Category Archives: Books

Books do so much. They teach, inspire, motivate, educate and entertain. You can travel to other parts of the world, simply using your imagination, as you read travel books. This blog that is written largely by author Denise Turney has a wealth of material on the book industry. Whether you are an author yourself, an editor, publisher, freelance writer, content marketer or literary agent, there is something for you at this blog. Enjoy exploring the articles and learning from what is shared in the articles here.

The Magic You’ve Been Waiting for Has Always Been Yours

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By Denise Turney

Book writers aren’t the only people who eagerly wait for the muse to arrive before they sit down and start creating. Musicians, songwriters, painters and . . . dare I say it . . . entrepreneurs also wait for the muse to strike before they make a decision or take action.

Waiting for the muse to strike, for magic to happen, might increase the likelihood that you’ll be successful at something. When the muse hits, your confidence might soar, causing you to feel as if you can’t fail.

However, waiting for magic to happen, could also put you behind the eight ball. In fact, it could paralyze you, leave you stuck between the best choice and the worst choice.

The good news is that the magic you might have been waiting for has always been yours. The muse you’ve been waiting to strike has always come from within you.

The challenge, at times, is figuring out how to tap into this muse. Some ways you can access the magic that’s inside of you are:

  • Trust the source of all life
  • Meditate (quiet your ego, so you can finally start hearing from your core, your authentic self)
  • Enjoy being outdoors for at least one uninterrupted hour a day (i.e. a walk, swimming, bike riding)
  • Soak in a bubble bath
  • Sit in a comfortable sauna
  • Brainstorm (sit down and start writing about things you want to appear in your life now, paying attention to what surfaces)
  • Engage in a relaxing conversation with family or friends (relaxation does wonders)
  • Keep a dream journal (dreams reveal a lot about what’s going on in our subconscious minds)
  • Get a good night’s sleep
  • Pay bills before you sit down to create, so your mind will be clear (the less you have on your mind, the better)

Get ready to do some exploring! Test various choices and actions, seeing how your subconscious responds to the stimuli. Be open to change. Be willing to continue trying new things until your core starts breaking through all the junk the ego has been shouting for days, perhaps years. The better you get at breaking through, the more magical your life may feel, not to mention the improvements you’ll see in your creative work.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Exposing the truth about writer rejection

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By Denise Turney
Enter the world of a writer. Fuzzy, cloudy thoughts about an impending success that’s most certain to come, millions of book readers finally seeing what great talent the writer has always possessed. A willingness to forego parties, movie nights and long weekend getaways just to have time to finish another novel chapter – it’s a writer’s inner world, a choice a writer makes over and over.

Some writers pour hundreds, even thousands, of dollars into book marketing, steadfastly hoping to get their book in front of larger numbers of people. Add to that the fact that, for a writer, work never ends, ideas, plots, characters and twists surfacing in his or her bright, creative mind at all hours of the day or night.

Is it any wonder that a writer takes it personally, as if an editor or publisher just punched her in the stomach, each time she receives a rejection letter? As if that wasn’t enough, far too many rejection letters that writers receive are ‘canned’.

If a writer looks deeply enough, he could walk away with this glimmer of hope. He could recognize that, perhaps, an incredibly busy editor or publisher didn’t even take the time to read his manuscript. In that case, it’s so what about the rejection letter. Or the writer could come to the conclusion that the rejection letter does no more than group them with the other 99% of writers who submitted a manuscript to the same editor or publisher.

Get enough rejection letters and it’s not surprising for a writer to start doubting that she chose the right profession, perhaps even forcing the writer to conclude that, for her, novel writing will never be more than a hobby, despite fantasies and daydreams that declare just the opposite. After all, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 26% of novelists and non-fiction writers only write on a part-time basis.

Of note, 68% of writers are also self-employed. Additionally, the lion’s share of the writers reported on by the Statistics Bureau are non-fiction writers. Newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, corporations, marketing agencies and public relations firms are types of organizations many of these writers create content for.

Although non-fiction writers don’t generally have to read through a rejection letter the way a novelist does, non-fiction writers (especially those who are self-employed) do deal with job proposal rejection. It’s these points that make it absolutely necessary for a writer to have a tough interior if he plans to stick around long, possibly writing his way into the top 10% of writers, creative artists who earned, on average, more than $109,000 annually as of 2010.

Of course, the highest paid novelists, people like J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, James Patterson, Stephanie Meyer, Danielle Steel and Ken Follett, pull in tens of millions of dollars a year. And, perhaps, it’s these novelists’ tremendous success that lends an air of hope, a belief in their own potential (yet unrealized) success that keeps many lesser known writers churning out one novel after another, laughing at the words printed a on crisp rejection letter.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Are you waiting for a Mind Shift

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By Denise Turney
It only takes a few seconds to verbalize a dream. However, it can take years, decades, to manifest a dream, in part because it may take years for your mind/thoughts to shift so you can receive the good things you’ve been asking for. Believe it or not, it took me years to get this.

Just saying you want something is not enough, especially if there are thoughts “hiding” in your subconscious or super-subconscious that speak the exact opposite of what you want 24/7. Can you imagine the inner conflict you’d be putting yourself through each time you uttered what you really want, your conscious mind asking for one thing/your subconscious demanding the opposite?

No outside force pulling you back, all of the conflict and resistance self-imposed, just hidden from your conscious mind. No one to blame, but action to start taking. As it is with parents, friends and other people who care for us, who want to see us do well, our minds try to protect us. It’s in this protection that we constantly avow that there’s something to fear, something that could hurt us. Each time we feel fear, our subconscious protective thoughts start playing, trying to keep us safe.

In effort to keep us safe, these subconscious thoughts also keep us from the good things we want. Like a catch-22, we find ourselves stuck, unable to move forward. One of two things may  happen. We’ll get tired of trying to break through our own subconscious barriers and quit, perhaps going on to live a life of despondency (not recommended) or we’ll keep pushing (resting as needed) until our subconscious thoughts start to shift.

Yes! We can receive miracles. Yes! Our love based dreams can come true, should come true. But, it might take longer than we expect. We might have to take risks to prove to our subconscious that we no longer need it to replay protective tapes in effort to keep us safe, to hold us back. We might have to try new things to prove to our subconscious mind that change is not a thing to fear, to prove that achieving our dreams will bring good, not something to dread or fear. Raymond Clarke learns this in Love Pour Over Me. You can learn to progress to receive want you truly want too!

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Writers influence how people see life

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By Denise Turney
Unless you’re a speed reader, I’m guessing it takes you two to three days to read a 250 page novel. Characters’ names, personalities, preference, challenges, strengths, scene locations and character  motivations jump out at you, becoming a part of your personal memories.

If you’re reading a book that’s replete with uplifting scenes and plots, it’s not a stretch to think that you’re feeling pretty good about life in general while you turn the novel’s pages. Read a novel that deals with murder, lies and mayhem and you might start wondering if the world is one big mistake. That, or you might start to believe you can’t trust nearly anyone (if anyone at all) fully, completely.

Writers have this kind of power. They can influence how you feel about life as a whole while you’re reading their books. Even more, writers can influence how you perceive yourself and those closest to you. This leads to the question of why you feel drawn to read certain types of books.

For example, do you absolutely love reading romance novels, murder mysteries, sci-fi, inspirational novels or chick lit? Could the love you have for these novels signal your desire to validate the way you perceive the world? Do we look for experiences, entertainment, news stories, etc. that help prove that the way we see life is right?

If so, could it be true that not one of our views or perceptions is right, just the way we want to see things? What do you think?

Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now at –

http://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html

Impact of Growing Up Poor on Children and Adults

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By Denise Turney

It’s not only in America where incomes are widening, moving more of the world’s wealth into the hands of those who are already enjoying prosperity. It’s almost as if those who have are getting more, while those who don’t have are having the little they once owned taken from them. As Global Issues reports in its 2005 Poverty Facts and Stats report, “The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.”

Children Growing Up Poor

As with other national and global issues, it’s often children who suffer most from these and other disparities. For example, the report also states that as many as 22,000 children around the world die each day due to poverty. In the United States, the numbers of children living in poverty is increasing, in part due to the 2008 recession, some of their parents getting laid off or having their hours cut back.

Children who grow up poor in communities where some families have money, although perhaps not wealth, might feel different, as if something is peculiar about them, their siblings and parents. Over time, if economic conditions for some of these children do not change, the thought that it’s their lot in life to be poor could start to infiltrate their minds. If this happens, a cycle of poverty could work itself out in these children’s lives.

After all, most of us mimic one or more behaviors that our parents exhibited in front of us. If we hear how hard it is to land quality jobs, earning enough money to keep persistent bill collectors away from the door, everyday at home, in time, we might come to believe what we’re hearing is true. Add in the anger of one or more frustrated parents, and the weight of growing up becomes more clear.
If growing up poor isn’t too burdensome, too hard, as it manages not to be for Raymond Clarke, childhood friendships can help children who are growing up poor to incur a sense of hope, a belief that things will improve. It’s these friendships that can work to take some of the sting out of growing up poor. However, to break the cycle of growing up poor, children need to see, read about, hear about, etc. stories of everyday people who improved their financial situation after they became adults.

Without these occurrences, these positive rags-to-more than surviving stories, the weight of growing up poor could start to feel too heavy. After all, we all need positive experiences along-the-way to keep us encouraged to continue our journey in this world. It’s a reason the success of people who grew up poor empowers so many. It takes courage, persistence, vision, passion and commitment to change one’s life by great degrees. It also takes the support of one or more other people. As is made clear in Love Pour Over Me, we need each other.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Sources:

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats (Global Issues: Poverty Facts and Stats)

Mind tricks about love that could hold you back

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By Denise Turney
Love is the most wonderful thing in the universe. It can’t be fully described. Words simply can’t give it definition, limiting it with vocabulary and human perception. Yet, we try.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Where there is love there is life.” Lao Tzu shared, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

Invisible to the naked eye, love defies the logic that asserts that physical size and strength translate into courage and insurmountable resolve. Perhaps Barbara de Angelis stated it best when she asserted, “Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible – it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.”

Is it any wonder that we all yearn for it our entire lives, can’t get enough of it?

Yet, there is a flip side to love’s equation, a regrettable side, and it is this. Love is the very thing we often feel we’re lacking. More regrettably, it’s also the thing we feel we can’t trust.

Don’t think so? Listen to your favorite songs, one refrain after another about how love comes at a high price. As if to reinforce our fears about love, we fill our sweetest poems and novels with warnings, alerting others about the risks of loving, how it sets us up for heartache. Is it any wonder we turn away from the very thing we yearn for, can’t live without?

To feel safe, tucked away from love, we might start playing mind tricks. For example, we might practice self-deception, trick ourselves into thinking that if we sacrifice what we really want, our one true love will magically appear. (This person is generally someone we believe would never, under any conditions, cause us to feel hurt.)

That, or we might spend hours daydreaming instead of being present. We might avoid using vision to create the life we truly want.

Another mind trick we might practice in order to feel as if we’re receiving love (while we’re actually running from love . . . trying to feel safe) is telling ourselves we’re comfortable about a job, relationship, etc. when we really aren’t. Does this sound familiar?

But, the number one queen size mind trick we play is waiting for something outside of us to move, to give us what we want. We keep waiting for magic to happen rather than taking responsibility for our own lives. It might feel good, safe, but it won’t help us move forward.

This was a hard lesson for Brenda to learn.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

All writers should be wealthy

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What a notion!  All writers are wealthy, absolutely loving life!

Talk about a wonderful world!  No writer gets her work rejected. Not only that, each writer receives no less than a five-figure payout for every single novel he writes. Oh, if it were only like that.

Have fun dreaming (or cashing those big checks, in case your a wealthy writer who has it like that!!) And if you’re just at the dreaming stage, here’s to hoping you soon make the leap to writing awesome, page-turning novels you genuinely love writing, novels that help you rake in the dough!

“Hang on, Snoopy!  Hang on!” Remember that song line?

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Valuable resources for women who love to read

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By Denise Turney (author of Love Pour Over Me)
The Internet is packed with benefits, one rewarding novel connect after another. Websites, social media posts, e-blasts and digital newsletters have put a wealth of literary information at book lovers’ fingertips. At first glance, it’s like being planted in an oasis of book clubs, author interviews, book trailers, marketing slogans, author You-Tube video messages and free to low-cost print and e-books.

Perhaps at no other time in history has it been so easy to get in touch with your favorite authors. Gone are the days when you had to stand in line at a bookstore for one or two hours just to meet a writer whose books you’d read and absolutely enjoyed for several years. Now all it takes is the click of a button.

If you grew up in the 1970s or earlier, this might seem like a bit of culture shock. For younger readers, it’s the “norm”. No one’s as far away as they once appeared to be.

But, how do you know which websites, book trailers, author videos, interviews, etc. to check out? After all, you can’t see them all, just as you probably can’t read every book, even every book you’d love and appreciate. There is simply too much to choose from. You might as well settle in to the fact that you’re going to miss an incredibly large amount of good stuff, including books that could deeply inspire, motivate, educate and definitely entertain you.

We really are living in a time of great information wealth, great books being a tremendous part of this enriching data.

By sifting through all the data that’s out here, the time it takes you to discover life changing books can shorten significantly. In effort to help you sift through the massive amounts of literary data there is on and offline, I put together lists of resources that can benefit you as a book lover.

Book Clubs (some are great places to meet with other book lovers in person, make friends with people who share your passion and more)

Large Book Websites

Guides for Starting Book Clubs, Etc.

Book Festivals/Conferences Writers Attend (places where you could meet your favorite authors)

Enjoy visiting these and other book related websites, joining and participating in quality book clubs and finding and reading great books. After all, many great books are hidden, not featured in newspapers, magazines or even on websites. Finding these enriching, emotionally moving reads is like finding a rare jewel, a jewel you can treasure for years, perhaps the rest of your life.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! 

How to know if a book’s written for money or quality entertainment

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By Denise Turney

Globally, more than two million books were published in 2005 alone. That’s a single year. Of that number, 328,259 of those books where published in the United States. It’s nothing new that writing and publishing books is one way you could become a multi-millionaire. What has changed over the years, especially with the Internet’s rising popularity, is the number of people who are penning novels.

Book Publishing’s Attraction

The sheer number of authors alone has taken a bit of luster off what it means to be an author. In fact, it’s not uncommon to hear a friend, colleague or relative proudly exclaim, “I can write a better book than . . .” (Fill in the blank with a New York Times bestseller author’s name.

But, can anyone, regardless of their writing experience or storytelling skills, sit down and write a bestseller at the drop of a hat? Or better yet, should anyone write a novel just so they can become rich?

The quality of novels hitting the market may reveal that writing books for money is becoming increasingly attractive. For example, years ago it was hard, very hard, to buy a novel that had numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes in it. It was also very hard to come across a novel that switched point of view so many times that readers got confused about who was saying or experiencing what.

Read enough of these books and you could start to think that authors don’t respect readers. You could also start to think that authors are arrogant, of the belief that stories they create are so automatically awesome that only a dumb person wouldn’t see the greatness in the writing.

Signs a Book Was Written Mainly for Money
Besides being filled with grammatical and spelling errors, books that are written mainly for money may also be developed using a formula or pattern, are built upon cliff hanging scenes that the greatest sci-fi fan would have a very hard time believing, rely on shock to hold reader interest, have so many rancid sex scenes a gigolo would blush (which swings back to the shock factor), shy away from facts (some writers really do hate to conduct research) and more.

Yet, authors who aim for riches rather than to develop quality entertainment, stories that stir the human spirit and provoke deep thought, haven’t created this issue in a vacuum. They haven’t turned down the respect authors once enjoyed all by themselves. The push from book publishers, literary agents and editors to sell-sell-sell is no less responsible.

To reduce the risk of taking on an author who has the talent but not the marketing mindset or skill to sell thousands of books a month, publishers are starting to watch the self-publisher ranks. Once a self-published author sells 10,000 or more copies of a single title, it’s not uncommon for publishers to contact that author, asking them if he wants to work out a deal.

This is a near complete about face over how publishers acquired manuscripts decades ago, back when modern novels became classics. Back then, publishers, editors and agents hunted for talent, scouring through stacks of manuscripts in the hopes of finding a rare gem, a quality novel that introduced readers to complex characters, people whose experiences mimicked their own without, at first glance, appearing to.

Waiting for Great Quality Art
It remains to be seen what impact sales over quality will have on the book industry. Perhaps the impact will mirror the impact that less conscious songs have had on the music industry. After all, one thing is certain. Readers, like music lovers, aren’t dumb. They know quality entertainment when they read it.

While listening to an interview given by the music mogul, Clive Davis, I was inspired to hear Clive share that he was waiting for a conscious singer/songwriter, someone like Bob Dylan (and dare I say, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Diane Warren, Carole King and Nina Simone) to appear on the music scene. He’s not alone.

One great artist, an artist whose primary goal is to create quality entertainment, can set an industry on its end. In this regard, creating novels that aim to provide quality entertainment may help generate more profits for the book industry long term than books that are written solely for money.

Yes. There are risks. Books you pour months, perhaps years, of work into — writing and editing and writing and editing — may not gain many a large number of sells, costing you money. Yet, the risks may be worth it, especially if you genuinely love to write, respect reader intelligence and appreciate how great books you’ve read changed your life in remarkable, yet, generally unnoticeable, ways.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Everybody should love reading books!

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Everybody should love reading great books!  Reading is an excellent way to learn, to continue to grow. It’s also a great way to exercise the brain, ensuring that you stay alert and sharp. While reading books, you can explore new lands and learn from characters’ mistakes without actually having to make the same mistakes yourself. You can experience thrilling life events, meet fascinating people, learn how to build or fix things around your home and learn new languages.

The above cartoon really captures how fascinating your life could become after you start loving to read great books!  It’s a habit so rewarding, you might not be able to stop, and why should you!

Happy reading, my friends!  May you find wonderful, thought provoking books in the most amazing places!  May the stories that keep you up reading until late at night usher in tremendously rewarding experiences, ones you may not have even thought you’d ever have!

Before you leave, be sure to grab a copy of my new book, Love Pour Over Me! To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.