Taxation without Representation (Satire)

James Otis, Jr. said, “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” yet there are millions of Americans who are taxed and who receive no benefit from the taxes they pay. They aren't even allowed to vote. This, my friend, is taxation without representation, and it is tyranny!

I’m talking, of course, about the dead. 

Not only are they taxed, but they’re taxed simply for being dead. It’s true. It’s called “Estate Tax,” and it’s an outrage! How can we allow these Americans--who cannot even speak up for themselves--to be treated so unfairly under the law?

So I say, “Let’s give dead people the right to vote!” 

And when the zombie hordes come to my door in search of brains, I’m going to tell them just that. I’m going to make protest signs for them and send them to Washington, DC. 

Washington is already filled with brain dead, corporate zombies, so they should fit right in.

Read first 50 pages of Ride of Your Life for free!

There's a new BookBuzzr widget on my blog at the top of the column on the right. If you click on it, you can read the first 50 pages of Ride of Your Life for free! Check it out, and if you like what you see, click on a link to buy a copy today.

Download the first chapters of RIDE OF YOUR LIFE for free!

You can now download the first chapters of Ride of Your Life for free!


Yes, Ride of Your Life is a part of an exciting new teen fiction sampler put together by the amazing, super-creative Alicia Kat Dillman: Beautiful Dangerous Love.   

Here's the blurb:


"Do you crave the dangerously beautiful worlds of paranormal suspense, ghostly romances, and otherworldly adventures? The you’ll be swept up in this sampling of six fantastic indie reads including Daemons in the Mist by Alicia Kat Dillman, Destined by Jessie Harrell, The Pack -Retribution- LM Preston, The Magic Crystal by Lorna Suzuki, Ride of Your Life by Shevi Arnold, Whisper by Chelsea M. Cameron."


So what are you waiting for? Start the summer off right by downloading this wonderful mix of teen fantasy, science fiction, paranormal and romance from Smashwords today.  

The Challenges of Writing with Dyslexia

I asked author Alicia Kat Dillman to tell me how she overcame dyslexia to write her debut novel, Daemons in the Mist. 

This is her answer:

“It is my great strength that gets me where I want to go, but it is my flaws, my weaknesses, that made me who I am.”

Sometimes I am so determined in my need to succeed that I forget just how much I have accomplished and just how far I have come.

I don’t like to dwell on things I can’t change or things that I have no control over. Instead, I just keeping moving forward toward the goals I set for myself.

I have dyslexia; in fact I have all three forms.

When I write, sometimes I move letters or words around out of order. And half the time when I read it back, I'll miss the error because my brain is auto-correcting it for me. This is made even worse, if I’m trying to write while the TV is on or someone is trying to talk to me. I will literally start transcribing the audio into the sentences inter-spaced with what I was trying to write. Sometimes words just end up there that are out of the blue and completely unrelated to anything I was thinking.

Because I know this happens, I work around it.

It’s all about focusing on what you need to do instead of focusing on what prevents you from doing it.

I listen to music that won’t distract me and try to write mostly when everyone is asleep, which means about 90% of my writing is done between 11pm-4am. For example, I’m writing this at 2am.

Dyslexia isn’t something that goes away or something you grow out of. It’s something you have to deal with every day, something that’s just a part of what makes you, you.

The point is not to let it run your life.

Sure, nearly every time I write “me” it comes out “my,” instead or vice versa. And I will forever type “chnage” instead of “change,” even though I know how it’s spelled. And I can read a sentence a dozen times and still not see the mistakes, because my brain corrects it for me.

I used to feel embarrassed about this, but you know what? Dyslexia is a disability and those are nothing to be ashamed of.

* * *

About Alicia Kat Dillman

Indie author & illustrator Alicia Kat Dillman is a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. Kat illustrates and designs book covers & computer game art by day and writes teen fiction by night. The owner of two very crazy studio cats and nine overfull bookcases, Kat can usually be found performing, watching anime, or hanging out in twitter chats when not playing in the imaginary worlds within her head. 

Daemons in the Mist

Seventeen year old Patrick Connolly has been hopelessly infatuated with Nualla for years but he is all but invisible to her. Until, that is, he rescues her from a confrontation with her ex. Little does Patrick know he’s just set off a dangerous chain reaction that will thrust him into a world of life-altering secrets and things that shouldn’t exist, because the fog and mist of San Francisco are concealing more than just buildings.

Website Link: http://www.katgirlstudio.com/

Book Link: http://www.katgirlstudio.com/book/daemons-in-the-mist-book/

Looking for a great summer read? How about a bittersweet, teen romantic ghost story?

I'm excited to announce that my latest YA novel, Ride of Your Life, is now available on Kindle and Nook and from the iBookstore! This is the story of Tracy Miller, a teenage girl who dies in a theme-park fire and meets the love of her life thirty years after her own death. This bittersweet romantic ghost story was inspired by a true event: the Great Adventure Haunted Castle fire that killed eight teenagers in 1984. I think Ride of Your Life is the most romantic ghost story since the movie Ghost, but I hope you'll download a free sample so you can decide for yourself: http://amzn.com/B0081ICVEQ

Interview with the amazing Jo Ramsey

 What was your favorite book when you were a child?

Oh...that's a hard question to answer! I loved to read, and almost every book was my favorite at one time or another. Charlotte's Web was one of my favorites in elementary school.

 What was your favorite book when you were a teenager?

As a teen, I had a favorite series, not just one book. I loved the series The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper. Those books are the reason I got into writing YA urban fantasy.

 Cool. When did you discover that you knew how to tell a good story?

I've always enjoyed my own stories, even though when I was young they probably weren't all that good. I started making up stories when I was about two or three, and I would tell them to my parents, my friends, and even my stuffed animals. Whoever I could get to listen. Fortunately, a lot of the adults in my life liked my stories and encouraged me, though they might have been just humoring me.

 How old were you when you started writing fiction?

The first fictional piece I remember writing was a story about a girl named Maria who was sent to live with her uncle. I was five.

 Wow! Did someone encourage you to write?

As I said, a lot of people in my life encouraged me. The biggest encouragement when I was very young came from my kindergarten teacher. I already knew how to read when I started school, and I picked up writing pretty quickly, so she wasn't quite sure what to do with me. As part of my language arts program, to give her time to work with the other students, she started asking me to read some of the books in the classroom and draw pictures about them. Then she started asking me to write stories about the pictures I drew. I loved being able to write stories as part of school.

 Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes. Even when I was two or three, I knew I wanted my stories to be in books someday.

 Why do you choose to write fantasy?

I don't write exclusively fantasy, but definitely the majority of my stuff is urban fantasy/paranormal. When I was a kid, I really wanted to get out of my own life. Reading books like the ones by Susan Cooper, Dianna Wynne Jones, and other authors who wrote fantasy were a wonderful escape for me, and when I started writing seriously (when I was about eleven), I wrote stories that took me out of my own life and into some pretty fantastic situations.

I still have a soft spot for stories about "typical" kids who end up in very unusual situations. Like having to save the universe from being vaporized.

 Why do you write for this particular age group?

I started writing for teenagers when I was a teen myself, and I guess I never really matured past that point.

 Tell me about your book. What inspired this particular story?

I have two new releases.

Cluing In came out November 9, and is a contemporary YA novel about Jamey Mandel, a 16-year-old boy who breaks up with his girlfriend Tina when she starts pressuring him for sex. A few weeks later, rumors circulate that Tina is pregnant by her new boyfriend, and she comes to Jamey for help. Jamey turns her away. A few days later, Tina takes her own life, and Jamey blames himself.

I created the character of Jamey when I was in college; he was a baby then, in a story about two teen parents. Somewhere along the line, I wrote a story about Jamey as a teenager. When I polished it up to submit, I was told there were too many subplots, but the one thing that stood out in my mind was a minor mention that a girl Jamey had once dated was pregnant. I scrapped most of the other subplots and that became the main focus of the novel. (Not to worry...the other subplots are going to become their own novels, at my editor's request.)

The other new release, From the Ashes, is book five in my urban fantasy series Reality Shift. Shanna Bailey and Jonah Leighton are two teenagers who use energy healing and channeling (communicating with higher-level beings) to banish demons, send malevolent dead spirits to "the other side," and prevent the universe from being vaporized. In this book, Shanna and Jonah find a "psychic" who isn't what she seems, and who is the next potential portal for the entity that will destroy the universe. Meanwhile, Shanna is getting used to life in her foster home, and is trying to cope with her former next-door neighbor Ken Gallant, who now wants to be her boyfriend.

The series was inspired by some conversations a friend and I had a number of years ago, about things like demons and dead spirits. My friend practiced energy healing, channeling, and yoga, and those became part of the story; Jonah is based on him. Some of the struggles Shanna goes through are from my life.

 Tell me about your writing process. Do you outline? How do you edit, and is there a lot of editing? How do you get feedback? Are you a member of a critique group?

I don't really outline. I do jot down brief notes about where I think the story's going to go, especially if I'm working on a book in one of my series. Sometimes the story ends up somewhere completely different, though. I write fairly clean first drafts, so my editing process is pretty quick. I highlight all my "crutch words", the words and phrases I tend to overuse, and do a first pass where I eliminate as many of those as I can, fix typos, and fix any plot holes or other content issues that I find. Then I do a second pass where I fix anything I've missed the first time. Usually after that, the manuscript is ready to submit. I'm not a member of a critique group and I don't have any beta readers; I don't usually get any feedback until my editor at whichever publishing company I've sent it to sees the manuscript.

 If readers could take away just one thing from your story, what do you want it to be?
 

That no matter what has happened in their lives, they can still grow and change, they can get help and get past it, and they can go on to do great things.

Cluing In is available from Featherweight Press, http://www.featherweightpublishing.com.

From the Ashes, along with the rest of the Reality Shift series, is available from Jupiter Gardens Press, http://www.jupitergardens.com.

To find out more about Jo and her books, please visit her website, http://www.joramsey.com