Author Archives: Michelle Garren-Flye

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About Michelle Garren-Flye

I am an author of romance, poetry, children's books and graphic novels. I also own a bookstore. My love of the written word runs deep.

Time is not your friend.

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Immortality and everlasting love are two of the meanings of mountain laurel.

This morning I taught my nine-year-old how to make waffles because it’s summer, everybody’s getting up at a different time…and, well, she’s nine. It’s time to start doing some basic stuff for yourself like making your own breakfast. But as soon as I thought that, I realized something.

 

She’s nine years old. How did that happen?

Time isn’t our friend, is it? It rushes us along, always on its schedule, never paying attention to the moments we want to stand still and enjoy like our vacations and celebrations. Time only takes a breather when we’re standing in line at the DMV or going to an unpleasant doctor’s appointment. Then Time says, “Hold up there, what’s your rush?” And the seconds slowly become minutes and seem like hours.

I’ve been fascinated by the concept of time for most of my life, I think. I remember my mother telling me once how long it would take for the Jello she’d just put into the refrigerator to jell. An hour.

How long is an hour? I said.

She probably rolled her eyes and sighed, but I remember her laughing a little. “Sixty minutes.”

Sixty minutes? How could I possibly live that long? I wanted the Jello now. And yet, when I ran along and played with my Barbie dolls, all of sudden, an hour had passed. And I was enjoying a plateful of jiggly green Jello that I could poke with my fork to see it wobble and not get fussed at for playing with my food.

My obsession with time has continued through the years. Don’t rush it, people say when you’re trying your best to get through one stage of your life—high school, college, the first years of married life, the first stage of child-rearing, the lean years during your first jobs when you’re not making much money…

And they’re right. Because all of a sudden you’re teaching your nine-year-old baby who’s sprouted ridiculously long legs to make waffles. Or reaching up to give your 12-year-old a hug. Or teaching your 16-year-old to drive. All because it’s time. And you were never allowed to stand still for those moments in time that you’ll always treasure but can never go back to.

And all of this is to say that on Wednesday, my book Out of Time, which explores some of my thoughts about time, will mark another point in my timeline. And this time, I’ll be enjoying that moment with you right here on my blog. I’ll be posting throughout the day about Out of Time and what it means in my personal quest to understand the rush of time. Please stop by with any questions about my writing, thoughts about time, comments about the weather…whatever. And at high noon, the pinnacle of the hours of the day…I’ll have a special guest here. Then at 7 p.m. (Eastern), as the hours of the day draw to a close, I’ll choose one commenter from a random drawing to receive the grand prize of a Kindle Fire!

So take a few moments from your day and stop by. Help me make the most of the day…before we’re out of time.

A Thrilling Excerpt…

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Out of Time Excerpt5-page0001

Less than a month to Launch…and another excerpt!

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It’s less than one month to the Out of Time Launch Party (June 15). Remember, we’ll be celebrating right here all day long with a special guest, door prizes and a grand prize Kindle Fire giveaway. I hope you’ll all join me. In the meantime, here’s another short excerpt from Out of Time to pique your interest…Out of Time Excerpt3-page0001

There was nothing remarkable about this space more than any other. A small clearing in the woods, tall grass brushing Aylin’s withers, starred with little blue flowers. Kaelyn turned her horse in a circle, looking around, her scalp prickling. “There’s something here.”

“What do you feel?”

“It feels like—not danger, exactly. More like…possibility. Though I can’t say of what. But it’s there.”

“Where?” Cerys hadn’t drawn her sword. Whatever it was Kaelyn sensed, it wasn’t imminent danger, anyway, or her friend would certainly have been ready to do battle.

Kaelyn closed her eyes, feeling the wind brushing the hair from her temples. Her horse whinnied in protest of some unseen hazard. Behind her eyelids, she could see it sparkling, wavering in the air before her. She opened her eyes and pointed. “There.”

“Can you see it?” Tamsin peered at the empty air where Kaelyn pointed.

She couldn’t before, but now realized she could. As if on the edge of her vision, the air was a slightly different color—or, just as likely, a slightly different scent—than the air around it. Rose-colored. Rose-scented. The smell of a promise, the color of a dream. “Yes.” She shifted her gaze to Jack, who sat quietly on his horse. “It’s the portal.” She felt certain he’d brought her this way on purpose. He wanted to find out if she could see it.

He inclined his head. Something about his look troubled her. Had he hoped she wouldn’t know? This was the thing he guarded. Did Jack worry that she would want to go through it?

Out of Time book trailer. Check it out!

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Welcome to the Red Carpet

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This week, I get the fun of having my first Red Carpet World Premiere of a book trailer. We can dig our toes into the plush carpet (no shoes required at this premiere) and enjoy the book trailer for Out of Time here:

Out of Time Trailer

To add to the fun, please enjoy this short excerpt from the book:

The police detective frowned at Kaelyn. She studied his face, thinking how different he looked than Jack, or even Todd and Richard. Handsome, but not overwhelmingly so. Down to earth. This man passed for a warrior in the human world, but now that she’d seen real warriors in action, she feared for humans. Nothing about this man suggested he could fight with a sword or defeat an enemy or swing acrobatically from the treetops. And yet men once had. Kaelyn wondered what had changed here on Eladi and if life for humans was different on Ayeli before they were driven to extinction by the Elves. From the few stories she’d heard, the war had been a fierce one. Were those humans really gone? A sense of loss filled her heart at the thought. At least the Meti had survived, even if they had been driven to seek shelter elsewhere.

The detective stood, startling her. She jerked out of her reverie. “What’s your name, Detective?”

“Eric.” He said it as if he knew she was asking for his first name. Then he corrected himself. “Detective Eric Shapiro, ma’am.” To her surprise, he bowed his head, much as others had bowed to her since she became a queen.

“Can I go, Eric?”

The detective opened his mouth as if to answer, then, looking uncomfortable, shut it again. He shuffled papers on the desk and mumbled something about being right back, exiting without looking at her.

Writing and publishing and what comes between.

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I’m getting better at this self-publishing thing. I’ve even started thinking of it as a four-step process. The first step is writing/editing. This includes all the drafts and all the deep editing and re-writing. (I’m going to skip a step here, but stay with me.) The third step is publishing. This mostly consists of pushing a button and saying a prayer as your book begins its journey into the world. The fourth step, which actually begins somewhere between the second and third step and continues well into the future, is marketing. I’ve talked about that some, but it includes blogging, tweeting, sending out excerpts, begging for reviews, putting together a press kit…you name it, it’s there.

The second step, which is what I’ve been deep in the process of recently, is book-making. I include copy editing and formatting for ebook and print in this step, and it’s the step that many authors miss out on in traditional publishing. This is the step I’ve had to work to perfect over the years. I’ve found it’s not as simple as typing up a book and plugging it into a publishing platform like Smashwords or CreateSpace. It involves a lot of work, a lot of oversight and a lot of experimentation to get a good, clean-looking book. Chapter headings, white space, margins… Oh, and book covers! Book covers are so much fun. I usually have to get professional help with these, but I also get to make some suggestions and requests (much more so than with traditional publishing). And when it’s all done and you’re ready to move on to Step three, you can call yourself something new, something beyond an author, editor or even publisher. You can call yourself a book-maker.

Pretty stinking awesome.

I’ve been at it for a couple weeks now. I’ve finished the copy-editing and am into the formatting stage for Out of Time. It’s already up for pre-order on Smashwords and Amazon. Go check it out, even if just to look at the beautiful cover designed by Farah Evers Designs. But don’t forget to come back here often. As soon as I’m done with formatting the print version, I’m throwing myself headlong into marketing, and I’ve got a few surprises lined up that will culminate in the day long Out of Time Launch Party on June 15.

See you soon!

Promotion: The dirty word of writing.

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With the launch of Out of Time less than two months away, I’m throwing myself into the process of making certain readers know about the book. In other words, promotion.

Promotion. It’s not a four-letter word, but it might as well be. As writers, we want readers to read our books, but we would rather stay away from the actual hawking of said books. But if we don’t hawk the books, they don’t get read, and to get the books read, we have to sell them.

Hence, promotion.

I’ve never yet gotten a real handle on the promotion thing. I would love to be one of those writers who writes only and hires someone to do all the dirty work for her. Tweeting and Facebooking and advertising…everything short of standing on the corner of Main and Broad yelling, “Buy my book! You’ll love it!”

But that’s not really possible, is it? I have to promote my book, but why can’t I have fun with it? So I’ve decided on June 15, I’m going to host a big party here, complete with party favors (i.e. e-giveaways) and a grand door prize of a Kindle Fire. Please spread the word. Invite your friends. And here’s your invitation:img_3990

One last note, I’m running a campaign on Thunderclap to promote the launch party, too. If you’d like to support the campaign, here’s a link: Help Me Launch Out of Time. Remember, I’m promoting the launch party, which will hopefully promote the book, but no purchase is necessary to participate! Just come and join the fun, and maybe take home some goodies!

Things are different now.

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If you look around, you’ll see what I mean. My blog has changed a little. I may introduce more changes, and some things on here will change every time you visit. It’s a metamorphosis of sorts.

I’m morphing.

Out of Time, my new (and first) romantic fantasy will be out in just over two months and I’m a little weirded out by the whole thing. Writing romantic fantasy isn’t like writing a contemporary romance. Not even a little bit. And now I’m in the process of putting the final touches on the manuscript, I’m seized by uncertainty.

What if it isn’t any good?

You see, I know I’m a pretty decent writer. But writing romantic fantasy is so different from writing contemporary romance. There’s all this world-building and character development that’s totally different from contemporary romance. It’s kind of like if I was a painter, and I’d spent my whole life perfecting my technique at painting, but then I decided to try sculpting instead. I’m a really good painter, but until someone actually looks at my sculpture and tells me what they think of it, I don’t have any idea if I’m good at sculpting.

So what do I do to fix things? I spend my afternoon playing with fonts and headers and background colors on my blog. If I’m going to morph into a sculptor of worlds, I need a blog that reflects that, right? So things are different here.

At least some things are different. Others remain the same, like my love of sharing excerpts from my manuscript:

“Um, are you certain about this?” She clung to the railing, trying to talk herself out of her hesitation. “I haven’t climbed trees in a long time.”

“There’s no other way down.” He balanced easily on the branch.

“How did I get up here?”

“I carried you.”

That explained the clean, piney water scent from her memory. But not much else. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You carried me and climbed the tree at the same time?” Her incredulity made her voice rise at the end of the sentence.

“I’m a multi-tasker.” He shrugged. “I had things to do. I have things to do.” He rocked on the tree branch, heel-toe, heel-toe, his movement both impatient and graceful. “Come on.”

Excerpt Time!

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Note: I often agonize over what to include in an excerpt. For traditionally published books, this is even more important as there are often limits as to how much you can include. Self-publishing lightens this requirement as I often give myself permission to publish as many excerpts as needed to let readers know this is a book worth reading. However, though I want to give you a real taste of what the book is about through an excerpt, I don’t want to give you everything. So, rest assured, though I plan to publish several excerpts of different lengths between now and OUT OF TIME’s birthdate of June 15, you aren’t going to get anywhere near all of the “good parts”. 

Enjoy!

 

My God, is he really holding a sword? The wonder of it drowned out the horror of what was actually happening. Kaelyn wanted to believe it was all cosplay, but her instincts screamed that the danger was very real. The hard metallic clang reverberated through her bones and then something hit her…hard…and she sprawled on the floor, rolling to all fours to see it was Jack of the expensive costume—not a costume at all—his sword drawn and fighting back to back with Todd as they both shielded her. Todd, the guy she’d met in a bar and made out with and was thinking about sleeping with because they’d been on six dates and he was perfect.

Jesus Christ.

Kaelyn scooted far enough away to be out from under the feet of her protectors, the shock beginning to change to an emotion she had never felt before. A white-hot fury. This was her house and her family. She looked for a weapon, cursing her inability to find anything more than a cardboard box to shield herself with, and knew she was lost if these two couldn’t defeat those who had attacked her. She’d have to trust the guard and her brother to do what they could to defend her home. And her father.

A feeling that it shouldn’t be happening at all overwhelmed everything. It couldn’t be real. She was just a girl. Just a girl who grew up the daughter of a king and went to college for a degree in advertising and marketing. Just a girl with an apartment in downtown Asheville, and a boyfriend and a brother…

An image of her father in his royal robes lying on the kitchen floor with her brother standing above him—defending—rose in her mind, and the world swayed beneath her. There’d been blood there. The blood on the sword of her attacker… This was no game, but what was real? She couldn’t be certain anymore.

Something heavy and metal swished through the air bare inches from her face, bringing her forcibly out of a cloud. Jack grabbed her arm and propelled her none-too-gently to her feet and behind him, backing toward the corner of the office. She tripped and stumbled, but refused to fall, catching herself on the back of Jack’s coat and falling against him just as his sword found its home in his enemy’s breastplate, squealing a metallic protest. A few feet away Todd had just finished off his opponent. He swung around as the metal-clad monster fell away from Jack’s sword. “Kaelyn!” Todd’s voice cut through the air between the two men.

Jack faced Todd. His sword out, he crouched ready to spring, and only then did Kaelyn realize she still clung to him, her breasts squished against his back. Releasing him and moving cautiously away, Kaelyn thought she’d never seen anyone look more menacing. His eyes gleamed with that otherworldly light she’d glimpsed before. Would he attack Todd? Had they really been fighting on the same side? Todd lowered his sword just a little. “You’re scaring her.”