Featured YA Author – Mardi Orlando

I’m happy to introduce you to our first Featured YA Author, Mardi Orlando. A woman of many talents, Mardi has written several YA fantasies, wrote and illustrated children’s books, and a book of poetry.

She studied psychology and teaching, and teaches art and music to children of all ages. Mardi recently received an Arts and Literature Grant from the East Gippsland Shire Council for her contribution to the Arts. She has also travelled extensively and found that an open mind is essential in all walks of life. Mardi lives in Lakes Entrance in Victoria, Australia with her husband of 15 years. Her newly published novel Secrets of Ghosts is a haunting fantasy for young adults.

What’s Secrets of Ghosts All About?

‘Something is trying to disappear me and I do not like it. It feels like I am being slowly undone.’

In 1917, at the age of 14, OSCAR ghosted at the frontlines of Passchendaele Ridge where he fled to escape the loss of his entire family. Now, trapped in limbo, he is hiding in an abandoned church with his gathering of ghosted orphans trying desperately to find a way to save their souls. He is more powerful than they know but his determination is more damaging than he realizes. Through Static Recordings they call for help but slowly they are forgetting everything. 

Sixteen-year-old DAFFODIL uses crystal to change her spirit and has escaped the Institution where she was sent after both her parents died. The abuse may have been difficult but it just may have prepared her for her first mission with The Secret Society Of Gifted Teens – a task that MADAME GLISZNORT has carefully orchestrated to save her Lost Children (the ghosted orphans responsible for the mysterious sightings in Blackwater that threw the town into an irrecoverable contest so long ago). Even death cannot release her from her obsession; after all, she has more than a vested interest in the outcome. And now she has located the most gifted teenagers, and trapped them in this lost place where she must manipulate their fears so that they can access their gifts and do what she has been unable to. Their survival is unlikely – for that would mean they would have to destroy the Shadow – a teeming whirlpool of hatred borne from a place of such human darkness that it turned Blackwater into a ghost-town so many decades ago.

Now, stranded in the icy wasteland of no-time and encirled by a dense mist, with six other gifted strangers Daffodil must figure out a way to free these ghosts’ souls and to do that she will have to get her companions to expose the secrets that have tragically haunted their own lives. It is the only way they will source their gifts. It is the only way they will survive. But first they have to destroy the Shadow. It feeds off misery and shame – and there is plenty of that here. When JAKE finds the old radiola VIII in the church attic and realizes he can hear the ghost’s recordings in the static, the group is thrown into a battle for survival – for the lost souls, for themselves, and for the future. And time is running out.

Motivation to Write Secrets of Ghosts

Mardi heard some strange stories about the WWI era, and when she began to investigate, she was amazed by the unbelievable devastation (approximately 20 million deaths due to war, illness, starvation etc.). She knew she just had to write something about it. There were so many mysterious tales, which had her looking up old newspapers, and that is what gave her the idea to relay the past via the front pages of a newspaper.

The story is told in three parts: The present day where seven gifted teens are stranded in no-time; The front pages of the Blackwater Herald Moon Tribune, which tells Madame Glizsnort’s trials with the ‘mysterious sightings’ that become her Lost Children; and Static Recordings, which reveal the ghosts’ cries for help.

What Made You Self-Publish?

She has now self-published several books. At first she did it because all she heard was about how hard it was to find a traditional publisher, and was really worried about how her creativity would cope with rejections—so she never tried. In fact, she had so much fun being an Indie author that she just kept going. Mardi has total control and can make her own covers, add her own illustrations and design the book the way she wants it to look. Now she has really taken to social media, especially Linkedin, and is having a ball with all the great groups. She has met so many lovely and supportive people that she feels like a part of a team. Mardi can’t believe how many great self-published authors are out there (She has read so many) and she wonders… maybe this way is even better.

Links to Purchase Secrets of Ghosts:

http://amzn.to/PH2Wx0

http://bit.ly/PZrj5H

http://bit.ly/OA59Wp

Website: http://mardiorlando.com

Blog – Mysteries and Curiosities: http://bit.ly/LMUwPy

Facebook: http://on.fb.me/O76GIC

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/mardi_moi

Goodreads: http://bit.ly/QBBSQY

It was a pleasure having Mardi Orlando as a Featured Author. I want to first congratulate her on her art grant, and second, thank her for being a part of Pay It Forward. Now help me tell the world about Mardi Orlando - http://bit.ly/QRjHGa

Young Adults and Secrets,

Bea

Featured Author – Dorothee Lang

Okay, I’m a little early with the next author. Please welcome our Featured Author, Dorothee Lang, who is a writer, web freelancer and traveler, and editor of Blue Print Review. Dorothee is from Germany, where I’m in the process of moving to, and has always been fascinated by roads, languages, and places abroad-themes reflected in her own work. Her book, Worlds Apart is a true story of two friends, two journeys and ten life lessons. I’m definitely interested in this one since it focuses on lessons learned from traveling.

About Worlds Apart

Smitha Murthy lives in Bangalore, India. A restless wanderer in the wilderness of this world, she worked as contributor to the Deccan Herald, as teacher in a school in China, and in the Global Markets Research department.

While Smitha Murthy is in a foreign country for the first time – teaching English at a Chinese school – she chances upon a fellow traveller in the web: Dorothee Lang, who has just returned to Europe from a journey to Asia, and is trying to find the balance between everyday joys and worries, work, and the call of the horizon.

An engaging travelogue in the form of emails unfolds. It leads from the Great Wall to Shanghai, from Munich to the Mediterranean Sea, and from curious questions ("How does one type on a Chinese keyboard?") to shared life lessons: "And that is the beauty of travel. It's a journey to discover the truths that lie underneath."

Interlaced with photos and rounded up with practical advice for travelling and teaching in Asia, WOR(L)DS APART is both an inspiring travel read, and the story of a friendship across cultures and borders.

The Start of Worlds Apart

This book started through a coincidence: after Dorothee returned from a journey through India, she posted some travel memories and photos online. A few months later, those blog posts triggered an email from the other side of the world: “Hi! I know that you will be really surprised to receive an email from this stranger. Let me explain. My name is Smitha, from Bangalore. Right now I am in the middle of a teaching adventure in China…”

After the first contact, they both wanted to learn more since they led very different lives. They had no idea that their mail conversation would continue and would turn into a book—but at some point, as the dialogue developed, crossing between cultures, revealing differences and commonalities, so they began to collect the correspondence in a file.

Choosing an Indie

For Dorothee, the indie literary scene – both the online and print one – always felt a bit like the individual travel scene: drawn to follow new trails, to explore new places, to cross borders, to share. They thought about self-publishing, too, but felt it would be good to have someone with editing skills that could advise and revise their collected notes from a fresh point of view, especially as they wrote their mails without the plan to publish them. Folded Word Press, their publisher, started as an online magazine and chapbook press of handmade books – that’s how Dorothee got to know Jessi Graustein, their editor. Jessi was also into travelling, and when she posted about the idea to invite travel-themed manuscripts, it all fell into place.

Link to purchase Worlds Apart: http://foldedbooks.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/worldsapart

Author Website: http://intersectingjourneys.wordpress.com/the-authors

I want to take this time to thank Dorothee Lang for sharing her book with us, and I’d also like to thank her for featuring Net Switch and Pay It Forward on her website.

Travels and Memories,

Bea

Birthday Dash!

I’ll be back with a new Featured Author later this week. I’m taking a few days off for my birthday. The 40’s are the new 30’s, right? I gotta celebrate.

Featured Author – L. Darby Gibbs (Elldee)

I love this Pay It Forward author features because it allows me to virtually meet authors from around the world. Today I’m introducing you to a 1960’s born southern east coaster woman, L. Darby Gibbs (aka Elldee), but has shared the same amount of time on both coasts. Gibbs is just as likely to pronounce “route” to rhyme with “root” as often as rhyme with “rout.” This dichotomy of accents catches the ear of her students on a regular basis as she is a teacher of English and creative writing at the high school level. 

Gibbs mainly writes science fiction, but is known to thrash out a contemporary poem or short story on occasion as well. She lives with her husband, a practical inventor, an adventurous daughter who doubles as her first reader, and two dogs in a 1920's house that interrupts her writing routinely as it is always in need of remodel. Gibbs has two books currently published in e-book format at Smashwords. She has been published since July of 2011, and is currently working on the second book in her series Students of Jump.

In Times Passed Synopsis

Take one time-jumping Nerg box and add three best friends, one self-aware computer and a leap into the past of more than 200 years, and you are bound to have a little trouble.

Idea for writing In Times Passed

Gibbs worked at a factory and was a product grader. She would pull off the line anything that didn't meet quality requirements. Doesn't take much thought or intelligence, just good automaton-like reflexes. She would listen to music, daydream, write letters in her head while her eyes registered flaws and her hands reached out and grabbed, flipped and dropped the item into the correct bin based on the type of flaw. Then a song came on the radio by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, "I just dropped in (to see what condition my condition was in)." As she listened, the story of a man who found a means to travel in time started playing out in her mind.  Gibbs liked the image of him "dropping in to see what condition [his] condition was in."

In Times Passed Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9rAZYoz024

Where to purchase book:  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/77866

Gardens in the Cracks and Other Stories Synopsis

This book is an anthology of SciFi short stories.  The title story is Gardens in the Cracks and is about Marga Graber who has been living under the pandemic-inspired edicts of the desert planet Castoe all her life, following in her mother and grandmother’s footsteps. Her ravine farm has prospered. She enrolled her first son in the scrapper apprentice program as required by those same edicts and mourned her loss when he disappeared, presumed dead along with his mentor teamster. Now she must face again the placement of a second son in the program. It is one thing to intellectually know that the planet must raise its population and its production in order to contribute again to the Common Wealth planets, but returning the planet to full recognition as a contributing member after falling to mere colony status has costs that are felt much more personally.

Idea for writing Gardens in the Cracks

Gibbs had been writing several short stories and found that two of them Gardens in the Cracks and an included novella Scrapper together were nearly book length. So she looked through pieces I wrote that she thought could inhabit a book with them. They all deal with adjusting to the things that we struggle with in life: love, fear, challenge, and believing in our selves. 

Where to purchase book: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/177065

Why Did Gibbs Self-Publish?

She thinks she might be just a little bit of a control freak and that played a part in her decision to be an indie writer. She likes creating the whole package though she did get as much feedback as she could to make it a good package that she finally uploaded. She wrote the first drafts of her books several years ago and just put them away assuming that publication was a pipe dream. And then e-publishing arrived, and she thought she would dig them out and see if they had much to say for themselves. Clearly redrafting was needed, and she could see where the stories should take some new turns as well.  It’s only been a year she published the first in her series Students of Jump, and just this summer she published an anthology. She’s off to a good start.

Author site at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LDGibbs

Gibb’s Blog: http://ldarbygibbs.blogspot.com/

Gibb’s Goodreads Author Page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5109451.L_Darby_Gibbs

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LDarbyGibbs

I appreciate Gibbs taking time out of her busy schedule to be part of Pay It Forward. It was a pleasure meeting her.

Old Houses and Science Fiction,
Bea