Featured Author – Jeri Walker-Bickett

Our next featured author, Jeri Walker-Bickett, piqued my interest with her book, Popular Poe Stories in Plain English. First, I must confess that I haven’t read Poe, not even in college. Second, I always loved Shakespeare but people have complained about not understanding the writing. The thing is, I have always unraveled Shakespeare in my head and matched it to today’s English, and in a sense this is what Jeri has done with Poe.

Jeri Walker-Bickett was born and raised in Wallace, Idaho, a rough and tumble mining town with a checkered past. The storytelling urge struck at a young age, but an undergraduate degree in writing led to a graduate degree in English education. Between living the scholarship-laden life of an academic bum, she did seasonal work in national parks. Jeri met her future husband in Yellowstone and they later married in Las Vegas. This phase in their lives sparked an obsession with food and travel. Fate has intervened to allow her to take time off from the classroom. Her forthcoming novel, Lost Girl Road, is a ghost story that takes place in the woods of northwest Montana. She currently lives in North Carolina with her husband and their pets.

Popular Poe Stories in Plain English Synopsis

Five of Edgar Allan Poe's most popular short stories have been rewritten in a plain English version that is more accessible to today's readers. The content has not been shortened or simplified. Modernized paraphrases of the following stories are inlcuded: "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Oval Portrait," "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Since I was curious as to how Jeri rewrote the stories, I purchased Popular Poe Stories in Plain English yesterday and I’m halfway through. The cover matches the book beautifully—coinciding with the story, The Masque of the Red Death. If you’re not familiar with Poe and would like to read his short stories but are too intimated, then I suggest you get yourself a copy of this book. You will not be disappointed.

Here’s an excerpt from The Masque of the Red Death:

For a long time a deadly plague known as the Red Death had spread over the land. No virus had ever killed so many or been considered so dreadful. A sure-sign was all the disgusting blood involved. It announced its presence with light headedness, followed by bleeding from the surface of the skin, and inevitably death from all the blood loss. The mess that leaked from the sick person, specifically the blood oozing from the face, made it impossible for anybody to help the victim. The course of the disease from start to finish took only thirty minutes.

How did the idea come about?

Writing this book provided a way for Jeri to overcome severe writer's block and it also got her back into a regular writing routine. As a teacher, many of her students always struggled with grasping Poe's language. This is her way of bringing Poe to those who might feel his writing style is too old-fashioned.

Why Self-Publish?

Jeri decided to self-publish to make up for the valuable writing time she lost to teaching. Indeed, Kindle's popularity helped bring back her desire to write. Her motto has always been "slow and steady wins the race," and she has taken the past year to learn the ropes of being an indie author. Jeri’s Poe eBook provided the chance to learn how to format a cover as well as gain experience formatting text for a successful upload to Kindle. Jeri still plans to query agents once she finishes drafting Lost Girl Road, but in the meantime, she will also self-publish the novel.

Link to Amazon Purchase: http://amzn.to/S6p6FR

Author Blog and Website: http://jeriwb.com/ 

Facebook Page: http://on.fb.me/UkvETe

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeriWB

Goodreads: http://bit.ly/OGbHJw

LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/QnFYM4 

I want to thank Jeri Walker-Bickett for giving me the opportunity to enjoy Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. For those self-published authors out there looking for a hired critique, proofreader or copy editor, I also suggest you start with Jeri’s editing services (knowledge in MLA, APA, and CMS guidelines). Not only is she a writer, but an editor as well. I know I’ll be hiring her for my next novel. Thanks Jeri for being a featured author and participating in Pay It Forward. Now spread the word about Jeri Walker-Bickett and her Popular Poe Stories in Plain English - http://bit.ly/RAoqbT. There might even be a student in your life that could use a little help with Poe.

Classics and Interpretation,

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

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