Meet the authors contest edition Volume #1

@TheraLance

First in the, The Winter Rose 2019 Award's Fanfiction category with the story The Eye of Loss and third in their Poetry category with Life Will Bloom in Our Shadows. 

To me, these achievements are a really big deal mainly because someone else that isn't related to me nor was my friend before these awards is saying that my stories are good. While I know there's a lot of room for improvement, this type of encouragement and validation of skill greatly helped boost my self-esteem and motivation to write.

1 what's a song you enjoy? Who is the artist? 

Picking randomly from my endless list of favorites, I'll say Kids In The Dark by All Time Low. It's recently helped inspire quite a number of scenes for a few of my ongoing stories.

2 what inspired you to write? 

The Teen Ink magazine and fanfiction.net helped inspire me to write with the intent of showing others my work. While I did write scenes and little poems before I encountered these platforms, they showed that other people, who were my age at the time, were successfully sharing their creations with others. Also, a local teen writing group gave me a lot of positive encouragement on my scenes, so I was motivated to pursue more ambitious goals, e.g. a full out story.

3 what's one Wattpad goal?

For my first goal, I want to reach 1,000 reads, 100 votes, and 50 comments.

 4 what's a good piece of advice for a newcomer? 

Experiment. Try out different verb tense for the same few scenes. See if a chapter flows better with more or less description. Write a few short stories or several related scenes from first, second, and third person to test out the point-of-view's strengths and limits. If you're new to writing, finding out what you want to do technique-wise should be nearly top priority.

5 Are you still surprised when you get a new vote, follow or comment? 

Yes. I think I'm always going to be surprised at that.

6 what's your schedule regarding your writing? 

I do not have a stable schedule for my life has been a wee bit unpredictable.

 7 What's your dream vacation?

My dream vacation would be to throw a dart at a random state on a map of the US and travel through it for a few weeks. I would see some of its famous sites, but I'd be more interested in walking the lesser visited paths in its parks or shopping at the used bookstores and little natural food co-ops in its towns. During the evenings and nights, I would write or read in a hotel room somewhere. Maybe watch a movie or two if I was completely wore out.

8 how would you enjoy a rainy day?

My top pick would be to read a book that features heavy cloud cover or rain, or that has a gloomier atmosphere.

 9 if you could hang out with your favorite celeb for a day, who would you choose and what would you do? 

Tom Hiddleston. I don't know if I could really spend the day with him ( I'd probably end up a nervous wreck after awhile). However, just a conversation would be cool. His portrayal of Loki in the first Thor movie really helped kickstart my first multi-chapter story (which is never being published, too many beginner mistakes combined with nostalgia for how it's written) that wasn't simply a collection of random scenes, so I would really like the opportunity to thank him for that.

10 what's your favorite snack? 

And the "who's your favorite child" type of question. I have a lot of favorite books, but Harry Potter, The Storm Thief, Inkheart are among some of the more influential ones.

11 what's your favorite book? 

Chocolate chip cookies on cool and cold days, and watermelon during the summer.

12 How would you celebrate a publishing deal?

Not sure, I might watch a movie, listen to some of my victory songs, write more in a spur of excitement, etc. I'd be excited, of course, and do something fun in celebration. As to what that fun thing would be, that's completely random.

Request time!

While it's technically a Yugioh fanfiction, it'd be more apt to classify The Eye of Loss as a dark urban-fantasy adventure. Just before the start of the story, a newly formed group of friends had opened the Pandora's Box of magic by playing dangerous Shadow Games with ancient Egyptian artifacts. Now in The Eye of Loss, the teens have to deal with developing powers that haven't been seen in millennia while helping each other overcome the side effects of this dark magic (two of their number have had their souls fractured after all). To make matters worse, an old cult wants to acquire this Shadow Magic for themselves, regardless of what it unleashes into the world. If character-driven stories that blend aspects of Egyptian mythology and the folklore of the fey into an urban setting intrigue you, then come check it out.