Tamsin Silver is an old friend of mine, and I’m happy to lend her this space (and it means I don’t have to come up with a blog post!)

I love being a Fantasy writer. What a fun genre to write in. I’ve attempted to write Crime…and I can do a downright awesome beginning, but blimey, I cannot get past that. Hats off to J.D. Robb and those other folks that write Crime, like Richard Castle. What? He’s not real? Oops, my bad. 😉 (Nathan Fillion, you’re real to me🙂

I’ve been writing stories since I was…ten or eleven (we will NOT say how long ago that was…but I will say I wrote them on an electric typewriter.*shudders*) and I’ve been often told, “Write what you know.” So, when I was redoing my series, Living Dead Girl, a few years ago I set them in the Goth/Industrial scene seeing as I’ve been in that since 1989 (*cough cough* please don’t do the math). We used to always joke that the real vampires could hide in the goth/industrial scene easily since so many “posers” and “wannabes” were there, no one would know the difference. Thus the background for my series was born.

Originally, my series was going to be this love story between a vampire and a witch. Then I set the book down to finish college, become a teacher, run a theatre company, move to NYC, and produce theatre. But one New Years I made a resolution to finish it. As I reworked it, the characters took over. Atlanta fell in love with someone else, the primary plot changed, and I was stuck sitting there going, “Where did my original story go?” Then I thought, “Who cares?”

From that point on I’ve written without an outline. I just let the characters take me on a journey. From what I understand, this is not normal practice. And, it very likely is why I have to do a lot of revision and cuts, but I enjoy the adventure my characters take me on.

That journey got a wakeup call one day when a YA vampire movie, that shall not be named, was all people could talk about. I worried, “What if it’s my story?” So, on a Friday afternoon off, I went to see said movie the day it opened (I was one of 4 in the theatre) and saw that it was NOT my story, not by a long shot. HOWEVER, it made me realize…someday it might be. If I wanted my story out there, I needed to take my dreams seriously.

I sat down to finish The Betrayal (the first book in The Living Dead Girl Saga) and began to shop it around. I told myself I had two years to get a bite on this book or I’d consider going to grad school. Thankfully, I did get a bite, and in October of 2011, Eirelander Publishing released The Betrayal as an e-book. The second book of the saga, Shattered, is in edit now, and hopefully will hit e-book “stores” this summer!

Speaking of October, I was lucky enough to be interviewed at NYC Comic Con this October by the talented and lovely Ana Catris (Link to Interview: http://is.gd/sIbCn1 ). The audience of that online publication is primarily Young Adults. Now, my books fall under the 17+ age range so I’m not used to getting YA feedback. So I asked Ana what they had to say. She told me that they felt the interview made me sound normal, like anyone else they would know, giving them hope for their own writing. That made me supremely happy to hear.

If you have a dream, be it writing, theatre, dance, drawing, graphic design, etc. You should go forth and do it! If you have an original idea, let the world know about it! Have the confidence in yourself. I didn’t have that confidence for ten years and this book sat printed on paper, in a drawer, bouncing about with me from SC, to NC, to NYC. And thankfully I saw that sparkling vampire movie, because it put a boot on my ass…and my simple “love story” became a story of self discovery, strife, love and standing up for what’s right. It’s an adventure not only for those who read it, but for me as well. I couldn’t be happier.

I pray that you pursue what you love. It makes all the difference.

Take care and happy writing! If you are interested in asking me anything…find me on Twitter…I lurk there often! Username: @tamsinsilver

xo

Tamsin J

P.S. If interested, you can snag an e-copy of my book by going to my website: www.tamsinsilver.com and if you don’t have an e-reader, the book will be out in print through Amazon Print On Demand by the end of March, 2012.

For fun, if you like my characters, there are pictures of them here: http://tamsinsilver.com/photogallery-2.php as well as info on each of them on my blog: http://tamsinsilver.blogspot.com/

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