioned one to the girls and one to the boys. Management allows us access to televisions, and all of us have requisitioned one for our rooms, but the channels are restricted—we only get ten. The reason for this, we think, is that ten channels are all management is capable of monitoring. We know they monitor the feeds because occasionally a particular channel will go dark for an hour, or maybe thirty seconds in the case of a commercial management finds offensive. Still, what TV we get is enough to give us a treasured window onto the outside world.

The TV lounges have rules. The boys—that would be Max—makes the rules for their lounge, and the girls—that would be me—make the rules for our lounge. One rule we have in common is that guys and girls can’t enter the other lounge without an invitation. The boys haven’t invited me into their lounge in years, not since Adelee and I led a group of girls on a surprise strike on their lounge one night, taking down a dozen or so of them. Hey, we had to do it; they hit us first and had it coming. Adelee was eighteen at the time, and little twelve-year-old me was her prodigy—God, she was tough as nails. She graduated a while back and I officially took over leadership of the girls, much to the carping and objections of some of the older girls.

I’m here with Carmen and Nessie, who are the closest thing I have to friends. Carmen and I have our issues, but she’s as protective of the girls as I am, so in dealing with the boys she always has my back. She’s a slender Asian girl with long, silky black hair that hangs almost to her waist, but her petite body is deceptive. She’s almost as fast as I am and totally lethal. Nessie, on the other hand, is a pouty little flirt whom I tolerate only because she’s Carmen’s lieutenant, and she fights hard.

I hear a cacophony of voices around the corner in the lounge along with some raucous laughter. Then I hear Max’s voice.

“Okay, settle down,” Max says. “Let’s get down to business.”

“You sure we can trust Max?” Carmen whispers to me.

“He’s a dirtbag,” Nessie snarls.

“Relax,” I say. “Let’s give him a chance.” In the back of my mind, a small voice tells me they’re right and that I’m an idiot to trust him, but I squelch it and stay put.

“We’ve got a special visitor tonight,” Max says to a now-quiet crowd. “She has safe passage. Anybody tries anything, you’ll wish you were dead.” More silence. “Jace, come in.”

I turn the corner and enter the lounge filled with boys sitting on couches, recliners and the floor, all with hatred in their eyes when they see me. Carmen and Nessie follow a step behind, one on either side of me. Immediately, a wave of hisses and boos erupt, and someone lobs handfuls of popcorn at me, until Max rushes over and kicks the bowl out of the guy’s arms sending an explosion of the white stuff into the air.

“Behave,” Max thunders.

The room goes silent again.

“I’m here to listen,” I say to the room full of hostile eyes. “So, let’s talk.”

Viraj Smith immediately shoots to his feet. His last name isn’t really Smith. I don’t know what it is. All of us are given new surnames when we arrive here, as if to reinforce the point that the old us is dead and cremated. Viraj is one of the brainiacs here—so nerdy and geeky that just the sight of him makes me struggle not to laugh. But, next to Max, he’s the best fighter among the guys, so I respect him for that.

“Jace, you can’t lock us out of the pool every time the girls want to swim,” Viraj says, his voice tense with anger.

“Yeah, Mason wants to see Brittany in her bikini,” someone shouts.

Author Q&A with Ben Langdon + Giveaway

Please welcome Ben Langdon, author of The Miranda Contract to the blog!

Supervillain. Pop Star.Sometimes the life we're given isn't the life we'd choose for ourselves.
For the past five years, Dan Galkin has been lying to everyone about just how ordinary he is. But Dan's the grandson of The Mad Russian: one of the world's most powerful, and insane, supervillains. And Dan has powers too. He's a living battery, able to absorb and discharge electricity with his mind. Normally he keeps his powers hidden, but when the old man returns with an offer to make his grandson heir apparent, any chance at an ordinary life is blown apart.
Miranda Brody thought she wanted to be a pop star, but now she's got the international profile and the entourage, she doesn't recognize the Miranda she has become. After getting caught up in the cross-fire between Dan and his grandfather, Miranda realizes there's more to life than being famous. Staying alive, for example, becomes a high priority. And not falling in love with the pizza boy comes a close second. Labeled by society, trapped by expectation. Dan and Miranda might actually be able to change everything. As long as they don't kill each other first.

About the Author

 Ben Langdon is from Portland, Victoria, and when he's not writing, he teaches English and literature at the local high school, raises three children who are his favorite heroes-in-training, and enjoys reading. He mostly writes speculative fiction, particularly in the superhero or neo-pulp genres, but he also turns his hands to literary and mainstream short stories. Writing is a big part of his life, and one that he really enjoys. As well as writing fiction, he has also been a freelance columnist for The Age newspaper and the editor and publisher for This Mutant Life, a ‘zine for superhero fiction.

Author Interview

1. How did you know you wanted to start writing novels?

I've always loved writing but never really thought I'd actually write a full-length, real-life novel mostly because I never seemed to have the time. There was school, the university, the work, then family… it was always a matter of "Just wait a few more years." The thing that changed my whole perspective on writing, that made me really commit to writing a novel, was NaNoWriMo. A couple of people at work agreed to do the 'Novel in a Month' and it was this community of writers struggling against deadlines, chatting about writing and actually understanding the process that gave me 'permission' to actually writ a 50,000 draft. The next year I signed up with the Victorian Writers' Centre in Melbourne and I enrolled in a writers' workshop with author and publisher, Paul Collins. The writers I met there are still my close-writing friends and their support and feedback helped me get The Miranda Contract into reality.