The Next Big Thing Blog Hop part deux

Thanks for making it back to part two of my participation in The Next Big Thing Blog Hop.

What is a blog hop? Basically, it’s a way that readers can discover new authors, because with bookstores closing and publishers not promoting new authors as much, we need to find a way to introduce readers to authors they may not see in their local bookstore.

Here you have the chance to find many new authors. You’ll find information about me, my blog, and my book – Buying Time. But that’s not all! Click on the links at the bottom to other authors you might like to check out—they’re picked out by me!

I’d like to thank my friend and colleague, author Tom Lucas for tagging me to participate. Click this link to find out about his book, Leather to the Corinthians, and show him some internet love by leaving a snarky comment! http://readtomlucas.com/

In this particular hop, I and my fellow authors, in their respective blogs, have answered 10 questions where you get to learn about our current work as well as some insights into our process, from characters and inspirations to plotting and cover decisions. I hope you enjoy it!

Please feel free to comment and share your thoughts and questions. Here is my Next Big Thing!

1: What is the title of your book? Buying Time

2: Where did the idea come from for the book? It’s loosely based on a short story with the same title that I wrote back in my college days about a time traveling time salesman.

3: What genre does your book come under? Contemporary fiction. I tried calling it sci-fi for a bit…but a few hard core sci-fi readers complained there wasn’t enough sci-fi in the book…and they’re probably right. The sci-fi elements are very secondary to the story, which also has elements of faith and romance (yeah, I know—not exactly sure how that happened!).

4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? This was actually probably the hardest question to answer because I didn’t visually actors when I wrote this (I sometimes do that when I write, but not for this work). I’d choose Alan Rickman to play Big Ben, the time salesman; Milo Ventimiglia as Tom Morgan; David Duchovny as Larry Pace; Sandra Bullock at Grace Pace.

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Two completely different men are offered an opportunity to redo a part of their life. (One-sentences are hard!)

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency? Small indy publisher out of Oxford, Miss.

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? About two years just for the first draft. After two polish and clean up edit rounds by me, I sent the word out to about a dozen first readers who gave me feedback. I went back in for a very healthy revision based on the collected notes I’d received. The entire process took about three years. Way too long, in my opinion.

8: How did the cover come about? I had a basic idea for the cover and communicated that to the designer, Emily Y. Kanalz who then proceeded to do a bang-up job on the final product. I love what she did!

9: Who or what inspired you to write this book? Lots of things combined, really. I love time travel stories (Buying Time is NOT a time travel story) and alternate histories. I also think, given the chance, that many of us would revisit some part of our life to fix it or do it differently. This story came about as a result of all those ideas colliding!

10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Like most of my work, it’s set in the South…the setting I use is the area of Florence, Alabama.

Below you will find authors who will be joining me by blog, next Wednesday. Do be sure to bookmark and add them to your calendars for updates and exciting developments.

Sidney Williams: http://sidneywilliams.blogspot.com

Sean Taylor: http://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com

Aaron Drown: www.achristopherdrown.com

Happy Writing and Reading

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop hello

Hi there and welcome to my blog! For my regular readers, I beg your patience as I participate—for the first time ever—in a blog hop.

For those of you new here, you’re likely here thanks to a link provided to you by my friend and colleague, author Tom Lucas. I want to thank Tom for inviting me to participate and for encouraging all of you to check out my page.

I know that you’re getting a wide variety of authors as you make the hops. Honestly, I’m not how sure far up (or down) the string of hops I am…but I’m pretty sure you haven’t run across many like me. Good or bad? That decision is up to you. (The images on this page is a sampling of covers to things I’ve written).

I spent a little more than ten years in the comic book industry (graphic novels to you more literary types) mostly as a writer, but some of that time as an editor…and some of that time as a Marvel editor. I quit writing for a few years to take up my second career: teaching! That career led me to a side-career of speaking (at writer conferences and the like), which I never thought I’d like…and yes, the introvert in me still gets nervous. Once I got going with the teaching, I dove back into writing, this time my focus was prose. I still write comics and have several graphic novel projects in the works that I’ll be talking about on this page soon. I’ve got an agent trying to sell my YA novel, The Intern, but next week I’ll be answering my ten questions about my first novel, Buying Time, which is a contemporary fiction work…with a smattering of romance (completely unintentional on my part!), a tiny sprinkle of sci-fi (completely intentional on my part!), and a coating of faith (a natural extension on my part!).

I blog about once a week where I break all the “rules” of blogging in that I pretty much write about what I want to write about (y’know—if you’re going to “do” a blog, you need a FOCUS!). I write about writing, review the occasional book, write a little about my family, rarely politics (though those seem generate the most comments!) and whatever else strikes my fancy.

So, I hope to see you next week where I’ll also point you to five more unique writers!

Thanks for stopping by.

Online teaching presents different challenges

Since I’ve been teaching exclusively online for nearly a year and a half now, I thought it might be the right time to step back and make some observations. My thoughts are intended to be commentary on the online experience as an entirety, simply the way I’ve found it in that time.

Full Sail often comes under a lot of fire because it’s a “for profit” university and that makes the skin crawl for those in traditional academia. I’m not really sure WHY it does because by the time you add up all the costs, it’s all roughly the same. I know that THREE (count’em, 3!) universities made a profit off of my combined nine (9) years of higher learning…and two of those were “state” schools!

But that’s not the point. Those of you who know me know that once you get me started on a topic I enjoy, it’s tough to shut me up. That’s one of the reasons, I think, I’m a potentially decent teacher of writing—I absolutely love it.

But the online student is not able to sit in a classroom and listen to me and know that I have a tendency to be a bit sarcastic, not in a mean-spirited way, but in a that’s-just-so way. They’re not able to toss out and idea and back-and-forth it live for maximum creative feedback and to see me get worked up and excited when talking about stuff students have done well or fully grasped.

Thus, the biggest challenge in online learning, it seems to me, is to communicate the teacher’s passion for the subject. “Knowledge” can be presented in a matter-of-fact/here-it-is kind of way…and it isn’t always really exciting. To hear someone lecture on the same material can be to see it in a completely different way.

The biggest problem, though, is student engagement. The Full Sail model is one of “online” but not “part-time.” Many students (and probably non-students—maybe some of you reading this) interpret it to mean part-time and they put a bare minimum into the work, barely scraping by.

GIGO, right?

I sometimes have students complain about the amount of work…and I always bite my tongue because I want to respond “but YOU are the one who signed up to cram all this information into one month—why are you so surprised?” I generally respond with something a little nicer that still says buck up and get the work done.

For me, it all goes back to the spirit of effort we teach athletes. We often hear athletes, even during off-season, talking about how bad they want it. Which is to suggest or ask what is it they’re willing to do (and NOT do) in order to best prepare themselves for the game/season.

Writing is the same way, of course; how much are you willing to give up in order to spend time writing?

Students in the online model of learning who don’t fully engage are only hurting themselves. I now find myself asking those who are struggling to find time or to make time…

“How bad do you want it?”