Friday, March 27, 2015

Busy Week

Also found on my website www.taylorfenner.com for the week of Saturday March 21 - Friday March 27, 2015: 

Hey everyone! I hope you've had a good week. My week has been busy but good for the most part. I'm seriously disappointed that there is currently snow on the ground outside my window. It sucks! 

I received the paperback copies of The Haunting Love on Tuesday night. I have to admit, I'm one of those people that when I'm expecting something to be shipped to me I track it relentlessly. I always wonder if there's someone at UPS keeping track of how many times I log on to see where my packages are. It's a bit obsessive, I know. Anyway, I woke up really early on Tuesday, figuring that if I slept in the UPS guy would be ringing my buzzer and waking me up. Alas, I waited all day and the books didn't show up until after 5. 

Wednesday was especially busy for me, as I've had quite a few inquiries from people wanting a copy of my book (Thank you very much by the way! I truly appreciate it!) and I also started working on setting up a book signing. I've pretty much chosen the location for the book signing in Clintonville, WI. I'm just working with the chosen venue at this point to finalize the exact date and then I will post all the information on Facebook as well as on Goodreads and my website. So far we're working on an early May date for the book signing if that works out for them. I hope everyone is excited as I am! 

Thursday was pretty much the same, working out the details for the book signing, and working on things to go with that as well as getting a couple books out to people. Now that it's Friday I'm mostly looking forward to resting for the weekend and maybe getting a little writing done in my current work-in-progress. It's been a busy week and I'm looking forward to some down time to visit with friends and just hang out. 

I can't believe next weekend is Easter already, but either way my usual Friday blog will still be posted as schedule next Friday! I hope everyone has a relaxing weekend whatever you plan to do! 

Friday, March 20, 2015

I Dream of Travel and Paperback Books

Happy First Day of Spring! If you're like me then this is the day you've been waiting for since the first day of winter. Hopefully this means that there won't be any more snow/ice/slush until at least November. Anyway, I hope everyone had a safe St. Patrick's Day, and that you've recovered by now. 

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day had me thinking about traveling and how much I would love to go to Ireland someday. About how much I would love to travel in general. There are so many places I'd love to go that I haven't been able to get to yet. I know what you're thinking, "you're 22,  and you have years and years ahead of you to get to all of those places".  Sure, I could get to anywhere in the U.S. or Canada that I wanted to go to; but I'm terrified of flying so vacations to Ireland, London, Paris, or Italy might have to remain a dream for now. 

Regardless I can't help thinking about the beautiful lush green landscape of Ireland and the travel bug begins to bite at me. Maybe I'll be able to take some sort of trip this spring or summer; even if it's just to northern Michigan where I usually go to unwind. 

This week has been pretty productive for me overall. I'm going through a first round of edits with my upcoming novel, Finding Elizabeth, and that's going pretty well at this point. I'm about 1/3 of the way through with my first round of corrections. At this point I'm aiming for a mid-to-late September release for Finding Elizabeth. 

When I haven't been working on correcting edits in Finding Elizabeth, I've been working on getting the word out about The Haunting Love. You might have noticed that my cover images on Twitter and Facebook got new banners this week. I'm happy with the way they turned out if I do say so myself. My paperback copies of The Haunting Love have been shipped out to me this week and I should be getting them either Monday or Tuesday. Once I get the books I'll get on task of setting up a book signing. There's one location I want to check with, and I'll post more info once I get things set up. Can't wait until the book signing? You can now buy paperback copies of The Haunting Love on Amazon: http://amzn.com/1633557839

Another change you might have noticed is the new theme for my websitehttp://www.taylorfenner.com. I've changed it so it looks a bit more springy (I hope). Be sure to take a look to see what else is new around the site. 

Other than that it's been a pretty good week for me. I hope everyone is having a great first day of spring! Have a great weekend, get out and enjoy the sunshine tomorrow if you get the chance!

[Originally posted on my official author website www.taylorfenner.com ]

Friday, March 13, 2015

Ghosts and The Paranormal

From my weekly blog on my author website: www.taylorfenner.com for the week of Saturday March 7 through Friday March 13, 2015. 


Happy Friday the 13th! Is it supposed to mean something that we've had a Friday the 13th two months in a row? To keep with the eerie mood the topic of this week's blog is: Ghosts and the Paranormal; and why I write about them! 

I can’t honestly say I’ve always been into ghosts or the paranormal. When I was a child I was afraid of everything. There used to be a show on HGTV called “If Walls Could Talk” where people would talk about things they had found in their old houses that once belonged to previous occupants. Part of me thought that was cool while the other part of me thought that with an old house came ghosts of its previous occupants; and that terrified me. I can also remember watching shows like “The Most Haunted Places on Earth” with my great-uncle around Halloween when I was little. When I say I was afraid of everything I mean it; I couldn’t watch 48 Hours or Dateline, the movie Psycho terrified me to no end (along with most other horror movies), and anything that mentioned ghosts scared me.


It wasn’t until I was in middle school that I finally got over my fear and really got into everything paranormal. I credit that to a couple of books I read as well as the movies An American Haunting and The Fog (the remake). I mean who wouldn’t love a movie where vengeful ghosts return from their watery graves to seek revenge against the descendants of the four men that killed them? Throw in a girl with vivid nightmares and a secret connection to said vengeful ghosts? Even better! After that everything was fine, and by fine I mean I developed an obsession with the paranormal and a love of horror movies.


When I started writing The Haunting Love it was more of a way for me to move past and keep myself sane from a few deaths in my family; the paranormal element was just an added bonus. Regardless, I did do a lot of research on ghosts during the course of my writing. Not to the level of Iza’s brother Quinn of course, but I did learn a lot about peoples’ different beliefs when it comes to ghosts as well as the different forms of ghosts that people believe exist.


That was before I even started watching Ghost Adventures. I used to love that show; watching it religiously every Friday and/or Saturday night. Though I didn’t quite believe the “paranormal experiences” the hosts kept claiming to be experiencing I fell in love with the back stories of why people throughout history have believed certain locations were haunted. I stopped watching the show last year after it began giving me nightmares (not because it scared me but because after a while it got kind of morbid) but I still try catching it every now and then when there isn’t anything else on television on a Saturday night but the show has lost something for me after one of the 3 main investigators left. The three of them kind of had a certain way they meshed together and it wasn’t the same after one of the guys left.


I still maintain a strong interest in all aspects of the paranormal. My next novel Finding Elizabeth, a stand-alone novel, will touch upon ghosts, reincarnation, and Wicca (a Pagan nature-based religion). My other upcoming novel Out of Darkness, the first in what I’m aiming to be a duology or a trilogy will include all sorts of paranormal creatures, some of them well heard of before (ghosts, witches, werewolves, zombies to name a few) as well as a few that aren’t as well known.


I hope this shines a better light on why I choose to write about the paranormal. Whether you’re a paranormal fan, or just giving a new author a chance, I thank you for reading The Haunting Love, and I hope you’ll look forward to reading my two upcoming novels!


Have a great weekend and a safe St. Patrick’s Day on Tuesday! Don’t forget to wear green and eat some corned beef!

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Why I Chose Green Bay for The Haunting Love's Setting

Hello my loyal blog readers. I hope everyone had a nice first week of March and that the weather is treating you decent. (which seems unlikely if you're in certain parts of the country that seem to keep getting either ice or snow storms.) My week has been pretty productive and I've gotten a lot done on the project I'm currently working on.

Since The Haunting Love has been out for a little over three weeks now I'm sure most of you know that the story is set in the Green Bay area here in Wisconsin. I'm sure some of you are wondering what made me decide to set my novel in Green Bay, as opposed to some of the usual novel locations like New York or L.A.; or even why I didn't make up a fictitious city to set The Haunting Love in.

The answer is simple. The first scene of The Haunting Love that came to me was the car accident scene. Truth be told, that scene occurs in my mind in neither Green Bay or De Pere; but in Allouez, Wisconsin which is in between the two. To paint a better picture I will tell you my envisioned location for the car accident scene. Driving along Riverside Drive from Green Bay to De Pere with the Fox River Trail and the Fox River on one side and the guard wall (or whatever it's called) below Minahan's Tomb on the other is where Iza truly gets into her car wreck. 
See Photo Below:

To those who are not familiar with Minahan's Tomb, or those that are not from Wisconsin and have no idea who Dr. William Minahan was I will briefly explain. Dr. William Minahan was a Wisconsin native who parished on the ill-fated Titanic in 1912. His body was recovered and is now interred on a hill in Woodlawn Cemetary in Allouez, Wisconsin overlooking the Fox River Trail and the Fox River. Why is this interesting and why did it strike a nerve with me? Well his back story didn't really, but I remember a story my great-uncle told me once when I was young. In 1987 some vandals broke into Dr. Minahan's Tomb (or Crypt ) and stole his skull. That single sentence is what has stuck with me. As you can imagine, I was horrified as a kid. Who would steal some guy's skull from his tomb? That's sick! What would they even want with his head? Luckily the vandals were quickly apprehended and the tomb is now under heavy lock and key. I can only assume the head was recovered and returned to his final resting place. Talk about giving a spirit a reason to haunt somewhere and not be able to rest in peace! Regardless, to this day everytime I travel along that road I glance up at the crypt and remember the story my great-uncle told me. 

Thus you see, my setting was chosen. I wrote my entire novel around one location. Some places in The Haunting Love are real, while others are things made up from my imagination. Here are a few examples:

The Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary: Yes, this is a real location. Here's a little information from their website www.baybeachwildlife.com:
The Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary is a beautiful 700 acre urban wildlife refuge featuring live animal exhibits, educational displays, miles of hiking/skiing trails and various wildlife viewing opportunities. It is the largest park in the Green Bay Park system and home to the second largest wildlife rehabilitation program in Wisconsin, caring for more than 4,500 orphaned and injured animals annually.

The Sanctuary attracts hundreds of thousands of bird watchers, families and other visitors from across the USA and many foreign countries each year. They come to explore and discover nature while learning the importance of preserving natural landscapes.

First established in 1936 as a site for waterfowl rehabilitation, the Sanctuary has grown to offer environmental education programs to over 10,000 students, nature walks, urban fishing, summer camps, cross country skiing and much more.
I've been to the wildlife sanctuary many times throughout my life, both on school trips and random day outings with my family. It's one of my favorite places in Green Bay. It's relaxing to sit and watch the geese and other birds argue over cracked corn thrown out by people. They're such greedy little critters, but I happen to think they're adorable. 

Custard's Last Stand: I'm sorry to say this place is completely fictional. I was looking for a place for  the Johnny character to work at and after playing around with a couple different ideas this is what I decided to name his workplace. It's a play on words of "Custer's Last Stand" and custard (which is like ice cream). And since Johnn'y workplace is meant to be seen as a burger / ice cream joint comparable to Dairy Queen or Culver's, Custard's Last Stand was born. I can just envision Johnny's work uniform to look like General Custer's uniform covered with an apron of some sort. Can you picture it?

       De Pere, Wisconsin and De Pere High School: Yes, De Pere is an actual city. I wouldn't call it a suburb of Green Bay, but they're both in the same general area. Most notably De Pere is known to be the main location of Seroogy's Chocolates.  There is also obviously a De Pere High School but what I didn't know until later is that there is also a West De Pere High School. Either way, De Pere is the main setting of The Haunting Love. 

I hope this helps give you a bigger picture of some of the setting of The Haunting Love. I'm a Wisconsin native, and I've lived about 30 miles from Green Bay my entire life so it made sense for me to set my first novel in a city that I'm well familiar with. I hope that if you've already read / are reading The Haunting Love that you enjoyed / are enjoying it or if you haven't had a chance to delve into it yet I hope you give it a chance! 

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Until next Friday!

(You can buy The Haunting Love in eBook format on Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00SW1B940

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