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Home » Archive for April 2012

What Every Parent Should Know! Protect Your Teens Tour with Diane Griffin - Interview & Giveaway

Writing Innovations
author tour|book tours|blog tour|virtual book tour cafe|virtual book tour|pr|book pr|book marketing|diane griffin|protect your teens tour| Welcome Diane, I'm so glad you could stop in today. We're touching on a very serious subject, Protecting Your Teens Online, and I know so many parents are going to love your tour to learn more about this much needed information. Diane is currently on tour with the Virtual Book Tour Cafe', and you can follow her tour HERE for more information and to enter her contest (details below).

WI:  Why did you choose to breach this subject?
DG: As a security expert, I deal with a wide variety of growing trends of activities that have the potential for harmful consequences to businesses and people. A few Close friends of mine have teenagers and I was troubled by their behaviors on social networks and texting while driving.  I wrote the book so that my friends would have a better understanding what teenagers are doing on these social media sites, and then I thought to myself; that this information should be shared to ALL parents of teenagers. Parents that have teens active on social Media Sites, and don’t want to read 100+ pages of info on Facebook or find some of the techno-terms and lingo online confusing. Even if you have a Facebook profile and connect with people from time to time there, you will find this book helpful. I wrote this as an informative, easy-read, quick-answer guide so you can take action to protect your teens (and you) on Facebook now.

WI:  Tell us a bit of what people can expect from these books.
DG: In the Social Media book, I discuss the critical elements you and your college bound teens must consider regarding social networking and media if you want them to have an advantage for getting accepted, getting scholarships and ultimately an advantage for being desirable to employers in an already very difficult job market. In other words, helping you give them the better that you want them to have.

I am not here to tell you how you must parent your child. I am here to provide you with important issues to consider so you can make the best decisions possible for you and your teens in keeping a positive and healthy relationship as it relates to their online activities and specifically Facebook

WI:  What is the most common mistake parents make when it comes to protecting our teens online?
DG: While there are many benefits today to the ways we have of staying connected, it creates opportunities for many other people whom we don’t know to connect with us and our teens. This gives strangers access to information about … where we live, where we were born, who our friends are, what our “likes” are … you name it.

WI:  In your experience, what is the number one mistake teens make when socializing online?
DG: Not fully understand that you should not post anything online you wouldn’t expect the whole world to see and not understanding that there is no such thing as privacy on the internet

WI:  What can parents do to protect their teens, especially if they're going off to college?
DG: Identity Theft is high among teens going off to college, parents can teach kids about how to handle credit cards & bank accounts.  Also, how to protect personal identifiable information online, i.e. bank accounts & credit card numbers.

WI:  Facebook is huge. What should parents do when their child signs up for Facebook?
DG: Go with your gut. If something doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. If you don’t feel right about what someone is asking you to do, walk away.

WI:  What are the statistics for children either being abducted or murdered from socializing online?
DG:  The Counterintelligence and Cyber Divisions, Los Angeles FBI field office started keeping statistics in 1996, and we opened 113 cases that year. Through fiscal year 2007, opened 20,200 cases and arrested almost 10,000 subjects for sexually exploiting children online. So it's a crime problem that has grown exponentially over the years and continues to grow every year.

WI:  What should be the first thing parents should do when first allowing their children to have access to technology?
DG: Parents should monitor what their kids do with technology, they should be the first line of defense -Know their online friends. – Ask for their passwords, discuss the dangers of social media

WI:  What is the biggest danger of cell phones?
DG: Never-Ending Interruptions, Distracted Drivers, Negative Impact on Personal Contact, Health Effects, a very expensive hobby

WI:  Where can readers find you:
DG: Reader can contact me on website site; www.protectyourteen.com   or 866-661-5211  or www.Securityfirstassociaes.com

WI:  Where can readers purchase your books?
DG: The can purchase the book from the web site: www.protectyourteen.com

WI:  Anything else you'd like to share today?
DG: With the knowledge that one would gain from the books,  I am hoping that you can make better informed decisions about what social Media activities you are comfortable with your teen actively participating on. Now you know the positives of social media, the potential risks and what you can do about them. While in some cases, it may be best for you to have your teens wait until they mature more before they are exposed to this massive social network. And for others, you can create a better bond between you by actively participate in how your teens set up their profiles and how they engage with the apps and people in this community.

Diane I love all of your advice. The books have been getting great reviews and I am looking forward to reading them. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. I believe it is much needed information.

The Writing Innovations Team
 

Title: Protecting Your Teens Tour
Genre – Education
Publisher – Self-Published
Release Date: May 15, 2011

Website: http://www.protectyourteens.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/protectyourteens

YouTube Video links in case you want to embed the video on your site:
\http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5YTlrW3B9I Safe Text

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azPAAMnpybw Social Media Secrets We Found The First One-Eyed Man At Dawn...Chatting with Lyle Blake Smythers

author tour|book tours|blog tour|virtual book tour cafe|virtual book tour|pr|book pr|book marketing|lyle blake smythers|feasting with panthers|pink narcissus press|, book publicity Do you not just love that teaser? "We found the first one-eyed man at dawn.." What better way to start off! Welcome to Writing Innovations Lyle Blake Smythers!

WI:  Tell us a little bit about yourself...

I am a busy man because by day I am a librarian and by night I am an actor.  I have been in the Washington, D.C., area since 1974 and have worked most of that time in the field of children’s and young adult books,  as a children’s librarian for a public library, a school librarian, and a cataloger of children’s/YA books at the Library of Congress.  Currently I am still at LC but providing cataloging support for a special ongoing inventory and quality control project.

When I’m not among the books,  I am onstage performing.  I started in local community theater, which here in D.C. is of unusually high quality, and somewhere along the way I made the jump to professional theater that actually pays me something.  Right now I can be seen as the Major-General in a dinner theater production of The Pirates of Penzance.

In what I laughingly refer to as my spare time, I pursue my other passion, which is writing.

WI:  How many books have you written?

Feasting With Panthers is my first published novel but actually the second one I’ve completed.  The first was a short realistic children’s novel for the middle grades which I shopped around to traditional publishers for a while before coming to believe that it had insurmountable problems with the narrator’s voice.  It has now become a trunk novel, meaning I have put it away.  It was doing something completely different that allowed me to produce Feasting, which is not a children’s book but an unusual magical adventure novel with multiple narrators and, I hope, a fresh approach to the whole swords-and-sorcery field.

WI:  When did you first consider yourself a writer?

When I was in the sixth grade I was a big fan of the adventure novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, his Tarzan books, the John Carter stories set on Mars, and the Pellucidar books that took readers to a strange world at the Earth’s core.  I started writing my own story, entitled Expedition Into the Unknown, a highly derivative work that took some men in a giant Devil Drill to the Earth’s core for adventures among strange people and monsters.  It was not terribly good but I had fun with it.  When I got to junior high school I said, “This is awful” and abandoned it.  Since then I have been preoccupied with making my own stories.

Like most writers, I have been a lifelong reader, and I took a creative writing class in high school.  I worked on the literary magazine in both high school and college and was an English major.  As I have mentioned, I am a librarian, with a degree in library science.  Most importantly for my creative side, however,  I read widely in many genres.

If you want get basic, I agree with those who say that the title and the cover are extremely important, followed by the blurb or the description that you provide.  We are currently awash in a sea of books, what with e-books and self-publishing, and so we must fight for the reader’s attention.

I am rather traditional in that I want my work to see print, something I can hold in my hand and show to my father, who does not use a computer.  I also recognize the importance of e-books and their growing popularity.  I am very pleased that Pink Narcissus Press is making both versions available.

It took an incredible fourteen years (see previous remarks about my busy schedule), during which I occasionally put it aside and came back to it again.  There were other things going on in my life which distracted me from being productive.  Now I do make more time to write.  I am on the verge of finishing the first draft of my work in progress and it has only taken two and a half years.

I have found the editing to be essential for producing a better book, but it must come from the outside, from another person who is impartial.  I do some self-editing as I go, then go back and try to clean things up, but I need an editor.  Rose Mambert, my editor at Pink Narcissus Press, did so much to improve my book in the areas of consistency,  clear writing, the pruning of unnecessary stuff, and content in general.  This is an invaluable process.  It’s less painful when I realize that the editor is helping make my book a better book, which of course is the ultimate goal.

This has been my first publishing experience, other than a few short stories here and there, and Pink Narcissus is a small press that falls into the traditional pub category.  I like having the support and not having to do everything myself.  However, I tend to write rather unusual, not to say oddball, things and there may come a time when I may choose to embrace the freedom of self-publishing to get something out to the world that a trad pub would not want to publish.  I find it’s valuable to be open to different options.

I hope they find a fresh, original story that is full of surprises and told in inventive ways, through language that is vivid, literary, and exciting.  I love words and I must say I had a field day with writing this one.

WI:  What can we expect from you in the future?

Right now Feasting can be pre-ordered from Barnes & Noble at bn.com.  It will shortly be available on Amazon and from my publisher at  http://pinknarc.com/ which is also how they can connect with me if they have comments or questions.  I am also on Facebook.

Thank you so much for this opportunity to be here.

Thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today. We wish you much success in the future.


Lyle is on tour with the Virtual Book Tour Cafe', and you can follow HERE. We found the first one-eyed man at dawn...So begins the highly original fantasy tale of warrior poet Catalan,  when he and his band stumble upon a handsome acolyte near death in a  mountain pass. But when the acolyte reveals his mystical vision, the  poet finds himself at the center of a War Game between two mysterious  sorcerers. To unravel the mystery, Catalan and the agents of the War  Game must seek the missing pieces of an enchanted chess set in a quest  complicated by deceit and treachery, in which nothing is what it seems.Ingeniously weaving together citations throughout the text from a  variety of sources ? including Yeats, Milton, Joyce, Poe, Baudelaire,  the King James Bible and many more ? author Lyle Blake Smythers serves  up a truly literary feast.Websiteshttp://pinknarc.com/books.htmBook Genre - Literary FantasyPublisher - Pink Narcissus PressRelease Date - May 2012 Need a Reason to Write Inspirational? Cesar has 4 - & Giveaway

blog tour, blog tours, book pr, book promotion, book publicity, book tour, book tours, Cesar, giveaways, virtual book tour cafe, Virtual Book Tours 4 Reasons to write Inspirational genre books
One: the author gets a chance to share with readers about their own personal life, the problems that they have faced and their triumphs in life. For many the idea of putting out personal thoughts and experiences is quite daunting, maybe fearing ridicule perhaps? There is one poem in my book which I had an issue with, the one that talked about looking forward to my wedding day. Right now, at this stage of my life, I am divorced. I could have removed that poem, but many people look forward to marriage and just because mine did not work, it was no reason not to include the poem.
Two: the author gets a chance to inspire the reader, it might just be in a small way but there is always a chance that your words can change a persons life. I have read books in my life that have made dramatic changes to my life for the better, and if some place, one of my poems helps a person then that would be fantastic.
Three: it can help create change, not just change in a person, but change in society. As teens, many of us loved the idea that we can change the world, yet as adults we look to our president or prime-minister to make the changes for us. But books can change opinions and shape minds, and those minds can go on to change the world.
Four: inspirational books can help people that are feeling alone in life. They can possibly see that they are not the only one that feels what they do, that they are the only one who have faced trauma, and this simple fact can help show that people can fight through the bad times of their life and come out better-off on the other side, that there is hope in life. This collection of 250 poems was written by Cesar during his late teens, and each piece of writing was originally intended to remain as a personal record of his journey with God. Yet the collection at some point became much more than mere thoughts about the world and God; they developed into poems, lyrics and poetry on a full range of subjects.Then the writing stopped and the pages of thought and devotion were lost to time, gaining nothing but dust in an attic. That is where Cesar found them thirteen years later, and he chose to publish them as a testament to the influences which once surrounded his life, and as a dedication to God for his faithfulness.The book is also dotted with hand drawn sketches which adds an additional level to the book.
Release Date: April 13th Genre: Christian non-fiction / poetry Web Link / Book excerpts: http://ppsbycesar.blogspot.com/p/home.htmlGiveaway Link(Ends May 13th):http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/21128-prayers-poems-songs
 Prayers Poems Songs

by Cesar Follow the Tour HERE & read my review of Prayers Poems Songs. Writing to Debt Free & Giveaway with Nicholas Maze

author tour, blog tour, blog tours, book promotion, book publicity, book tour, book tours, exit leave debt behind forever, finances, nicholas maze, pr, self help, virtual book tour cafe, Virtual Book Tours Today we welcome Nicholas Maze to the table, as we chat about his book Exit:How to Leave Debt Forever, his writing and his future plans. Welcome Nicholas, we're glad you could join us today.

WI: Are you currently working on any new projects?

WI: Where can readers find you?

WI: Where can your book be purchased?
 

Nicholas is also giving a $25 Gift Card to one randomly drawn commenter from his tour. Leave a comment with your email for a chance to win. Follow his tour HERE for more chances. VBTC Pit Stop: Interview & Giveaway wth Acacia Beumer - Launch Out Into The Deep

author tours, BK Walker, blog tour, blog tours, book pr, book promotion, book tour, book tours, Book Trailer, giveaways, inspirational, virtual book tour cafe, Virtual Book Tours I am so excited to take part in the Launch Out Into The Deep Tour with Acacia Beumer and Aaron Slaton. If you get a chance, visit their website and check out how beautiful it is and all the wonderful information they offer. I loved it!

Today we are joined with the female half of this magnificent duo, Acacia! We're so glad you could join us today!

WI: Tell us a little bit about yourself...

I am an army wife and a mother of two little ones (Jana Grace 3, and one year old Jaci Marie). My husband is presently in Afghanistan and this has been extremely hard for my oldest daughter; more so than for me. As an adult, I understand that this is my husband’s job but my daughter does not understand why daddy left and she can’t see him. The last time she saw him is when we dropped him off at the airport. So at times she’ll ask, “Mommy, are we going to pick up daddy from the airport?” My husband said, “I have something for Jana and you’ll never guess what it is. He’s was right, as I named the latest kid gadgets and did not come close. He gave me a hint: “It’s something that people rarely do in this day and age.” He wrote Jana a personal letter. How sweet. Besides being a wife and mother I spend approximately 32 hours per week at my intern site (psychiatric hospital) in order to fulfill degree requirements to become a Marriage and Family Therapist.

WI: I could imagine that would be hard. Bless her little heart.

WI: How many books have you written?

Launch Out Into The Deep is my first book but it will not be my only. I plan to write many more books that will encourage others and propel them to new highs spiritually. All of the positive feedback and reviews have helped me to see something that I doubted; and that is that I am a writer.

My creative side comes from personal experiences. One will also notice when reading Launch Out Into The Deep that I share a lot of personal experiences I’ve had with clients. I gain a lot of wisdom and insight from counseling. I find that when people are at their lowest they can be the most humble and truthful. I find this to also be true of myself.

The first step is to have an intriguing cover and title that will make a person want to pick up your book and read it. Yes, I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but truthfully, most of us do.

I guess I am a bit old fashioned but I prefer paperback. However, Launch Out Into the Deep is also available in E-book because I realize we live in an instant society. E-books are also great for the customer that feels really compelled to read your book and does not want to wait for it to ship. I actually purchase e-books quite often but my eyes do tire from being on the computer daily so paperback is always my first choice.

Do you need complete silence, do you create a playlist? I have to just motivate myself to do it. There are times when I don’t feel like it but I find that once I get started, the flow happens.

It took me less than six months to write Launch Out Into the Deep. For the most part, the experiences were within me waiting to come out. During the writing of this book I was going through a lot of emotional pain and was growing weary in my faith. Writing was healing for me and helped me to reflect back on what I had accomplished and even value what I’d learned through bitter trials.

Interesting question as Lanuch Out Into The Deep has had two editions. The first edition of the book was published in 2006. Upon reading some reviews I saw where reviewers commented on grammatical errors. I recently published the 2nd edition (includes a chapter-to-chapter reader’s guide, and author’s story) and took the opportunity to have it edited again. Most reviews rave about the book and say that it’s edited well. Others say there are grammatical errors. I realize there is no perfect book and your book will not appeal to everyone. At the end of the day, I tried, and the most important thing is that the majority of readers could care less about a few errors when the book is one that inspires them.

To be honest self-publishing was never my desire. I attempted to knock on the doors of traditional publishers but was unsuccessful. I now realize that unless you have a platform or an audience, a traditional publisher is not going to invest thousands into your message. I read the success stories of renown authors who self-published and I eventually felt this was the route for me to take.

I desire for readers to view their hurt and shame differently in order to let go of the past. Bitterness and unforgiveness can take a toll on your life and can lead to many physical ailments. Love the life you have and accept that there is no perfect life. Love yourself and stop looking back at past mistakes. We all make mistakes but we can grow from our experiences if we so desire.

Readers, please visit my site at www.launchoutbook.com and make sure to sign up for our newsletter to receive two free chapters from the book, two audiobook mp3’s (also available in audiobook), and the animated screensaver featured on our homepage. 


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