Tuesday 17 December 2013

Book Tour - Heart Shaped Emblor




Young Adult Paranormal Romance/ Sci-Fi
Date Published: 10/11/2013

Hidden powers. Otherworldly boyfriends. FORBIDDEN SECRETS. 
For Aislinn Moore, attending college at seventeen isn’t a big deal. Not when compared to the difficulties associated with seeing ethereal beings and having prophetic dreams. 
As Aislinn learns to surmount the obstacles of her talents, she awakens something inside herself—an ancient memory, long forgotten. She senses there are reasons for her gifts, but remains unable to understand them. 
When Alexander Welch enters her life, she learns of the Ewlishash—the hope bringers—and thinks she may have found her answer. Alexander is sexy, sweet, and his talents are like something straight out of a Sci-Fi flick. Aislinn wonders if she may be like him, but the more she tries to fit his mold, the more her instincts scream that her destiny holds something even greater.

Alaina Ewing
Alaina Ewing lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two boys. She holds a degree in Multimedia Production and is the Assistant Chair for Cascade Writers, a nonprofit Milford-style workshop. She also makes jewelry, dream catchers, and enjoys working with herbs and essential oils. 


Her first novel, The Heart-Shaped Emblor, releases October 11, 2013 with Evil Girlfriend Media. The novel is the first in the Ewlishash Series. Read more about Alaina at www.alainayewing.com.



Twitter: Trinity1226 and/or EvilGMedia

                                        



Guest Post

Hardest Thing About Character Development


I think the most challenging thing for me has been finding the right amount of brokenness to give my characters. Some people like to throw everything in the book at their them and make them squirm in agony, but I don’t care for that method. Usually my characters’ weaknesses have more to do with internal struggles, so the need to continually put physical roadblocks before them isn’t necessary. I use a lot of emotional challenges instead.

So far, I haven’t had a method of developing a character, but now that I’m working on some new projects, I’m using something that I learned from author Steven Barnes. I saw him on a panel at Norwescon in 2013, and he told us how he uses the chakra to develop his characters. There are seven points of the chakra, and he breaks two or three of those points and has the character heal them by the end of the novel. This is a really fast way to know what your characters’ flaws are right up front. So if I want to create a character that is suffering in two areas, like communication and spirituality, then I can create scenes to assist in showing those broken aspects, then more scenes later on to show the changing of that character to strengthen those weak parts of the personality.

The toughest thing I encountered in The Heart-Shaped Emblor was the development of Aislinn. She is emotionally and spiritually broken, doesn’t have any confidence, and has to overcome all of that as well as her fear, in order to fulfill her destiny. So many people beta read the novel for me because finding that balance between her being weaker in the beginning, but then strong by the end, was difficult. Brokenness is difficult. So much of what I put into Aislinn’s character came from things I felt or thought at some point when I was not as sure of myself as I am now. This is what makes her feel believable to me.

Bottom line, not everyone will always connect with a character. I don’t connect with characters who are athletes because I’m not competitive in that way. Keeping my characters’ challenges aligned with things I know helps me stay on track and make them relatable.



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