To Dust by Amy Lauren's Tour Stop! - Guest Post

I am very glad to have Amy Lauren's on the blog today!!

Containing four previously-published and three brand-new short stories, To Dust is a YA anthology of urban and contemporary fantasy.

To Dust  (click for bonus material)
The Maliche are devouring Imber’s world, and the only tool she has to stop them is a magic box. Shame the only ones who can work the magic are the terrifying fae in their forest home…

Certified
Anna is a Raiser, able to raise from the dead anyone she doesn’t know. So what can she do when her best friend murders her boyfriend? Everyday Weirdness, 5 July 2010.

Not Fantasy
Beth knows that the fairy world exists; her best friends are a pink tortoise and a talking pen, after all. Her creative writing professor strongly disagrees – perhaps too strongly, Beth thinks, when strange cracks start appearing in his office.

Shoe  (click for bonus material)
Would you take home the pair-less shoe? AlienSkin Magazine, December 2009.

The Chaos Shark
When Ellie finds a strange-looking shark trapped in a tide pool, she realises the legends about Chaos sharks might be true. If not, her whole family is about to die…

The Wasporcist
Everyone thinks she’s mad when she complains about the noise – but Lily knows the buzzing in her ears is more than her imagination. Time to call the Wasporcist…

Sea Foam and Blood (click for bonus material)
Terminally-ill Adelaide finds an unexpected cure in the Pegasus myth come to life. Moon Drenched Fables, June 2009 (Best in Issue).

I asked Amy to write about her daily writing habits! And here's the guest post:

Hi there! First of all a big thank you to Madison for hosting me on her blog today. *cookies* all round! 

So, Madison asked me recently about my daily writing habits. I have to confess, I laughed to myself when I read her question, not because it’s a silly one, but because I am utterly dismal at having a writing ‘habit’ at all! :D Sadly, I work full time and also have a family (including Small Boy, who is less demanding than your average nearly-two-year-old, but really, that’s not hard, ha), so writing gets smooshed in wherever I can make time for it – and at the moment, it isn’t as regular as I’d like. 

See, for the last three years, I had trouble with writing. I’d sit down to try to write something, and nothing would come. Or I’d plan out my week and allot time to writing, and the time would arrive and other really unavoidable commitments would creep in, or work would have been so frantic that I had no brain left over, or I’d be sick, or or or or or. 

Really, though, what the problem was was this: It wasn’t the right time to write. Now, I firmly believe that things happen for a reason and that if something you’re trying to do isn’t working, then sometimes it’s because the timing isn’t right, and I think there was an element of that at play here. But also, one of the really big reasons it wasn’t time to write for me was because I’d forgotten how to have fun with writing. It had become a mess of daily schedules broken and word counts missed, and all in all it was just another way for me to feel like a failure. Which was awful, because I knew that somewhere along the way I’d loved writing, and I hated that it had come to be a slave master. 

So that’s when I quit writing. Yup, really truly. In fact, you can read the post announcing it right here. I quit writing, I shut up my blog, and I wandered away to do other things with my life, kind of hoping that I’d come back to it one day, but not really knowing at all. And for about eight months, I didn’t write at all.

But then the bug wormed its way back into my life, if a bug worming isn’t a mixed metaphor :D I scrawled notes on scrap paper, emailed myself a cool sentence I’d thought of. I caught myself daydreaming about stories I’d used to work on; a friend challenged me to write to daily prompts. One of those prompts turned into a short story that ended up being published (details here), and although it took months, slowly I started to write again. And it was fun.

So to answer Madison’s question, I don’t have a daily writing habit. I still have to squish it in around life and work and family and boring things like eating and sleeping (though, let’s be honest, I love eating, and when I’m not a stressnut, I have the most awesome dreams that often end up as the basis for stories, so y’know, sleep = win). I still come home brain dead more nights than not, and my calendar, on which I get a stamp every time I write 1000 words, has more blank squares than not. But when I write, I write, and I get the stories done one word at a time – and I have fun doing it. 

And that’s the most important thing in the end: your daily habit is whatever you need to do to make sure that you’re writing new words, and that you’re having fun doing it. So: go out and buy yourself a cheap calendar, and give yourself stars and stickers when you reach your goals – and celebrate the fact that you’ve moved one step forward, even if you can’t make time to step every day. 

Here are some links on where to find Amy online! 

Find Amy: Website Twitter Facebook Goodreads Find To Dust: Website Goodreads Smashwords (all e-formats) Free TO DUST bookmarks with special QR discount code

-Madison xoxo