Renee's Author Spotlight: Release Tour – Time’s Tempest by M.J. Moores

I’m excited to be taking part in M.J. Moores blog tour for her new bookTime’s Tempest: The Chronicles of Xannia Part One. I’ve included some information about her and her book, some links you can use to connect with her and a guest post written by her.

If you’d like to check out more of the tour you can get more info at:

http://mjmoores.com

http://dkcreaderscorner.wordpress.com

Bio

M. J. Moores began her career as an English teacher in Ontario, Canada. Her love of storytelling and passion for writing has writing has stayed with her since the age of nine. M. J. relishes tales of adventure and journeys of self-realization. She enjoys writing in a variety of genres but speculative fiction remains her all time favourite.

Book Description

The end of the word or just some nut-job trying to get innocent people killed to validate his own endgame? Taya’s not sure, but either way it’s up to her discover the truth between fate and destiny in this divided land.

Don’t forget to enter her giveaway!

You can win a Time’s Tempest Set:

1 copy of Time’s Tempest: The Lost Chronicles

1 copy of Time’s Tempest: The Chronicles of Xannia Part One

(click the image to the right)

The Idea Manufacturer

Written by M.J. Moores

The curse of many a writer is too many ideas and not enough time. But where do these ideas come from? It’s different for everyone and yet, you’d be surprised at the amount of overlap there is from one writer to the next.

Now, take me for example – give me a few key pieces of information and I can build you a solid novel outline in about 30 minutes. Ask me to write you a short story and I’ll still be searching for ideas a month from now. It seems that what I like to write about requires a minimum of 80,000 words in order to be told right. But if you re-word your request and ask me to write a scene that’s a part of a larger storyline – okay! I’m with you, I can do that… but I wouldn’t call it a short story. In fact, leading up to the publication of my novel I released several free Lost Chapters that are prequels to the main story. I call them chapters because when you read them you feel like there should be something that comes before and there’s definitely something big coming after.

With all that said my main source for ideas are my dreams. I just happen to be one of those people who not only dreams in colour but my brain will formulate intricate stories and play them out for me as if I were watching a movie. When I wake up, if I don’t immediately write down everything I remember (which usually consists of 11 pages – odd number, I know, but that seems to be my average), I lose it. I generally have either a really clear first chapter with chicken-scratch notes on the continuing plot or I start with the most vivid scene I can recall and then piece together what came before and/or after. I have two dream journals with nearly 40 stories hidden in their pages. I started recording my dreams in grade 9. So, you can see that I don’t have these awesome story-dreams every night; they are few and far between but still, a person can only write so fast and that’s 40 more stories than I have time to write right now.

What’s interesting to note is that my debut novel Time’s Tempest did not come from one of those story-dreams and neither will the next series I write beginning this NaNoWriMo. I got the idea for Time’s Tempest from my husband (boyfriend at the time) back in 1999 on New Year’s night – Y2K; it’s interested to see how different people react to a possible cataclysmic event… and I got the idea for my next series The Hollow Kiss from a fellow writer’s site (Tara Sparling Writes) and a joke book title generator for crime/mystery novels. As excited as I am to pop open either of my dream journals and dig in to one of my truly fascinating dreams-stories, these two ideas were just that – ideas… unfinished thoughts of what if taunting me to tease them out. My dream-stories are little pre-packaged plot bundles waiting to be opened. I found myself needing to know more about these other two ideas to the point where they wouldn’t leave me alone until I’d flushed them out. Of course, by that time I was so invested in each story that it had to be completed.

Something I’ve learned along the way though, is that if stress is a factor in my life my creativity suffers; my dreams are random or I don’t remember what I’ve dreamed at all (if I can even sleep depending on how severe the stress is) and I don’t have the space in my mind to follow a day-dream based on a given idea. Therefore, my writing suffers and it stopped altogether when I attended university – exams, labs, practicums, tests, projects, work and a long-distance relationship ruled my synapses for five years. Then, I was stressing about my wedding, getting a job teaching, and developing lesson plans every night so that I didn’t look like an idiot in front of my students or peers.

Once I found balance in my life, where I had a number of go to lessons for classes and the world slowed down enough where the stress was minimal or manageable, my ability to be creative with my personal writing returned. I was following Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs where I couldn’t self-actualize until certain other basic necessities were met. So now, even though life is just as crazy as it was when I was going to school and starting my career (I’m the mother of a toddler, editor, freelance writer and am still happily married) I know to look for those moments of balance that allow me to free my mind and explore my creative side in order to let my ideas flow and permit myself to be inspired. This makes me whole; sane; and able to call myself a published writer. I firmly believe that too much stress will block anyone’s ability to be creative and if you find yourself struggling for ideas, perhaps you too need to de-stress. I firmly believe that one of the reasons writing retreats came about (and are now advertised as part of a writing-norm) is that we all need to find a way to relax and enjoy ourselves. The unfortunate part just happens to be that when you’re a writer, relaxation equals inspiration.