You Have Not Because You Ask Not by Heather Blanton

Jesus said you have not because you ask not. What’s that have to do with writing?

Heather Blanton

Recently, I held a virtual launch party for my newest novel, A Promise in Defiance. We gave away everything from earrings to coffee. Fun stuff and my guests had a blast. I also debuted two book trailers and a video shout-out from a tv producer. None of it cost me a thing. Oh, and did I mention that my interview in USA Today’s "Happily Ever After" section came out the same day?

I got all this stuff because we merely asked.

If you have a platform of any reasonable size, you have something to offer advertisers, other authors, reporters, yes, even tv producers! Can you leave a review for a product? Would your readers leave a review? Will they talk about a product? Then your platform has intriguing possibilities.

I write Westerns. Call my stories Inspirational Westerns or Western Romance, but at the heart of each story, the guy in the white hat saves the day and rides off into the sunset with the girl. I love Westerns because of what they’ve meant to me over the years and those who've shared them with me. So, when I hear about a new Western coming out, I try to support it. That’s how I started my interaction with Rick Balentine, the creator and Executive Producer of the new Western TV show, Big Sky (http://www.bigskytvshow.com/). He “gets” what it means to write a traditional Western. Through a somewhat similar scenario, I met Mark Richard, formerly the Executive Producer at AMC’s Western, Hell on Wheels. Over the course of a couple of years, he and I have become good friends.

So I asked a friend of mine who is an aspiring actress if she would record a few lines from a script I wrote. She did a great trailer for me, costumes and all! You can check it out here. And David McKnight, a reenactor at the Fort Worth Stockyards also did one, in full costume. (You can see it here.) I promised these two that I would get their videos to some important people. That’s all I can do, but it’s a step.

In the meantime, my assistant, the fabulous Pepper Potts—er, I mean, Diane Estrella, discovered a company called Little Black Gun (https://littleblackgun.com/) They sell jewelry made out of shell casings, and the casings have actually been fired! I reviewed a pair, happily. They gave me an extra pair to give away. I got a t-shirt from the Talking Shirt (https://thetalkingshirt.com/), for the same arrangement.

We gave away nearly a dozen items at the book launch. Tote bags, vitamins, books, posters, and the list goes on and. Diane also got me the interview with USA Today … by merely asking and offering up some legitimate sales numbers.

So the take away here is—

1. Follow your passion
2. Passion will lead to connections
3. Build your brand and that will make more connections viable
4. Ask your connections if you can work some trade
5. Be nice to and professional with everyone you meet
6. Shoot for the moon

Why not? With God, all things are possible.

About the Author

Heather Blanton is the independent bestselling author of several Christian Westerns, including the Romance in the Rockies series, which has sold over 40,000 copies. Intrigued by the concept of three good sisters stranded in a lawless Colorado mining town, a few notable Hollywood producers have requested the script for her first book in that series, A Lady in Defiance. Heather loves exploring the American West, especially ghost towns and museums. She has walked parts of the Oregon Trail, ridden horses through the Rockies, climbed to the top of Independence Rock, and even held an outlaw's note in her hand.

A Promise in Defiance

A Promise in Defiance
by Heather Blanton

CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES...EVEN FOR THE REDEEMED. When Charles McIntyre founded Defiance, he was more than happy to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven. But things have changed. Now, he has faith, a new wife...and a ten-year-old half-breed son. Infamous madam Delilah Goodnight wants to take it all away from him. How can he protect his kingdom and his loved ones from her schemes without falling back on his past? How does he fight evil if not with evil?

Logan Tillane carries a Bible in his hand, wears a gun on his hip, and fights for lost souls any way he can. Newly arrived in Defiance, he has trouble, though, telling saints from sinners. The challenge only worsens when Delilah flings open the doors to the scandalous Crystal Chandelier. She and the new preacher have opposite plans for the town. One wants to save it, one wants to lead it straight to hell.

For Tillane and McIntyre, finding redemption was a long, hard road. God's grace has washed away their sins, but the consequences remain and God will not be mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap...and the harvest is finally at hand.

Links
http://ladiesindefiance.com/
https://www.facebook.com/authorheatherblanton/
https://twitter.com/heatherfblanton
https://www.pinterest.com/heatherfblanton/

Mistaken Identities...Tanya Hanson

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold. Proverbs 22:1

When I was born, my great-grandfather wrote me a letter I didn’t read until many years after his death. I’d been christened with such an elaborate Russian name he declared I ought to be a ballerina or composer.

Sadly, I’m a klutz and only okay on the piano. And despite his excitement, I grew up seriously loathing both my first and last names. I was often teased about being a “Commie.” Each name was constantly mispronounced and misspelled. I won a prestigious art award in college and yup, spelled wrong. My mom often joked that I’d marry a Smith or Jones. Something easy.

Hanson seemed to fit her prediction. Easy to pronounce for sure. But just as easy to misspell. I have relatives who still spell my married name HansEn. Uh, we’ve been married almost forty years.

I mention all of this because I wondered about pseudonyms when I started out as a writer. Do I honor my father? My husband? Or become somebody entirely new. A very successful, very famous author I met through RWA regretted using her actual name; she kept getting fan mail from a guy in prison who vowed to “look her up” when he got released...

Reality won out. Tanya Hanson I was and Tanya Hanson I would remain. And hence comes my initial advice to every newbie author. Google your pen name before you carve it in stone. I did not. Upon publishing my first book, it took my eleven year old neighbor boy's misspelling my last name as he looked up my new website to discover that Tanya HanSEN is a porn star.

Yup. At least I got a lot of traffic to my site. And also Too Much Information about the real me all over the internet.

Then came the additional challenge of writing both secular and inspirational romance. My writing both genres never bothered my editors, nor did my keeping the same name. But wow, I’ve gotten some nasty comments and reviews from judgmental readers.

So I wonder. Is it better to start out fresh and new? Or like my great-grandfather’s wish, aspire for good things as your actual self?

Do you use a pen name? Should authors use different names for different genres? Too late for me, but let me know your advice and thoughts for upcoming authors out there!

Claiming His Heart

Caught between a noose and a cave-in, Tulsa Sanderson must do anything possible to prove his brother’s innocence...even if it means marrying a gold miner’s daughter he just met. He needs every nugget and flake he can pull from her worn-out claim, but he sure doesn’t need a wife. Save his brother and he’ll be back on the Texas cattle trails. God, and trusting Him, are things of the past.

Charlotte Amalie lost her heart, her virtue, and her money to the last mysterious outsider in the valley. Faith? That’s wavered, too, after too many family tragedies. But she has no choice but to wed the handsome Tull. He bears terrible family secrets that need to be kept behind closed doors. Although she’s eager to leave the valley to find a new life for herself and medical treatments for her wounded brother, her unwanted marriage douses her plans, yet stirs up hope and love for Tull...and begins to fortify her weakened faith.

Can the two of them find a future--and faith--together even with their haunted pasts? 

Amazon Buy link:

http://tinyurl.com/n4mxbgo

Tanya Hanson and her firefighter-hubby live on California’s Central Coast where they are the besotted grandparents of two darling little boys. Her love of the West shows up in each of her stories. Claiming His Heart, set in the gold mining country of southern California, is her first inspirational historical romance.

www.tanyahanson.com

The Big and Little Things~Tanya Hanson

This is Tanya Hanson here. I’ve been invited to Seriously Write as a monthly contributor by the wonderful Angie Arndt whose support and cyber-friendship help me every single day!

                                       "The Big and Little Things"

                                            by Tanya Hanson

When Hubs and I took a city-slicker wagon train trip, the excursion, both grand and rustic, inspired the setting for a story set on a Colorado ranch. That inspirational novella got me contracts for an eight-book series. 

Gulp. How could I possibly get seven more plots developed, new characters born? I started looking into the details surrounding me every day. My black Labrador. My godson’s disability. My vegetarian niece...

Then into our unexciting life came...Cancer.

I never started out with cancer as a theme until my husband survived it. And my daughter’s close friend and sorority sister Jackie did not.

Those two, with their courage and faith and hope in the midst of blackness, inspired the characters in Sanctuary, the third book in my series. A romance between two cancer patients. A cowboy hero, already in remission.

A city-girl heroine, facing an incurable brain tumor and struggling to accept Who’s in charge.

In many ways, it’s the best book I’ll ever write. And also the hardest. I learned more about the nightmarish glioblastoma multiform (the deadly GBM) than I ever cared to know. This horrific disease strikes only three out of 100,000 people. After fighting hard for four years, Jackie died a year and a half ago. Despite faith, hope and love, her death tore my heart apart. My son’s best friend, Teller--(all the kids went to the same university and lived next door to each other on Fraternity Row)--sent me a loving condolence card.

Fast forward to Good Friday evening. Tenebrae. The exact date, day, and time Teller and his beautiful wife Nichola exchanged vows six years ago.

This time, they were renewing those vows.

It was an evening of both joy and tears, hope and fears. For in the most agonizing of ironies, Teller is now fighting GBM, diagnosed last June. The struggle is not over, nor the challenges. Toss into all of this, the poignancy of their one-year old son. But the love last Friday night, the faith and the hope warmed the air already spiraling with hugs and prayers.

And much fun as well. Music, dancing, and my son’s frat brothers all together again despite the miles between. Like old times, Jake, in from Texas, had me laughing much of the time. That’s the kind of event it was--joy in the moment, hope for the future.

And I found my inspiration. Oh, no, not another cancer story. I’d been agonizing over a name for the heroine in the Christmas story I’ve been asked to write. Hearing the name of Jake’s fiancée, I knew it was perfect. I asked, and he said yes, with much more laughter and hugs.

I seem to be able to find inspiration in both big and little things. How about you?

A beautiful plus-one at a wedding, a hunky cowboy..autumn leaves and rugged horse trails. The perfect setting to unite two healing souls... Ranch foreman and single dad Hooper Martin is ready to put his health and life back on track after battling cancer...including re-entering the dating scene. His little girl sure could use a mother. Falling hard for wedding guest Malia Cameron makes perfect sense to him: she's a survivor, too. Mallie has put her heart on hold, knowing she will never recover from her struggle with a brain tumor. She can't promise a future to anybody and vows never to fall in love. Letting Hooper Martin into her life would be a big mistake. But his good looks take her breath away, and his living faith starts to gentle her confusion about Who's really in charge.

Tanya Hanson, a multi-published author of western romance, is a member of Los Angeles Romance Authors, RWA chapter. Sanctuary received the CTRR Award at Coffee Time romance as a Recommended Read. You can find her at

www.tanyahanson.com