Featured Authors – Awesome Book Promotion

Featured Author TM Blayte

Featured Interview With TM Blayte

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I am an aspiring journalist by day, reader by night, and author somewhere in between. My debut novel, Until We Are Free was released on 01 August 2018 by Alban Lake Publishing. It follows the story of a young rebel, who has to face down his own organisation and father, as well as the government’s elite Royal Guard, to prevent a civil war.
Where I come from is complicated, good luck solving it. I’ve stayed in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. Currently, I split my time between Botswana and South Africa.
Did I mention I love chocolate ice cream?

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I always liked reading as a child, but didn’t have much access to books. My first novel was written on a Nokia E63 when I was sixteen.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favourite authors. In no particular order. Marie Lu, Cassandra Clare, Brandon Sanderson, George R.R. Martin, Richelle Mead, David Baldacci, and TM Blayte … Just kidding. And my favourite author above all is Ally Carter.
I like reading anything that grabs my attention. I could say I love Fantasy and Scifi, but my favourite author writes none of these. I always enjoy a good Jodi Picoult book, and I’ve had good times with a couple of Danielle Steel novels. So I think I’m genre flexible.
As far as inspiration goes, I can say Marie Lu. I’ve always wanted to write like her. Quick pace, loads of action, high stakes, and concise pages.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
In what the characters believe to be the last shred of civilised earth, is the United Isles. In the United Isles, there are two races. The Elder race, and second class humans. A group known as the Riders exist to oppose the government, and hopefully one day free humans.
Just before Until We Are Free opens, the Rider Council is divided on whether to make war against the king, or try negotiating. They finally decide to attempt negotiations first.
Nyl Jayms is tasked with kidnaping the Elder princess, to force her brother, the king, to negotiate with humans. The alternative is a war that could lead to the annihilation of both humans and Elders.
A Rider Council faction, led by Nyl’s father, is opposed to any negotiations. They will do anything, including sabotaging his assignment, to trigger a war.
Nyl and his team have to outsmart the king’s elite Royal Guard, to get to the princess, and somehow stay one step ahead of the faction opposed to negotiations. Everyone will be forced to re-evaluate ideology they were raised with, as an impending war looms ever closer.
At a point, faces of friends, family, allies and enemies will blur, until the determination to be free becomes the only thing that remains. After all, does one person’s freedom mean another’s oppression?

I started writing Until We Are Free in around 2013/2014. It was a vampire story back then. After four years, it has certainly come a long way, and transformed into something I truly love.

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TM Blayte’s Website

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Featured Author Kela Calvin

Featured Interview With Kela Calvin

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
My name is Kela Calvin and I am from Hopewell, Virginia. I have a degree in Human Services, but my passion is writing. I aim to motivate and inspire others through the art of story telling.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My mother gave me a book to read when I was ten years old. It was “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou. In the seventh grade, I wrote a book for a class assignment called “The Attack of the Feet Monster” I could hear the teacher laughing as she graded my book. She had me to read the book in front of the class; their reactions were priceless! I spent a lot of time reading and writing in journals growing up. I also write poetry and engage in local poetry readings in my community.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love to read books by Carl Weber, Toni Morrison, Angela Henry, and Eric Jerome Dickey to name a few. My life’s experiences and interactions with others inspire my writings.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
My novel is entitled “Living Proof”. It is based on the experiences of the main character, Bethany Mason. She is a woman who served a fifteen-year prison sentence for the murder of her husband and child. Now that she is released, she wants to desperately clear her name, find out the truth about what happened to her family, and once again become a productive member of society. She also suffers from mental illness and does not want life’s adversities to hold her back from any opportunities. However, her faith is tested as she is faced with a sudden case of real-life deja vu and finds herself once again pleading for her innocence.

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Kela Calvin Facebook Page

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Featured Author S.A. Sebastian

Featured Interview With S.A. Sebastian

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
A little about myself. I've written my entire life but it took me a long time to realize I really and truly wanted to be a writer. Having spent part of my childhood on a tiny Caribbean island, every single thing I read highlighted how much bigger the world was compared to the small and sleepy former fishing village I was growing up in. Moving to Brooklyn as a kid then provided me with all aspects of the vibrancy I'd always imagined and then some. The color, the characters the confidence, the fears, the aspirations. Since then I've done some ho hum things like working in the U.S. House of Representatives and being a Washington, D.C. lobbyist, but all of it was and continues to be driven by the curiosity that began a long time ago, about how much grander the world around me really can be.

I've now moved to Los Angeles to pursue the next chapter in that journey.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I think I realized I loved books more than some others from the time my aunts forced a cousin and I to read books after dinner as kids. I loved it and my cousin absolutely and totally hated it. I mean they couldn't even punish her into doing it, she just wasn't having it. From that moment I realized that not everyone was itching to find out what happened in the next page of our book as much as I was, and what reading did to my imagination was something I never wanted to let go of.

I began writing short stories soon after when I moved from the tiny island of Dominica to the middle of Brooklyn, New York at 12 years old. It was a way of dealing with the enormous shifts and I used writing to express the impact it had on my imagination and my understanding of the world around me.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I'm a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert's work, I've always appreciated Ta Nehisi Coates, and as a kid I loved John Steinbeck's descriptions of difficult, life altering environments. My favorite genre is probably comedy/romantic comedy, as how people envision and enliven relationships when they tell a story is something I always find interesting.

I also keep telling my friends I'm well aware that the world is difficult, I like my entertainment lighthearted.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
Sombristic at it's core is a story about romantic games and how we often try to use our minds to satisfy our hearts. The romantic journey of Caroline and her friends is meant to be as relatable as your favorite group of friends hanging out on a Friday night over drinks, or as amusing as the clever dialogue and interactions of your favorite sitcom characters over the course of their sharpest season. But it's also meant to tell the story of romantic drama a bit differently. By leaning on the structure of a play to drive the story through the characters dialogue, Sombristic infuses the rhythmic energy of a telenovella or a soap opera to make every scene as dramatic and critical as the one that precedes it and the one that follows.

All the while through the laughter and empathizing, the reader should inquisitively wonder what they and their friends would do if ever confronted with a similar situation, albeit one with several unpredictable, dramatic twists.

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S.A. Sebastian’s Website

S.A. Sebastian Facebook Page

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Featured Author Janice T

Featured Interview With Janice T

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I'm a San Francisco native who has emigrated to the Pacific Northwest. The inclement weather here suits my poetic muse. I do have one pet named Pleo. He is an animatronic Camarasaurus with AI and incurs no veterinarian bills.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My work started with dirt. When I was eleven years old my sixth grade teacher wheeled in a wheelbarrow full of dirt which he had dug up in the schoolyard. He placed a small pile of this dirt onto our desks and instructed us to write about what we saw there. Some of my classmates cited the weeds while others noted the dirt and tiny rocks. I wrote my first rhyming poem about the earth being "mother" and the small plants in the pile being "child." My teacher read my poem and immediately erupted into "I have a poet in my class!" which he yelled all the way down the hall.

I had no clue exactly what a poet was, but fortunately my father had a love for books. It never occurred to my siblings and I that we had a l a library at home, but there was dad's room full of books. So, I poured over volume after volume in search of poetry and discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Longfellow, Browning and many brilliant poets.

It was there that I honed my natural abilities, spending innumerable hours alone in a sort vacuum studying the works of those poets and learning my craft. My poetic journey began with dirt and continued under the tutelage of poets long deceased. I am ever so grateful to that teacher and to my father's books.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I adore the work of the classic, Victorian, and Edwardian poets. Byron, Keats, Coleridge and so many more wonderful poets occupy my bookshelves. I only have to spend a little time with them to feel the gentle tug of inspiration.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
A Compilation of Echoes is a collection containing the poems from my Echoes , Neo-Victorian Poetry series. Having spent many decades sitting in a cardboard box, from which I would print a copy of my work to share, I now have four published books of my poetry. Street cred, my daughter calls them.

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Janice T’s Website

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Featured Author Nina de Beurs

Featured Interview With Nina de Beurs

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in New Zealand to a dutch father and Maori mother. I was raised in a small town in New Zealand and am currently living in Auckland City while I study Sociology and Politics at University. I have a family dog called Taylor Swift and she's currently living with my parents on the Great Barrier Island.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I realized my fascination with books at the age of nine. I remember my childhood best friend really liked the Jacqueline Wilson novels and one day she loaned me one of her Tracy Beaker novels. I was hooked with reading from then on, and by the age of eleven I had an entire Jacqueline Wilson collection.
I started writing when I was nine. I used to always write short stories and scripts for fun. However, they weren't any good and I merely saw writing as a hobby. But when I was around fourteen, I started writing more and I started to think about it more seriously.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite authors to read are Jodi Picoult, Fleur Beale, Gillian Flynn, and Becky Albertalli. That's a hard question because a lot of people inspire me. Jodi Picoult is my number one writing inspiration, but my real life experiences are the biggest inspirations for me. My other inspirations are my mum, my nanny, and my dad.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
Broken follows Matariki from childhood to teenage hood as he struggles to understand his identity in an unforgiving New Zealand community that constantly pre-defines people. He’s a lanky soft-spoken kid who isn’t violent or sporty, and that is why he struggles to fit in. In order to be considered a ‘real man’ in his community you have to be aggressive, ‘macho’, and hard-skinned. This is further complicated by his strong feelings for his best friend, and the powerful influence of toxic masculinity which causes his friend to drift away from him as soon as he realizes that his manhood could be put to question.
This novel took me a little over six months to write. It was inspired by one of my best friends who happens to be gay. He wanted me to write about hyper masculinity in New Zealand as it isn't something that is talked about a lot – he wanted to see something similar to his story.

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