Baal’s Puppet – Free!

Full length novel that will throw you down the track at a break neck pace. Now free for a limited time! I’d appreciate some reviews from this little promotion, so thank you to everyone in advance. Please enjoy!
Baal’s Puppet! Get it here!

Set in the city of Portland, Oregon. Nine people’s stories weave together to make an intense and fast paced read. Each character’s story taking them to the same run down hotel on the outskirts of the city, where the unthinkable is waiting for each of them. This thriller novel, rooted in horror, has plenty to offer with plenty of action and more story than meets the eye.

Not Making Excuses

So I’ve come to this road once again. A few weeks have past since releasing a new novel. I’m back into writing something new, among a few other projects. Plus my ordinary home life that is ever changing. I have difficulty writing a book from scratch, let alone keeping an active blog, and tweeting about shit that is actually appealing rather than rambling garbage or book plugs.

Its not a time issue, (for the most part.) I simply don’t feel like blogging after writing for several hours on end without coming up for air. I rather go sit with my dog or mess with my cat for a bit. Or simply eat lunch and watch a little TV.

No I’m not abandoning my social sphere, just taken away by my own works. That is where I am at, locked in my own creative world. Solitude with my thoughts of a haunted house and three friends. I’ll be sure to post a bit of the new novel soon so I have something to show for my time.

Thanks all,

Tafe

Why Zombies? No.. Seriously..

Here lately with what I have been working on, I find myself coming over pages upon pages of novels. Searching for authors to contact. But that’s not my point. My point is, a vast majority of what I find, is zombie books. Understand that zombies are the new vampires. But I just don’t get it.

Zombies are zombies. Very little wiggle room. They sometimes run, which is exhilarating and terrifying, considering they have an insatiable drive to catch you. The walking zombies are fun, they are more like backdrops to stories rather than the main issue. By definition, a zombie must try to eat you or they simple are not zombies. All of them die first, in some shape or form, and decompose in some way or another.
That’s zombies in a nutshell. No real history to them, not much room to be innovative. Just walking or running corpses that try to eat you. The most innovative thing done with them is the new movie “Warm Bodies.” Which is a little sad that we are so captivated by these rotting flesh eaters that we had to make a love story about them.

Now a quick plug for vampires. Firstly, they may have brains and they may not. (I Am Legend – Underworld.) They may be pure evil or they may sparkle, (Twilight… – 30 Days of Night.) Vampires have lore and plenty of wiggle room. That’s why it was okay when they were on top, because at least, (outside of chick lit basically,) all stories were different in some way.
With zombies, every story feels like the same. I have even stopped watching The Walking Dead because I’ve simply had enough of the zombie genre. I even had a zombie book I was working on towards the end of the vampire craze. I wish I had finished it because I would have caught the zombie wave perfectly, but my lap top took a bad drop and that was that for a while.

I would just like to move on to something new, zombies have been played out. Hell, I’ll take a Godzilla craze at this point. As long as I don’t have to hear about any more people preparing for the “inevitable” zombie apocalypse.

Bit of a rant I guess. My bad.

Tafe

I Took A Long Weekend… Of Sorts.

So I disappeared for a little bit. Little over a week by my count, but I do believe I made a blog post somewhere in there. Perhaps not. Who knows?

I did it for a few reasons. Most importantly being: I needed it. I think.
As I have said before, I’m currently working on a rewrite and a new book called Something Haunted. And it just wasn’t working. Every time I sat down to work on either, I drew a blank and had no drive to fight through the block. Today I have worked on Something Haunted and it’s been great. The block is gone!

Now, just because I took a break doesn’t mean I did nothing. I worked on a plot line to give me some direction for Something Haunted. And by worked on it I mean, I kept Evernote handy and shit just slowly came to me and added up.
Mainly though, I worked on something outside of my own works. I don’t want to talk about it too much until the ball starts moving a little quicker. But I’m rather pumped about it and wish the process was a little easier so it could come together quicker.

So, that’s me right now. Going to another predators game tonight, getting excited about Something Haunted, and wishing that Inner Horror would rewrite itself.

Thanks everyone!

Tafe

Liebster Award

I moved my blog to WordPress just a few weeks ago and have had more fun blogging than ever before. Entirely because of the open arms of other bloggers. One especially, she nominated me for this award. (So blame her for wasting the nomination on me.) Find her here, Writers Blog. She’s always entertaining and insightful to read, so really go check out her work.
Thanks for the nomination, Lily!

The Rules:

Post eleven facts about yourself
Answer the questions posed by your nominator
Pass the award on to eleven new recipients – preferably under 200 followers
Post eleven new questions to your bloggers
You can post a copy of the badge onto your blog, just put ‘Liebster Award’ into google and there are lots to chose from! Also remember to put the links of your nominees on your post, so everyone can see why you think they are so great!!

Eleven Facts About Me:

1. I grew up in Southern California and now live in Tennessee. Where I find myself missing the beach so much more than I ever thought I would.

2. I prefer candle light while I write. Always having some unscented candle on my desk along with an old fashion library light just for back up.

3. Typically after my third cup of espresso, I’ll stand up from chair and start yelling, “More Coffeeee!.” While my cat stares at me wondering why the hell I’m hollering.

4. Most of the time my desk is covered in 1 part writing stuff(iPad, keyboard, notebooks, pencils,) 1 part beer bottles, 1 part coffee cups, and 1 part candle tops. For some reason the candles get thrown away but the tops never do. They make good drink coasters.

5. I just recently learned how to tie a tie. Not that I didn’t wear them on occasion, I just kept them tied and loosened them when I took them off. Still can’t tie a bow tie though. Those damn things are difficult.

6. I can watch all types of horror movies except ghost movies. They scare the shit out of me.

7. When I was twelve or so, I tripped down a flight of concrete stairs and was bleeding from several areas. But I popped back up hoping the good looking girl behind me didn’t see my fall. Fairly certain I limped for the next day or so, but I’ll be damned if that girl saw me.

8. I have never read Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, or Catcher in the Rye. Incredibly embarrassing and I do want them. Just haven’t ever gotten around to buying them.

9. Out of all the hostess products I could miss, (Twinkies, Cupcakes, Ho-Hos.) I actually miss Snoballs the most. Those coconut covered, pink fluff balls that I think I haven’t eaten in over a decade.

10. I played ice hockey from when I was 5 until just before I turned 18. Giving the game up to move to Tennessee with my girlfriend. which leads to number –

11. I live vicariously through my best friend who chose playing ice hockey instead of a girlfriend. He too has a girlfriend now and has kinda settled. Now we just kinda argue over why we ever got girlfriends.

Questions and answers:

1. What are you currently reading?
Douglas Adams’ “Salmon of Doubt.” It kinda reads like a biography and it’s really great.

2. If you could meet any three people (alive, dead or fictional) who would it be?
Let’s just go one in each category. Darren Shan the author my two favorite young adult series’ and his adult trilogy, “The City Trilogy.” All of his work is fantastic and I’d like to know his technique.. Bob Marley. His music is great and as a person his insight was/is incredible. And for fictional, Dante from the Divine Comedy.

3. Your favourite book?
It’s hard to narrow it down to a single book. But there is one that I have kept around for years called “Feed.” By M.T. Anderson. Someone bought it for me and it sat for a while on my book shelf. It was one of my first Sci-fi books so I wasn’t sure how I would like it. I definitely liked it and even after the several years its been since I read it, I can still remember most of it.

4. What is your most embarrassing moment?
My parents signed me up for an ice skating class when for my fifth birthday. Well when I got there it turned out that it was a beginner figure skating class. So my first time on ice was in figure skates.

5. Can you make any anagrams with your name?
Actually that’s why I chose “Tafe” for my pen name. Fate.

6. What would you rather read, Harry Potter or Twilight?
Harry Potter. Twilight isn’t as awful as people make it out to be. But I would never read the books.

7. One skill you wish you had?
I wish I could draw, sketch, paint. Something along those lines would be fantastic. But unfortunately I still draw stick figures and every time I try my hand at sketching it turns out a mess.

8. Your favourite song at the moment?
Harlem Shake by Baauer. Its not for the song itself but how people dance to it. Look up a Harlem shake video and be prepared to laugh!

9. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Picture Perfect I think. My girlfriend wanted to see it and it did have some funny parts.

10. Your best childhood memory?
Basically every road trip with my dad. I traveled a lot for hockey and most of the time I kept my iPod in. But occasionally my dad and I just talked. Now, with him across the country, I wish I left my iPod at home for those trips.

11. If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be?
England, Australia, back to Jamaica. Somewhere I am surprised by just how much I have in common with people.

This is the part where I’d put my own nominations if I had any. Sadly I haven’t been on WordPress long enough to have more than a handful of people to nominate and just about all of them have already been nominated. So this is where I will send you to my nominator’s,(Lily,) nominations. I checked them out and they are all great. Go and take a look for yourself!

http://jcbhojoo.wordpress.com/

http://februarystationery.com/

http://crankycaregiver.wordpress.com/

http://sarahcradit.wordpress.com/

http://globalparkedideas.wordpress.com/

http://ashleymanning.com/

http://misswho.me/

Thanks to everyone for reading,

Tafe

Alright, It’s Friday.

I have a four day weekend! Woooo! Which to you means you probably won’t hear from me till wednesday. I know… It’s sweet, sweet sorrow or some shit. So I thought I’d keep everyone up to date with just a couple updates.

For starters, Something Haunted is becoming fun to write. About 30 pages in so far and it is the first book I’ve done that isn’t continues. Meaning it spans over several months and I’m not necessarily used to jumping a few weeks at a time. Which isn’t difficult, just new to me. Also I’m describing it as a dark comedy. I guess anyway. Not sure what else to call it. Planning on having a haunted house with irish ghosts, three childhood friends that own it, and a few witches that want the house for their own plans. We can refer to it as a rated R Casper the friendly ghost. It is going well and I am hoping to have it finished and published by summer.

As for the rewrite of Inner Horror, I have mixed feelings about it. After finishing Baal’s Puppet, I can see how my writing style has improved and I really want to bring Inner Horror up to the same level. But don’t want to butcher the storyline in the process. Alas, I think it’s a necessary evil for the bettering of the book. I really hope to have it finished and updated in 3-5 weeks. Which is a while, but I rather give myself plenty of time than not enough. I’m Happy to dive into the old characters again. When I got it finished the first time, I was so tired of fighting with the book to get it done. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore and that should never happen.

As for life, like I said, I have a four day weekend with my girlfriend. Hopefully we will be going to a Preds game tuesday night to end the weekend. Looking forward to it even if its not set in stone yet. The summer is approaching and my little sister will be graduating high school, so our trip to California is quickly approaching. Which I’m very much looking forward to. It’s always nice to go back home. I like the south, but occasionally I need to go home to maintain immunity to developing a southern drawl.

It’s friday, which means I’ll probably have a few drinks tonight and tweet much more than normal.
Have a good one everyone,
Keep Reading,

Tafe

Twitter and The Author

Twitter is the only profile based social media that I use. Period. I have an author Facebook that I think I liked a few bands on and a personal Facebook that I literally have fifteen friends added. I hate Facebook with a passion and the only reason I have one is: 1. Can’t delete the damn thing. And 2. My girlfriend doesn’t like appearing to be single, so I keep a Facebook so she can have “In a relationship with-”
Silly? Absolutely.

So twitter is my guilty pleasure and something I enjoy most of the time. For some reason I seem to gravitate towards twitter while slightly intoxicated, (perhaps more on that later.) I like it because it keeps the social experience simple. I can follow/friend people with just a click, able to do so with just about anyone and it feel normal instead of stalker-ish. At least for people with public profiles, everyone is on the same page, all on twitter to follow and be followed. You can retweet or tweet someone back and carry on a short convo with a stranger but have it feel friendly. I think it mainly has to do with the 140 character limitation, keeps things short and sweet. All of that is great. For an Indie Author, it is a great way to mingle and get your name seen.

Now on the other side of the social coin, some people are annoying as shit. Especially a lot of authors. (Sorry.) Most of the time I can’t open my feed without finding half or more of it is self plugs, (book promoting.) Or tweets that are nothing but hash tags with a link. My favorite though, is people that follow, wait for a follow, then unfollow once they get it… Recently I had a small DJ follow me from the UK. Sent me a PM with a link and what seemed like a personally typed message, not just an auto service message. So I followed the link and listened to some of his songs, a trance type Dubstep that sounded decent.
A couple days later, I thought I’d message him back and compliment his music, since I was genuinely surprised I liked it. Much to my surprise when I couldn’t message him because he no longer followed me. It annoyed the hell out of me.
Now, I’m not one to boast about my number of followers. (At least not outside jabbing at my girlfriend from time to time just to tease.) I like following a wide range of people and typically they follow back. No smoke and mirrors. It’s just that simple. I typically follow until they unfollow me or they don’t tweet for a while. I use a neat little website called JustUnfollow.com and It tracks who unfollowes me and who disappears. Makes it pretty easy. I also use an app called TweetCaster which is like the twitter app on crack. Allowing me to mute certain people that plug a little too much, while still giving me the ability to see their other tweets.

My approach to twitter is pretty good, I think. I have gotten a little over 200 followers in the last few weeks just by following others. I’d say half of the 200 found me, while I found the other half. Most of the time I keep my book plugs at one per day, most days I don’t plug at all. I tweet what is happening to me, around me, and stuff I find interesting. As an author you sell yourself first and your books second, in my opinion.

#ThanksForReading,

LA_Tafe

About Me

About me:
I grew up in California and moved to Tennessee a few years ago. I live with my girlfriend and my aging cat who needs better control of his claw retention. Typically you can find me with my brother-in-law, (No. I’m not married. But as my brother-in-law would put it, “It’s Inevitable.”) most of the time watching hockey games with a beer in one hand and my other making aggressive gestures at the guy who couldn’t score.

I grew up with an interest in writing that I never really addressed. All the signs were there, It just never occurred to me that I’d enjoy it. One of the biggest signs being a love for reading, It wasn’t uncommon for me to get caught with a flashlight and a good book when I was supposed to be sleeping.
At certain points in my childhood I’d find myself trying to touch pen to paper, failing to write the vision in my head. Instead, resorting to mish-mashing story lines from books and movies I had seen and calling it my own. Now, I pride myself on fresh ideas. Trying to stay away from the mainstream, (Vampires, Zombies, Sex, Etc.) Writing original stories to take my readers on a journey through uncharted territory.
There came a time in high school that my parents wanted me to find a direction in my life. I sat down and thought about it, finally seeing what had been smacking me in the face for years. Writing.

Another thing that played a big role was my nightmares. Sounds bizarre, I know. But my dad loved horror movies and because of it, I grew up with them. The American werewolf movies, Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, Creature of the Black Lagoon. More recent things like It and Night of the Living Dead. If you name a horror movie from the 90s I probably saw it and keep in mind I was born in 92′.
The funny part about it is the movies never bothered me, it was the all too real nightmares that followed them.
So I guess you can say my passion for writing came from my love for reading and my genre of choice came from my nightmares. There’s been many nights I wake up, not afraid but my blood is pumping. Grabbing my iPad to jot down a few notes and then back to bed. It took a long time, but now I welcome a good nightmare.

Below are small descriptions for nightmares that have become full length novels. Just click the titles to find them!

Thank you for reading,

Tafe

Baal’s Puppet
Nine lives come together. Each of their stories thought provoking and real. Lauren and her pained relationship with her father. David who hopes for a life outside the drugs he finds himself peddling. Robert who made the biggest mistake of his life, ready to make more of them. A killer who find his purpose in something even more heinous.
All of them come together in a run down hotel on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. Where something much bigger than their lives hang in the balance. Who will you hope for when none of their hands are clean? Who will you hope doesn’t make it?

Inner Horror
A seventeen year old boy falls asleep to find an evil he thought was imprisoned is out and stronger than ever. Losing himself to his own nightmare and questioning his own sanity, he fights back to take hold of his life. Will he take it back before something unthinkable happens? Or will he be lost among his nightmares never to wake up again?

Quick Note: I am currently in the process of rewriting Inner Horror, slight changes to the story line and main character. I am hoping to have it done in the next few weeks but can’t promise anything. It is a full length novel with plenty to offer, I just think it can be better so I plan to do just. Pick it up for 99 cents before It is back to $2.99 and you will get the new copy and the old!

Writing Apps. What You Need To Know.

So having just finished another book, writing it using an iPad no less. I thought I would weigh in a little bit on a few of the writing apps and programs I have used. Starting with the big one.

Microsoft word for PC or Mac.
The heavy hitter of the word processor world, competed with by maybe one other well known program, Apple’s Pages for Mac. Word is the heavy hitter because it has every feature you could want, wrapped up in an incredibly intimidating and convoluted interface. That basically is the good and the bad in a nutshell. It is awesome, just difficult to use. Personally, I wrote my first novel with it, but my second time around I used it for the final phase of my writing. use it at the final phase. To format for Smashwords and Amazon. Plus one quick run through Word’s spell check. I really like that method and plan to use it for the future.

Apple’s iPad app, Pages.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I used my iPad to write Baal’s Puppet. Not because I wanted to necessarily, but my Macbook took a fall for the worst and hasn’t turned on since. So there I was, faced with the decision of what app to download and went with the obvious choice. For starters, it looks great. The nice interface that Apple is well known for, easy to jump into, inviting, and fast. It has all the features that are necessary, a spell check, word count, page count, and recently got a change tracker. Plus, of course, tables, charts, plenty of fonts, everything you would expect from a word processor.
Now for a few flaws. A few months ago when I started Baal’s Puppet, Pages didn’t have access to drop box in any shape or form. Now it does, but its kinda cumbersome and not really built in. It just has a “Open In” feature that lets you send it on over to the Dropbox app. It does have iCloud support but if you are like me, you want to be able to access it from any device, not just Apple products. Also, the spell check is just a spell check, no sentence check, or structure check, and it doesn’t work nearly as well as Word’s does. And during the proofreading step, I wasn’t using my keyboard to type, just the onscreen one, and occasionally when I backspaced several words out, it would crash. That is when I realized that it has a great autosave feature that makes sure you never lose more than a sentence at most.
With the gripes above, you would think I may hate Pages. But really it is the best. Has the needed features with a great interface. If you are like me, you don’t like a million buttons on the screen while you write and pages takes the minimalist approach in that department. One of the biggest things is Pages allows you to send files in three different formats. PDF, Pages (which is docx. I believe,) and most importantly, doc. For anyone who has had to nuke their book in order to rid it of all formatting errors, you know it’s a pain in the ass to reformat. I was able to send my book from iPad to computer and upload it without any need for formatting. Yeah I was pretty damn pumped.
With that, of course In my personal opinion, Pages is the best writing app for the iPad and I will continue using it for books to come.

Documents to go and Quick office. Two of the bigger off brand apps for writing. Both of them come with versions of Excel and Powerpoint but the Word aspect is what I will touch on. Neither of them are terrible. Both of them have basic features such as spell check and paragraph style. They auto sync to google docs and dropbox, among other cloud services. Which I think is the best feature they offer. Their interfaces are awful, Quick office is a bit better in that department but still bad. They do export in doc. Format but they tend to have errors hidden in them. Big problem.
Among these two apps are plenty of other writing apps, iA writter, Write 2, Free Writing, to name a few. All of them run the risk of formatting errors and their features are basic.

All in all, you want the best tools to create your work. And if like me, you are writing on a iPad. Pages it the way to go. it’s 10$ while Documents to Go and Quick office are both more expensive. Granted you are paying for a package of Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. Until Microsoft comes out with a Word app, Pages has just about everything you could want and if you own an iPad, you probably are already partial to Apple products so it’s probably your first choice anyway.

Hope you enjoyed my insight.

Tafe

To Indie Or Not To Indie?

Now before I start off I want to say that I have never been been published by the big five, (Four? I don’t know they just keep falling.) Or any publisher for that matter. And ordinarily I HATE speaking out of ignorance. But I would like to give my perspective for new authors, or anyone that loves to read and doesn’t know what actually goes on behind the scenes of that vampire romance novel, or emotional drama that you couldn’t put down from start to finish. Here is why I self published and have no future plans to do anything but Self-Pub

While I was writing Inner Horror and even before I really started writing a full length book, I looked into getting my work published. Looked up success stories of people that sent in their manuscript and they got published within the next year. Found a whole lot of rejection stories. And found a lot of people who got scammed by some no name publisher that required some money up front and then all your dreams would come true. Or some bullshit like that. They took the money and ran. While not every small publishing company is a scam there is plenty that are.

Then if by chance I got published, (Long shot considering I still have a lot of kinks and am learning how to be better every day.) That out of the 20$ (roughly) that a hardback of my novel would cost, I would make a ridiculous fraction of that money. Everywhere I read, the author never made it over 50 cents per unit and While you would get an advance, if you didn’t want to have to pay that money back, you better invest in promotion. It would take up two years just to see your book printed and you basically sell your soul to the devil. Or at least, your books soul. That is what really turned me off. I worked on the damn thing, the vision was mine. I want control.

On top of those huge negatives. For me, the sheer enormity of working with a publisher intimidated me. Just to be completely honest. And I didn’t want the fame of it all. I wanted my book to be out there for people to read and enjoy, some people to give me feedback so I know what I did right and what I did wrong. And to make a little money. Didn’t want my name on a billboard or on the front windows of every big name book retailer. (However that would be pretty awesome.)

Just wanted a simple way to get my book in the public eye. Thats when I heard about KDP, (Kindle Direct Publishing.) At the time I released Inner Horror, my first, It was the easiest thing I could do. Simple upload, bit of info, and done. For my second novel, Baal’s Puppet, I decided to use Smashwords and KDP. I love Smashwords and will be using them from now on. It also wasn’t very difficult, but their formatting guide can make it seem harder than it really is.

That is just my experience and the reasons I wanted and will continue to self pub. The shift is slow moving but self publishing is becoming the best way to start. While there are some unfortunate downsides, I am happy with it. And it can only get better from here. With the industry beginning to realize that We exist and are multiplying.
I encourage anyone with questions about self publishing, or even just some writer talk, to contact me via email or twitter.
L.A.Tafe@live.com or LA_Tafe

Tafe