Kasper's Ramblings from Kasper Beaumont

Sci-Fi / Paranormal with a healthy sprinkling of romance. An interview with Sally Ember @sallyemberedd #FSFNet

4/17/2016

Sally Ember is an author of many talented, from her sci-fi novels The Spanner Series which combine a blend of paranormal and romance to her other roles as an educator, business manager, Vlogger and blogger. There is more to Sally than meets the eye.
With the elements of Buddhism and meditation she discusses, we get a sense that Sally is moving along the path to enlightenment.
I interviewed Sally today for the Fantasy Sci-Fi Network and uncovered some new information about this award-winning author.

Here are some of my favourite snippets from my interview with Sally Ember:
* Sally classes her genre as: 'sci-fi /romance/ speculative fiction/ paranormal/ multiverse/ utopian books for New Adult/adult/YA audiences.' Something for everyone there.
* She talks about her working relationship with Willow Raven, her cover artist
* We discover what 'vajras' are
* Sally admits to hearing voices ;-)
* Her friends and family might find some hints of themselves in her works
* Sally has a song list for her writing and how each song relates to characters and scenes
* Volume 4 of Sally's series is due for release in 2016
Click here for the full interview

Dr. Clara Ackerman Branon, 58, begins having secret visits from holographic representations of beings from the Many Worlds Collective, a consortium of planet and star systems in the multiverse. When Earth is invited to join the Collective, the holos choose Clara as liaison between Earth and the Many Worlds Collective to make the secret visits public and guide Earth's new leaders. While Earthers adjust their beliefs and ideas about life, religion, culture, identity and everything they think and are, rebellions and conflicts arise. The Collective works with Clara to create the Psi-Warriors who fight the leaders of the resistance, the Psi-Defiers. With multiple re-sets needed to revise the past and future to save lives, in which of the timelines in the multiverse does her love, Epifanio Dang, get to be with Clara? Over Clara's thirty-year term as Chief Communicator, Earthers must undergo major transformations.

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A fantasy author with a different approach: M.P. McVey @mpmcvey #FSFNet #author

4/9/2016

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M.P. McVey is a fantasy author with a difference. Not content with the established sword and sorcery or urban genres, he strikes out on his own to give us something truly original and fantastic. His debut novel is Plod on, Sleepless Giant which is about the elephant which turns our world and the tale of his enlightenment.
M.P. has built on his life-long love of reading and ignited a passion for writing.
I was so excited when M.P. and I got together to discuss his thoughts in an interview for the Fantasy Sci-Fi Network, which you can check out here.

Here are my favourite bits from the interview with M.P.:
* M.P. talks about a middle school teacher who inspired him to write
* He discusses about the meaning behind his book's synopsis
* His fave scene is the one with the greatest emotional connection
* Sometimes listening to the same song over and over again helps him to write. Can you guess which song it is?
* M.P. talks about his next project, which is to be a sci-fi satire. (Great concept)
* I'm really impressed with his fave author, who is a role model for me as well
* His 'mostly grey' cat has a clever name
You can read the full interview here.

Synopsis:
At the center of earth exists Temelephas. Created as an insensitive automaton, he is chained to his wooden wheel, ever turning our world. Never to feel, never to remember ... he was made to only walk.
Earth is ravaged by a storm the likes of which humanity's meteorologists have never seen, leaving nothing but questions. Cities are left in rubble and people like Edward and Lily begin to put their lives back together, all while afraid of the storm's possible resurgence.
Destruction lays in wait for Earth and its inhabitants, and there is nothing they can do. It is left to a sole Watcher--those that guard over all in creation, sent on a fool's errand to save the earth, humanity, and most likely the universe. "Walk, walk, walk, through the darkness he would stomp; his feet pounding his life into the earth."

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Check out this great new author I've discovered - Morgan Bell @queenboxi #author

4/4/2016

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Morgan Bell is a Speculative Fiction author with intriguingly named titles. Try 'Sproutlings' and 'Sniggerless Boundulations' on for size. These two are one anthology and one short story collection. These short stories have already received critical acclaim with one receiving a commendation and another being shortlisted for a prize. Morgan is gearing up for the release of her first novel later this year, entitled 'Daughters of Mallory.'

My full interview with Morgan Bell can be read on the Fantasy Sci-Fi Network's webpage. You can read it here.
Highlights from the interview include:
* Morgan has an awesome sense of humour. Just check out who she would want to be marooned with on a deserted planet.
* Her favourite authors are a little different to the usual J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien answers we frequently hear.
* The story of how Morgan came to writing is quite an inspiration.
* She lists her fave booktube vloggers. Vlogging is the latest craze.
* Morgan can't have her first choice for reading her audiobook, but her second choice sounds promising.
* Her bucket list activity sounds wonderful

Morgan Bell’s Sproutlings is a mesmerising collection of exquisite peculiarities. Welsh and Cornish mythology. Australian campfire tales. Astral and fantastic. The pertinency of forty-three modern authors is punctuated by bites of botanical fiction from Poe, Lawson, Orwell, Lawrence, Wells, Alcott, and Wilde in this tour de force of tiny stories.

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Hashtags - friend or foe? Social Media tips part 1 #TwitterSmarter

4/2/2016

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Twitter logo. No permission sought, but I hope they love my article promoting them.

Hi folks, my friend Lorraine from the Writers' Grapevine newsletter has commissioned me to produce a series of articles on the use of social media. Here is the first one - 'Hashtags: friend or foe?'
Let's have a think about how and why hashtags were created. For those new to the concept, hashtags are created by placing the '#' symbols in front of a group of letters.
Hashtags were first used on Twitter for ease of finding tweets with similar content such as #holidays, #Easter, #amreading and #sale.

It is easy to see how these hashtags make it easy to find what tweeps (Twitter users) are looking for in a hurry. The tweets are created and move down the page so quickly that without hashtags you may miss important tweets relating to your topic of interest.
When looking at your Twitter page, the most frequently-used tweets of the moment are displayed on the right, such as breaking news around the world, Donald Trump's toupee and Halle Berry posting a naked photo on Instagram. I like to look at these regularly to find out what is the big news on Twitter.
I tend to use hashtags from groups that I am in such as the Fantasy Sci-Fi Network #FSFNet, #ASMSG and #SciFiRTG. The groups you will join depend on your interests. I am a fantasy author, so I gravitate to like-minded (ie: weird hehe) individuals. These type of hashtags help promote the members of the group and increase your retweets and visibility together.
Other hashtags you can use are ones about a theme such as: #sale #Easter #fantasy. These are the ones that tweeps type in to look up tweets about that topic.
Remember that the goal of a tweet is to entertain / inform and most-importantly to engage. Also with a limited character count in a tweet, the less characters you can use, the more you have for other content.
As with anything in this world, a medium amount of use is good and it is very possible to go over the top with hashtag use. Hashtags come out in a different colour and make reading the tweet more difficult. The general industry consensus is that 3 is the upper limit for using hashtags. Many tweeps, myself included, will not retweet a tweet which exceeds 3 hashtags because these are seen as spam and inferior-quality tweets.
An example of overuse of hashtags: "Keep #pushing! Then hire an #editor. ;) #amwriting #amreading #amediting #Writegoal #WordCount"

Can you see how it fails to entertain or inform? It is just saying 'buy my service.'
Here is a better example: "Happy birthday Alijandra Have a fantastic day from the Fantasy Sci-Fi Network #FSFNet #birthday @AMogilner"

See how this one sends a message and can still be easily found using a hashtag.

Another issue with hashtags is when they appear for no particular reason, such as #noparticularreason #didntwanttogetoutofbedtoday #whatamigoingtowear. Can you see a practical use for these hashtags? How likely are they to be searched and to increase your social media reach? The answer is 'not likely.' They are usually just difficult to read and annoying and most experienced tweeters will ignore them.

Lastly, is there a place for hashtags on Facebook? Maybe. In my experience I have not seen them used appropriately, but there is potential for it. The usual ones I see on FB are by non-tweeters and they fall into the #toohardtodecipher category, which means that most people skim over and ignore them.
If you use a well-known hashtag such as #CharlieHebdo, you may get some traction if people see or search for it.
Twitter and FB are such different entities that different strategies are required for success.

Twitter logo. No permission sought, but I hope they love my article promoting them.

Note: Kasper Beaumont is the author of the Hunters of Reloria book series and has an engaged Twitter following of over 16,000 tweeps and last month had over 428,000 tweet impressions. The opinions expressed in this article are Kasper's own. You can find Kasper on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KasperBeaumont.

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Sci-Fi / Paranormal with a healthy sprinkling of romance. An interview with Sally Ember @sallyemberedd #FSFNet

A fantasy author with a different approach: M.P. McVey @mpmcvey #FSFNet #author

Check out this great new author I've discovered - Morgan Bell @queenboxi #author

Hashtags - friend or foe? Social Media tips part 1 #TwitterSmarter

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