Penyanyi : Guest - Alethea Kontis
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Guest - Alethea Kontis
Good morning! We've got author Alethea Kontis visiting today. Alethea is discussing the ins and outs of creating characters, particularly Female Author Main Characters. So pull up a seat in one of our supremely comfortable chairs or couches. Grab a cup of mocha latte and a decadent dark chocolate cookie and enjoy!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing is a Magical Business
By Alethea Kontis
Confession: I wasn't the best English student in the world.
I was good at math. I majored in Chemistry. For this reason, I did not have my
very first true creative writing class until Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot
Camp in 2003. I was 27.
Not that I had ever really stopped writing, of
course...those of us so cursed by the Fates never lose the compulsion to tell a
great tale. I still played around, sending weekly poems to my pen pals and
journaling like crazy. I had a few novel ideas--including the one I write
mostly while bored in Physics--and a bunch of short stories--including the one
I wrote while bored in Inorganic Chem. I also had a screenplay and outline for
a Movies for Dummies book that I wrote while...you guessed it...bored at my
movie theatre job.
Thanks to my storytelling parents I was an avid reader by
the age of five and, thanks to my Assistant Manager position at the Moves at
Polo, I saw pretty much every single film that released between 1991 and 1998.
I had a great mind for story, a fabulous ear for dialogue, and I knew every
cliché in the book.
At least, I thought I did.
Who knew that describing your character in a mirror was a
typical lazy-author cheat? Who knew that the majority of Chosen Ones have green
eyes? Who knew that you shouldn't have two main characters whose names
rhyme...or start with the same letter...and that the first letter that pops
into your mind is usually "A", because we're trained to think
alphabetically?
From manuscript format to MacGuffins...my brains were on the
verge of leaking out my ears as I tried to soak in every word of that class. I
took a lot of notes that week. Some things I can still reference on the
internet. But one cliché in particular stuck with me: "Just because they
tell you to write what you know doesn't mean you should make your main
character a writer."
This rule was mostly brought about as a result of Stephen
King (Shining, Misery) and Ray Bradbury (Death is a Lonely Business, Graveyard
for Lunatics), who wrote Author Main Characters and did them well. But those
main characters were MEN. How about Female Author Main Character? One in
particular changed my life in 1984, proving to a young, impressionable Alethea
that she could have the writing and the adventure and the guy and everything
else her heart desired.
That woman was Joan Wilder.
Shortly after returning from Boot Camp, a fellow camper
(Eric James Stone) helped me set up a Blogger account, and I started keeping my
journal online, for all the world to see. In part, it was (and still is) an ongoing
letter to my Mom, telling her about my life and letting her know that I was
okay (because of her three daughters I am the least likely to pick up the
phone). I started to look for the magic in my own life, stories I could tell
that would amuse her.
And then the stories started to find me. I got one book
contract, and then another. I made friends with a bestselling romance author
and an SF Grand Dame. Rainbows started falling out of the sky. My best friend
got pregnant. My grandmother got dementia. I fell in love with a man from the
other side of the ocean and flew halfway across the world to meet him. I kept
adventuring and keeping logs of my travels, living vicariously for my coworkers
who felt stuck in their small town.
Within the space of a few years, my world completely
changed. And when I looked back, I realized that I had a story--a story about a
frumpy, scared girl who chooses the brave path and realizes that her life is a
thousand times more amazing than she ever imagined, full of magic and misery
and everything in between.
I called the story BEAUTY & DYNAMITE, but I might have
just as easily called it BECOMING JOAN WILDER.
Call me a cliché if you will, but it's my life. It can't be
written any other way. So many women want to "live the fairy tale,"
but I'm here to tell you: it's not all sunshine and puppy dogs. But sunshine
and puppy dogs still exist. Some things are meant to be.
And some things are just meant to be great stories.
Once upon a time, a young girl walked into a world of wonder
and delight. But that's not where this story starts. The young woman she became
published a nationally recognized children's book and edited a star-filled
collection of stories to benefit the tsunami relief effort. But that's not
where this story ends. Meet Alethea Kontis, a
self-proclaimed Genre Chick whose life is an adventure that tears
through these pages like a hurricane. Carrot-a-day cancer cures and Murphy as a
guardian angel (yes, that Murphy, the guy with all those irritating laws) are
just a part of the daily routine for the Incredible Whirlwind of Beauty and
Dynamite, the force of nature masquerading in human form.
Link to original Beauty & Dynamite book trailer:
Buy Link for HERO:
http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Woodcutter-Sisters-Alethea-Kontis/dp/054433616X/ref=aletheakontis-20
About Alethea Kontis
New York Times bestselling author Alethea Kontis is a princess, a goddess, a force of nature, and a mess. She’s known for screwing up the alphabet, scolding vampire hunters, turning garden gnomes into mad scientists, and making sense out of fairy tales. Alethea is the co-author of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter Companion, and penned the AlphaOops series of picture books. Her YA fairy tale novel, Enchanted, won the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award in 2012, was nominated for the Audie Award in 2013, and was selected for World Book Night in 2014. Both Enchanted and its sequel, Hero, were nominated for the Andre Norton Award. Born in Burlington, Vermont, Alethea makes the best baklava you’ve ever tasted and sleeps with a teddy bear named Charlie.You can find Princess Alethea online at: www.aletheakontis.com.
Website/Contact: http://www.aletheakontis.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AletheaKontis
Instagram: http://instagram.com/aletheakontis#
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/aletheakontis/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- Lynda Again,
Hope you enjoyed Alethea's take on creating characters. Her books sound terrific, don't they?
I have a birthday coming up in April and one lucky member of my newsletter will receive a birthday prize! You can join the newsletter by clicking the link below. Stay tuned for more details.
If you haven't heard, I've sold Rider in a 3 Book deal to Entangled Publishing! To celebrate that, I'll be offering a prize (or maybe a couple of prizes) near its release date. We're going to rename Rider, which was always just a working title) and I can't wait to see what we come up with ;-)
If you haven't heard, I've sold Rider in a 3 Book deal to Entangled Publishing! To celebrate that, I'll be offering a prize (or maybe a couple of prizes) near its release date. We're going to rename Rider, which was always just a working title) and I can't wait to see what we come up with ;-)
Contact me:
Website http://www.lyndakscott.com.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LyndaKScott
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lynda-K-Scott/201599553208653
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