A Letter from the Editor
What I like best about Books & Buzz Magazine is our strong sense of community.
After all, it’s our community members who write the articles and columns, appear on the cover, and help spread the word.
Whether you’re a writer who’s sharing your talent with us, or a reader who’s discovering it and passing it along to your friends, you have a very important role to play in our community. At every step along the way, it’s your participation that makes this magazine a success.
The feeling of community is just as strong over at ChapterBuzz, where thousands of feedback comments exchanged between writers and readers have strengthened many a character, and tightened up many a plot. When a group of people help each other like this, we finish our novels faster, publish our books sooner, and reach even more readers. In other words, we all win.
This month, our community members have lots to share:
Tier II Rising Star Author Susan Woerner shares one of her most powerful writing tips with us: a website she uses to transport herself into the minds of her characters, so that she can hear what they’re hearing and feel what they’re feeling. And you may be surprised to find out how simple this technique is.
Next, since I consider community involvement to be the key to writing the best possible book, I’ve put together a guide called The Power of ChapterBuzz: How feedback can help you write the perfect novel. It explains how to use ChapterBuzz to get as much quality feedback from readers on your work-in-progress as you can—and why it’s such a good idea to do so. Think it’s too early to start asking for readers’ opinions? Think again.
On the cover this month is Devon McLaughlin, a four-time published fantasy author based in rural Pennsylvania who hails from a family of writers. In her feature article, she talks about the moment she got hooked on fantasy (when she read The Hobbit in high school), how attending a festival gave her the idea for her latest “twisted fairy tale,” and why she needs to wait for one of her characters to come back from sabbatical before she can finish her series.
Devon has also shared with us an excerpt from Legend of the Blood Raven, a fantasy novel she published in 2015. In the scene you’ll read, a cryptic and momentous prediction is made about Bran, a young dwarf maiden, at a party celebrating her coming of age. “Your people will need you most when you think all is already lost,” the prophecy goes. And that’s just the beginning…
Enjoy this issue of Books & Buzz Magazine, and be sure to head over to ChapterBuzz where there are always plenty of novels springing up, just waiting to be discovered by you!
Happy reading,
Timothy Pike
Editor-in-chief, Books & Buzz Magazine
