Cursed By S A Archer: Blog Tour #2 Guest post & Giveaway

This is my second stop on the Cursed blog tour, I am really excited to reveal that on this tour stop I have a guest post from S A Archer author of Cursed.  Cursed is one of the many books that’s part of the Sidhe series.

You can see my review of Cursed – which was my first stop on the tour HERE.

I’m also excited to announce that there is a giveaway!!  One lucky winner will receive ebooks of the entire Touched mini- series, yes, the entire series :D

So firstly I would like to welcome S A Archer and thank you for guest posting here at Chocolate Chunky Munkie.

New Trends in Ebooks

By S.A. Archer

Time is a premium. As much as I love reading, there just isn’t time to sit down and read a massive novel. Like a lot of folks, I have an e-reader on my phone so I don’t have to tote a fat novel around to have something to read during those odd free moments, like standing in line at the store or while waiting for a table in a restaurant. But I don’t usually have more than a few minutes, so I am nibbling away at a story only a page or two at a time. At that rate even a moderate length novel can take me months to finish, and by then I have forgotten much of the early part of the story.

Short stories and novellas are more attractive lengths for readers like me. On my phone I have two full length novels and a whole slew of short stories and novellas. Knowing I can’t hack away much at those novels, whenever I have the time to goof around on my phone I grab one of the shorter length works instead.

I’m not the only one shoehorning reading into snippets of free time. I have friends who commute on a train every day. They know they have 20 minutes. They know they can get through a short story in that time; and get all the experience of character growth, wonderful settings and description, a nicely compact plot, and have the satisfaction of completing it before they arrive. So that’s what they pick, rather than a novel that might only be getting started by the time they have to put the story away.

And when you sift through most novels, how much fluffy and filler is there? Did we need the description of the character having interpersonal relationship issues with their neighbor, when the main focus of the story is about their career as a demon fighter? I am reading for the meat of the story anyway, and skim through the neighbor chit chat looking for the good stuff. Many novels are chocked full of descriptions of meals, random chit chat, working the day job, and ordinary happenings just to pack all around the main story. Chuck all that extra stuff. I don’t have time for it and I am just wading through it to get back to the main plot. Novellas skip all that extra stuff that just dilutes the power of the story.

This is one of the reasons I write short stories and novellas. I want to get to the heart of the story. The more fluff I expel, the tighter and more intense the story becomes. Recently I received an email time stamped 2am, from a reader who told me that she woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep, and even though she wanted to read to help her drift off, she didn’t want something that was going to take forever to get into. So she skipped all the other books in her to-be-read pile and read Cursed. She loved the excitement and intensity and could not wait to see the next story.

This is the second new trend with e-books: serialized fiction. Just like we enjoy half-hour or hour long television shows each week, serialized fiction brings the story to readers in bite-sized ‘episodes’. Serialized fiction builds on previous episodes which allows for the epic story, the large scale character growth, and the sense of a larger world which goes beyond a single book. While you have that complete reading experience of the short form, you are left with the excitement and curiosity to see what will happen next. And just like you tune in week after week for your fix of your favorite shows, the next episode of your favorite stories are right there every month or so, rather than having to wait a year or more for the next novel in a traditional series to be written and go through the publishing pipeline.

With the mini-series of The Sidhe (Touched, Rise of the Unseelie, and Champion of the Sidhe) we are hitting all of the marks that make serialized novellas so awesome. You get an intense read that grabs you right from the beginning and doesn’t let you go. You get the tight character focus that makes you feel like you are living inside their skin. You get the cliffhanger that drives you to read the next book. And you don’t have to wait more than a month to get your next fix. Those are the promises we make and have been keeping so far with the first five books of The Sidhe. With a fully realized and complex story world, headstrong characters who give everything to defend their beliefs, and intense action packed into every book, The Sidhe is on the cutting edge of the new era of e-books.

- S.A. Archer

www.SidheTouch.com

 About The Author:

Urban fantasy author. Chronicler of the fey. Addicted to Sidhe magic and vampire bites. 

The Sidhe Touch blog Free The Sidhe stories. Segments posted twice a week. 

Fey Cast The story behind the story and fun stuff. 

The Sidhe Touch website Character profiles, series reading order, and other goodies.
 
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So here are the giveaway details:

• There will be 1 winner - The winner will get ebook copies of all the books in the Touched mini-series

·         Open to International Followers·      

• You must fill out the rafflecopter form below to enter
• Giveaway will end January 30th 2012 

a Rafflecopter giveaway