Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Author Jacqui Letran on her Lumen Award Winning Book, "I Would, but My Damn Mind Won't Let Me!"



WHEN DID YOU FIRST KNOW YOU WANTED TO BE A WRITER AND WHY?  
It was not an aspiration of mine to become a writer; I am more of a practitioner at heart. I am fortunate that my practice has allowed hundreds of clients to realize life-changing breakthroughs, and that work always begins with teaching each new client some powerful secrets about their mind. It’s a lot to absorb, so many clients asked me to send them a written summary as a reminder. After so much client feedback, the obvious next step was to document that information in a book . As the writing began to take shape, I became more excited at the possibility of reaching so many more people through a published book -- to help anyone learn how to understand and control their thoughts and feelings.
AS A CHILD, WHAT DID YOU ASPIRE TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP?
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a teacher. I thought it was wonderful to be so full of knowledge and to share that knowledge. As I got older, that aspiration faded, and my focus turned to nursing. I earned my degree as a Nurse Practitioner. What I didn’t realize is that as a Nurse Practitioner, I was really a teacher -- teaching my patients how to take care of themselves. Now I am a teacher. Through my books, interviews, group work, and one-on-one sessions, I get to help people overcome their mental and emotional obstacles and become happy, confident, and successful.
HOW DID YOU GET THE IDEA FOR YOUR AWARD WINNING TITLE?
The name of the book was given to me by my clients, just as the reason to write the book. When asked why they did not pursue the things they truly wanted, my clients would often respond with, “I would, but my mind fights me”, or “My Mind is too strong and I can’t do what I want!” or simply, “My damn mind won’t let me!” Thus, the current title was born!  
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LINE FROM YOUR AWARD WINNING BOOK AND WHY?
My favorite line is, “Whatever you are focusing on, you are telling your unconscious mind to give you more of that thing. So when you find yourself thinking about your negative feelings, know that it’s your thoughts that actually created those negative feelings in the first place. If you decide to change your thoughts and focus on something positive, you will in fact be taking control of your feelings."
WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HOPE READERS WILL GLEAN FROM YOUR AWARD WINNING BOOK?
I hope that readers will embrace the fact that the power to create the life they want is really in their hands -- or in their head, to be more precise. Whatever they focus on will grow bigger. The power of choice, along with the guidance inside the book, can transform a hopeless situation into an opportunity for personal growth and happiness.
TELL US SOMETHING INTERESTING ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE AS A WRITER:
This is not something that most authors would confess to, but I will. I’m not a great writer. English is my second language, and I struggle with proper tenses and grammar. However, because I believe in my message and the power of the mind, I wrote and wrote without editing. I knew that an editor could correct any errors and mistakes. This process reinforced for me the power of asking for help and being an open receiver.
WHICH AUTHOR HAS MOST GREATLY INFLUENCED YOUR WRITING STYLE?
I don’t have a favorite author, but I remember reading countless self-help books myself in my younger years. The writing style that spoke to me the most was simple and straightforward. In my own writing, I focused on making things as simple as possible.
WHAT BOOK HAS HAD THE GREATEST IMPACT ON YOUR LIFE?
The book that has the greatest impact on my life is, The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. I loved learning about the different love languages and understanding that people express themselves in different ways. This book taught me to be mindful of how I express my wants and needs as well as being mindful in how I show others I care. This has helped me tremendously in my personal life as well as my professional life.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR GREATEST LITERARY ACCOMPLISHMENT?
In 2016 I won the Literary Classics’ Lumen Award for Literary Excellence and the Gold Medal for Youth Non-Fiction. In the same year, I also won the Gold Medal from Readers Favorite. I feel so blessed and grateful that my work has been honored with such acclaimed recognition.
DO YOU HAVE ANY WRITING RITUALS?
I don’t have a writing ritual other than when I write, I write by hand and I keep writing without going back to edit. That way I’m able to flow with my thoughts and get the messages I need to get out. After I’m done writing, I go back and type it up, re-organize my ideas, and work through a few edits. After that, it’s sent to my husband for another review, before being sent to a professional editor.
HOW DID YOU GET PUBLISHED?
I am self-published. I love learning so I’ve been taking a lot of seminars as well as researching and learning from experience as well as other self-published authors.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO CELEBRATE THE PUBLISH DATE OF YOUR AWARD WINNING BOOK?
I am a believer in celebrating every accomplishment, whether big or small. Most of the time, I celebrate by going out for a good meal and spending quality time with my friends and family. I’m certain that I’ve screamed, “Wohooooo!!!!” and “YES!!!!!!!” at least a couple dozen times!
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE PROCESS OF BECOMING PUBLISHED AND ANY TIPS YOU MIGHT OFFER FOR OTHER ASPIRING AUTHORS?
You have a message that only you can deliver, in a way that will connect with the people who need to hear it, in a way that only you can convey. Be brave. Stop thinking about it, and just go for it!  
CAN YOU OFFER ANY ADVICE FOR WRITERS ON HOW BEST TO PROMOTE THEIR BOOK?
I learned after my book launched how important it is to promote your book way in advance of your launch date. There are so many ways to do that -- from social media, to word of mouth, including a mention in your email signature and tons of other ways. This surprised me, but makes perfect sense in retrospect. You want to create a buzz so that there are eager readers waiting for your book. The movie and music industries have used these tactics very successfully, and we authors must do the same.
WHAT OTHER BOOKS HAVE YOU PUBLISHED?
5 Simple Questions to Reclaim Your Happiness! a 2017 Literary Classics Gold award recipient in the category of Young Adult Self-Help Books.
DO YOU HAVE ANY NEW BOOKS IN THE WORKS?
Yes, I’m currently writing the third book in my Words of Wisdom for Teens Series. This one is called, How to Unleash Your Inner Super Powers! and will teach teens just how powerful they really are and how they can harness and embody the powers they already possess.  Readers can sign up at:  https://ahealedmind.com/books/  to get sneak peeks, specials, and advance copies.

LITERARY CLASSICS Book Awards & Reviews International Book Awards • Top Honors Youth Book Awards • Seal of Approval http://www.clcawards.org

Monday, July 10, 2017

Teen Author, Sahana Kumar, on her award winning book The Rain of Blood



WHEN DID YOU FIRST KNOW YOU WANTED TO BE A WRITER AND WHY? I think I just picked up a pen in fourth grade and started scribbling and I was hooked. I loved the creativity of the whole process and the control I had over it. I love writing because I can make anything I want and no one gets to tell me what to do when I’m writing it, and I love character building most of all. As soon as I started, I knew I wanted to keep writing.
WHAT DO YOU ASPIRE TO BE SOME DAY?  I want to be a doctor or a bioengineer and also keep writing. One of my favorite things about writing is I don’t have to pick just that - it’s not an all or nothing kind of thing. I can choose to be an author along with whatever else I want.
HOW DID YOU GET THE IDEA FOR YOUR AWARD WINNING TITLE? The title I think came with the idea for the story - in the book, the heroes venture through a labyrinth called The Rain of Blood, so it was the obvious choice for a title. More broadly, I tried to pick three of the greatest human emotions and represent them in the three books in this series and they ended up being hope, pain, and fear. The second book centers around the idea of rising above pain, both mental and physical, and that’s where the, admittedly rather morbid, title came from - The Rain of Blood.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LINE FROM YOUR AWARD WINNING BOOK AND WHY?
“He stepped out onto a sunlit grassy slope, slamming the door on the sound of the windows singing Scumbags in twelve-part harmony.”
Out of context, that quote probably sounds crazy but I love it because I think it really captures the sense of wild, untameable magic in Zairon. To give you a little bit of context, the main character steps from the top floor of a castle onto a grassy slope that shouldn’t exist after tricking a group of windows that sing - terribly. The magic of Zairon is one of my favorite parts of writing it, so that scene was incredibly fun to write.
WHICH OF YOUR CHARACTERS FROM YOUR AWARD WINNING TITLE DO YOU BELIEVE ARE MOST LIKE YOU AND WHY? I probably relate the most with Vicky, despite the fact she’s not a major character. She feels very out of place in Zairon, like she doesn’t fit in. She’s also a huge perfectionist, and hates it if anything she does isn’t good enough … something about a lot of the feelings her character has, I relate very strongly with. The development of her character that way was very subconscious. It took me a long time to realize I did that, my dad was the first one who noticed it and then when I reread Vicky’s sections I realized he was right.
WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HOPE READERS WILL GLEAN FROM YOUR AWARD WINNING BOOK? There are a lot of messages throughout the story of personal strength and sacrifice … overwhelmingly I hope readers take the message of friendship and the power that it can have from this story. Jason, Claire, and Zac share the kind of bonds that most people search for their whole lives and I hope the story inspires readers to search for that type of friendship, the kind that never dies.
TELL US SOMETHING RANDOM/INTERESTING/FUNNY ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE AS A WRITER: Okay something random … at school I write so much it’s become almost like an expected thing and my friends are very used to me doing weird things because of writing ... If we’re standing in line waiting for something and I have my laptop, nine times out of ten I’ll ask one of them to hold out both their hands, palm up, and I’ll put my laptop on their hands and use it to stabilize while I type and they just laugh and let me. They’ll also give me crazy, impossible challenges like write a 100 word story with every odd sentence being 6 words and every even sentence being 4 words - okay, go.
WHICH AUTHOR HAS MOST GREATLY INFLUENCED YOUR WRITING STYLE? I’m going to go with the totally cliche but definitely true answer - J.K. Rowling. I grew up reading Harry Potter and I easily have read those books more than any others.
WHAT BOOK HAS HAD THE GREATEST IMPACT ON YOUR LIFE? Other than my own? I want to say Cassandra Clare books and Christopher Paolini books have had the greatest impact on me. Again, they’re totally cliche pop culture type books, but both of them have absolutely amazing writing styles and their stories are the kind of books I want to write some day. Cassandra Clare, I think, does this beautiful job of making you question your entire life through her writing and the way she ties in all of the biblical references into her stories are seamless and beautiful. Her characters are absolutely amazing - flawed, but somehow still strong. They’re very human, very gripping, but somehow ethereal all the same. Christopher Paolini has been this huge inspiration to me since he was a teenager when he published Eragon. Reading that book in particular made me think maybe I could write something like that and maybe the idea of publishing before I hit thirteen wasn’t so crazy after all.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR GREATEST LITERARY ACCOMPLISHMENT? I want to say just getting through the first book’s publishing process was my greatest accomplishment. At first it was just really exhausting. I was just a 12-year old kid and I loved writing the book and suddenly all these people were coming in and poking holes in my story and putting it under a microscope and pointing out every tiny flaw. Pretty much every night that year, my seventh grade year, I’d come home, do my homework, edit for two or three hours, do violin, singing, and science olympiad practice and then go to sleep completely exhausted and it was just rinse and repeat. It was all worth it though when that first book came out, and I learned so much from that process. After that, with the next book I started being able to make the changes on my own without someone having to hover over me.
DO YOU HAVE ANY WRITING RITUALS? Just my age I think keeps me from having too many writing rituals - I mean if I have a chem or a math test the next day, there’s no way I’m going to be sitting down and writing that night. That said, I like to have music going when I write, usually sad music, and I write the best between the hours of 10 at night and 2 in the morning.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO CELEBRATE THE COMPLETION/PUBLISH DATE/OR OTHER OF YOUR AWARD WINNING BOOK?  I believe I went to school and took a history test, then went out for ice cream with my family after dinner.
CAN YOU OFFER ANY ADVICE FOR WRITERS ON HOW BEST TO PROMOTE THEIR BOOK? My promotion method was actually extremely unorthodox but nevertheless worked - I wrote fanfiction. I got on fanfiction sites and started actively writing stories and promoting them on message boards and after I got enough followers and people who liked my writing I sort of casually like slipped it in there, like hey I wrote a book and if you like this story as much as you say you do in the comments you should go read it and a bunch of people on the site went and bought the book and let me know what they thought of it. It was incredible and it’s a really fun way of both improving your writing, getting feedback on characters, and promoting your book all at the same time.
WHAT OTHER BOOKS HAVE YOU PUBLISHED? I published the prequel to the Rain of Blood, the first in the series titled the Cave of Mystic Dreams when I was 12.
DO YOU HAVE ANY NEW BOOKS IN THE WORKS? Yes, I am working on the third book of the Champions of Zairon series. The second one is the one that won the Literary Classics Young Author Award. The 3rd book is called The Forgotten Elder.
The Forgotten Elder should be available hopefully in 2017 or 2018 on Amazon.

LITERARY CLASSICS Book Awards & Reviews International Book Awards • Top Honors Youth Book Awards • Seal of Approval http://www.clcawards.org