My Heritage and my Writing By Shobhan Bantwal

I was born and raised in a large, conservative Hindu family in a small town called Belgaum in Southwestern India. I was the black sheep of the family, the only tomboy and hellion in a family of five girls. My four sisters were angels—good little Brahmin girls with the perfect mix of academic achievement, modesty and deportment. Needless to say, I single-handedly gave my parents every gray hair they possessed, but they were wonderful parents and to a large degree I owe everything I am today to them. The most valuable things they gave me were an outstanding education and the love of reading.

An arranged marriage to a man who happened to live in the U.S. brought me to New Jersey several years ago.

My Indian heritage became the natural basis for my writing. As an Indian-American woman, I straddle two distinctly different cultures, both equally rich, both with their share of woes and quirks, yet both equally intriguing.

When I started to write, I decided to base my first story in India, and use my hometown as the backdrop. I gave it a fictitious name so as not to offend its denizens, but I had a perfect town with all its gossip and conservatism and color and sharp contrasts to draw upon for my stories. My characters are not based on any real people, but I could easily picture them living in my hometown, doing the things I did when I was growing. Even the convent, which my protagonist in my second book uses as a safe haven, is fashioned after the parochial school I attended as a young girl.

THE DOWRY BRIDE, my first book, was released by Kensington Publishing in September 2007. THE FORBIDDEN DAUGHTER, released in September 2008, is my second book and the one I am touring to promote at the moment. Information about my books and other writing is available on my website: www.shobhanbantwal.com

For more information about Shobhan Bantwal’s virtual tour, visit – http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2008/09/forbidden-daughter-by-shobhan-bantwal.html

The Forbidden Daughter can be ordered at: http://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-Daughter-Shobhan-Bantwal/dp/0758220308

Lillian Brummet - Before She Was Published

Dave and Lillian met and married 17 years ago in Kelowna, BC – the southwestern province of Canada, located just North of the US State of Washington. Sadly the couple are unable to have children, but they have always had several cats and dogs that they adopt from the SPCA to continually share their home. Gardening is the Brummet’s hobby of choice and you can often find them playing in the dirt. www.brummet.ca

“I grew up in a broken home; my mother was married 4 times and 2 of those men found me too attractive, unfortunately. Sadly there were no rule books at the time to help families deal with situations like this and I found myself on my own and on the street at the age of 13 -1/2. I stayed out of the government system by working the same jobs I always had up to then, such as working for nurseries and babysitting and yard chores and the like while going to public school. Soon, though, I found out how different I was from others at school and I just didn’t fit in anymore. So I stopped going to public school for a few years. At age 15 I was caught living on my own and was taken to a foster home where I was given the option of working part time, having some independence still, but going back to school to get my grade 10. Which I did, but when I soon was on my own again by choice this time, more due to my discomfiture with family activities and bonding than anything else. At 19 I went back to school and eventually received a university level of grade 12 (meaning some of the highest available courses in maths, sciences, etc). Eventually I took several other college courses that lead to a career in the field of hospitality management in my mid-twenties. On the side, I helped run my mother’s market garden and my husbands drum teaching business. To say I was on over-achiever is not an exaggeration. I had this drive in me to not let the past be forever torturing me and holding me back.

When I was growing up, teachers often commented on my writing ability - and honestly, English was one of the few classes that kept me going to school when I was first on my own. I used poetry as a healing tool, a way to get the pain out where I could examine it. Eventually, prodding from friends lead me to enter a contest and then another and another… I never did win a grand prize, but my work did appear in five hardcover anthology books and several publications throughout North America. I also had the honor of attaining "Editor's Choice Award for outstanding Achievement in Poetry", not once – but twice. These small achievements and praises gave me some confidence in the quality of my work.

But what prompted me to write as a career began with a bad car accident – a three-car pile-up and I was in the middle. After a year of full-time physiotherapy, followed by a year of trying to get back to operating my business and continuing therapy, I realized I was never going to be able to continue that work full-time.

At that point Dave and I were feeling like our lives were going the wrong direction. I knew that with the injuries received from the car accident, I was not able to continue to run my business and having a full-time job elsewhere was not looking like a possibility due to chronic pain issues. I mean, we worked hard for our careers and to have it just taken away like that was really shocking – of course, I’m grateful for it now. At the time, however, I looked back at my life in disgust because I felt all my efforts, work, pain… it was all for nothing. No one would notice and no lasting benefit was left behind. I questioned why I survived the life I had only to have these things happen – and I questioned the value of my life. This was the trigger that helped me realize that I just couldn’t live like that any longer. Dave and I had several heart-to-heart discussions about the meaning of our lives, what was important to us and how we mean to use the time we are given. I even wrote a short poem about it:

LOCOMOTION

Locomotion keeps me moving through the confusing compulsive waves of life.
And, lost in this rush, I consume and exhaust myself for the unknown.
Feeling awfully tired, I pause - and look in at my routines in disgust.
And a desperate yearning to escape beyond the maze, and into self-sufficiency arises.

Right around this time, my husband was taking a writing course and I began taking it alongside of him. Soon, our submissions were accepted and sold and a free-lance career began, which later developed into our career as authors.

We embarked on a freelance writing career in 1998, and began publishing our column “Trash Talk” in 1999. Although we stopped writing this column at the end of 2006, it continues to be picked up by publications around the world. This column was developed into our first book Trash Talk (2004), which we soon followed up with a collection of my poetry in the book Towards Understanding (2005). Our most recent book is Purple Snowflake Marketing, which was released in 2007 – we are excited to announce that this author’s marketing plan guide will be released as a 2nd edition in late 2008 with just under 200 additional resources and information for authors to use in their promotion plan.

We also write articles dealing with gardening, yard, pets and outdoor adventures. Dave is the editor, proofreader, photographer, graphic designer, diagram and image creator and website managing half of our co-writing relationship. While I do the research, data entry (typing), office work, handle most of the marketing and interacting with publishers and media. We work very well as a team for live marketing endeavors from interviews to book events – with Dave being the speaker while I am the assistant, events go quite smoothly.”

www.brummet.ca

Lillian Brummet - Before She Was Published

Dave and Lillian met and married 17 years ago in Kelowna, BC – the southwestern province of Canada, located just North of the US State of Washington. Sadly the couple are unable to have children, but they have always had several cats and dogs that they adopt from the SPCA to continually share their home. Gardening is the Brummet’s hobby of choice and you can often find them playing in the dirt. www.brummet.ca

“I grew up in a broken home; my mother was married 4 times and 2 of those men found me too attractive, unfortunately. Sadly there were no rule books at the time to help families deal with situations like this and I found myself on my own and on the street at the age of 13 -1/2. I stayed out of the government system by working the same jobs I always had up to then, such as working for nurseries and babysitting and yard chores and the like while going to public school. Soon, though, I found out how different I was from others at school and I just didn’t fit in anymore. So I stopped going to public school for a few years. At age 15 I was caught living on my own and was taken to a foster home where I was given the option of working part time, having some independence still, but going back to school to get my grade 10. Which I did, but when I soon was on my own again by choice this time, more due to my discomfiture with family activities and bonding than anything else. At 19 I went back to school and eventually received a university level of grade 12 (meaning some of the highest available courses in maths, sciences, etc). Eventually I took several other college courses that lead to a career in the field of hospitality management in my mid-twenties. On the side, I helped run my mother’s market garden and my husbands drum teaching business. To say I was on over-achiever is not an exaggeration. I had this drive in me to not let the past be forever torturing me and holding me back.

When I was growing up, teachers often commented on my writing ability - and honestly, English was one of the few classes that kept me going to school when I was first on my own. I used poetry as a healing tool, a way to get the pain out where I could examine it. Eventually, prodding from friends lead me to enter a contest and then another and another… I never did win a grand prize, but my work did appear in five hardcover anthology books and several publications throughout North America. I also had the honor of attaining "Editor's Choice Award for outstanding Achievement in Poetry", not once – but twice. These small achievements and praises gave me some confidence in the quality of my work.

But what prompted me to write as a career began with a bad car accident – a three-car pile-up and I was in the middle. After a year of full-time physiotherapy, followed by a year of trying to get back to operating my business and continuing therapy, I realized I was never going to be able to continue that work full-time.

At that point Dave and I were feeling like our lives were going the wrong direction. I knew that with the injuries received from the car accident, I was not able to continue to run my business and having a full-time job elsewhere was not looking like a possibility due to chronic pain issues. I mean, we worked hard for our careers and to have it just taken away like that was really shocking – of course, I’m grateful for it now. At the time, however, I looked back at my life in disgust because I felt all my efforts, work, pain… it was all for nothing. No one would notice and no lasting benefit was left behind. I questioned why I survived the life I had only to have these things happen – and I questioned the value of my life. This was the trigger that helped me realize that I just couldn’t live like that any longer. Dave and I had several heart-to-heart discussions about the meaning of our lives, what was important to us and how we mean to use the time we are given. I even wrote a short poem about it:

LOCOMOTION

Locomotion keeps me moving through the confusing compulsive waves of life.

And, lost in this rush, I consume and exhaust myself for the unknown.

Feeling awfully tired, I pause - and look in at my routines in disgust.

And a desperate yearning to escape beyond the maze, and into self-sufficiency arises.

Right around this time, my husband was taking a writing course and I began taking it alongside of him. Soon, our submissions were accepted and sold and a free-lance career began, which later developed into our career as authors.

We embarked on a freelance writing career in 1998, and began publishing our column “Trash Talk” in 1999. Although we stopped writing this column at the end of 2006, it continues to be picked up by publications around the world. This column was developed into our first book Trash Talk (2004), which we soon followed up with a collection of my poetry in the book Towards Understanding (2005). Our most recent book is Purple Snowflake Marketing, which was released in 2007 – we are excited to announce that this author’s marketing plan guide will be released as a 2^nd edition in late 2008 with just under 200 additional resources and information for authors to use in their promotion plan.

We also write articles dealing with gardening, yard, pets and outdoor adventures. Dave is the editor, proofreader, photographer, graphic designer, diagram and image creator and website managing half of our co-writing relationship. While I do the research, data entry (typing), office work, handle most of the marketing and interacting with publishers and media. We work very well as a team for live marketing endeavors from interviews to book events – with Dave being the speaker while I am the assistant, events go quite smoothly.”

www.brummet.ca

Before Pamela Thibodeaux Was Published

My Life In A Nutshell

As a child my life-long dream was to get married and have a family. I never dreamed of becoming a writer…all I wanted to do was stay home and be a full-time wife and mother.

Although I am a wife, mother, and now grandmother, the “stay home” part has eluded me.

In March of 1978 I left high-school to marry at sixteen and then obtained my GED in April that same year. At that point-between marrying and having babies- I began a career as a bookkeeper by keeping records for my father's construction business. In 1992 I earned an Associate Degree in Office Occupations, specializing in Computer Applications. Though I currently work as a Licensed Sales Producer in the Insurance industry, my past employment history is as colorful as my writing resume. I have operated in professions ranging from cashier in fast food restaurants and convenience stores to a full-charge bookkeeper and tax preparer.

In spite of all of the changes in my life (marriage, children, divorce, another marriage, and grandchildren), one thing has remained constant: Reading.

I've always been an avid reader, from Dr. Seuss before school age, to Walter Farley's "Black Stallion" series as a preteen, then on to romance where I found my passion. Mainstream, contemporary, historical...it did not matter. If it was a romance, I read it! They say 'don't judge a book by its cover' but I refused to listen....if it looked good, I read it.

One day while pregnant with my daughter I flung the book I currently attempted to devour in disgust and muttered, "I can do better than that!" I'm still not sure if the book was really that bad or if I merely had a hormonal moment, but thus began my writing journey.

That incident occurred more than twenty-five years ago and I must say I, as an author as well as a human being, have evolved a great deal in a quarter of a century.

For years I was a closet writer who wrote in 5-subject notebooks, shy and afraid of what people would think. I had no idea that there were rules to writing or anything similar. I simply wrote as the characters and story unfolded in my mind. Once I bought my first word processor, my secret was out. The one defining moment when I thought I just may be on to something was when my mother, also an avid reader but a sports fanatic, missed the Super Bowl to read my manuscript. If you know any sports fanatics you'll know that it takes something very special or drastic to pull them away from that game.

I've come a long way since those years as a closet writer. Today I am multi-published in romantic fiction and creative non-fiction. My writing has won awards such as Coeur de Louisianne's 1999 Diamond in the Rough and their 2000 Ruby and in 2001 I earned my RWA Pro Pin.

My romantic fiction novels have been tagged as, "Inspirational with an Edge!" and reviewed as, "steamier and grittier than the typical Christian novel without decreasing the message" and consistently receive high praise and good reviews.

My short stories have received awards such as Reviewers Top Pick from Night Owl Romance & Recommended Read from My Book Cravings.

My non-fiction has been featured in publications such as Cross & Quill, Fellow Script, and Vocational Biographies and much of it can be found online at Associated Content.

I've also contributed to publications such as Bylines Writers Desk Calendar, Crumbs in the Keyboard; Stories from Courageous Women Who Juggle Life & Writing and Penned from the Heart Daily Devotionals (volumes xi, xiii, & xiv).

Not much has changed since I have been published. I still long to stay home only now, that desire has changed from being a “stay home wife & mother” to being a full-time writer.

To find out more about my life and writing, visit my website and/or blog and sign up for my mailing list!

Until later…take care, God Bless! and remember….when the going gets tough, the tough get on their knees.

Pamela S Thibodeaux

“Inspirational with an Edge!”

My Life in a Nutshell

Terry Spears - Before She Was Published

Before I was Published

Terry Spear

Before I was published, I was a reserve Army officer, working to mobilize forces. But since I was young, I loved to create stories and I was an avid reader, took creative writing in junior high, but I never thought I’d be a “real” writer.

When my kids were little, I read to them all the time, and I thought, wow, I want to write a children’s book. I wrote them and sent them off and one even went to a senior editor. But she wrote back saying it was a great story but too similar to one already being published.

So I didn’t write for a number of years. Then I divorced and I had two small children to raise on my own. Sometimes great shakeups is what a body needs to finally get them on track.

I wrote the great American romance novel set in the old west…and then learned that historicals, especially western, didn’t sell well. Back to the drawing board.

At the time, paranormals were becoming popular and I’d always loved ghost stories and Dracula. But I wasn’t ready for the really hardcore stuff yet. I started with psychics. However, it was a ghost teen book and vampire and witches teen book that sold first. Good news.

Bad news? The company closed the line before the first of the two books came out. Undaunted, I knew I’d found my niche. And two years later, sold the first of a werewolf adult series. Heart of the Wolf spawned three more in the series, and my publisher bought all of them.

What makes them unique? The world. The characters are one with their wolf side and I did a lot of research into individual wolf behavior and group behavior. I’ve always loved doing research for my stories, so by incorporating werewolf legend and real wolf attitude, Heart of the Wolf and the rest of the series was born.

Terry Spear/Terry Lee Wilde

www.terryspear.com

www.terrywildeteenbooks.com

Russell A Vassallo

Before I was Published

When I was eleven years old, I asked my dad for an allowance. Other kids were getting them and I felt I was entitled to as weekly pension too. My dad owned a confectionery store at that time. He told me to bring my wagon around to the front of the store. I did. He brought out a cooler filled with soda bottles and some cakes and cookies.

“Here,” he said “is your allowance. You pay me seven cents for a bottle of soda, the cakes are two for five cents and the cookie packs are two cents each. Whatever you get for them is yours to keep.”

From that moment on I knew I was going to be self-supporting if I wanted an allowance. So I trucked my goods down to the factories at break and lunch time and I sold my wares, went back and got the bottles, and returned them for the deposit on each bottle. That was fine but it wasn't the kind of money I wanted and it was a lot of work on very hot, sultry days.

I met a fellow who worked on the docks at the Port of Newark and he offered to sell me firecrackers at very reasonable rates. He was probably stealing them, but in my neighborhood one did not ask questions. Questions were bad. They raised suspicions. So I would buy a full case of firecrackers consisting of one thousand packs for ten dollars and sell each pack for seventy-five cents. Kids in schools started buying them in April, May and June. In July and August, I sold them to local kids around the neighborhood for thirty-five cents (they weren't as rich) and in September and October, I'd sell left-overs to the school kids for fifty cents per pack.

Most of my early life was spent in schools. I graduated from Seton Hall University and attended the Law School there. I graduated in 1961 but went to work as an insurance adjuster in order to pay off my school loans. I worked at two major insurers until the pay just wasn't enough to support a wife and two children so I started my own investigation and subpoena business and succeeded very well at it.

In 1971, after ten years out of law school, I applied for admission to the NJ Bar and took the two-and one-half day examination.

I was sworn in on May 18^th, 1971 and practiced civil trial work for twenty-five years, wining nine-two per cent of my cases. During that term I was cited for contempt of court on eight occasions and threatened with incarceration on at least four instances. On two occasions, when other attorneys became over-bearing, the bailiff had to break up near-fistfights. On one of those occasions the judge actually came off the bench to separate us. One could say I was a tough adversary. I prefer to say I represented my clients well.

In 1990, Halloween to be exact, Virginia and I were involved in a near-fatal auto accident. We were on our way to see one of our trotters race at Freehold when another vehicle ran a red light and caved in the side of my Audi. Virginia nearly died. For over a year she had to wear a back brace. We just both decided it was time to retire, get out of New Jersey, and enjoy life.

I actually didn't start writing until 1999 while recovering from colon cancer.

Tears and Tales: Stories of Human and Animal Rescue was my first book and is still selling well. In fact, the marketing is just beginning to take-off three years after publication. We haven't really touched the library market as yet but we do a lot of book fairs and festivals.

The Horse with the Golden Mane is a collection of longer stories dealing with animal/human relationships. Like Tears, it's won its share of awards and sold a goodly number of copies. We also learned how to make our books profitable by keeping expenses down until the marketing begins to work.

My wife then began nudging me to write a sort of a memoir about some of the underworld figures I grew up with and later represented in civil matters as a lawyer. I really didn't want to write an “I was born on . . .” kind of memoir so I used the technique of viewing it from the neighborhood and the people who inhabited my early life there. Virginia says that it's a wow! She's a tough critic and very picky so if I please her, I know it's good. And we have a waiting line of orders already. I am hoping for an August publication date. Information on that can be obtained on our website www.krazyduck.com

What do I do now? Write. Market. Run a farm. Rescue strays. Antagonize my cat. Aggravate my wife. Plague my doctors with solicitations to buy my books.

Even my vet had some on his counter that we sold. My hematologist gets hit for ten books every time he examines me (once a year for blood work).

Russell A. Vassallo

www.krazyduck.com

www.maneofgold.com

Before Ginger Simpson Was Published

Before I was published I worked at the University of California. The first twenty years, I spent working with graduate students, first in the admissions office and later as the Manager of Admissions & Enrollment for the Biological & Agricultural Sciences. I loved my job, but grew tired of being at the same place every day, doing the same thing. Actually, that's not true; I would have stayed there until I retired but a workmate decided to sue me and two other women for racial discrimination. I wasn't allowed to approach her to ask what it was I or the others did to her to cause her to take such drastic measures. I hadn't a clue. In my opinion, during the eight years we worked together, I assumed we were friends and colleagues. I evidently was wrong. Since I wasn't strong enough to stay and work shoulder-to-shoulder with some who accused me of being something I absolutely abhorred, I bolted.

I left Graduate Studies and moved to the Undergraduate College of Letters & Science which sort of completed the 'big picture' for me. I was an academic counselor for a year and spent most of my lunchtimes and breaks writing my first and second novel. Although I realized I would never make a substantial amount of money with small press, getting both manuscripts accepted for publishing was the impetus of bigger dreams of perhaps achieving mainstream publishing. Besides, the questions of why I'd left a job I loved for some many years kept creeping into conversations and I was forbidden to answer them. Retirement was my way to 'kill two birds with one stone'.

I carried around the rage at **** for years, but finally let it go, realizing the woman saw a way to make a quick buck and took it. Now, I feel sorry for her because one of the women she sued, and my best friend, was diagnosed with cancer and died during the whole ugly ordeal of depositions and stress. **** has to live with that for the rest of her life.

I've continued to achieve publishing, but not at the level I thought I wanted. I've recently resigned myself to finding happiness with what I've accomplished, realizing that the competition is far to keen and dependent upon two many things beyond my control. I can't count on writing the exactly correct and formatted query letter to the right agent on the right day of the week describing the book that perfectly fits what a publishing house is looking for, down to the word count. I've come far since I started and I'm proud of that.

E-Publishing allows me to write what I want to write and I don't have to stretch it with extra verbiage to meet requirements. The story line doesn't have to fit a script and there doesn't always have to be a happy ending. Internet publishing is my comfort zone and where I've found a fit. I'm tickled with the reviews I've received, my fans and my friends.

Don't discount e-pubbed authors as an untalented lot. The competition is so keen among the houses now, that rejection letters are getting to be more and more common place. I've read books by some of my peers and found talent surpassing that of the authors on the NY Best Sellers List. I feel like I'm in regal company.

For information on my backlist, you can visit my website at http://www.gingersimpson.com

My upcoming release, Sparta Rose, is due out in a few months from Enspiren Press and you most certainly will hear my screams on my blog at http://mizging.blogspot.com when I learn the exact date. Leave a comment so I know you've visited. I love meeting new people and greeting old friends.

SPICE up your life with GINGER
http://www.gingersimpson.com
http://mizging.blogspot.com
http://myspace.com/mizging