Blog Post
Non-Copyright © April 2013 by Arlene Webb
No rights reserved. Any part of this may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing. The characters and events portrayed in this post are not fictional. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead or not sure, is intended with much gratitude and they’ll know who they are.
Cover Art © 2011 by Greg Elsborg
(Son of renown author, Barbara Elsborg)
June, 2006 was a fantastic month. That’s when someone on Critters (another writer site) told me, Arlene Webb, about CC. Within a year, I had a star beside my name, a buddy list, and private queues for a series I’d been working on since 2004.
For me, CC isn’t just about honing the craft of writing, although I bear testament to how fantastic the site is with thousands of crits given and received. I’ve made friends that know me better than anyone else and those friends are still teaching me how to write.
One of the best moments of my life was when I told a crit partner online I had an acceptance at a small e-publisher, and a moment later the phone rang at the flower shop I work at, and a delightful voice with a British accent reached across the ocean. The walls between cyberspace and not-cyberspace crashed down, and my world expanded even wider.
Because of CC, I seen authors that I shared worlds with hit the NY Times bestseller list, have everything they’ve submitted become published with small and large publishers, and confided thousands of personal words, telling of every up and down, on a private pad hosted by CC. Since January, 2007, four of us used the paragraph a day function to bounce ideas, fine tune blurbs, shriek with happiness, vent, and most of all share our love of writing reaching the equivalent of 9, 115K novels.
So, the gist of this ramble is to thank CC for introducing me to forever friends, to hundreds of people who taught me the craft by entrusting their stories to me and providing a learning-growing platform that works so wonderfully. Currently, thanks to CC, I’m mutli-published with MuseitUp and Decadent Publishing.
I went indie with the series that obsessed me for a decade and brought me to CC. Indie allowed me to control how quickly 4 books released (within a year). Thanks to the encouragement of CC crit-partners, I defied the standard norm for writing a series and published 450K, broken into 4 books, and meant to be read in progression.
Here’s the blurb for the beginning of the saga many on CC helped me polish one agonizing word at a time:
Splintered Energy is an Earth-based science fiction/suspense/romance novel, the first in a four book series and not a stand-alone story. Book 2, The R Word, picks up where Splintered Energy leaves off. House of Seven, book 3, leads to book 4, Under Color, the final in the series.
Waves of pure energy are quite happy hanging in the cosmos, traveling at the speed of light to brighten up the sky--until dawn breaks. Literally.
When sentient light fractures, it zaps into human bodies and becomes trapped. Without any memories to guide them, a handful of confused beings whose skin tones are now specific colors, struggle to understand humanity while it's quite clear they shouldn't be in this world. The few humans clued in to Earth's invasion don't flutter, but are drawn to their fiery fate with hearts wide open as they fight to survive.
California. A widower's twelve-year-old son is rather young to bring home a woman, especially a collapsed green beauty too frightened to open her eyes.
Arizona. A divorcee blinks hard, but the gorgeous red guy stepping in front of her car is still red. She swerves to avoid hitting him and ends up in the ditch. When she comes around, she wonders which layer of hell she's fallen into.
Ohio. A teen also fears he's dealing with the demonic, but no matter how dangerous things become, he's determined to stand by a man with inhumanly blue eyes.
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http://www.amazon.com/Splintered-Energy-The-Colors-ebook/dp/B0055L2FHU/ref=la_B0054HJK2I_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1366119793&sr=1-7
http://arlenewebb.blogspot.com
Thank you, CC, for hosting me today and for help with every deleted, revised, stored and published word I’ve attached my name to as author. Sincerely, Arlene