Welcome to Blue Publishing Podcast. We've got a lot of things that we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about our brand new Christmas novel which will be coming out. This is November.
We're going to talk a little bit about the author, Liz Nitham. And we're also going to talk about this awesome find that we found through Goodreads. This teenage author, her name, is Elise Gordino. And she is an absolutely great writer.
We're also going to backtrack a little bit. We're going to talk about another really great teenage writer that we came across. Ray Welker. We posted about her a few weeks ago, but this is the first podcast that we're doing, so we're going to be talking a little bit about her.
So we're very, very excited for this podcast. We've got a lot to talk about. We're going to try and keep it short for you guys. So let's go ahead and get started.
All right, well, to get started. You know, here over at Blue, we've been super busy trying to get things all set up. We're brand-spanking new, and we're just trying to figure out how to plug in all this stuff that we know how to do and get it into a system. So we're actually kind of excited because we finally broke down and got a Pinterest account.
I mean, I personally don't like Pinterest. I don't understand the reason for Pinterest. I'm probably going to have to figure it out now because I've got a Pinterest account. But we're going to be on Pinterest.
We're on Google+, we're on Facebook now, we're on Twitter, so we've got all these social media things that we're out. We're out there trying to connect with people, and so people can connect with us. And obviously, we've got this podcast that we're producing. And so just to give you a little bit of what this podcast is going to do, we're just going to talk about what's going on with Blue for the week.
And then we're also going to talk about some books that we've read and just, we're just going to have fun. So we hope that this is fun and entertaining. So the first thing's first talk about our brand new book that's going to be coming out here in just a couple weeks. It's called The Christmas Calendar.
And it's written by Liz in income. And Liz is an absolutely wonderful lady. I actually had the privilege of meeting her a couple years ago, actually, in Twin Falls, Idaho. That's where she's from.
So if you're from Twin Falls, Idaho, here's a little shout out to you. And I had the opportunity of meeting her and talking to her. And she found out that I was in the publishing industry and things like that. And she started asking me questions.
And she had this book that she was just finishing up writing at the time. And I said, you know what, go ahead and send it to me. And we'll go ahead and review it. We'll just let you know if it's good or not.
Right now, we don't have the time to really publish any new books for the people that I was with at the time. And so she sent us the book and it was fantastic. And then I decided to start Blue about a year later after meeting Liz and reading her novel. And as soon as I started Blue, I instantly contacted her and I was like, you know what, Liz, I want your book.
I want a Christmas calendar, the Christmas calendar because it was such a good book. It's a story completely about redemption and finding yourself. We have this wonderful main character who has had a very, very rough life. And she's made a lot of mistakes in her life.
Many mistakes that she's not very proud of. And she's got, as she opens her door one day, and all of a sudden, there's this Christmas calendar that's just chilling there on her doorstep. And she has no idea why this is there or anything like that. And so what's next and that she notices about it is that each one has a little 20, that has these 24 little windows.
I should probably describe what the calendar even looks like, right? It's in the shape of a house. And this house has got 24 windows, each one representing a day from December 1st through December 24th. And it depicts all of these different scenes from the main character, whose name is Catherine Daley.
It depicts all of these scenes from her life that she's tucked away because she doesn't want to remember them because they're all these bad things that she's done. And she connects with this person named Carol, who is able to help her understand the calendar and all of these different events in her life and how she can move forward to having a more full life with purpose and happiness and love in it again, because all that had been lost. It is an excellent, excellent story. It's very similar to Charles Dickens' Christmas classic in the sense that Catherine kind of takes on the Ebenezer Scrooge, right?
But unlike with the Christmas Carol, where it's the same night and yet the Christmas past, present future that kind of shows up, it's all done in this calendar. And it just develops beautifully. And so we really were excited with it when we were able to pick it up and we were able to meet with Liz and talk to her about it. And she's super stoked.
When we actually originally contacted her, she was like, I don't know if I want to self-publish this or if I want to have somebody else publish it. We're like, we will take it without any hesitation. We would love to publish your book for you because your book is exceptionally good. And it's got that great, great message to it.
And Liz herself is just such a wonderful lady. She's got a lot of care and compassion for others. She has just this great spirit about her. She's always smiling.
It's great. She has a son who's got some medical problems that she's able to work with and just is an absolute joy to be around as she works with her own child and with people with disabilities and things. And she's a very, very caring woman, always wanting to go out there and help others. And so she's just a great example.
She's always loved writing, which is something that I think is just awesome because I always love writing too. And then also, one of the things that she really hadn't seen before was writing being a career. But as a starting develop, she's starting to see that as a career and it's super exciting for her. And so anyways, the Christmas calendar should be coming out in the third week of November, just right in time for Thanksgiving.
We're kind of timing it around that Black Friday, but we're going to release it before Black Friday because everybody's nuts on Black Friday. So we really hope that you'll be able to check it out. We're posting up the first chapter for free on PublishBlue.com. We've also got some interviews with Liz up there as well.
And so it's just a really, really great read. And we're going to be talking more about this in our weekly updates on our podcast. You'll hear more and more about the Christmas calendar. So it's just kind of our intro to the book.
So that's pretty much it for the Christmas calendar. We hope that you pick it up and you read about it. And you read the book. That's what we do.
We publish books. Now one of the other things that I really enjoy being a book publisher is going out and find a new talent. I don't know how, at least the publisher that I used to work for, they just waited for people to submit to them. They didn't go out actively searching for authors.
And I feel very differently about that. I think that you should go out. You should find talent because it's all out there. And half the time writers don't even know they're good enough to get published.
The really good writers aren't the ones out there looking to get published. And so we were out there, and I came across this blog, which was just absolutely fantastic. It was written by a girl named Rachel Welker, Ray Welker. And the blog's name is called that Author Chick.BlogSpot.com.
It's a great name for a blog, right? But she had all these really short little pieces that she'd written or she'd collaborated with all these different people. And the way that she spoke was just fantastic. There was one of her favorite posts that I found.
It was titled Mom. I'm just going to read you just a short little bit about it and why I got excited about reading about her. So it goes off and it says, I guess I finally want this. Want to share this.
That or I can't handle it anymore. There are a lot of things I can't handle anymore, but this is the easiest one to spill. I've gone three weeks with my good side, this side, out. I hadn't suspected anything.
Just hope that maybe life was going in my favor for what felt like the first time in years. I couldn't have been more wrong. When those people kept asking me if my other side can hide things from me, I lied. It can.
It does. I have moments in my life that are blanks. That's how I can tell when my other side was out. That and when my memory goes hazy at moments.
That's how I know a switch is coming. The strange thing with the incident though, is that there wasn't that unwelcome hazyness that used to always ease me into it. It just popped up on me. Two weeks passed and before I knew it, I was at camp.
There are two weeks where I have no memory. I hate to lie. I hate to hurt people, but I have. I've done it before and I don't take care of this.
Then I'll only do it again. So I guess this is goodbye, Mom. And everyone else. I could say I'm sorry, but not really sure if I am.
I hope you don't miss me too much. It was such a fantastic blog post. It was able to create this perfect environment for me to be able to go into and feel for this main character, who's obviously out there trying to find herself. For whatever reason, it sounds like she's got some sort of a split personality.
And whenever that second personality comes out, she's not quite sure what's going on. It was just so well written. And then when I found out that she's still in junior high, I was blown away. And so I'm excited to also tell you that as soon as Ray gets a novel, that's good.
And she's sending us some stuff. We're going to be publishing her because she's just an exceptional writer. She just has this way with words and with description and with communicating at such a higher level than what her age is able to show. And making her message clear without having to do it in a million words.
And that's something that we really look for when we're looking for authors. And when authors should be writing, they should be looking for the best, simplest way to tell a story. When a story gets complicated, then the reader stops reading. And so Rachel just has that ability to do that.
And it's just an absolutely fantastic story that she has. So I encourage you to go to that authorchick.blogspot.com and check her out and see what she's all about. And hopefully you'll be able to enjoy her just as much as we have. And we hope that you'll be able to see some of her work in the future from blue publishing.
Alright, so some of the other stuff that we're doing here at Blue is we're really trying to contact out with bloggers and get some reviews going. We've had some pretty exciting contacts come up and we're building up our contact list more and more. And so we were actually late. I was up late working until like 4.30 in the morning.
And I'm just last night getting these contacts with these bloggers done in order to help out with building up authors and getting things done. And so if any of you are authors out there and you're trying to find a way to increase exposure for your book, one thing that you can do is to really try to work with bloggers, emailing them and saying, Hey, would you be able to review my book or do an author interview with me? Bloggers enjoy doing these, especially if they are a book blogger. It helps give them content for their website as well as just having fun opportunities of meeting people.
They never thought they would meet before. Who knows? Maybe you'll become the next even king. And they can say, I have his personal or her personal email.
So if you're out there and you're trying to get your book out there and you aren't quite sure a good way to start about doing it and you're thinking about paydads, don't do paydads, or if you're thinking about doing social networking things like that, your very first spot should be to try to go and communicate and be networking with bloggers and become their friends. You know, don't just be like, Hey, I want this. Can you do this? And then you never talk to them again.
Become their friends and work with them. So one of my favorite things to do in the week is when I get to go to Goodreads and go to the creative writing section and just read stories that are posted up there for free. And find new talent. And this week, I was able to find somebody who I wasn't expecting to find, especially with her age.
She's still in high school. And she is just a fantastic writer. And she was writing a story that just caught my attention so quickly. Her name is Elsie Gorduno.
And she is, like I said, she's still in high school. She's been raised in the city of Chicago. And her favorite subject is English. And it's because of her love for reading and things like that.
And she started writing poems and stuff for emotional relief. And she started to find out that she was good at writing. And so then she started to write even more and more. And she's working on her novels now.
And so she reads a bunch of fan fiction and stories online and all these things. And she's obsessed with The Walking Dead. And she loves singing, which I absolutely love singing. She loves musical theatre, which is beautiful because I love musicals.
That's what I do for fun is I help her do some musicals in my local area. So just great fit there. And she wants to perform on Broadway, which, you know, go after your dreams, whatever you are, whoever you are, go after your dreams. Well, she's written this story, which when I started reading it, it just the way it caught my attention.
It opens up with this family. There's five boys and this girl. And they're playing a prank on their teacher, who isn't their teacher anymore. They're all leaving.
We don't know why they're leaving yet or anything like that. And you just see this connection that this family has. They're all laughing and having fun and they enjoy being around each other. And it's just very, very well written dialogue in that regard.
And so as we're reading though, we realize that this is a flashback in this very first chapter. We don't really know much about what's going on here. All we know is that you've got the super, super tight knit family and then a bombshell drop at the very end. So I'm just going to read a few little excerpts for you from the story.
So this is kind of midway through the chapter. And this is after they played the prank and they're actually coming around and they're starting to say their goodbyes. And they had a bet over who would start crying first. And so it goes and it starts and goes.
It looks from me to Adam slowly comprehending. You made a bet that I would be the first to cry. He isn't mad, just amused. Uh, yeah, I thought I would be first, but you beat me to it.
I wiped the tears from my eyes. Well, I won, Adam says, while walking towards me. I roll my eyes and we hug each other. This leads to a big group hug.
And when we pull apart David says, Hey, that was one good last prank call. Liliana, mom says again. We all go downstairs and I see my mom waiting by the door. Finally she says an exasperated voice.
I follow her outside and she gets inside the car. I stand in front of her door, not really wanting to go inside. I turn to say a final goodbye and I'm surprised to find that all the boys are right there next to me. After another group hug and a bye from each boy, I get in the car.
Carter steps closer to the car so that he is leaning in the window. Things won't be the same without you, Liliana. He says quietly. Turn your frown upside down.
This isn't goodbye forever. He nods and steps back from the car. When we drive away, I wave out the window. I'm going to miss them so much.
And then you realize that there's a break and it says, I wonder if the boys really missed me. I'm finally going to see them after five whole years. And then the story begins. The way this was written, obviously there's a few little touch up things that'll need to be done to the story.
In order to help just flow better and build up some of that proper English when it comes to writing stories. But overall the story was very surprising. I enjoyed it very much this first chapter and I'm excited to read all the other chapters that she has available. It's not yet finished being written.
So as soon as it is, we're going to see what we can do with it. So it's very exciting with the story that she's doing. We quite enjoy it. We hope that you enjoyed our very first podcast.
It didn't. Well, go ahead and listen to it again and hear it. Well, it didn't. Hear it.
So we hope that you enjoyed it though. And if you have anything that you'd like us to include in the podcast, we're going to do more on tips on publishing. We're going to talk more about us. Our week goes on just so many different things that we're going to try and talk about in the Publishers Podcast.
I don't know what any podcast is out there that really talks about beings and how it's publishing. And the things that we do. I think that'd be pretty valuable to us. So anyways, if you have any questions or comments, just feel free to email us at admin at publishblue.com.
Currently right now we've got a couple of titles out for sale. Tornado is a short story by Daniel Lance Wright and Paradise Law, which is also a novel by Daniel Lance Wright. Both was available for sale at publishblue.com as well as Amazon.com and in any Barnes and Noble location. We hope that you enjoy this podcast and have a great day.