Playing Patience

Book Title:  Playing Patience

Author:  Tabatha Vargo

Release Date:  April 26th 2013

Genre:  New Adult/Romance/Contemporary

Presented by:  As You Wish...

BLURB

Sometimes all you need is Patience.

Life’s been hard for Zeke. Being a punching bag for his alcoholic father has turned him into stone. Not even the dodgy trailer park he lives in can scare him. Fighting is his release and sex, drugs, and his guitar bring him peace, but deep down Zeke isn’t quite as hard as he makes himself out to be. When he meets Patience, she finds all his broken pieces and puts him back together, but she’s a ray of light in his shadowed life and the last thing he wants to do is bring her into his dark world. Playing careless is easy, playing the bad guy can be fun, but playing Patience is impossible, especially when she can see right through him.

Zeke isn’t the only one who’s broken, and for the first time, in a long time, Patience feels alive. Her black and white world gets a shot of color when she meets Zeke. He’s unlike anyone she’s ever met with his tattoos, piercings, and blunt honesty. She wants nothing more than to let go and ride the wild side with him, but some wounds never heal and the broken pieces of Patience aren’t so easy to find.

***Warning: this book contains graphic language, sex, and violence. Mature readers only. Not intended for young adult readers.***

Excerpt from the book:

She reached up, tucked her hair behind her ear, and bit at her lip like she knew what I was thinking. She closed her eyes and sighed when I ran my thumb across her bottom lip.

“I think I want to kiss you.”

There. I’d said it. It was out there and there was no taking it back. I hadn’t kissed a girl since I was fourteen. Mainly because it felt entirely too personal, but with Patience I wanted to be personal. I wanted to taste her in ways I hadn’t tasted other women, and kissing was the only way I could do that.

Her eyes widened, and her throat bobbed up and down as she swallowed hard. Her breathing accelerated as I gave her a minute to let my words sink it. If she wasn’t okay with being kissed good and hard, I was giving her plenty of time to say so. I had a feeling that once my mouth connected with hers it would take a lot for me to stop.

“I think I want you to kiss me,” she whispered.

I looked down at her sweet mouth and bit at my lip ring. I tilted her head up to meet mine and moved in. I let my lips skim hers and they were every bit as soft as they looked. A tiny noise escaped her mouth and I lost it.

PLAYING PATIENCE BOOK TRAILER

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AUTHOR BIO

Tabatha's been writing since she could pick up a pencil. Her first publication was a little poem in her elementary school paper, from that point on she was hooked. When she was a teenager, she traded in her girly magazines for personalized writing notebooks.

At nineteen, she met her own personal prince charming and writing took a back burner for a while. She's now married to that prince and the mother of a beautiful seven-year-old princess/rock star. Once her daughter was born, writing came back into her life, and she finished her very first novel, Wicked Fate, in May of 2009.

She's now pursuing her English degree and she hopes to one day teach while continuing to write.

 
Where to Purchase: 

Barnes and Noble:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/playing-patience-tabatha-vargo/1115197721?ean=2940016552019&isbn=2940016552019

Amazon:                              Paperback                             Kindle
                                                       

What Covers Are Your Favorites?

Book covers are an important part to every book.  Authors have to make certain that they get a cover that fits their book and will intrigue any potential readers.  Readers always judge books based on the cover design first.

So if you are an author and need a cover for your book, how do you know what to get?  Most authors hire a professional illustrator, unless you are able to do your own illustrations.  Many publishing companies have hoards of cover designers that study the different trends of book covers: the ones that sell and the ones that don’t.  They then will design a cover that follows the trend.  But if you are an independent author how do you know what to put on your book’s cover?   First, think of the books you have and their covers.  What was it about those cover designs that made you pick up the book?  Second, hire a freelance artist to help you design a cover.  If you have a series make sure you hire an artist who is willing to do the entire series so that way you will have consistent cover designs.

To give your book it’s best outfit, think about what your book is about.  It is a mystery? Fantasy? Horror? You’ll want a cover the fits the genre.  Is your book light-hearted read, or an intense thriller with many twists and turns.  Do you want a person on the cover or a nature design.  What age group is your book appealing to?

For instance, when I had my illustrator for my Mellow Summers series, I wanted something that would appeal to the teenage/young adult crowd since they were my target audience. 

For my Fantasy series, my illustrator stuck with a simple design and stayed away from the modern cover designs.  Most modern fantasy tends to be dark fantasy, which my books are not.

Just remember, if you wrote a book: think of the covers that grab your attention. Below are a list of covers that would make me pick the book up in the store.  Your cover must do the same.

Not an author?  Well, tell us what some of your favorite book covers are.  Book covers are the outfit of the book.  They are what make us notice them.

How To Write a Good Beginning

As an author, I am sometimes asked how you create a good beginning.  If you are thinking of becoming an author yourself, or just want to write something, you need to know how to write a good beginning, especially if it is fiction.  When you begin a story you need to hook your reader within the first paragraph.  In a novel you need your reader interested within the first two pages.  The sooner you engage your reader’s interest, the better.   Think about it.  Have you ever put a book down because you thought the first few pages were boring?

When I begin a novel, I always try to envision how it should begin.  Action sequences are a great way to start a story, especially fantasy or science fiction.  In my novel, Galdin, I begin the story with a rebellion.  Enemy forces have invaded the castle, the king is dead, and now the queen must escape with her children or perish as well.  My reader knows nothing about the cause of the rebellion, only that the main character’s life is suddenly in danger.  But that is okay.  The point of a beginning is to hook the reader.  The details can come later.  Though don’t wait too long to give the backstory because your audience will want to know.

Here is how I began Galdin.

Captain Dylan burst through the chamber doors.  “We must leave, my lady,” he urged.

The sounds of battle echoed throughout the grounds.  Betrayed.  The king was dead.  Killed by his most trusted general.  Captain Dylan had an oath to fulfill.  But it was more than that.  To Captain Dylan, the king was like a brother.  He viewed the king’s family as his own.  This would be his final act of loyalty to his king.

In this short paragraph, the you know that a battle is taking place and everyone’s lives are in danger.  There is a sense of urgency.

Now, not all stories need to begin with an action sequence.  In my Mellow Summers Series I start out differently.

My name is Mellow Summers and I am twenty-six years old.  I was never one to believe in ghosts, but all that changed the day I decided to attend a university up in Vermont.  I don’t know why I wanted to go to Vermont considering that I hate the cold.  I guess I just wanted to get away from my parents for a while who had made it their mission in life to tell me how to live.  Anyway, like I said, I never believed in ghosts.  That is not until I met Rachel.

So she never believed in ghosts.  What made her change her mind?  Who is Rachel?  In this first paragraph you have the main character’s name and where she lives.  You also have the gist of the story: who is Rachel and what did she do to change Mellow’s mind about the existence of ghosts?

Imagine if I had begun the story with “My name is Mellow Summers” and stopped right there.  Would care about the character?  Probably not.  But add: the bit about how she never believed in ghosts until she moved to Vermont and met Rachel and you have something completely different.

Well, here’s a question: who is Rachel?

Consider how J.K. Rowling began Harry Potter.  In the first few pages we learn meet Harry as an infant as he left on the doorstep of his aunt and uncle’s house.  We know that he is considered a hero in the wizarding world and that his parents are dead.  But we are left with the question: what did this baby do to be considered a hero?  And why does Dumbledore think Harry will be safer with his aunt and uncle who are obviously not part of this magical world of wizards and witches?

When writing the opening sequence to your story you need to answer two questions:

1. What is the story?

2. Why should we care?

In the first question, you set the tone for your book.  After the first two paragraphs, you reader should know whether your book is an adventure story, fantasy, a mystery, or a romance. 

Then, you have to make your reader care about your characters.  You do this by getting them to unknowingly ask questions.  In Harry Potter you want to know who he is and why he is called the boy who lived.  With Mellow Summers you want to know Rachel is and how she got Mellow to change her mind about ghosts. With Galdin you want to know if Captain Dylan succeeds in saving the queen and her children.

And the number one way to know if you have a beginning is this: if it doesn’t engage you, the author, then it won’t engage your reader.