22 Nov Welcome to Day 3 of the REIMAGINING NEON Blog Tour featuring Author, Linda C. Mims! @boom_lyn @linneatanner @RRBC_Org @RRBC_RWISA @4WillsPub @4WP11 #TheNeonHouses

GIVEAWAYS

(3) $10 Amazon gift cards

Please leave Linda a comment below or anywhere along the tour,

for your chance to win one of her awesome giveaways!

It’s time to go back and revisit the short stories and novellas you wrote years ago and tucked away. Did you print them as hard copies, stick them in an envelope, and place them on the back of the shelf? Or did you remove them from your hard drive and place them on a memory stick? It’s a cinch they weren’t half bad. I’m betting your terrible is another man’s “kinda good”. So, if they have even a glimmer of worth, why not freshen them up for 2023?

Let’s say your old novel was three quarters complete, but you couldn’t figure out where you’d take it. How about someplace new and different? If it started out as a romance, why not make it dark by turning your love interest into an obsessed stalker, or better yet, a vampire? Instead of trying to figure out if he loves her, your heroine must figure out if he wants her dead.

If mysteries and thrillers aren’t your genre, it’s okay to stick with the romance angle. What matters is you already have the bones of a story which would take you days or weeks of writing to recreate. Renew, restore, and reimagine that story.

How to Reimagine My Story

Read through it, editing out cliches and staid phrasing. Edit into the conversation some of the slang and phrasing of today? Update your plot with today’s politics, technological advances, scandals, or reality television nonsense.

Have you traveled since writing the old tale? Place the action in that new locale? You always said you’d put it in a story one day. Make today the day. Play up the beauty of the scenery and what it felt like driving along the coast. Were you on a motorcycle? How would that have played out with someone chasing you at high speeds?

Were buildings torn down or destroyed where you live? How did that make you and your community feel? Describe those feelings and make your efforts to save the structure a new part of your old story. Let it impact the character and add to his conflict.

Don’t hang on to old pages and chapters that aren’t relevant even if you love the way you turned a phrase or made the words flow. It’s difficult to destroy your words, because they cost you dearly, but more than likely, new, more effective words will spring up in you with way less effort as you write from this place of new imaginings. That’s the beauty of being an artist.

Your old writings have sat on the shelf long enough. Now, as you read them with fresh eyes, you see how to make them relevant for this current time. Get excited about what you will produce! And guess what? You’re the only one who knows you wrote those pieces ten, fifteen years ago.

BOOK BLURB: THE NEON HOUSES

What would you do if you were the daughter of a cult hero who boasted a past life full of exciting, colorful exploits? Suppose the thing that made your mother a cult hero was also inside you. Now, imagine spending your whole life trying to hide it—until you shared the heart-stopping death of someone close to you. Supposed that death brought you face to face with the gift of the neon houses.

New Chicago and its neighboring town, The Southland, are vastly different worlds in circa 2087, but Dr. Noel Kennedy is an expert at navigating both worlds. As the Deputy Chief of Schools in The Southland, Noel has perfected being a solid, middle-class citizen. Not even her husband, Fredrick Kennedy, truly understands what she is.

When Zarah Fisher, Noel’s young protégé, is murdered on a deserted street in The Southland, Noel knows the exact moment Zarah takes her last breath. Though miles away, Noel feels the girl’s terror, and hears her anguished screams inside her own head because of an inheritance that has left her with extraordinary gifts.

Can Noel find justice for Zarah without risking it all? Murder, mayhem, and suspense abound in this action-packed page-turner. 

More than a mystery, The Neon Houses thrills the reader with scenes of a futuristic 2087. Autoplanes, body planes, and flying buses are the norm. Robots and androids cook, clean, and serve the affluent, while dystopia lurks just around the corner.

AUTHOR BIO: LINDA MIMS

Linda Mims is a writer, a dreamer, and an educator, who hails from a quiet village just south of Chicago. Her stories are mainly about urban characters who are engaged in mystery and mysticism. Her hope is that while entertaining and informing, she’s also sending the message that humans aren’t that different and all each of us want is a better world.

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