Meet Our Authors and Guest Authors
Today we celebrate authors
It's not a National Author Day but today, we're celebrating authors on our blog.
We celebrate those people who have strung together words, forming sentences that weave tales of imagination, leaving us longing for the rest of the story.
Writing a book is easy, right?
Let me tell you a story. A friend decided to write a novel. I encouraged her and a few months later I asked her how the story was going.
"I'm done. I'm finished!"
"Great!" I replied, thinking that she had finished the book. "Send it to me, let me read it, and then I'll help you to publish it."
"Right! Let me send you what I have. Check your email in a few minutes."
She hung up but what she said and how she said it didn't sound like a happy writer who just finished a book, so I was anxiously waiting for the bling of my email alert.
When the email arrived, instead of a manuscript, she sent me this picture as an attachment:
"What happened? The beginning sounds great, why don't you continue writing?"
"Why?" she shouted. "Why? Because I wrote three pages and then I changed my mind about the plot and deleted it. Then I wrote five pages but I had another idea and deleted that one too. I've been doing that for six months nonstop. Write, delete. Write again, don't like it, delete again."
"Yeah, just... write your stories and let me read them. And, never, ever mention it again that I should write a book. Okay? I saved this on my computer as a reminder to never, ever attempt to write a book, ever again. And don't you tell me that writing is easy, okay?"
"Well, I never said that writing is easy. All I said was that writing a book is one of the most challenging and rewarding things I've ever done."
~Erika M Szabo
You can read the full post HERE
Although writers enjoy writing, they put countless hours into writing, rewriting, and rewriting again. Self-published authors also invest a lot of money into editing, formatting, book cover, and publishing. Traditional publishing is not free either, the publishers invest money into getting the book ready and to publish it.
The authors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else, don't you think?
The Author Gang Authors
Genres:
Magical realism, fantasy, suspense, children's and health-related books
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Erika became an avid reader at a very early age, thanks to her dad who introduced her to many great books.
She lives in New York and when her daughter moved out of the family nest, she started writing.
Erika writes magical realism, alternate history, epic fantasy novels as well as fun, educational and bilingual books for children ages 2-17 about acceptance, friendship, family, and moral values such as accepting people with disabilities, dealing with bullies, and not judging others before getting to know them.
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Genres:
Contemporary, Metaphysical and Sweet Christian Romance, Prose/Poetry, Self-help, Romance for the over 50 group, Suspense, Dragon Fantasy
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Grace Augustine
Editor and award-winning author, Grace Augustine, was born and raised in Northern Montana. She currently resides in Iowa. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2003 and speaks publicly regarding this autoimmune disorder. Grace has written sixteen books in seven different genres. Her love of writing began in her early teens. She enjoys acrylic painting, old movies, and promoting independent authors and musicians, hearing from her readers. |
Genres:
clean adult & children's fiction, many genres
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Toi Thomas
Co-manager of Our Author Gang
Toi is a blogger, fur-baby mom, geek girl, techie, cinephile, bibliophile, and a foodie. Born in Texas but considers Virginia home. A former special education teacher’s assistant, Toi now works as a behavioral therapist. Toi entertains paranormal fans with her Eternal Curse Series. She dabbles in multiple genres with her short story collection, Legend of the Boy... She educates and entertains young readers with her picture books, and even writes sweet romance as, Glorie Townson. |
Genres:
Paranormal and young adult
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Lorraine Carey
Her love for paranormal stories and urban legends began at a young age when staying up all night to watch spooky movies or reading a scary book started a lifelong passion. Lorraine is no stranger to the paranormal, as she has encountered many unexplainable events during her lifetime. Many of those events have been woven into her fiction tales. |
Genres:
Fantasy and children's books
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Christina Weigand
Christina Weigand's a writer, wife, and mother of four grown children. She is also Nana to four granddaughters. She lives with her husband and youngest daughter in Pennsylvania, returning there after a short sabbatical in Washington. Currently, she's working on fantasy novels and inspirational writing. Through her writing, she strives to share the Word of God and help people young and old to realize the love and mercy He has for everyone. |
Genres:
Romantic suspense, romantic thriller, paranormal, supernatural suspense, and contemporary romance.
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Joanne Jaytanie
Joanne Jaytanie writes romantic suspense, romantic thriller, paranormal, supernatural suspense, and contemporary romance. She loves to submerge herself in the world of her characters, to live and breathe their lives, and marvel at their decisions and predicaments. Joanne lives with her husband and Dobermans, in their home located on the Olympic Peninsula with a panoramic view of the Olympic Mountains. |
Genres:
Non-fiction
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After an assortment of jobs, she worked as a book designer for Bill Yenne at AGS. While there, she wrote, "Ghost Towns" and "100 Medical Milestones That Shaped World History." She published "The Soul of California - Cooking for the Holidays" and "50 Fabulous Tomatoes for Your Garden" as an indie. She is working on a crime noir meets urban fantasy novel.
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Genres:
Fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, romance
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Rebecca Tran
Award-winning author Rebecca Tran’s first works were fantasy novels. Since then she has branched out to other genres ranging from paranormal to sci-fi. Although, it wasn’t until Rebecca wrote her first dragon shifter series that she fell in love with writing paranormal romance books.
When not writing Rebecca is a pharmacist and mom. She has two girls at home and a spoiled Boston Terrier. When she has free time, Rebecca likes quilting and combing antique shops for teapots to add to her collection.
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Genres:
Dystopian sci-fi
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Nicola Mc Donagh
Nicola McDonagh is known for her unique writing style. She is the author of the unconventional sci-fi/dystopian Song of Forgetfulness action-adventure series, and the award-winning short story anthology, Glimmer.
She loves to play around with the written word and the visual image and has been a photographer, actor, director, scriptwriter and other less exciting things, before settling in Suffolk, UK, with her musician husband, and a plethora of rescued cats and chickens.
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Genres:
Heroic Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Space Opera, Sword & Planet, Horror, and Children's Fantasy
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Joe Bonadonna
My Dad first got me into reading and into films when I was about 8 years old. I’ve been a fan of fantasy, horror and science fiction for as long as I can remember. I’m a big fan of hard-boiled crime and mystery novels, too.
I also write for Janet Morris’ Heroes in Hell series, have appeared in a number of anthologies, and often contribute to Black Gate online magazine.
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Genres:
YA multicultural fantasy, contemporary fiction, and poetry
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Tricia is an author, editor, and blogger who lives in New Hampshire with her family. She writes a variety of genres including YA multicultural fantasy, contemporary fiction, and poetry.
Through her blog and her book, The Essential Self-Publishing Guide, she is dedicated to helping aspiring writers achieve their dreams of becoming published authors. When Tricia isn't working on her latest novel, she can be found walking her dog, devouring books, or drinking tons of coffee.
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Sandra Bouquet Carslick
A Craniosacral therapist/Energy Medicine Practitioner and creative author of In This Moment…the little book of emotions. Primarily living in Maine, she spends winter and early spring in Arizona. Her interests are mind, body, spirit medicine along with cycling and hiking. Facilitating healing has been her life’s chosen mission, but Sandra’s most important role is to be the “Saint Anne” to her Grandchildren Yassine, Amine, Rylee and Warren.
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Click and read a few of our guest author's posts
We love to have guest authors on our blog to bring a great variety of genres to our readers. Grace is our master at inviting authors to the blog and Rebecca and Joe had brought a few guests too.
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Guest: Keriann McKenna |
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Authors we are happy to introduce
Ferguson is an author, poet, and journalist appearing in a small press, regional, and national publications. He wrote propaganda for a variety of entities for 25 years.
His books include two short story collections: Southbound, Shillelagh Law; two poetry collections: Reflections of a Scurvy Bastard, Destination Known; and a job-search parody: Dave Doolittle's Resumes That Work, So You Don't Have To.
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Barbara G.Tarn had an intense life in the Middle Ages that stuck to her through the centuries.
She prefers swords to guns, long gowns to mini-skirts, and even though she buried the warrior woman, she deplores the death of knights in shining chainmail.
She’s a writer, sometimes artist, mostly a world-creator and story-teller. Two of her stories received an Honorable Mention at the Writers of the Future contest.
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I’ve had stories in over a hundred magazines from Weird Tales, Spinetingler, SciFan, Mad, Black Belt, Fantasy Tales, Sherlock Holmes Mystery to Crimson Streets, and others as well as tales in close to a hundred anthologies in many genres.
I am also the winner of the 2012 Pulp Ark Award for Best Author and my short story “The Clockwork Nutcracker” won best steampunk story for 2013 and has been expanded into a novel.
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As far back as she can remember, Cindy has written poetry. Wife, mother and grandmother, she has a myriad of memories to draw from. Not good at playing the part of "starving artist", she's had many careers.
Recently she retired from being an OTR truck driver with her husband, Dave, which provided different views of the world.
Cindy has published seven poetry books and a children's book. Her poems also appear in anthologies as well as several books by fellow authors.
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I have been writing short stories and doing other forms of art since I was very young.
Math was never my strong suit, but the art of writing? Ah, now that’s what I enjoyed the most. Anything creative appealed to me, and writing gave me so much more than merely painting a picture. I could create anything I wanted using the written word.
I have done some type of art most of my life and graphics as well as web design for the past twenty years. I love the creative aspect of graphics and art as well as music. Creativity is utmost in my endeavors.
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RA Winter, began her writing career under her married name, writing genealogy books. However, her love for reading romance novels intruded in on her daily activities.
RA spent many years traveling the world and has lived in many different countries. Turkey, Egypt, Germany, and Jordan, have all been called "home" at one time or another.
Now you can find her quietly living in Pittsburgh, Pa, with her husband, writing her next novel.
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We post about a great variety of things:
Books, publishing, cooking disasters, heartwarming animal stories, gardening and skin care advice, mythology, angels, paranormal creatures, movies, music, dragons, love stories, humorous stories, historical places, and... I feel like I'm running out of breath here... so we do post about a lot of things.
Click and read some of the Author Gang's posts
https://asmallgangofauthors.blogspot.com/p/post-gallery.html
Enter our Flash Fiction Contest
https://www.facebook.com/333279623762179/photos/a.341481882941953/522547054835434/
Click to read our first Online Magazine
http://online.pubhtml5.com/ahsh/ncyp/
Enter our Flash Fiction Contest
Click to read our first Online Magazine
http://online.pubhtml5.com/ahsh/ncyp/
Thank you for visiting our blog! Hope you can find something interesting to read and new authors to check out.
The Author Gang and our mascot, Loki
Loki is our virtual dog. When we held a Book Cover Contest on our blog, we thought we needed a mascot and we had a lot of fun choosing the right name for him. As Joe said, "The best thing about Loki is that he doesn't need to be walked and fed." But Loki tells stories sometimes with his best buddy, Toi. Loki is not particularly interested in books, besides chewing them to bits just like any other dog, but he says, "Woof" which probably means "Hello" in doggy language.
Take a look at Loki's page HERE
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