Summer author blitz 2013 Guest post :D

Hi there guys! Today I'll be writing an English post because I've signed up for the 2013 Summer Author Blitz, created by Belle Whittington and Tabatha Perry.
*Facebook party
I think this initiative it's nice and will help me and you find about amazing authors and books. :D (by clicking the image below you'll be able to check the schedule)

My assigned author is Mickey Mills, who wrote a mystery/thriller novel called Hauting injustice. I have read it, and I must say it was great. The details regarding Pheonix's work were really interesting and the ghost story got me :) It was about making justice, about paranormal, about friendship and about love, and it's a novel that I highly recommend :)
Haunting injustice book trailer 
Mickey lives in Oklahoma, he is an engineer by education and a writer by passion. He started writing for publication late in his career, culminating with the publication of Haunting Injustice. For this guest post Mickey is offering a free e-copy of his book and he is talking about paranormal writing :) 

Writing the Paranormal

People have asked what brought me to write a ghost story.  It’s not a question I took lightly, nor did I answer off the cuff. For me the answer was simply I love ghost stories. Growing up in an area rich in tales of the supernatural and things that go bump in the night it just seemed like a natural fit.

Through the ages ghost stories endure. One of my favorite childhood stories was Dickens’ – A Christmas Carol. It certainly wasn’t for the moral of the story, that wealth can’t buy you happiness, it was all about the ghosts. I loved the way Dickens wove the three spirits into the morality of teaching Scrooge the life lesson. Like most children I found the Ghost of Christmas Future especially creepy.

So when I actually got serious about writing a full length novel, I knew immediately it was going to be some kind of ghost story. It was a period of time when ghost hunter series were starting to crop up on television and crews such as T.A.P.S. (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) were growing in popularity on the SyFy network series, Ghost Hunters. As I watched these shows I got what they were doing and how they were doing it but what I found sorely missing was the back story – the emotion and characters of the ghosts and the ghost hunters.

I started thinking about ghost hunters and how a very diverse set of flawed characters could interact in the context of a story. I wanted my ghost story to have a wide range of emotion, I wanted the story to be somewhat creepy, but I wanted to write it in a natural kind of way so that it wasn’t so outlandish it could still be believable. I wanted it to be somewhat light with sprinkles of humor around the tragedy and injustice.

I built the characters before I had a story. I knew a strong leader was required, an intellectual, but someone marred by personal tragedy always underneath the way he did things. Then I wanted to surround that guy with a set of quirky characters, more to prop up the underpinnings of the story and give scope to the cast.

I started with a blank paper and built an outline for each character I was considering. On this sheet I started filling in the blanks which included, name, age, sex, physical characteristics, emotional characteristics, family background and anything else that might let me paint the character in the story. Many times I patterned my character off someone else. For example, I loosely patterned my main character, Phoenix Worthy, off Keanu Reeves.

An interesting story on how I came up with the name, Phoenix. I was laid off from my job and later, as I was talking to a friend about it, she asked, “What are you going to do now.” I thought about it for a bit and replied, “I think I am going to get a new tattoo – a Phoenix.” She was quiet for a minute and finally said, “I can see that; you are Phoenix worthy.” I knew immediately that was the name for my main character.

From there it seemed easy to come up with the rest of. Phoenix Worthy, with the British medium and the Latino technician, a single mom with a tough exterior masking her internal fragility, became the trio of my ghost hunters.

Once I had the cast, I began to come up with the story. The story shaped my ghost characters. I knew I had to get some circumstance that had to immediately connect the reader to the ghost, so I consciously introduced them first. I think it worked out very well.

One odd thing that happened while I was writing is when I got around mid-book it seemed like something was missing and I could not quite put my finger on it, so I stopped and went back over the story up to that point.

It turned out the ending I had in mind had some inherent flaws and was weak when cast against the path that got them there.  So I rethought the story arch and decided to add a new character and inject her into the story. I had to tear out a couple of chapters to do it, but it was absolutely the right thing to do. Phoenix needed a love interest and Native American paranormal researcher, Annie Kai was the perfect fit and really let me do a much stronger close.

The process of the book became in interesting story unto itself. Remember I mentioned that I was laid off my job. I decided I was going to take some time before I got serious looking for work and get the book written. I also decided to take care of some bucket list things and take a motorcycle trip across country. I set out with a tent in the saddlebags and explored the American Southwest and the Pacific Coast Highway. I spent many early mornings and late evenings in my campsite writing the story. Three months later the bike trip was over and the book was written. It was the experience of a lifetime.

I don’t want to give away the story here, but I would like to offer some of the writing lessons I learned while writing this story.

1- Know your characters. Before I ever put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) I got intimate with the characters. I knew them like family before I ever started to write.

2- Outline the story. I like the roadmap analogy. How can you get somewhere you’ve never been without a map? I had a general idea of where I was going before I left. If I didn’t know where I was headed it’s likely I would never get there.

3- Don’t be afraid to change the map. If along the way something doesn’t feel right with the story, be willing to change your story, if it’s the right thing to do and will improve the reader’s experience.

4- Trust your reader. What I mean is don’t insult your readers intelligence by trying to describe every tiny detail. I know when I read and the writer drags me around with descriptive passages about the minutia of the scene it drives me nuts. I tried to stay focused on what was important to the story at that moment and use colorful metaphors as descriptors.

5- Set a daily word goal and stick to it. In my case I set a minimum of 1,000 words. I knew if I stuck to that commitment I could finish the book in three months.

6- Write like a madman – edit like a surgeon. Without the benefit of a room full of editors and pocketful of cash to pay them I was relegated to editing my own work. I edited by paragraph from back to front. One thing I searched for in the manuscript was every instance of the word – that. I evaluated the usage and if it didn’t need to be there, out it came.

I’m proud of the book and everyone that has taken the time to read it has come back with positive feedback.

Now I just have to get serious about finishing the next chapter in the life of Phoenix Worthy.

Some of my short stories:

http://www.everydayfiction.com/trajectory-by-mickey-mills/

http://www.everydayfiction.com/sailing-the-paper-seas-by-mickey-mills/

http://www.everydayfiction.com/fire-on-falcon-road-by-mickey-mills/

I was born in Myrtle Beach, SC., and have been many things in my lifetime: soldier, engineer, inventor, writer - just to name a few.

My writing experience grew out of an opportunity to be a freelance motor-sports journalist and for a few years I spent most weekends traveling around some of the largest speedways of the Southern US – places like Daytona, Talladega, and Bristol, covering the NASCAR series.

I have traveled the world as a soldier and later as an engineer, seeing sights and meeting people around the globe. In the late 80s I lived and worked on the coast of Belgium for a few months.

I am an avid Motorcyclist and in the last 10 years have put nearly 100,000 miles on my Harley.

Today I eke out a living doing freelance writing and graphic design. I am mostly building world-class PowerPoint presentations.

I live in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

It's time to sum up, but not before I ask you, if it was to write a story/novel, what kind of story would it be? Would it contain paranormal, romance,mystery, or maybe a little bit of each ? What should a successfull book have? :)