Posted on by susannevalenti · 15 Comments

Confessions of a writer tag…

  
I was tagged to do this by Melanie so thank you! This looks fun and a little daunting but here goes nothing…
This tag was created by a little bookish a little writerly and the rules are listed there!

1. When did you first start writing? Was being a writer something you always wanted to do?

I first started writing my Cage of Lies books in August 2013 but have been writing on and off since I was a kid. I always wanted to be a writer and it was something I always just said and bpnever really did much about so one day I just decided to stop talking about it and stat doing it!

  
2. What genre do you write?

So far Dystopia but I have an apocalyptic series running around in my head which will probably follow and I’d love to do fantasy one day too!

  
3. Can you tell us a little about your current work in progress? When did you start working on this project?

I’m currently working on Broken, the third instalment of my Cage of Lies saga. I’m in more of an editing stage with it than all out writing and as it’s the third book I won’t give too much away but this one is emotionally more difficult than the others. Maya, my protagonist, is dealing with a lot of difficult issues in her personal life as well as the ongoing struggles that run throughout the series. I’ve been working on the series for a few years but can’t be sure exactly when I started in this book!

4. What was your first piece that you can remember writing? What was it about?

The first piece I can actually remember writing was a fantasy with lots of dragons and people who lived in cities in the clouds. It started off with this little hermit guy who was guarding a town in the middle of the city. Some people came and kidnapped a girl from the town and killed the hermit… I didn’t finish it but maybe one day I’ll find it and see if there’s anything there that I can use going forward lol

  
5. What’s the best part about writing?

I get go on an adventure every day!

  
6. What’s the worst part about writing?

Killing off characters you love because the plot demands it 😭

7. What’s the name of your favourite character and why? (This can be from another author or your own work. Book crushes are perfectly acceptable here as well.)

Today, it’s Harry Potter I don’t have to tell you why because you already know! 

  
8. How much time a day/week do you get to write? When is the best time for you to write (morning or night)?

Time of day doesn’t make much difference to me. I tend to write when I get in from work in the evenings or on my days off and I’ll squeeze some into my lunch breaks too. When I’m in all out writing mode I have a minimum of 2000 words a day to write but on my days off I make that 8000 and I’ve managed 12000 a few times ☺️

9. Did you go to college for writing? Or if you haven’t been to college yet, do you plan to?

I didn’t. I don’t think it matters as I think writing is a passion and you can either do it or you can’t. Everyone’s routes to it are different but for me college wasn’t part of my journey.

10. What bothers you more: spelling errors, punctuation errors or grammar errors?

They all bother me but I’d go for grammar because I can’t bear it when people get their there and they’re muddled – it sets my teeth on edge! 

  
11. What is the best writing advice that anyone has given you?

Write what you love. If you love the story you are trying to tell then you will get it written, edited and out there. If you don’t love it you’ll lose momentum along the way…

12. What advice would you give to another writer?

Write the book you want to read. Don’t try and please anyone else, don’t compromise your vision and when you finish it you’ll be proud of it!

13. What are your favourite writing sites or blogs that you turn to for help, tips or encouragements?

To be honest I’ve never used any 😕 I just do what feels natural and I have my sister to discuss any issues with or offer encouragement!

14. Besides writing, what else do you enjoy doing? What are your hobbies?

Reading lol I love working out and watching movies and playing video games if I get the chance too.

  
15. What is the best book you’ve read this year?

Ahhhh this is so hard but I think Queen of Shadows pips it for me!

  
16. What is the best movie you’ve seen this year?

Ahhh this is hard too 😬 maybe the new Terminator as that sounds out in my mind

  
17. What is your favourite book or series of all time?

I don’t know I don’t know! I’m going for Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and the Twilight saga oh and Lord of the Rings and probably more too because I have too many!

18. Who is your favourite author?

I can’t pick. If I do a list it will have more than ten names on it so I just won’t lol

19. What are your plans for the rest of the year in terms of your writing?

I’ll be editing and trying to release Broken and I think I’ll try to write and release another novella called Embers (I can’t give away anything about that one for spoilers lol)

20. Where else can we find you online?

Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads and my books are available on Amazon 😊
I’m just nominating any authors out there who would like to do this, I’d love to head your answers too! Xoxo

Posted on by susannevalenti · 32 Comments

Goodreads friends!

This is just a quick post because I would like to have all of you as goodreads friends! 

  
It’s just hard to find people who are the right kind of book crazy with no starting point and I am a bit late to the goodreads party…

  
I don’t think it’s weird to ask right? 😳 I just love getting recommendations for new books and discussing them with people who enjoy them as much as I do…

  
I have lots of wonderful friends but just not that many who are book crazy like me and even those who are haven’t always read what I have and sometimes you really really need to vent or cry or explode with excitement 😭😂😲

  
And if I find something new I want to tell you all about it! 

  

So if that sounds like the way you like doing things too then please be my friend on goodreads and like my Facebook page!! ☺️☺️xoxo

Posted on by susannevalenti · 95 Comments

An offer of ARCs! 

  
On October 1st my book Chained is going on sale and I’m looking for anyone who would be interested in having an advanced copy in return for an honest review (feel free to love it 😍). If you know anyone else who would be interested then please let them know too ☺️

I’m also up for doing cover reveals and interviews and anything else that anyone would like me to do!

I can’t think of a better group of people to read it first and I’m seriously excited whilst simultainiously terrified but that’s okay lol. 

So if you don’t know what Chained is about, here’s the blurb:

Terrified of the contamination and the creatures it has created, humanity hides behind The Wall. No one knows what lies beyond the wasteland. Maya has never thought much about what might still be out there, lurking in the forgotten places. But when she’s thrust into the unknown, she is forced to question everything she has ever been told. Not everyone outside died, some of them became something… else. As her heart is torn in two, every choice she makes is harder than the last. What she discovers will change her forever. She knows she will probably die, but Maya has seen enough of death and she won’t let it have her without a fight. 

It’s a dystopian ya and the start of my Cage of Lies series. I really hope you like the sound of it and are interested in giving it a go 😊. And feel free to do a favour swap with me if you would like anything done for your own blog! 

Either comment with your email address or email me at susanne3587@hotmail.com if you’re interested and I’ll send your arc over 😊 (let me know if you’d prefer an ePub or PDF) 

Xoxo

Posted on by susannevalenti · 5 Comments

A post to help a fellow author!

This is a post that was made by a fellow author who’s book is available to download now. I think it looks really great and I thought some of you might too 😊xoxo

2015 – Dave Whaley the published author 

Ok, so yes I self published ergo I am published…. fair enouhh right? Well, maybe it is but I always dreamed of having my book in print and that hasn’t been possible with the rejection letters I had from publishers and agents alike. At this point, it is worth mentioning that this doesn’t neccessarily mean […]

https://authorwhaley.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/2015-dave-whaley-the-published-author/

Posted on by susannevalenti · 11 Comments

Sisterhood of the world bloggers award 🏆

  
I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve been nominated for this award!😀 Thank you to jessylaw for my nomination 😍

The rules are:

  1. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to their site. 
  2. Put the award logo on your blog. 
  3. Answer the ten questions you were given. 
  4. Make up ten new questions for your nominees to answer. 
  5. Nominate ten other blogs. 

Here are my answers:

1. Would you prefer to read a series or stand alone books?

I won’t say no to anything but I love to read a series. I find that you can get to know the characters and their world so much better in multiple books and so I get more from them. 📚

2. Would you rather be a book reviewer or an author?

My dream has always been to be an author. I am addicted to the written word in every form and can’t stop putting pen to page. I don’t think I’d make the best reviewer because I always find something to like in everything and find it hard to criticise things. So all of my reviews would probably be 4 or 5 stars and the difference would be between me really liking it or loving it lol.📝

3. Your house has been robbed and your bookshelf has been raided. What’s the book you really hope is safe?

I’m pretty attached to my Harry Potter books. I’ve had the first three since I was around eleven and then I queued up at midnight to buy each of the others as they were released so the memory of getting each of them and staying awake through the night reading them is pretty special for me. 💫

4. What is the hardest thing about running a blog?

I would go with time management! It can easily take an hour or two for me to put a post together in the way I want it (usually because I spend hours trawling the Internet for the perfect meme lol). And then once it’s been posted the notifications start coming through as people like/comment and I can’t resist responding at once which can mean that it’s taking time from other things I should be getting on with 😓

5. What novel are you looking forward to reading next?

I’m super excited for the new Throne of Glass novel which is out next week 😱😁😆😲. I’m in the middle of reading the Game of Thrones books which I’m really enjoying but I’ll probably put them on pause to find out what happens next for Celeana! (Plus I’ve watched the TV show of Game of Thrones so I already know most of what happens there lol) 👑

6. Do you use an e-reader or paperback books?

I use both! There are some brilliant books available on kindle that you can’t get in paperback and I wouldn’t want to miss out on them even though I do love a solid copy. Plus my hubby built me a huge bookshelf which I instantly filled and there are still nine boxes of books in the loft so he bought me a kindle to help me save on the storage space 📚📚📚

7. Who is your favourite author?

Isn’t that like picking between your children? (I don’t have any children but I imagine it’s the same) I love J K Rowling, Brandon Sanderson, Trudi Canavan, Suzanne Collins, J R R Tolkien… This list could get really long and I can’t pick! 😱

8. If you could be any book character who would you be?

I love Celeana Sardothien from the Throne of Glass books, she’s a kick ass assassin with plenty of attitude and the right amount of vulnerability and she’s pretty damn cool so who wouldn’t wanna be her? 🔪(this is a sword not a kitchen knife 😕)

9. Why did you start blogging?

I’m an upcoming author and I find that in my real life I have very few people who are as passionate about reading and writing as I am so I wanted to find likeminded people to connect with over our crazy obsessive, slightly unhealthy book addictions lol 😸

10. What was the last book you read?

A Game of Thrones (I’m half way into the second book now too). I am addicted to the TV series and had put off reading them so that I didn’t spoil the show for myself (I know I did it backwards this time but it was on my tbr list for so long and the show looked sooo good and I couldn’t resist!) but now that the show has caught up with the books I decided it was high time to educate myself on what really happened! (So far it’s almost exactly the same but I’ve been told there are some difference coming 😬)

My nominees are:

  1. Fiddlerblue
  2. Dash McCallen
  3. Gracedowntherabbithole
  4. 007ravish
  5. Olivia Emily 
  6. Amanda
  7. Notyourmommasbookreviwes
  8. Nerdybirdy
  9. Thewriteedge
  10. Caroline Peckham 

And the questions for you are:

  1. Do you have a TV series addiction and what is it?
  2. Which book character would you secretly like to marry?
  3. What’s the most exciting thing happening to you this September?
  4. Are you a Christmas freak or a Scrooge?
  5. Which book world do wish really existed?
  6. Which book series has you wishing for more?
  7. Would you rather be a vampire or a wizard?
  8. Which magic power would you have?
  9. Happy ending or shocking twist?
  10. What’s the first thing you’d do if the dead started rising?

I hope you have fun with it! ☺️xoxo

Posted on by susannevalenti · 37 Comments

1 month 303 followers and a husky who can’t read…

I am overwhelmed to say that after one month on here I have acquired an amazing 303 followers! Thank you guys so much for coming on this journey with me, I am really enjoying spending time getting to know you all through your own blogs and am so thrilled that you have taken the time to read mine 😍😍😍

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to have a quick read of the blurb for my upcoming novel Chained. I have found it insanely difficult to write a blurb that I feels sums it up in the right way without giving too much away but hopefully I’ve managed it. I’d love to hear your feedback on it and what you think the book is about based on it 😊 so here goes…

Terrified of the contamination and the creatures it has created, humanity hides behind The Wall. No one knows what lies beyond the wasteland. Maya has never thought much about what might still be out there, lurking in the forgotten places. But when she’s thrust into the unknown, she is forced to question everything she has ever been told. Not everyone outside died, some of them became something… else. As her heart is torn in two, every choice she makes is harder than the last. What she discovers will change her forever. She knows she will probably die, but Maya has seen enough of death and she won’t let it have her without a fight. 

I hope you liked it, I asked my husky Koda to have a look but he can’t read ☺️

  

Posted on by susannevalenti · 22 Comments

Re-writing re-writing re-writing 😲🔫

So this is a little piece that expresses my thoughts on that magical time in an author’s work; the re-write. 

So you think the draft is finished? You think it’s pretty much done? You think you’ll give it a read again… And hope it’s just the one….
  
Everything is going well, it’s something from a dream but something awful catches your eye – you can’t believe what you’ve just seen…

  
Okay so now you go again, the punctuation’s fine. It must be perfect by now right? It must be there this time…

  
So finally you’re sure that there are no more misused words. You give the thing a read again but something else occurs…

  
A plot hole? How can that be, you thought you had it sussed! So you work again to fix it all and finally you trust…

  .
You sit and stare and think a while, can this truely be? It’s done for real; the final draft you thought you’d never see!

  

Posted on by susannevalenti · 38 Comments

Welcome

Hi,

I am currently working on an upcoming dystopian saga called Cage of Lies and am hoping to get some of you lovely people interested in reading it! 😊

The entire series will comprise of five books; Chained, Linked, Broken, Bound and Free.

I have currently written drafts of all five books and will be releasing the series later in the year on kindle. (I’m just doing the millionth go over for all those pesky missing apostrophes 😲) So soon enough I will be taking a deep breath, closing my eyes and hitting ‘publish’ and I would love to have you along for the ride!

So if you love stepping into the unknown, following your heart, falling in love, and fighting for what you believe in then please follow me and check out my pages for more information on what I’m up to…

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