Guest Post: Chrystalla Thoma

Welcome to my stop on the Azure book tour hosted by Page Turner Book Tours!  Enjoy a guest post from author, Chrystalla Thoma!

About Chrystalla Thoma:

Chrystalla is Greek Cypriot (hence the strange name) and likes writing about bratty, angsty boys and spunky girls in fantasy and science-fiction worlds. She writes mainly for a young adult public but not only (heed the warnings!) 

She's currently preparing a non-fiction book about dragons, because the truth must out, and is juggling two series ("Elei's Chronicles" and "Boreal and John Grey").

Find her here:
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Guest Post:

8 tips for new authors

1) Always have coffee brewing. Or tea, if you’d rather drink that, but cafeine/teine is on the top of my list. Gets those brain cells (or what’s left of them) working. Necessary in the morning, a godsend at night, but needed at all times. Make sure you stock on coffee and maybe cookies to go with it.

2) Plan your story. I like to do that on paper. Yes, actually using a pen and all! I make bullet points and write down things that need to happen, twists and complications. Then I underline and highlight things that seem important.

3) I make a google search for images to help me imagine my world and the characters. For instance, when writing my dystopian series I often googled “slums” and “shantytowns”. On top of my usual research for my world, the images help me visualize and describe it. I do the same for characters and save copies of the images in my files to get inspiration.

4) When you start writing, you may realize the story isn’t going where you want it to go. Don’t hit delete. Never. Instead copy the file and keep that copy. Start your story anew, but you never know what gems you may rediscover later in your older files. I’ve used whole dialogues (with minor tweaks), descriptions, even story twists I’d forgotten about.

5) Find yourself reliable critique partners who enjoy your stories. The latter may seem counter-intuitive (after all, you want them to critique your work, not heap needless praise on you) BUT: in my experience, it’s better to choose people who like how you write for many reasons, some of which are:

You’ll get along better.

You’ll feel more confident – let’s face it, having someone call your work stupid and a waste of their time isn’t going to help you keep writing and fix your mistakes

They’ll be happy to spend more time on your stories, trying to help you fix plot holes and work out your characters’ motivations

Kindred spirits work well together and that means you may like their stories, too, useful if you will be exchange critique of your stories

6) This is related to the previous point: Find a good online critique group. It will put less pressure on you than real-life groups (maybe you like reading out your story and getting comments on the spot, but I’m too shy and insecure for that) and give you access to a wider range of writing styles, topics and opinions.

7) Don’t spend a lifetime polishing one story. It may be your favorite story ever, and you think you’ll never write anything that good again. Well, I really don’t think that’s the case, because we all evolve and change, our style changes, but we also know more and I really don’t think a story you wrote ten years ago will be better than one you can write now – and it’s a bad strategy. You may want to self-publish. You may want to go with a small publisher. You may want to get an agent and hit the big publishers. Whatever your decision, as soon as your super-polished perfect story is accepted for publication, everyone will ask what else you have published/to publish. If you have nothing, that’s tough. And if your next story isn’t as polished – because you won’t have the luxury to spend 10 years polishing it – then readers might get disappointed. My suggestion: move on to the next story.

8) Have fun while writing. Lose yourself in your world. Feel your characters. See the magic. If you don’t, then the readers probably won’t, either.

Title: Azure (Drowning In You)
Author: Chrystalla Thoma
Genre: New Adult Romance
Publisher: Self Published
Formats Available In: Digital

Blurb: A terrible mistake haunts college student Olivia Spencer. To escape the past, she travels to the Mediterranean island of Crete, hoping for the courage to start anew.

By the sea, she meets sexy and enigmatic Kai. But there’s more to Kai than meets the eye — and nobody wants to talk about it. The locals shun him, accusing him of magic. Kai, apparently, belongs to the sea, no matter how crazy that sounds.

Kai isn’t free to be with her or live his own life, and this is how he will stay, unless Olivia can break his curse and save him — in doing so atoning for those she failed in the past.

Contains mature content. Ages 17+

You can get this great book here