This morning, I’m turning the blog over for a guest post from a fellow indie author, Kryssie Fortune, whose brand new novel, “Curse of the Fae King”, was just released this week.  Without further ado, here’s Kryssie…

 

Book Two of my Scattered Sibling’s Series, Curse of the Fae King available on the Loose ID Website from 14^th Jan

 

Follow me on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kryssie-Fortune/267100286738528

Or twitter @KryssieFortune

Buy link

http://www.loose-id.com/curse-of-the-fae-king.html

 

Leonidas’s nightmare: when he inherited the Fae throne, he inherited the curse a witch cast on his bloodline. No wonder he hates witches. His dirty secret: if he doesn’t bed a different woman every month he’ll turn feral – and he’s bored to death with mindless sex.

When he hunts down his escaped war dragon, his enemies trap him on earth and strip his powers. His month’s almost up and if he doesn’t bed someone soon, his beast will rise.

Meena’s dream: to be good at something. Anything. Even sticking to a diet. Her secret: she’s a failed witch masquerading as human. She accidentally bonds with Leonidas’s escaped dragon. Sparks fly when he wants it back. Plunged into a world of stuck-up Fae, evil elves, and high-adventure they must solve a twenty-two year-old mystery. Along the way, they tumble into bed, and lust leads, unexpectedly, to love.
When Leonidas’s curse kicks in again, he’ll have to abandon Meena and bed another. Is their love strong enough to survive their secrets and break the ancient curse?

 

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With all the news I post here, and the other great authors I highlight, I think sometimes DREAM STUDENT, my first book, gets a little lost.  So here’s my clever plan to hook you and catch your interest…

As a reminder, here’s what it’s about:

What would you do if you could see other people’s dreams? If you could watch their hidden fantasies and uncover their deepest, darkest secrets…without them ever knowing? 

Sara Barnes is about to find out. She thought that all she had to worry about was final exams, Christmas shopping and deciding whether she likes the cute freshman in the next dorm who’s got a crush on her.

But when she starts seeing dreams that aren’t hers, she learns more than she ever wanted to know about her friends, her classmates…and a strange, terrifying man whose dreams could get Sara killed.

“Dream Student” is the thrilling first installment of the Dreams series.

And here’s a little bit from the end of Sara and Brian’s first date

And now here we are, outside the front door.  What to do?

Kiss him goodnight and go our separate ways for the evening?  Or does he come upstairs with me?  I’m calling the shots right now, that’s clear.  As confident as he’s been tonight, it only goes so far.  I know he wants to come upstairs, but I’m going to have to ask him.  There’s a part of him that’s still trying to grasp the fact that I obviously like him as much as he does me.  He’s not going to push his luck.  Unless I push first.

Well, what do I want to do?  It’s easy, it’s obvious, there’s no question what I want to do.

Except, if I’m being completely honest, I have to admit I am just a little bit nervous myself.  If you told me last night that in less than twenty four hours I’d be ready to go to bed with a guy I hadn’t even met yet, I’d have said you were crazy.  But here we are and here I am and this is so completely not me, but at the same time it feels completely right.

Besides, the truth is, unless I’m completely wrong about him we’re going to go upstairs sooner or later anyway.  It’s just a question of when if it doesn’t happen tonight.

But right at this moment, what I decide feels so important.  This is going to sound totally ridiculous, but it feels like something out of a movie.  You know what I mean, that moment when the music softens and the romantic leads are in the spotlight and everything else is forgotten; the whole world stops except for them.

Maybe it’s only my imagination or maybe I’ve got an overly developed sense of the dramatic–a few days ago I would have said it’s definitely that.  But it isn’t.  It’s not just my imagination.  It’s real. It’s exactly what’s happening right now.

I don’t know why it’s so important–no, that’s not true.  I do know.  It’s important because it’s exactly what I want and need right now, and maybe I’m lying to myself about love at first sight and everything else.  Maybe I’m just using him to distract myself from the nightmares and not sleeping right, maybe–well, maybe a lot of things.

You know what?  I don’t care about maybes, and I don’t care about motives and I don’t care about anything else except that he’s here right now.  He’s looking at me, waiting for me to decide.  Everything else is silent, frozen.  The snowflakes are hanging in midair; the whole world is waiting for my answer.

No pressure, though.  No pressure at all.  Yes or no?  Nothing else matters except what I decide.

You can buy it on Amazon, as well as Smashwords, Barnes & Noble (Nook or Paperback), the Apple iBookstore, Kobo, Diesel and AllRomanceEbooks.com.

It’s also available as a FANTASTIC, professionally-recorded audiobook, which you can buy at Amazon (audiobook), Audible (Audiobook) or the iTunes Store (Audiobook).

And if you want to try it first, here’s a ten-minute sample, narrated by the amazing Heather Jane Hogan.

  http://writingdreams.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Dream-Student-Audiobook-Sample.mp3

 

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I wanted to collect all the information about my audiobooks in one place, so…

 

So far, the first eight Dream Series novels, as well as the short story “Betty and Howard’s Excellent Adventure,” are all available as high-quality, professionally recorded audiobooks.  The first three novels are all narrated by the wonderful Heather Jane Hogan, and “Betty and Howard” is narrated by “Doctor Who” star Nicola Bryant.

 

The first book is “Dream Student.”  You can buy the audiobook right here and hear a ten minute sample by clicking below:

 

The second book is “Dream Doctor.” You can buy the audiobook right here and hear a ten minute sample by clicking below:

You can also hear an additional short sample from my favorite scene in the book:

 

The third book is “Dream Child.”  You can buy the audiobook right here and hear a ten minute sample by clicking below:

 

Book four is “Dream Family”.  This book is narrated by a new artist, Victoria Robinson.  You can buy it right here.

Book five is Waking Dream (narrated by Pam Daugherty). You can hear a sample of the audiobook below, and you can buy the book right here.

Book six is Dream Reunion (narrated by Elizabeth Klett).  You can hear a sample of the audiobook below, and you can buy it RIGHT HERE!

 

Book seven is Dream Home (also ​narrated by Elizabeth Klett)). You can buy it RIGHT HERE, and you can hear a sample below:

Book eight is Dream Vacation (narrated by Elizabeth Klett as well).  It’s on sale RIGHT HERE, and you can hear a sample below:

The first three books of the series are collected together in the Audiobook Box Set DREAM SEQUENCE.  Listen to samples from DREAM STUDENT, DREAM DOCTOR or DREAM CHILD above, and buy the box set RIGHT HERE!

 

 

Finally, there’s “Betty and Howard’s Excellent Adventure.”  You can buy the audiobook right here and hear a ten minute sample by clicking below:

 

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I’m thrilled to present to you another great indie author – meet Heather Dowell!

Hey everybody. My name is Heather Dowell and I was born in Tennessee on March 12, 1990. My family moved around frequently when I was a kid, mostly from county to county, so I’ve had a lot of experience with being the new kid. I graduated from Portland High School in Portland, TN in May 2008. Shortly after my 18th birthday, I enlisted in the United States Navy. I went to boot camp in Greatlakes, IL, which is a short train ride away from Chicago. I went to Chicago with my sailor friends as often as I could. I really enjoyed the city.

I’ve lived in Tennessee, Mississippi, Illinois, and Florida. If you count the womb, then I’ve also lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, that’s part of the reason why I chose for Heather Winters of “Summers & Winters”  to live in Las Vegas. I asked myself, “How would my life have been if I grew up in Vegas?”, and created a whole new world.

I served four years on the USS Carney(DDG-64) in Mayport, FL and lived in Jacksonville, the largest city in the US. I met some of the most wonderful people on that ship, and that is when I really started writing. In my upcoming book “The Newcomer”,  I transformed my real friends on the Carney into mythical creatures, like Mermaids, Vampires, Trolls, Fairies, Werewolves, and some creatures of my own creation, that are battling the Evil Black Dragon and his minions in order to keep them from conquering the world and dominating the human race.

I write books of almost every genre, all with a little hint of Romance, so if you are into that sort of thing, you should definitely try out one of my books.

I’m currently pursuing a bachelors degree in Elementary Education at Western Kentucky University. I have a passion for teaching children and for writing novels. I also love music and I’m a flag girl in the Big Red Marching Band. I’m married to a wonderful husband, and I love seeing my family every weekend. Family and friends are very important to me. You can probably see that through the characters that I have developed. They’re all very unique and some of them are based on people I know. Some of the events stem from real events in my life as well, but I twisted them into a very fictional story. I hope you enjoy my work, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Thanks for reading.

Follow Heather at her website, on Facebook and on Goodreads.

And here’s her book…

 

I thought leaving Las Vegas to move to South Carolina was going to be one of the worst days of my life. A pivotal moment I wished not to have. But as it turns out, coming to South Carolina would be the highlight of my life. Just like every other love story, it started with a boy.

You can buy it at Amazon!

I’ve got an interview with Heather…

 

Who is your favorite author?

Amanda Hocking. Her books have introduced me to the world of Paranormal Romance. Reading how good a book from an indie author could be, made me want to be one. I had already been writing “Summers & Winters”, but after reading her books, new plot lines just starting coming.

How do you describe your writing style?

I write just about everything in first person present tense, nothing else seems to really capture the essence of a character like it does. I also use reverse sentence structure, every once in a while, to put the reader right in the moment.

Besides those things, I have a two page rule. I never go two pages without dialogue. I want the reader to stay engaged, not bombarded by what I call “literary garbage”, placed there for the sole purpose of either showing how poetic the author can be or to fulfill a publishers word count.

Use no more than two sentences. Why should we read your book?

If you want to feel what it is like to be in love again, or it you want a book that makes you laugh, cry, or even want to punch someone, then you should read this book. The series only get better from here.

Have any of your characters been modeled after yourself?

I’ve been told that my lead characters reflect myself, not necessary who I am, but who I want to be or the traits that I admire. If I had to say one character resembled me most, I’d say it is Heather Winter for “Summers & Winters”.

If you could exchange lives with any of your characters for a day which character would you choose and why?

Alora. She isn’t in this series, but she’s in one that I’m working on. She’s very bold and goes after what she wants. That, and the guy I paired her with is gorgeous. As in, Ian Somerhalder, gorgeous.

What books have most influenced your life?

I think I answered that is the first question, but my favorite series of all time is the Forever Series by Quinteria Ramey and Brandon Alston. It ripped my heart out and then tried to piece it together again. I don’t know that the book will ever leave me.

If you could select one book that you could rewrite and add your own unique twist on, which book would that be and why?

Ah, unique twists. Hmm. I guess the last book of the Divergent Series. I haven’t finished it yet, but I saw the spoilers and I am so disappointed. I want a different ending. The first book was way to good for the series to end the way it does.

Beatles or Monkees? Why?

Beatles, hands down. I may only be 23, but there music is timeless. They have a song for every mood.

Who should play you in a film of your life?

I can’t think of anyone for my current age, but if they played a younger me, I would choose Kay Panabaker. I’ve seen her plan several different role, and I think she could play just about anyone.

 

 

AND, last but definitely not least, she’s shared an excerpt from her book with us…just click below to read it!

…

Read More Read More

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I realize I’ve got more to say on the topic (see Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here) and I think it might be interesting to look more closely at Dream Student and see exactly how I would envision it being turned into a movie.

I think a good starting point would be to look at what absolutely MUST be included.  Obviously Sara and Brian and their romance; Sara’s dreams; and Dr. Walters, the serial killer.  But what else is absolutely necessary?

I’d say Beth, Sara’s best friend is vital.  Sara’s parents should be in it for sure, and I think that Brian’s mother definitely ought to make her appearance (it’s only one scene, but it’s a good one).

Sara’s brother, Bob, doesn’t get much to do in this book.  He has only one scene where it’s just him and Sara, and that can easily be dropped.  Every other scene he’s in also includes Sara’s parents, so he can be there and have a few lines without a problem.

Sara’s godmother, Kat, is a bigger problem.  She has a long-ish scene with Sara where Sara confides in her, but that’s her only appearance in the book (although she’s referenced quite a bit).  That scene could be dropped, and she could be demoted to “extra” status in one of the family scenes.  This way, she’s at least established and maybe gets a couple of good lines, which sets her up for her part in the third and fourth books.

None of Sara’s classmates at school have especially large roles, so it shouldn’t be a problem to streamline the dorm and classroom scenes.

What scenes must be included?

Sara’s initial dream of Brian.

Her nightmare about the killer and subsequent breakdown with Beth (there are two such incidents in chapter one; they could be combined into one).

Going to the nightclub and meeting Brian.

Sara and Brian’s first date and first time going to bed together.

Sara seeing the girl from her nightmares in the newspaper and freaking out in her professor’s office.

Sara’s nightmares about the second victim.

Sara’s dreams of her fellow students.

Sara’s trip with her father to buy a Christmas gift for Brian, and the family dinner afterwards

Sara dreams of her classmate being targeted by the killer, then she calls her to save her.

Christmas Eve with Sara and Brian’s families meeting

Christmas morning.

Sara and Brian’s New Year’s Eve date

Sara learning how to pick locks and then surprising Brian in his dorm room.

Sara’s nightmare about the next victim

Sara has her art-student classmate draw a sketch of the man in her dreams, and then she and Beth realizing who it is.

Sara, Beth and Brian investigating Dr. Walters and figuring out where he lives.

Driving to Dr. Walters’ house, breaking in and confronting him.

Sara waking up in the hospital.

The epilogue, with Brian about to propose to Sara.

There are some things I’ve left out, to streamline matters for a two hour (or less) film.

Taking the usual three-act structure of a movie, basically act one ends with Sara in the Psychology department office, seeing the newspaper and realizing her dreams are real.

Act two goes from there, through Christmas, and up to the realization that Dr. Walters is the killer.

Act three is the resolution – figuring out where he’s living, what his pattern and timing is, and stopping him before he can kill his next victim.

Most of the classroom/dorm scenes will be in act two, and that’s also where Sara and Brian’s romance will really blossom.  The New Year’s Eve date would be the big highlight of this, and the scene leading up to it when Sara has her mini-makeover, could be taken pretty much word-for-word from the book.

What would I leave out?

Some of the classroom scenes in act one.

The sleep lab, for sure – it would raise audience questions that aren’t paid off, so it’s easier to drop it.

The dorm Christmas party (depending on how long things run in act two, this might be kept, or maybe made part of a montage showing Sara’s life at school)

Sara’s conversation with Kat

The failed trip to the house he used to live in as well (although that scene could work as a device to build suspense and then raise concern that they won’t be able to track down his new home in time).

The first visit to Dr. Walters’ house the day before the final confrontation

 

So there you are – if you’ve read the book, what do you think of my thoughts about a potential movie?

 

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Continuing my thoughts about adapting books into movies…you can find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

So now we come to my books.  I think, and most of the people who’ve read them also say, that they are very cinematic and would make good movies (or television, possibly).  But I don’t know if they’d translate word-for-word to the screen, especially the first book, Dream Student.

The first question that I think would have to be addressed in turning that book into a movie is, how to handle the point-of-view.  The book is told entirely from Sara’s first-person perspective.  We’re in her head the entire series. How to handle that in a movie?  Keep her perspective, maybe even have Sara narrating the story in voiceover?  There are plenty of movies that do that.

But there are also some specific story issues that pose difficulties.  For one thing, the identity of the killer.  In the book, Sara doesn’t make the connection between the man she’s seeing in her dreams and the professor she’s occasional seen on campus.  She’s simply unable to accept that someone she respects – a teacher! – could be committing the crimes she’s witnessing in his dreams, and reading about in the newspaper.  In the book, I think it works and is believable.  In a movie, where the audience sees everything, I think it might be a much tougher sell.  There are ways around it – Sara could simply never see his face in the dreams, for one thing.

There’s also her relationship with Brian.  In the book, there are no real impediments, but in a movie, viewers might expect there to be more difficulties before they find true love together.  I would resist that, because to me the story is Sara opening herself up to love, and learning to rely on Brian to help her get through the nightmares (and eventually catch the killer).

That gets to a more general point: what IS the story here?  To me, it’s Sara’s growing up.   The romance, the realization and acceptance of her ability to see dreams, and her pursuit of the killer, all of these threads are part of Sara’s maturation from a shy and sheltered college girl into a woman who can stand up for what she believes in, make adult choices and stand by them,  and do what’s necessary despite her fears.

Dream Doctor, and also Dream Child are more straightforward, and they’d both be easier to adapt than the first book.  I don’t really see any major issues with either book, honestly.  But when we get to Dream Family, I can imagine some problems.  I think it’s a fantastic story, and an important one – how does someone who’s been totally broken recover from that experience?

The problem is that, while in the book I think Sara’s experience in jail is traumatic enough (especially because we see it from her perspective) that her breakdown afterwards is believable.  But in a movie, what happens to her might not be enough for an audience to relate to how it affects her.  I would guess that the experience would have to be made worse – either longer, with Sara spending at least a weekend in jail, but probably longer than that.  Or, she would need to suffer more physically, possibly a serious injury.  I don”t really like those ideas, but considering the different medium of film and how audiences might view things, it might have to be done.

And these thoughts are just off the top of my head.  If I went through any of the books trying to figure out how to make it into a two-hour film, I imagine there would be a lot of cuts and changes to make things work in a visual, rather than written medium.

I hope I get the chance to find out how it all works, firsthand!

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Title: M-Day (M-Day #1)

Author: D.T. Dyllin

Genre: Dystopian Romance

Publisher: Tik Tok Press

Cover Artist: Lindsay Tiry

Interior Book Design: The Eyes For Editing

Buy on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1fdcqz4

Synopsis:

Before the day… before M-day… people used to read books and watch movies about zombies. They used to dress up as zombies; pretend to kill zombies… Basically, zombies had become a part of popular culture in a very unexpected way.

The highly anticipated zombie apocalypse never came.

What did come was much worse than any city over run with shambling corpses after brains and flesh. A virus… a virus that only affected men. Nobody knew what caused it, or where it had come from, not that it really mattered. It’s here and there’s no going back.

Maxine was one of the lucky ones–she got out alive. She and her friends banded together to survive the new desolate conditions left behind by the virus. When a supply gathering mission goes awry, Max and company are left with no better choice than to trust a group of uninfected military men. No longer on the run from her infected husband, Max discovers there could be worse dangers for her on the horizon… Like losing her heart to her mysterious savior everyone calls Zee.
 

About the Author

D.T. Dyllin is a Bestselling Romance Author who writes in both New Adult and Adult genres. She is a member of the RWA (Romance Writers of America) and also her local chapter, the MCRW (Music City Romance Writers).

D.T. was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Black & Gold for life, baby!) She now lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and two spoiled GSDs.

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If you’ve visited here before, you probably know about my Dream Series books, and that the sixth book, DREAM REUNION, was released just last month.  But you might not have taken a look at it yet (or you might be new to this site, or the series).  So, here’s a little bit about it to, hopefully, hook you…

“I wish someone – my mother, my husband, anybody – would really let me have it, instead of telling me everything’s not my fault when it obviously is…”

Sara’s seen the cost of interfering in other people’s dreams firsthand; it’s measured in ruined lives and cemetery plots.

When her supernatural dreams start up again, Sara is faced with problem after problem. And the only solution she can see is the one she’s sworn never to attempt – changing the minds of the dreamers from the inside-out.

Sara thought that fighting against serial killers, mobsters and crooked politicians was difficult, but she’s about to come up against the most difficult foe she’s ever faced: her own conscience.

Dream Reunion is the emotional sixth book in the Dream Series.

 

I knew this day was coming.  I’m actually surprised it took as long as it did.  It’s been nearly three months since I put Lydia Saunders into a coma, and on Monday evening, four nights ago, she died.

I’m officially a killer now, even if no one outside my family knows it, or ever will.  I thought I had made peace with it.  When I confronted her inside of Brian’s dream, she would have killed me if I hadn’t acted.  I did everything I could.  I offered to let her go – to forget about everything she’d already done – if she just agreed to stop interfering in any more dreams.  She refused.  More than that, she would have killed me – by that point, she had already wounded me – if I didn’t shoot back.

I know it was the only choice.  If I hadn’t done it, I’d have been the one in the coma – the one who died.  And she would have had free rein to destroy more lives – including my husband and my children.  I couldn’t let that happen…

I certainly hope THAT whets your appetite for the book…

You should definitely check it out, at Amazon.  And you really should check out these other fantastic authors who are also sharing from their books…

 

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Thrilling news (at least, I think it’s thrilling!).  I just found out that I’ve been nominated for two awards from the Paranormal Romance Guild’s Best of 2013 awards…

Dream Doctor was nominated for Best Romantic Paranormal Suspense novel, and the Dream Series as a whole was nominated for Best Series.

You can vote for me (at least, I think anyone can vote!) at the PRG website linked above…

 

 

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In the previous article, I talked about the four different kind of book-to-film adaptations.  Before I discuss how I think my books would look on film, I probably ought to look at some good (and bad) adaptations of books I’m familiar with.

I already touched on “The Hobbit” in the previous article.  I think it’s a good movie, but a very poor adaptation of the book, because it fundamentally isn’t even trying to tell the same story as the book.  And, unlike some books that would seem to be “unfilmable”, “The Hobbit” would work perfectly well if more faithfully adapted.

Peter Jackson was a lot more faithful in adapting the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Yes, there were changes (some of them pretty big), but he kept a sharp focus on the most important elements of the story and the tone.  While you or I may not agree with every choice he made (if you asked 100 fans of the books how to translate them into film, you’d get 100 different versions), you can clearly see why pretty much every choice was made, and pretty much every choice is defensible.

How about another favorite novel of mine?  Frank Herbert’s “Dune” has been adapted twice.  First by David Lynch in the 1980’s, and then by the SciFi Channel as a six-hour miniseries.  The SciFi version is just about as faithful to the book as any adaptation could reasonably be.  Yes, there are some changes, notably the addition of scenes on Kaitan, and the increased role for Princess irulan.  But there’s a logic to them, and in general, the miniseries sticks very close to the book in both tone and timeline.

Lynch’s version strays quite a bit more.  Some of the changes are intended to take difficult concepts from the books and make them visual (the “weirding modules”, etc), and some of them are the sort of excesses you have to expect with David Lynch (the depiction of Baron Harkonnen).  Lynch tries really hard, and the film is both visually stunning and well-acted by a fantastic cast, but all-in-all, it just doesn’t work.  Part of that is the length; the miniseries has twice as much time to tell the story, which makes a huge difference with such a long and complex book.

What makes an adaptation good?  To me, the biggest thing is to capture the “heart” of the book – to understand what story the author was trying to tell, and to tell that same story as closely as possible on film, with as much of the tone and feel of the book as you can.  That does not mean keeping things word-for word; in my opinion, the best of the Harry Potter films is “Prisoner of Azkaban”, which is, in some ways, the least faithful to the books in terms of the story details.  But it captures the heart of the story better than the first two movies, and despite the many changes in details, it’s closer to the books than the subsequent films, even though they superficially adhere closer to the books.

Of my four types of adaptation, I think that a happy medium of the first two approaches is best.  Keep to the details of the book wherever you can (fans of the book will be looking for their favorite scenes and moments), and if you must make changes, keep the heart of the story in mind.

I rambled on a bit, so I’ll save my thoughts about my books for the next article…

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