Minding the store



Image by David Shankbone, courtesty Wikipedia Commons, used under
Creative Commons licence.



Hello. My name is Scott Bury and I’ll be your editor for the next two months.

As you read in the last post, Siggy is taking a sabbatical over the summer, going to Europe (lucky!) to visit family and finish her next book. And while she could have handled WGT from Europe (or the International Space Station or anywhere else with an Internet connection), she knew she needed a break from her routine.

So, I volunteered to step into the breach.

All for the art’s sake. 

How I’ll spend the summer

As the interim editor, naturally I plan to continue the pattern Siggy established in 2011: publishing the words of writers about the topics they want to write about. As it says on the “Become part of the Get-Together” page, we encourage you to contribute posts on any topic under the sun.

Over the past year and a half, a lot of writers (myself included) have written about the act and the art of writing, itself. A few have contributed poetry or excerpts from novels. Some have written about social issues, others about personal tragedies and triumphs, and still others have contributed recipes. (Is anyone else hungry?)

I want to continue this variety.

But first, who am I?

Some of you may have read my words on this or other blogs already. My own blog is Written Words, which focuses on writing and publishing, but also covers politics, society and communications technology.

I have contributed three or four posts to WGT over the past year and a half, too: some writing tips and the occasional diatribe about the failings of the commercial publishing industry. I am the author of two books now available from various e-tailers: The Bones of the Earth (a historical fantasy) and One Shade of Red (an erotic romantic comedy spoof).

And I’m a journalist and editor, too. You can find links to all this stuff on my blog, if you like.

Let's talk about you.

Enough about me. Now, let’s focus on how you fit into this picture.

WGT has always published the broadest possible range of perspectives, ideas and subjects. Publishing is not the same as it was, and WGT is a chance for writers to shake up the publishing world and the blogosphere!

At the same time, writing about the topics you’re most interested in for WGT will expose your work to a new, growing and exciting audience.

What we want

While the topic can be almost anything (nothing defamatory, libellous or obscene, but scandalous is okay — we’ll let you know if you’ve somehow gone beyond our boundaries), we do have some criteria.

• Your writing must be of professional quality, showing good structure, organization, grammar, spelling, punctuation and diction.
• Contributions should be no more than 800 words.
• Your submission must include
• a brief biographical note about you ("The Frankestein Monster was assembled by a madman in Transylvania, and currently lives somewhere in the Arctic Ocean with sled dogs and a frozen corpse. He is the author of seven books of rambling drivel, including The DaVinci Code.")
• links to your own blog, website, author page or somewhere we can see your other work
• links to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or other social media sites
•  a picture of you in .jpg format
• an illustration for the piece, itself, also in .jpg.

Email your contributions as attachments to me, scott.bury@iauthorsi.org.

I’m looking forward to reading your work.

This is going to be a fun summer!

Scott Bury

TTC Virtual Blog Tour

As a member of MasterKoda and the Virtual Blog Tour they kicked off yesterday, I'm hosting my first guest today: Tara Chevrestt aka Sonia Hightower (Siggy Buckley)
 

What inspired me to write? Well, I've always loved writing. My favorite assignments in school were always book reports (I think this funny now as I review books constantly!) and essays. So I loved writing even way back then. But I didn't finally sit down and write a novel until I hit thirty. How it came about is pretty cool.

My husband and I were on vacation in South Dakota. I wanted to tour this lovely Victorian house in Deadwood, but we only had a few hours left to hit the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum. The next day, we were driving home to Utah. Well the house wouldn't let us just tour it on our own. My husband got in a funk. "I want to visit the motorcycle museum!" I finally acquiesced though pouted all the way and watched that lovely Victorian house disappear in our rear view mirror.

Funny how life works out. While my husband was drooling over bikes, I walked around the museum in a state of semi boredom. I love bikes, but I don't need to read every bit of detail about them or their engines. Well, I came across the women's section and there was a poster board type thing about Augusta and Adelina Van Buren, two sisters who rode their motorbikes across the United States in 1916 in hopes of proving they could be motorcycle dispatch riders.

Being a fan of historical fiction and wanting to know more, I told my husband, "Soon as we leave here, I'm gonna check Amazon and see if someone's wrote a historical novel about these chicks." (I don't like biographies. They put me to sleep.)

I couldn't find a novel about or based on them anywhere....so I wrote one myself.

Ride for Rights was released in February.

In the summer of 1916 women do not have the right to vote, let alone be motorcycle dispatch riders. Two sisters, Angeline and Adelaide Hanson are determined to prove to the world that not only are women capable of riding motorbikes, but they can ride motorbikes across the United States. Alone.

From a dance hall in Chicago to a jail cell in Dodge City, love and trouble both follow Angeline and Adelaide on the dirt roads across the United States. The sisters shout their triumph from Pike’s Peak only to end up lost in the Salt Lake desert.

Will they make it to their goal of Los Angeles or will too many mishaps prevent them from reaching their destination and thus, hinder their desire to prove that women can do it?

It's available on MuseItUp Publishing, Amazon, and Smashwords in ebook format.

Tara Chevrestt is a deaf woman, former aviation mechanic, writer, and an editor.  She is most passionate about planes, motorcycles, dogs, and above all, reading. That led to her love of writing.  Between her writing and her editing, which allow her to be home with her little canine kids, she believes she has the greatest job in the world. She is also very happily married.

She also writes as Sonia Hightower.  Sonia writes the racy stuff and argues that she was here first. She just wasn't allowed to be unleashed until the last year.

While Tara and Sonia continue to fight over the laptop and debate who writes the next book, you can find buy links, blurbs, and other fun bits on their website: http://tarachevrestt.weebly.com/index.html or their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tara-Chevrestt-Sonia-Hightower/218383211513877.