Editor Interview: Jessica Barnes

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Pen-Friends 🙂 Today’s feature is a professional editor sharing her insight of self editing and the publishing industry.

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Welcome Jessica Barnes!

SP: Please tell us more about you? 

I’m a small-town girl from Kansas who was lucky enough to get an editorial assistant position at a publishing house shortly after graduation. The fiction editor there took me under her wing and taught me how to edit novels, and I’ve been doing it ever since. Going on 12 years in the industry now!

SP: What do you like about being an editor?

I like collaborating with authors to make their story as good as it can be. Sometimes it’s just a matter of polishing things up, but sometimes there’s a problem-solving aspect, where an element of the plot just isn’t working, and the author and I have to put our heads together and brainstorm a way out of the situation.

SP: As an editor what do you wish you could tell writers?

Don’t take it personally! Continue reading →

Character, Concept & Cause

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Have you ever read a book that conveys an interesting concept but the story didn’t keep you invested to the end? Or a story where the cause was seemingly really important but you found yourself not really caring if they won or lost?

It’s most likely because the story was too focused on the concept or cause, and not on the character. In other words, we cannot care what happens to a character’s world, until we care about the characters who live in it.

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Falling for Your (Side)[1] Characters

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path divergingHave you ever gotten side-tracked in the midst of a climactic scene? Say your Hero is just about to charge into battle, or the Heroine is finally going to open that forbidden door, and a side character pops in to play a partial/ important/ crucial role, and then suddenly you’re off, writing their backstory, romping through their history and quirks, and discovering what their dreams in life are.

If this phenomenon sounds familiar, then welcome! Continue reading →

Feature Friday

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Pen Friends, todays feature is a Canadian poet and aspiring novelist.

Welcome Natalie Bearg!

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SP: Who are you?

My name is Natalie and though I was born in Canada I don’t consider it home. I actually spent much of my growing up years in Asia, mostly Mongolia. It may be because as an introvert I tend to live inside my own head but writing has always appealed to me, especially poetry.

SP: What all do you write?

I love to write poetry, but in terms of fiction I write fantasy, steampunk themed stories with maybe some supernatural elements thrown in there, and heart wrenchers 🙂

SP: What am I working on now?

Life, The Afterlife, & Everything Inbetween — That’s what I’m calling my story at the moment.  It’s a story that I started for nanowrimo in 2011 and the book is about just that. It’s a fantasy that follows a young girl who is trying to find herself in the world.

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Feature Friday

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Hey Pen Friends! Today’s feature is an aspiring Young Adult author.

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SP: Who are you?

My name is Dana Black,  and I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I’ve had a love of story for as long as I can remember, but I’ve been seriously pursuing fiction writing for the last four years. In my spare time, I enjoy photography and baking, and a few times over the years I considered going to pastry school or film school. Writing ended up winning out, and it continues to do so. But I make it a point of including food and baking in my stories as often as possible, and I dream of adapting my novels into screenplays.

SP: What do you write?

After trying out a few different genres, I have found a home writing young adult speculative novels, and I focus on fantasy. I’ve also got a time travel series in the works as well as a dystopian/fantasy waiting to be written.

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Childhood Influences

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Reflect for a moment on the special books that embody your childhood; those stories you still hold clearly in your mind, even if you haven’t picked them up for a reread in years.

I like to ask fellow book lovers what pivotal books they read as children or teenagers, because it’s often a window into who they are today – sometimes a window that I might not have glimpsed or understood without the shared love of reading.

I want to talk about the books that helped shape us, the stories and the characters that molded us (consciously or not) into the people and readers we are today.

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Feature Friday

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Hey Authors, today we will feature an author and professor of fiction and American Literature. Come hear his tips!

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Jim Schaap

SP: Thanks for joining us! Please tell us about yourself.

My name is Jim Schaap, although you’ll find me at Amazon under James Calvin Schaap. I mark my genesis as a writer from reading a novelist from the region where I lived then (and still do) named Frederick Manfred. When I read a novel of his (he’s an acquired taste, believe me), I thought it would be a joy to be able to write stories, because he made it clear that I didn’t have to be from New York or even some kind of literary family or sophisticated tribe. All of that happened when I was a freshman in college.

Continue reading →