Month: June 2014

What Indies Unlimited Did for Me

Morgan Winters Author PhotoGuest Post
by Morgan Winters

My name’s Morgan, and I’m an author. I feel kind of like I’m at Authors Anonymous, confessing my deepest secrets. I’ve kept my writing hidden for a very long time because I write incredibly dark and disturbing stuff. In fact, it’s so warped, I can’t even discuss it here on this Safe-for-Work platform. It’s better that way, anyway.

I’d started a half dozen or so projects, finishing none of them. That’s probably not a lot compared to most of the authors who frequent IU. But for me – the “nice guy” – it was a lot, and it was frustrating. I couldn’t complete them; I knew that once I did, I’d have to publish them. And then – then, I’d get “the looks.” You know the ones I mean… OMG, did he really write that? He must be sick! What a creep! I hope they fire him. I don’t want to work with someone that disturbed. Yeah, those.

No one expects that kind of dark stuff from me, you know? I have no idea where it comes from. Sometimes I wonder if I am indeed disturbed. But I have no urges to kill or torture anyone. No urges. Thoughts, sure, we all have those, don’t we? And usually in the boss’s office. But I digress.

Speaking of bosses, I need my job. I enjoy a roof over my head and food in my stomach. But I also have stories that need to get out of my head. Trading sanity for comfort? I figured there had to be a better way. Continue reading “What Indies Unlimited Did for Me”

Words are Words

Words are wordsI claim not to be a writer, but while thinking about what I wanted to say in this post realized that I’ve been stringing words together for mass consumption by the public since 2001. The vast majority of those words have been reviews of one kind or another. That first gig was reviewing music for a website that specialized in what is now called Americana. (For those not familiar with this term imagine a Venn diagram that includes many subgenres of country, bluegrass, a sliver of folk music, “roots” rock, and everything in the cracks between.)

Just like some book genres are more character based while others are more plot based, different musical genres focus more on the musical parts of a song while with others, the lyrics matter most. Americana is squarely in the focus on the words camp. The top reviewers at the site I was associated with paid a lot of attention to lyrics, often looking for the same things your Literature teacher pointed at while studying the classics. Is there symbolism, a subtext, or a “moral to the story”? Is a point being made that isn’t obvious or possibly even at odds with the surface message. (Think Springsteen’s Born in the USA for that last one.) Continue reading “Words are Words”

Your Platform or Mine?

Platform diving is like platform building.
Platform diving is like platform building.

Today is June first, a strategic date that marks the halfway point of the 2014 marketing plan I wrote six months ago. It took me a few minutes to find it under the scattered Post-it notes that clutter my desk. It is dusty. The ambitious plan is hand-written in a spiral bound journal that also contains my passwords for all the Internet sites I frequent. I give it a cursory look—and note those items I’ve actually accomplished. My critical nature zeroes in on the goals not achieved, and I’m annoyed with myself. Rather than toss the plan aside and start from scratch, I decide to give myself a break and review it without judgment. Success is not linear, a borrowed quote I use often. Have I accomplished any of the most important goals I established in a blissful haze of naïve optimism? Continue reading “Your Platform or Mine?”

Featured Book, The Briton and the Dane: Timeline

TimelineThe Briton and the Dane: Timeline
by Mary Ann Bernal
Genres: romance, historical fiction
Available from Amazon.

A beautiful archeologist besotted with an Anglo-Saxon nobleman is transported back to eleventh century England where treachery abounds. She is determined to learn the identities of the treacherous blackguards hiding in the shadows, but will she walk away or intervene, thereby changing the course of history to save the man she loves?