Today we welcome Barbara Villemez, author of Dreaming Dark.

Good Morning Barbara, and welcome to the creatinglifestyle blog.

Q. Perhaps we can start by hearing a little about yourself, where you come from, what you do.

A. I’ve had a lot of different experiences. As a military brat growing up I’ve been in a lot of different countries. I’m a psychotherapists, clinical hypnotherapist and, recently, a university instructor.
I’m also credentialed as a Feng Shui practitioner and teacher. My private practice was in Dallas where I held workshops for women’s empowerment as well as lecturing at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Q. So you have moved away from Dallas. Where are you now?

A. I’m now living in New Mexico and devoting my time to writing.

Q. I gather you are currently writing a series. Can you give us some background to these novels

A. Dreaming Dark  is the first in a trilogy. I have finished the second novel, Dark Whisper, which takes place in the Big Horn mountains of Wyoming.

Q. And what are you currently working on?

A. I’ve started on the third of the trilogy, which takes place on the Navajo reservation, northern New Mexico, and I’m rewriting a workbook and tape set that I published in Dallas for my female patients and am now creating it as a book with lots of updates. Fifty Female and Fabulous: A Holistic Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships has more spirituality then the original and I’ve had fun writing it. I hope to have that out as an ebook this month.

Q. Perhaps you can now tell our readers a little about Dreaming Dark .

A. The story takes place in Minoan Crete in the 1550′s BCE and in present day Dallas with both stories running concurrently. Cate O’Connor, psychologist, has clairvoyant dreams of events past and present but she keeps this ability secret. She meets Mitch Stafford, paranormal investigator, at his book signing when she visits Barnes and Noble to look for books on dream analysis. The attraction is immediate and a love affair begins, the pair discovering a familiarity with each other. Cate then begins to have disorienting flashbacks to a ancient time and Mitch thinks she is experiencing visions of a previous life. The story builds as she is stalked and a patient, her maid and then her ex-boyfriend are all murdered.

Each chapter is followed with the story of Kyra, a young girl captured by slave traders from a coastal village on the Anatolian coast. Kyra is sold to a priest on the island of Crete. Groomed to be a priestess she falls in love with the guard, Panos, something which is forbidden. Their story ends tragically when Thera (Santorini) erupts causing a massive earthquake and tsunami, devastating Knossos on the island. Cate is kidnapped by the killer and the ending is exciting. In the epilogue the two stories are pulled together to the amazement of  homicide detective, Mike O’Meara.

Q. That sounds an exciting must-read, where can our readers find your book and your own profile to learn more about you.

A. My book can be found at http://smashwords.com/b/127007  and my profile at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BGVillemez

Thank you Barbara for taking time out to giving our readers this opportunity to meet you. It only leaves me now to wish you every success with your books and future writing.

Mike Smith
Ebook promoter at www.creatinglifestyle.com

The last few years have seen a marked increase in the use of Social Media on the internet through the use of computers, ipads, iphones  and  every other form of hand-held communication device available in today’s market place.

The companies involved are constantly competing for a bigger and better share by updating software, providing the best service possible (although some don’t always get this right) and benefit-adding.

For example, Facebook started out much like Flicker. It was a place to show off photos and text  comments. But it wasn’t long before businesses started to hop in on the act and the creation of fan pages came into being. Twitter followed with a totally new approach that brought world events into our lives in the space of minutes of them happening.

Like facebook, fan pages, and twitter, it’s the numbers that count and it wasn’t long before tweetAdder came along, allowing members to automatically add others to their twitter list, while automatically adding a number of other functions. These features made it possible for members to add tens of thousands to their lists, giving them the power to communicate with thousands  all over the world.

We are now seeing instances where high court judges are forbidding media to broadcast certain information, only to have twitter and other social media freely spreading the forbidden word. Not much goes on in the world today that does not get noticed somewhere. RSS feeds are another example of information spreading across the globe within minutes of a major happening.

Is it good or bad? William Shakespeare (1564-1660) created the lasting quotation, `Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’  Does this mean that one man’s thoughts will be the same as another’s?

We all have our own opinions as to whether something is good or bad for the world to hear about or  not hear about. That will never be resolved. We are individuals and, as such, have a right to our opinions so long as we don’t insist on forcing them on others.

I have joined a number of Social Media sites including Facebook’s fan page at www.facebook.com/creatinglifestyle ,  Twitter@mikesdesk and google+ 

I believe google+ will take off in a big way. After all, google will have watched and  learned from the mistakes of other social media sites. Google+ is not too dissimilar from Facebook and I prefer their rules over facebook’s but that may all change as the competition hots up.

Blogging can be fun – it’s one of the best ways of freely making known your opinions on world events. My main rules are to avoid getting personal or disrespectful. It’s a great medium so use it and express yourself freely; don’t be afraid to voice your thoughts, and keep in mind that democracy is the proven best way; nothing can compare with freedom of speech so let’s  fight to keep it that way.

 I have with me Amelie Rose, author of romance stories such as Love Child, Mirror Image, The Duchess’ Diary and numerous short stories
Welcome Amelie, to CreatingLifeStyle.com.

 Q:  Tell us, when did you first become interested in writing?

 A:   Hello Mike and thank you for this opportunity to chat. I have been writing fairly seriously since my early teens. My first publication was in my college year book. Actually it was a poem and I have never continued with poetry but I got the bug for writing short stories when I won a school essay competition. Later I changed the essay into a short story after reading an article in one of my mother’s writing magazines.  I still have that magazine.

 Q:  You recently had a novel published on lulu.com. Was this your first novel?

 A:  Yes, Love Child was my first attempt at full-length fiction – well, no actually, that’s not quite true. I did write one years ago on my first ever computer – it was a DOS and we used those funny floppy discs.  Well, I lost the manuscript when the computer crashed – and the floppy I’d saved it on vanished. I still live in hope that one day it will turn up in a box somewhere. It’s probably nowhere near publishable but it’s still my first attempt.

Q:  I have read all three of your books and enjoyed each of them. You have published them all as ebooks and also self-published them on lulu.com . Can you tell us why you chose these methods rather than traditional publishing?

 A:  I’m glad you liked my books. Traditional publishing is not that easy to break into, at least judging from the  experience of people I have spoken to and some I have read about. Until the morning I woke up wondering what on earth I was doing with a job, when all I really wanted to do was write, I’d been happily writing short stories in my spare time. I knew from all I had read that the traditional route was fraught with rejection and I wasn’t sure I wanted to wait maybe years, if ever, to get recognized so I investigated other means and much of the advice and information that is coming through these days leans towards the internet and self-publishing.  There is a problem there too, of course, in that every other writer is doing the same and your stories can quickly get swallowed up in the avalanche of words flooding the internet.

 Q:  I see you have recently launched Love Child as a paperback in New Zealand.  Where can these be purchased from?

 A:  I keep a number in stock and these can be purchased by sending an email to me at amelierose@hush.com . Or direct from this link at LuLu . I am hoping to have them in the libraries; I just haven’t had time to complete the paperwork.  Also I shall be in Europe from March to September this year.

 Q:  Tell us a little of your background. I gather that before you began writing full time you were in the Real Estate industry? How did you manage to write during those years?

 A:  Yes, I started selling real estate when we lived in the Bay of Plenty then a few years later my husband sold his business and we moved to Auckland. I worked for the Challenge Weekly newspaper for three years before I decided to return to real estate. My job at Challenge took me around the country a fair bit and I don’t really like traveling on my own. As for writing, apart from the personality profiles and book reviews I wrote for Challenge, my evenings and weekends often saw me at the keyboard, writing my own stories. Then, when I re-joined real estate I continued writing but was able to do less on the weekends because it was our busiest time. In the end, I had to face why I was actually doing one thing when I really wanted to do another. I’d enjoyed the lifestyle real estate offered, but I knew that at some stage I had to pluck up the courage to leave  and follow my true passion. So here I am today.

 Q:  I see you have two short stories on smashwords.com that you have made available as free downloads.  What is the reasoning behind this giveaway?

A:  It’s encouraged. The philosophy behind it is that readers can read something you have written without having to spend. If they like what you have written then maybe they will take the step to buy your novels. It’s true that the free stories go like hot cakes. So many people have e-readers today and a short story fills in a bit of traveling time. I’m told these are especially popular with commuters who might have an hour or more each day on a train or bus. I’m not personally convinced about the value of it as a promotional tool though.

 Q:  Your latest book, The Duchess’ Diary, is a kind of ghostly mystery and makes an exciting read and Mirror Image is a fun tale of a pair of look-alike beauties. Both entirely different but fun to read. Do you have another in the pipeline?

 A:  Yes, I have two partial manuscripts that are, again, completely different from one another. One is about a group of middle-aged women, who meet on a coach tour of NZ’s upper north island, and the mystery they become involved in and the other, the one I am spending most of my time on, is set in the UK and France. I’m hoping to complete that while I am in Europe this year and I’ll be looking for an agent this time.

 Q:  I gather this is a big year for you. Tell us about it.

 A:  Well, I’m visiting family in the UK – my husband and I are both originally from there. Then we have some research to complete that will take us to France. But I think the real highlight will be our trip to Israel. It’s a place I have long wanted to visit and I’m really looking forward to it. The Edinburgh book fair in August is a definite must; it actually ends on my birthday so I’m excited about spending it at such an event and , in July, I’ll be at a lit fest in London. There are some speaking engagements but times and dates have yet to be confirmed.

 Thank you Amelie, it sounds like you’re going to have a busy time and we wish you all the best.
Perhaps when you return home you’ll come back and tell us a little about the trip and where you are at with your books.

Barnes & Noble: Love Child download
Barnes & Noble: Mirror Image download
Amazon: Mirror Image download
Barnes & Noble:  The Duchess’ Diary

http://mikessdesk.com  blog