Shelly Arkon is hosting a blog party complete with books and prizes, in celebration of her debut novel Secondhand Shoes. Here is a glimpse of what motivated Shelly to launch her writing career.
Author
Bio
When she was nine, Shelly Arkon's mother advised her
not to write a novel because no one would publish it...but she wrote it anyway.
Shelly
Arkon has never stopped writing since she wrote that first novel as a child. In
spite of more family drama than most of us could handle—as the mother of five
daughters, drama is unavoidable--she's been writing most of her life. She says
most of these stories, written in longhand in spiral notebooks, have been about
vampires.
She now lives in New Port Richey with her husband and two
dogs. She’s also a member of Florida Writer’s Association and Writer’s of Mass
Distraction.
Currently, she’s working on a book series. It’s’about two
grandmothers, one a New Age hippie, and the other, a Southern Baptist, their
grandbaby, their grown children who are pill heads, their extended
dysfunctional family, and a dangerous drug dealer.
The two grandmothers find themselves in a dangerous pursuit
to save their grandbaby while finding an unlikely friendship between them.
Interview
Why do you write?
There is a constant chatter going on in my head all day.
Ideas and dialogue come quickly where I have to write them down. If I don’t, I
may miss an opportunity to get it down the way I heard it the first time. Even
characters get perturbed when you don’t relay their information correctly. They
want their stories told in the right way. Not to mention, all of my characters
bug me until I do-I have a tendency to work on multiple projects at a time.
Can you explain the
trials and tribulations of writing your first novel or writing in general?
There’s a ga-zillion of those. My first set of trials and
tribulations began in the first grade when teachers stuck me in a slow class
because I couldn’t grasp reading and writing like the other kids in my class
did.
One afternoon, one of my teachers handed me a stool, an
eraser, and a piece of chalk. I was to write, say each letter to my name, and
then sound it out and repeat. This tiny feat took up an entire afternoon.
First grade through the third were the most tedious years of
my life. But I’m thankful to all my teachers for their patience and
persistence. By the fourth grade, I was further ahead than most my classmates
in reading and writing along with my big love for both.
Once I took off in reading and writing, I read everything I
could get my hands on. And I had an affinity for diaries, spiral notebooks,
pens, pencils, and daydreaming. My imagination ran wild with stories and poems.
I wrote non-stop as a child and teen.
Unfortunately, there were
people and even myself who discouraged me from writing. Many times I heard ‘no
one would publish you’ or ‘there’s nothing special about what you write’ or ‘so-n-so writes way better stuff
than you do.’ Negative self-voices are the worst. So you have to find your
positive self-voice to talk you out of the bad conditioning. This is something
I’m always working on.
Not only do people and yourself get in the way of writing,
but so does life. Marriages. Children. Divorce. College. Work. Mundane chores.
Traumatic life events. These can really put a damper on one’s ability to sit in
a chair and write out your characters’ problems when you have your own.
In 1998, I sat down one evening and wrote the first chapter
to Secondhand Shoes. My thoughts were I would be able to finish it within a
year, but I found myself suddenly a single mother of five. So I tucked it in a
folder and stuck it in my closet. For years, I made notes and wrote dialogue
for it and tucked it away.
Several years later, and down to two children in the
household, I plunked myself back into a chair and wrote. I wrote it four times
over. The first version, I hated and couldn’t relate to it at all. It was like
reading a Monday night movie on Lifetime for Women. The second version, the
protagonist was a real whiner. When I finally finished the third version, I
could finally see the forest through the trees, and the fourth version of
Secondhand Shoes was born.
Somewhere between the first and second version, in 2008, I
became a member of the Florida Writer’s Association. Every second and fourth
Monday evening, we meet at the Barnes and Nobles in Carrollwood. There, we edit
and critique each other. The girls and one guy in the group are my checks and
balances as I am theirs.
Once I got the okay from my group members that it was ready,
it was onto the next stage in the writing experience. Finding an editor. Well,
I had the gem of all editors. Kaye Coppersmith. She was a longtime member of
Florida Writer’s Association and halfway through my manuscript when she passed.
That was this past April. At the time, I felt like God and the Universe had
stolen her from me. And the negative voices ate at me again.
But I rose above it, wiped my tears, and went forward. It
wasn’t easy finding an editor who could keep my writing voice. So many editors
out there try to change everything so much so they lose the characteristics of
your characters and their voice. I also found a lot of people labeling
themselves as editors, only to find out they didn’t know much about the
profession.
And how did you
publish?
I ended up going Indie (self-published). Yes. I did try the
traditional route but after sending the requested manuscript to agents and
publishers, most times I didn’t even get a rejection. Not getting a response
bothered me more than not receiving one. It would have been nice to at least
hear they didn’t think my novel was marketable. To this day, I haven’t heard back
from one agent who requested my manuscript ‘as is’ in 2010. Getting published
isn’t as easy as one thinks. No one writes a novel and becomes instantly
published.
Let me tell you,
self-publishing isn’t easy, either. Since I’m not a computer geek by any means,
I thought many times I would throw my computer into the street over formatting.
My eyes thought they were going to fail me over the many times I proofread.
Right now, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with the marketing part. Indies are a
one man or woman show wearing many hats while maintaining their day jobs.
Also, being self-published takes the cost of making a book
out of your pocket. Nothing is free. One has to hire a cover artist, an editor,
and someone who can format for an ebook. It all takes time and a lot of
dedication.
Spread the News and
Cheer on the Run-Away-Bride Give-Away
Also, I’m giving away two $15.00 Amazon cards and two
autographed paperback copies of Secondhand Shoes. Since I don’t do
rafflecoptors, all I ask is for you to leave the best advice you can give
someone on their wedding day and promise to spread the news. On March 1
st,
I’ll announce the winners on my Secondhand Shoes blog,
http://secondhandshoesnovel.blogspot.com/
The Blurb
The shoes didn’t fit. It was an omen.
Eighteen year old psychic-medium-germ-a-phobe Lila should
have listened to her ghostly Gram’s advice the morning of her wedding, “Take
off that dress and those shoes. And run.”
En route to the honeymoon, she decides to listen after too
many disagreements with her groom. It doesn’t pay to go along to make everyone
happy.
Still in her wedding dress and shoes, she escapes out a
diner’s bathroom window into the Florida woods despite her fear of snakes and
germs with her dead Gram’s direction.
So she begins a journey of finding her inner strength,
putting her on a deadly run from her psychotic groom and his deranged friends.
Will she ever get past her fear of germs and snakes? Will
she survive her honeymoon?
My novel, "Secondhand Shoes" is now available on Amazon either in
paperback or as an ebook. Paper back is $13.50. Ebook is $4.99. But from
February 19th through the 21st the ebook is FREE to everyone. Here is the link
to Amazon : Secondhand
Shoes : Shelly Arkon
Today is your last chance to get your very own FREE ebook. Best of luck to Shelly, and I hope that you will join in her celebration.
