Outer Diverse is the first book of the Splintered Universe Trilogy, set in and around the Milky Way Galaxy. The first book begins as Galactic Guardian Rhea Hawke intestigates the massacre of an entire religious sect, catapulting her into a treacherous storm of politics, conspiracy and self-discovery. Her quest for justice leads her into the heart of a universal struggle and toward an unbearble truth she’s hidden from herself since she murdered an innocent man.

“a master of metaphor, Munteanu turns an adventure story into a wonderland of alien rabbit holes… a fascinating and enthralling read.”–Craig Bowlsby, author of Commander’s Log

“a rollicking science fiction plot with all the trappings…Hawke is a maverick in the wild west tradition…a genetic mystery with lethal powers.”–Lynda Williams, author of Okal Rel series

Outer Diverse is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Chapters and other great bookstores near you.

Finalists in the SF category include:

• 2012 The Awakening by Bill Douglas
• A Dangerous Weapon by Charlton Clayes
• Angel of Chaos by Nina Munteanu
• Curse of the Legion by Marshall S. Thomas
• Destiny’s Blood by Marie Bilodeau
• Guardians of the Crystal Skulls by Lina Arena
• Our Jewish Robot Future by Leonard Borman
• Quick Fall of Light by Sherrida Woodley
• The Presence by Paul Black

Representing more than 350 publishers, the finalists were selected from 1400 entries in 56 categories. Finalists were determined by a jury of judges consisting of editors and reviewers of ForeWord Reviews, booksellers, librarians, and other industry professionals.

First, second, and third place winners will be awarded in each category. A $1,500 cash prize will also be awarded to Best Fiction and Best Nonfiction as determined by the editors of ForeWord Reviews. Finalists were announced in their weekly email newsletter, ForeWord This Week, in March 2010.

Winners in each category and overall fiction and nonfiction prize winners will be announced at Book Expo America and on the Foreword website.

This 3-disc DVD set is packed with some of my best writing tips on how to be a successful author. The three workshops cover: ”How to Get Started and Finish”, “Craft of Writing”, and “Marketing” your writing. I’ll show you how to boost your career as a writer!

But first, here’s what students of “The Writer’s Toolkit” said:

“I felt inspired to look at my writing again…I found my ideas unlocked, problem areas exposed and strengths endorsed.”–Jane Morrell

“Nina was very relaxed, informal, very knowledgeable and interesting…She gave a lively presentation and gave lots of examples to relate to.”—Lauren Seaton

“Nina encouraged me to actually start my novel. She is very good, easy to understand.”—Patricia Slauenwhite

“Nina was engaging and inspiring… I was able to use specifics that were discussed to  improve my writing immediately.”—Susie Buck

“I found what I had been searching for a long time.”—Candice Croft

“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books … You’ve transformed me from what I considered an oddball to somebody special and for that it’s worth a fortune.”–Hectorine Roy

As a special bonus for a limited time only, I’m including my popular guidebook, The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! All for the price of just $195.00. The DVD set normally retails for $250.00 and the book retails for $27.95. So, you’re getting a great deal!

My writing guide The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! provides the basis for my workshops and contains a lot of useful information to you. It’s a great companion reference to the DVDs.  For instance, you can go to the workshops for an easy-going listen to the “skinny” on all aspects of writing then refer to the book for specific details, examples, exercises and further references on areas you need to get more detail or practice on. The book also includes an index and bibliography at the end for easy reference. It’s written in an easy to read conversational style and packed, like the workshops, with real examples.

The guide is popular with college and university instructors of creative writing and English, and thoroughly enjoyed by students of writing and professional writers, alike.

“The Fiction Writer is at the top of the required reading list for my students…A veritable cornucopia of hands-0n help for aspiring writers of any age…The quintessential guidebook for the soon-to-be-published.”–Susan H. McLemore, Language Arts Instructor, Glynn Academy

“Nina’s ability to take arid academic prose and make it interesting to students is actually rather remarkable. I have been regularly using material she created for helping my students understand the hero’s journey in literature – the students find her writing engaging, accessible, and (and this is important) easily applicable not only to their readings but to their essays as well. Brava, Nina, brava.”–David Merchant, English Instructor, Louisiana Tech University

I wish you a fulfilling and fruitful career writing and publishing your works. It’s quite a journey. I hope you enjoy every step of it.

All the best.

Sincerely,

Nina Munteanu, M.Sc., R,.P. Bio.

Acclaimed author, scientist and writing coach

These three  major workshops cover ”How to Get Started and Finish”, “Craft of Writing” and “Marketing” your writing. The DVDs will be available shortly (third week of August, 2010) for purchase on the Passionate Writer. Here’s what students of “The Writer’s Toolkit” said:

“I felt inspired to look at my writing again…I found my ideas unlocked, problem areas exposed and strengths endorsed.”–Jane Morrell

“Nina was very relaxed, informal, very knowledgeable and interesting…She gave a lively presentation and gave lots of examples to relate to.”—Lauren Seaton

“Nina encouraged me to actually start my novel. She is very good, easy to understand.”—Patricia Slauenwhite

“Nina was engaging and inspiring… I was able to use specifics that were discussed to  improve my writing immediately.”—Susie Buck

“I found what I had been searching for a long time.”—Candice Croft

Nina with one of her workshop students

“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books … You’ve transformed me from what I considered an oddball to somebody special and for that it’s worth a fortune.”–Hectorine Roy

DVDs will go on sale right here in a few weeks. Guests of Nina’s Writer’s Digest Webinar may be eligible for a special price.

Nina, the Writing Coach

Join Nina Munteanu, acclaimed author and writing coach, for a FREE Webinar through Writer’s Digest University on how to improve your writing and succeed in getting published.

Nina joins journalist and editor Vernon Oikle on “Toolkit Talks“, a conversation in which Nina shares some of her best tips on how to get published. Nina answers some commonly asked questions provided by Writer’s Digest Magazine; questions faced by writers getting started as well as those finding their career stagnating. Learn some of the secrets writers use to jumpstart and keep their career in upward motion.

Register for Nina’s free webinar by September 15th and you may have access to additional materials and be eligible for additional perks.

Hope to see you there!

“The Writer’s Toolkit” DVDs Coming Soon!

For those of you waiting to purchase Nina’s DVD set of “The Writer’s Toolkit“, a 3-disc DVD collection based on  three  major workshops that cover ”How to Get Started and Finish”, “Craft of Writing” and “Marketing”, DVDs will be available shortly (first week of September, 2010) for purchase on the Passionate Writer and other sites. Here’s what students said:

“I felt inspired to look at my writing again…I found my ideas unlocked, problem areas exposed and strengths endorsed.”–Jane Morrell

“Nina was very relaxed, informal, very knowledgeable and interesting…She gave a lively presentation and gave lots of examples to relate to.”—Lauren Seaton

“Nina encouraged me to actually start my novel. She is very good, easy to understand.”—Patricia Slauenwhite

The Writer's Toolkit 3-disc DVD set

”Nina was engaging and inspiring in a low-key way, no hype, practical, good humour. This was a really pleasant and helpful experience. I was able to use specifics that were discussed to immediately improve my writing.”—Susie Buck

“I found what I had been searching for a long time.”—Candice Croft

“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books … You’ve transformed me from what I considered an oddball to somebody special and for that it’s worth a fortune.”–Hectorine Roy

Guests of Nina’s Writer’s Digest Webinar will be eligible for a special price.

For instance, if your book is ranked 100,000 then that many titles on Amazon have sold more copies than your book. Keep in mind that Amazon carries around 6,000,000 titles; so, your book has sold more copies than 5,900,000 other titles. That’s pretty cool. 

Remember that the ranking provides a relative figure, not an absolute figure. It compares your sales to others on a scale of from 1 to their highest number (around 6,000,000).

Of course, you will likely not see a rank of 6,000,000 because books that haven’t sold any copies are not ranked and there are apparently many sitting on the shelves of Amazon’s virtual bookstore that have yet to sell. This is why when a book first sells, its rank may leap significantly, ahead of those books that haven’t sold yet.

So, why does your rank fluctuate so much and what does it mean? One minute it’s 1,000,000 and the next it’s 500,000. When it jumps up, it simply means that you’ve sold more books over that time period than the titles you were behind. It could mean that you sold 2 and they sold none or you sold 25 and they sold 6. The corollary is true of the reverse.

Dog Ear Publishing recommends that the best use of Amazon sales rank is to check the progress of your marketing efforts over time: how your book is doing in relation to its competitors.

Amazon Sales Rank Calculations

Morris Resenthal at Foner Books described to the best of his knowledge how Amazon sales rank is calculated:

Amazon’s sales rank is calculated as a rolling figure. It’s based on sales over a recent period. I can’t remember if the period is 60 or 90 days, though. It is, however, weighted by overall total sales (they put this back in after having dropped it for a couple of years), keeping long-term big sellers afloat even after their sharp sales peaks have leveled out.

Not all books are recalculated with the same frequency. The top 1,000 are recalculated hourly. The next block (up to 100,000, I think) are recalculated weekly, while the rest get checked monthly. However, a sudden burst in sales is enough to force an immediate recalculation on a 100,000+ book. This is probably based on a percentage of overall sales, but that’s just a guess.

Amazon Rankings Translated into Estimated Sales

Because the Amazon sales rank is comparative, it does not directly translate into actual book sales. Having said that, the general character of sales can and have been approximated by several publishers and marketers. Some have tried to correlate the rank into actual sales, based on an actual sale to rank comparison over a set time period. As you might have guessed, the estimates vary and therefore do not hold much significance.  However, I know you are curious, so here they are:

Wildfire Marketing published these results in 2008:

Ranking = Estimated Sales per week

• 10,000 = 30 books
• 100,000 = 6 books
• 1,000,000 = less than 1 book

Dog Ear Publishing published these weekly estimates around the same time:

Ranking = Estimated Sales per week

• 1,000 = 90 books
• 10,000 =  60 books
• 100,000 = 16 books
• 300,000 = 12 books
• 500,000 = 1 book
• 1,000,000 = 1 book per month

The Amazon sales rank is good to watch because it helps you to see the progress of your book in relation to others, based on your marketing efforts and other events that may affect sales of your book. I know many authors who daily check and fret over the rank of their book. I used to. Wheatmark suggests that you treat it like weight loss: average out your observations over several days, smoothing out both peaks and valleys to get a more realistic picture.

And focus on the super fact that you are selling your book despite the competition of six million other books on Amazon.

Nina and a student have fun learning

Nina recently gave three substantial workshops for aspiring writers in the South Shore area of Nova Scotia, based on her Aurora Award-nominated writing guidebook, “The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now“. Held at the Bridgewater Library, Nina engaged and challenged students in an actively participated workshop to hone their skills as successful writers. Students participated in writing exercises, and had their stories, query letters and ”elevator pitches” critiqued.  

Her workshops, covered by Vernon Oikle in the South Shore Now, included:

Workshop No. 1, which was titled “Getting Started … and Finishing”. In this session, Nina shared the strategies and techniques she used to write, finish and successfully publish while serving as a full-time scientist, teacher and mother. The workshop reviewed common misconceptions in the writing and publishing industry and provided practical strategies to help aspiring authors succeed.

 Workshop No. 2, “The Art and Science of Craft”, covered several models of storytelling, and examined the interrelationship of plot and theme, setting and character in a book’s overall story arc. Nina explored the language of page-turning writing with examples on the use of the five senses, power verbs, use of dialogue and other writing techniques that will transform your page into a compelling read.

Workshop No 3, “The Science and Magic of Marketing”, focused on a different but critically necessary creative process in an author’s writing and publishing career – revision, marketing and promotion.

Response to Nina’s workshops was very positive. Here are some of the things students had to say about Nina and her workshops:

“Nina was engaging and inspiring in a low-key way, no hype, practical, good humour. This was a really pleasant and helpful experience. I was able to use specifics that were discussed to immediately improve my writing.”–Susie Buck
 
“Nina was very knowledgable, relaxed, personable, unpretentious.”
 
“I enjoyed it. I was intrigued. Nina put her heart into her workshop.”–Darlene Tong
 
“I found what I had been searching for a long time.”–Candice Croft 
  
“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books … You’ve transformed me from what I considered an oddball to somebody special and for that it’s worth a fortune.”–Hectorine Roy

The series of workshops were filmed as part of “The Writers Toolkit” series and will be available for sale shortly. Go to www.ninamunteanu.com or here for news on availability and how you can get a great deal on the 3 DVD set.

Blu-ray Edge – Blu-ray movies, players, news, and more.

Seashore by Oleg Ershov

We have five major senses and several minor ones we aren’t even consciously aware of. The major ones include sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste.

In the April 2000 issue of Fiction Writer Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, tells us that we are biologically and psychologically designed “for intense experience in a richly sensual world. But we find ourselves in a senses-depleted world, a world limited largely to visuals, and ersatz ones at that.” She suggests that our readers are starving for sensual information.

“For fiction writers, the senses are not only a window onto external reality, but also the gateway into the inner realms.”

As writers we are in a unique position (at least for now) to describe what the visual media can’t (yet). We can provide our readers with a rich spectrum of sensuality such as what a place smells like, the texture of an object, the taste of a food, as well as the nuances of light and sound. Readers don’t just “watch” a character in a book; they enter the character’s body and “feel”.

So, how do writers satisfy the reader’s need to experience the senses fully? Description, yes. But how cold is cold? What does snow really smell like? What color is that sunset? How do you describe the taste of wine to a teetotaler?

Ultimately, literal description doesn’t quite cut it. To have the sense really sink in and linger with the reader, the sense should be linked to the emotions and memories of the character experiencing it. By doing this, you are achieving several things at the same time:
· You are describing the sense as the character is experiencing it—emotionally;
· You are revealing additional information on the character through his/her reaction; and,
· You are likely creating a more compelling link for the reader’s own experience of the sense.

How is this done? There are several tools a writer may use to achieve this. Here are a few:
· Use metaphor to describe the sense
· Link the sense to memories
· Use synesthesia (cross-sensory metaphor) to describe the sense
· Link the sense psychologically to an emotion or attitude
· Relate to the sense in a different way (e.g., a visual scene from the point of view of a painter)

Metaphor

The most compelling fiction arises when “truth” is portrayed obliquely, when objects or scenes are described through “impression”, or what I call truth-interpreted, rather than through literal description. Janet Fitch recommends that you “come in at an angle, obliquely, the way you approach all things evanescent.” This is where metaphor plays an important role. Of course, it goes without saying that for this to work, the writer must use appropriate metaphors.

The use of metaphor does several things when used to describe an object or place through one or several senses: it adds a dimension of emotion, tone and direction.

Janet Fitch (in Fiction Writer, April 2000) provides a good example of use of metaphor to describe the sky. The richest, most vivid words, she says, are words that use more than one sense at a time. She compares the term “yellow sky”, which provides one sense (vision) to a “lemon sky”, which gives you not only a visual sense but suggests taste, smell and even texture. The metaphor of “lemon” suggests an emotional as well as a vivid sensual description.

Smell and Memory

While all five of our senses can be linked to memories, two of them stand out. Smell and taste let us sample the chemicals around us for information. According to the California Institute of Technology, smell is generally considered the sense tied most closely to human memory, profoundly influencing people’s ability to recall past events and experiences. “Memory lies coiled within us like a magician’s trick handkerchief, and a simple smell or taste can pluck the tiniest corner and pull out the world,” says Janet Fitch.

“Smell is different from all the other senses in a very special way. A smell from your distant past can unleash a flood of memories that are so intense and striking that they seem real,” says Dr. Karl (Kruszelnicki), author of Great Moments in Science (1984) and science host of ABC Radio (Australia). “This kind of memory, where an unexpected re-encounter with a scent from the distant past [that] brings back a rush of memories, is called a ‘Proustian Memory’ ”, based on Marcel Proust’s sensual description of the smell of a madeleine cake dipped into a lime-blossom tea in his book Swan’s Way.

The sense of smell was no doubt one of the first senses to evolve in living creatures; it told us what was safe to eat. The sense of smell also affects behavior, such as finding a mate, synchronizing menstrual cycles, and communicating with the other animals in your group. Dr. Karl tells us that “women can tell (by the smell of swabs taken from the armpit) who has been watching happy or sad movies (men are not so good at this). A breast-feeding baby can differentiate the smell of his or her mother, from any other nursing mother. Dogs and horses can smell fear in humans.”

Ironically, smell, along with taste, is often neglected in our own overt observations and in writing. By consciously attending to these two senses alone, the writer is assured of engaging the reader’s more deeply rooted sensuality.

It might be useful to list some of your favorite or most powerful smells that you can remember. Here are some that my family members and I came up with over the dinner table:
· Freshly cut grass
· My lover’s neck
· Cold snow
· The interior of a new car
· Baking bread
· Wood burning fireplace
· Forest just after a rainstorm
· Freshly shampooed hair
· My own pillow
· My cat when he just comes in from outside

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is the use of one sense to describe another. It is a powerful tool in the hands of a skillful writer and at the root of compelling and imaginative metaphor. Also called cross-sensory metaphors, examples include “loud shirt”, “bitter wind”, or “prickly laugh”.

In her article in Fiction Writer (April, 2000), Janet Fitch suggests an excellent example of synesthesia: wine reviews. I admit that I like the “foxy nose” of a King David Concord, the “crisp laughing notes” of a zinfandel, the “rich buttery bouquet” of a C Blanc du Castel, the “silky richness of caramel” and “exotic layers of burnt sugar” of a 40-year old Taylor Fladgate tawny port.

Psychology & Attitude

How a sense is interpreted by your protagonist relies on his/her emotional state, memories associated with that sense and their current attitude.

Using baby powder as an example, Fitch suggests that you can “describe it literally: sweet, chalky, talcy, dusty, sneezy; or you can use synesthesias: smells pastel, smells tender; then move to the psychological element. Take an attitude on that smell: insipid, cloying, stultifying, like diaper rash, airless. Try a different attitude: sad, lost, vulnerable, hopeless.” You get the picture; we are using a sense-impression based on a memory or emotional experience pinned on that smell to create an entire sensation. What this does, of course, is reveal a great deal about the character in a seamless and powerful way, while establishing a rich setting to the story.

Different Point of View

Again, Fitch provides some good advice on this with the example of how to view objects. She suggests “seeing” through the lens of a photographer or the palette of a painter. What this does is several things:
· It evokes the use of different vocabulary, and metaphoric language (always richer than literal description)
· It avoids the static nature of a literal physical description
· It provides additional revelation on character and tone of the scene

Fitch recommends reading books on art for vocabulary. Because light “flows”, using it to describe something visually gives motion to the description too. Light moves like water: it “streams across a room”; it “bathes a landscape in russet tones”; it “plays chiaroscuro notes on her face”. Fitch describes light metaphorically as a painter or sculptor: it strokes, it daubs, it burnishes…

This article is an excerpt from The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! (Starfire World Syndicate) by Nina Munteanu

Read the full story at http://bluehost.prweb.com/releases/darwins-paradox/nina-munteanu/prweb568631.htm