Reality is a Lovely Place, But I Wouldn't Want to Live There

Most writers I know have imaginary friends. It's nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I find it's quite useful.

The most beautiful thing about being a writer is that you are never alone unless you choose to be.

Last night I had a sit down with Amelia, the protagonist of a new book I'm working on (spoilers!) so I could get to know her a little better before I threw her into a new scene. She was very cross, and with good reason, since I hadn't been listening to what she wanted to do in the story. I learned that Amelia was a Ravenclaw (not a Gryffindor, as I wanted her to be) and I got to know my first truly angsty, sassy protagonist. It's not what the plot needs; it's just who she is.

The wonderful thing about fiction is that it doesn't make the characters any less real or any less important to you than the people you see in day-to-day life.

2016 has been a big year for many of us and, in times like these, reality can be overwhelming. I want you to know, dear reader, that there is no shame in taking a quick vacation from The Real World to recharge - whether that's in a good book, a TV show, or just a chat with your favorite fictional character.

Reality will be waiting when you're ready to return.

The World Spins Madly - A Lesson in the Meaning of Empathy and Pain as a Writer

It's been a whirlwind of a year. I graduated from UC Santa Barbara in March, and just received my diploma in the mail yesterday!

In the last six months I have experienced some terrible personal losses that sent my life spinning. This is terribly unusual for someone who has been working since age 13 and always, always had a concrete Life Plan ahead of me. Due to many strange circumstances beyond my control, I am perhaps experiencing true Young Adult Life for the first time. It's terrifying. It's fun.

Most importantly, it's a time in my life that will shape the writer I become. It's important to remember that whether or not you believe in God, fate, or sweet serendipity, this life is going to pick you up and drag you somewhere you never expected. You might not enjoy the ride, but you might be surprised to find how resilient you can be. I have experienced great pain and love and joy and horror since December, and I can honestly say that I will become a better writer for it. The ability to deeply experience these strange and very human emotions is what makes me a good artist - or at least a very passionate one!

I think it is because of my dedication to being a writer that I am able to see purpose and meaning in the good and bad in my life right now. I will continue to experience the extremes life brings me because I believe that feeling my emotions honestly, no matter how painful, allows me to better empathize with others. And what is a writer without empathy?

I promise to you, dear reader and friend, that the pain I experience is worth it because it will bring me closer to understanding you. And I want to understand everything I can about you because sometimes you are also broken or hopeful or brave or scared and you are always, always beautiful and loved.

On Writer's Block: 5 Tips

I'll be honest; I started this article with the series of links at the bottom of the post. So you're not alone if you're experiencing writer's block.

Writer's block comes in many different forms. Sometimes I'm busy with life outside of writing, sometimes I get sick of spending so much time with my characters, and sometimes I just don't feel in the mood for writing.

While I am an advocate of taking days ( or weeks) to step away from writing and reacquaint yourself with the real world, there comes a time when you have to sit down, focus, and just get the story out. And what better time to initiate change than autumn? A time of transition when leaves fall, weather is capricious, and coffee shops are full of new students (not to mention pumpkin spiced lattes.)

 In case you still need a little inspiration, here's a list of my favorite tips on crushing writer's block:

1. You are a writer. Remind everyone you know.

• Let them hold you accountable for your work. Penning the next Great American Novel? Good! Tell all your friends. Better yet, give them a date when it will be finished. Having friends constantly ask where you are in your work might give you the extra push you need to get going.

2. Play dress-up. 

• Sit yourself down at a nice writing desk at home. Put on your glasses. Are you a sensitive and starving artist, a scholarly novelist, or a mysterious poet in black? Play the part! Even if it's just for yourself. If you'd like to take it a step further, go out to the library or coffee shop and let people wonder if you're already famous.

3. Force yourself to write for just 15 minutes.

• Come on, it's not that bad. Just grab a legal pad/moleskine/laptop/typewriter and hack away. It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be more than a sentence. Just try for 15 minutes. You'll be surprised at what comes out of it.

4. Read for 15 minutes.

• Reading something will either inspire you or make you competitive. Win-win!

5. Still don't feel like working on that novel? Give up - for now.

• Do something else creative to get ideas flowing. Like writing a blog post. (Example A)

Got any better ideas? Let me know! And as always, good luck on your adventures!
-

Links: 

HelloGiggles - How To Cure (And Prevent) Writer's Block
The Renegade Writer - 6 Proven Tips For Getting In The "Write" Mood
OWL - Symptoms and Cures for Writer's Block

My SpoCon Schedule

Meet Me at MacWorld

What are you doing in a couple of weeks? Playing with gadgets? Exploring Apple technology-infused art, music, and film, in all its glory? Hanging out with me? Yes?

MacWorld takes place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from March 27-29th. As you may know, PhatWare Corporation brought me out a few years ago, since I write pretty much all of my books on their iPad/iPhone app, WritePad, and do all my brainstorming on PhatPad, the iPad app. 

Hey, we can't all be Moleskine-toting all the time today! My purse gets heavy with all those notebooks, pens, journals, sketchpads, books to read...you get the point. 

Come find me at PhatWare's MacWorld booth signing and giving away copies of my newest novel, The Lazarus Serum, all weekend! 

I hope to see you there! 

Non-Fiction Books to Fuel Creativity

Believe it or not, I do have hobbies outside of writing, editing my work, and crying about it. Between marketing for The Lazarus Serum and fleshing out the beginning of a new book, I've needed to take breaks so I can learn something new.

That's where hobbies come in. I was recently asked how I keep up the "steam" for writing and editing. I'll post a new vlog on the topic soon, but until then here's a brief answer: take in as much information as you put out. I thought I'd share some of my findings with you, so here are four non-fiction books I plan on using to fuel my creativity! 

1. A Beautiful Mess is a pretty neat book including tips on photography and photo challenges to inspire you. 

2. Happy: Secrets to Happiness from the Cultures of the World is exactly what it sounds like - the book collects cultural secrets and teaches you how to apply them & bring a little brightness to your life.

3.Instant Happy is a great book for bitter writers - it's full of clever motivational tips and photos on how to stay happy. Sometimes a 10 second attitude makeover is enough to get you back into writing!

 4. Grow: How to Take Your DIY Project & Passion to the Next Level and Quit Your Job! promises to serve as a personal mentor and provide step-by-step instructions & advice on turning your project into a career (ahem - self-publishing, anyone?)

Have you read any of these books? Am I missing something important here?
If so, leave a comment below or shoot me an email at fallonjones@live.com!

Vlog 1: Character Creation

Click over to YouTube to see a larger version of the video or to leave a comment! 

Vlogging?

For some reason a few of you want to see my face online, so I've decided to start vlogging - video blogging - and posting a few videos where I'll be talking about some of the same topics I discuss at Comic Conventions, like writing young adult fiction, self-publishing, and marketing a book.

My first video will be about character development and how to create three-dimensional characters, but after that I'm wide open to ideas for future videos.

So what do you want to hear about? Leave your comments below or shoot me an email at fallonjones@live.com - I'm open to suggestions!

The Lazarus Serum - Icons

Get your FREE ebook - The Lazarus Serum - today!

Get your FREE copy of The Lazarus Serum today!

Merry Christmas to all you readers out there! Since it's the holiday season, I am giving The Lazarus Serum (a dystopian sci-fi) ebook free for the next 2 days!

The book is available for iPad, Kindle, and PDF download at the link below: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/357084

If you like what you read, please share this link with a friend or leave a book review.

Happy Holidays,
Fallon Jones

Coming Soon: The Lazarus Serum Paperback Edition

A few weeks back I had a poll on my website and my Facebook page on whether my readers would prefer a paperback or ebook version of my newest book, The Lazarus Serum.
Well, the results are in!
It looks like I'll have my work cut out for me the next few weeks as I format The Lazarus Serum for paperback publishing! The novel will be approximately 300 pages long, and it should be available before Christmastime. In the meanwhile, the digital version is already for sale here. Publishing a physical version of this book is going to be a long and expensive process, but I really do believe that this is the best thing I've ever written and I want the chance to share it with anyone who is interested in reading it. This story is worth the work.

On a similar note, I've taken a lot of time to think about my future recently. As an English major at a large university, I often worry that I'll get lost in the crowd and pressured to take classes that won't really help me grow as a writer. But I'm ready to cast my back-up career aside, because writing is honestly what I want to do. It's what I've always wanted to do.
Sometimes it's hard to let go of your back-up plan and commit 100% to your dream because there are so many "what-ifs". What if I don't succeed? How will I make enough money to support myself? What if my dream gets contorted along the way, or I change my mind? These are a few of the questions I've found myself pondering, and it's something all of us go through at some point in our lives.
In all honesty, I just had cold feet.
I've been scared because I've come so far in such a short time, and soon I won't have a lot of other options. Once I truly commit to writing, I won't be looking for anything else. All of my other possible futures will fade into the backdrop and eventually melt away. It's sort of like getting married, I guess. But when I set time aside to seriously consider my options, I realized that I do know what I want. And I want this. I want to write, to be a writer, even if I have to take out student loans and work multiple jobs to do it.
So I made the commitment. I switched out of my massive English major into the smaller college on the same campus--into a Literature major with less than a hundred students. Now I'll be primarily taking courses on reading and writing, I'll be in more discussion-based classes, and I get 24 hour access to a typewriter!
I applied, crossed my fingers, and I made the cut. Next quarter I'll be a Literature student taking classes on how to write for modern media and how to read like a writer! I feel very blessed to have this chance to work with other like-minded students who understand what it means to pursue literature as a career.
I'm ready to cast my doubt aside and focus all of my time, energy, and heart on my dream--are you?
~Fallon Jones

Author Jessica Rising on Writing About the Apocalypse for the Next Generation

I don't know if you've noticed yet, but the apocalypse is getting quite popular. Everywhere you go, books, television shows, and movies are reminding the public that our inevitable end is near. But where does that fit into young adult media? The Hunger Games are a hit, and dystopian books are selling better than ever! My newest novel, The Lazarus Serum, is a dystopian sci-fi fantasy written by a teenager about teenagers. (Click here to check it out!) This article is written by Jessica Rising, a fellow post-apocalyptic author who explains how (and why) to write in the genre for middle grade readers.
~Fallon Jones


Writing About the Apocalypse for the Next Generation 
By Jessica Rising 

How many times have you heard parents exclaim, “You know what I really want for my kids? Post-apocalyptic books. Where are they, anyway?” I know. All the time, right?

(Okay, so it’s more like, “why would I EVER want my children reading about the end of the world?” but I digress.)

I’ve had plenty of funny looks from people when I tell them I write post-apocalyptic fiction for kids. Dystopian also raises a few brows. I’ve heard all sorts of questions and doubts, from “that must be very difficult to keep child-friendly” to “I just don’t think that’s a good idea at all”. So here you are, all in one gooey, crème-filled blog post – my reasons for doing… what it is I do.

My genre is generally termed speculative fiction, though perhaps a more literal term would be “obviously fiction”. These are the stories that take the world and twist it up like taffy until the colors, swirls and tastes of reality are transformed into something entirely new. Fantasy. Science Fiction. Horror. Steampunk. Post-Apocalyptic. Dystopia. These are all speculative fiction. To read spec-fic is to escape reality in a runaway boat. To write it is to add a rudder and try to steer.

My current series, “Guts and Glory”, is best described as post-apocalyptic dystopia, or Apocalypse-Punk. And yes, it is for kids.

Lately, apocalyptic visions have become extremely popular. The other day I saw some graffiti that perfectly sums up why I believe this is so. It read, “In a society that has destroyed all adventure, the only adventure left is to destroy that society”.

We are all looking for who we are in this world, and the vast majority of us are no longer finding a satisfying answer. The drone mentality of work-and-sleep-and-work-again is slowly killing our spirits. And so we fight back with our imaginations. “What if this stifling cubicle was torn to shreds? What if this highway was bombed to bits so that it could never again carry its mouse-maze of deadlocked traffic? What if this whitewashed world was suddenly painted in the colors of explosive rebellion? What if society was so ruined that I could finally do something that mattered?”

We all want to be the hero.

Two of the best-known pillars of dystopian literature are George Orwell’s “1984”, and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Though their totalitarian societies are very different in many ways, they have one major theme in common: nobody is allowed to be an individual. The stifling of individuality is the number-one most powerful weapon any supervillain could possibly wield, for it turns a society of free dreamers into a single lifeless machine which supports the power of the few. Take away someone’s very identity, and they have nothing left to fight for. A nobody has no hopes, dreams, or even family to care about. A nobody only does one thing – work for the one who controls him.

More and more, we as a society are feeling like nobodies. And we don’t like that.

In “Guts and Glory”, the only free citizens are the Kids. Though they are born nameless, without family or homes, they have created a society that honors the individual. They adopt each-other. They take care of each-other. But most importantly, they have names. Every Nil Kid carries her name with pride, because that name was not given, but earned. Nil Kids have names unique to them, like Papercut, Books, Roach and Turtle. These names define who they are and what they contribute to their society.
And every one of them contributes something that matters.

My stories are for kids -- my heroes are kids -- because this world won’t be fixed overnight. Who knows, perhaps it will take an apocalyptic calamity to set things back to zero. But when the sun finally rises over a new tomorrow, the ones to see it will be the children of today. And those children still believe they aren’t nobodies.

My job as a writer is to make sure that never changes.

Jessica Rising writes all kinds of crazy books for the discerning – and somewhat mad – young reader. You can check out her books at gutsandglorybooks.com or Facebook.com/GutsandGloryBooks

Your Opinion Matters!

Answer the poll below and let me know if you'd rather have a paperback or ebook version of The Lazarus Serum:

Would you rather have an ebook or paperback copy of The Lazarus Serum?
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Update: Facebook Page

As of today, I have updated the Bite Me. facebook page to include not only the Serpents and Saints series containing Bite Me. and The Jaws of Life, but also The Lazarus Serum.

Click the link below to check out the new page!

Teen Writer Fallon Jones--Facebook Page

PhatWare Boosts The Lazarus Serum

Check it out! Even PhatWare Corporation is buzzing about The Lazarus Serum!

Post by Phatware.

5 Tools to Self-Publish

I use Grammarly's free plagiarism checkerbecause sampling is only okay in the music industry! 

A week has passed, and I'm ready to publish my latest book, The Lazarus Serum. A lot of people have asked me how to go about self-publishing, since there are so many different ways to do it now that the industry has exploded!

In this post, I have compiled a list of tools that have helped me tremendously in the epic adventure that is self-publishing.

1. Smashwords

If you are looking for a quick and cheap way to publish e-books, I strongly recommend using this website. You can access formatters for your book through their website, and they will get all of the kinks worked out so that your book looks professional when it gets into the market. And did I mention the distribution benefits? Provided your book passes the formatting requirements, (which it will if you pay for formatting) you can get your book carried through Barnes & Noble's website, along with Amazon and various e-readers.

2. Lulu

This is much more expensive than Smashwords, but your best bet for quality print works. They have a wide selection of editors, marketing packages, and formatting selections. You can do hardback, paperback, or iPad e-books with this option.

3. Grammarly

In addition to its free plagiarism checker which compares your work to billions of others', Grammarly offers contextual grammar corrections and word choice suggestions. It's way more comprehensive than what you'll find in your word processor - it's cheaper than hiring an editor, too!

4. WritePad

I used this iPhone/iPad app to write two of my novels - The Jaws of Life and The Lazarus Serum. It's a word processor that lets you write your books by hand rather than by keyboard on your screen. It has built-in handwriting recognition that will translate your scribbles (even cursive) into neatly typed words. You can customize your own text and color themes, export documents as PDFs, and sync with any cloud.

5. Your Blog

This is your best marketing tool. And believe me, marketing is the most important part of self-publishing. I use social media like Blogger, Facebook, and Twitter to keep my readers informed about what I'm up to next. Your blog is also a great way to link people to your products. For instance, I have separate pages for each of my books on my website that tell a little bit about each story! Besides talking about your own works, your blog is a great place to talk to your fans directly and rant about your hobbies - like I'm doing right now.

To get a feel for what a self-published book looks like in its final form, check out The Jaws Of Life or The Lazarus Serum!