And the winner (for October Blog Hop '11) is...

Mary-Ellen! Congrads Mary! After placing all the contestants into a hat and drawing randomly, your name was pulled out. I'll be contacting you shortly.

I really enjoyed participating in the blog hop. I plan to do many more in the future.

Thanks again to everyone who added me to their followed blogs. It means a lot. I may not be the most frequent poster, but I have plans to change that.

To anyone who wants to read Dark Threats can find it on Amazon electronically as well as paperback. It's also found on Barns and Noble.com and iBooks for the Apple.

Thanks everyone!

Coming Soon:

Hey guys, sorry it's taken be a bit to choose the winner of the Blog Hop. I've had a crazy few days. At this moment I'm putting names in a hat and preparing it for a child to randomly pic. The winner should be announced tonight!

Successful Writer Day!

Friday the 14th: Successful Writer Day!
I think from now on I'll post entrees called "Successful Writer Days". Once in awhile things happen in a writer's life that make all those rejections or brain-stalling less productive days seem worth it. I call those "Successful Writer Days".

Thursday was fun. I spent the day with my sweetheart (October 13th is her birthday, just like Annabelle). It was a very relaxing day.

Yesterday, Friday the 14th, was successful.

1st off Janeen and I visited a Tooele High Creative Writing class. I spoke of my writer's journey and briefly about the books, showing slides of my various influences and research pictures. I'm grateful to say that the students were curious and began to ask questions. Lots of hands went up and lots of smart questions came my way. 
I love creating interest in my stories. I simply want to entertain and inspire, so when people show interest, I just get more excited.
I never spoke to High School students before. I found them very curious and their questions involved a lot of the mechanics of my world. Excellent! It gets me thinking and simply drives my creative juices further.
Janeen got my back, keeping track of those who asked questions so we could give one of them a free copy of Dark Threats. She was (and always is) a perfect help meet. She helps me keep track of who has their arms up the longest and provides added perspective on my books. Also, she loves to throw candy at the students. :)
Congratulations to Shantelle for winning Dark Threats!

We had a nice lunch. Afterwards I spoke with John at the Purple Cow (a local bookstore). He's going to pass out my book marks at his store and at the Children's Book Festival. Also, he's reviewing Dark Threats to see if it's appropriate for the store. More on that as news develops!

Finally, we attended the last speaking engagement of the day. We visited the West Elementary 6th Grade! Janeen had a brilliant idea to set up our projector and her lap top so that we could show my pics again. We let it slip that kids who ask questions might qualify for books. Of course I was assaulted with wonderful questions about the books and characters. We decided to have the kids place their names in a hat and the two 6th grade teachers pic the winners. Congratulations to Andrew and Dawson for winning copies of Dark Threats! My sweetie helped run the slides and answered questions for children to shy to ask me. Janeen got a chance to throw candy to all the kids, resulting in some fun chaos for a minute. :)

Of course everyone got a book mark as well.

So all in all a fine successful writer day. Next speaking engagements will be October 28th. I'll be visiting a High School English class and the Jr. High History classes. Can't wait!

October Blog Hop!

Welcome to the October Blog Hop, where you can visit new blogs, enter to win prizes, and have a great time!



At the bottom of this post, you'll see a list of participating blogs. Just click on each link, check out the prize, and follow the easy instructions to enter. You can enter on each blog, so it's possible to win multiple times. It's frighteningly easy.



On this blog, you can win a paperback copy of NIGHT CHILDREN DARK THREATS!

To enter, all you need to do is:



1. Become a follower of my blog.



2. Leave a comment on this post and tell me why you'd like to win this prize. If your e-mail address isn't visible through your Blogger profile, please also leave it with the comment so I can notify you if you win. You can enter until midnight MST on Saturday night, October 15th.



That's it! You are now entered. Now please go visit all my friends on the list below. It's almost like trick or treating!

October Blog Hop Participants

1. Tristi Pinkston 2. I Am a Reader, Not a Writer 3. Bonnie Harris 4. Michael D. Young 5. Misty Moncur 6. Debbie Davis 7. Mandi Tucker Slack 8. Mary Ann Dennis 9. Deanna Henderson 10. Laura Bastian 11. Kristy Tate

12. Kristy Wilson 13. Jennifer Debenham 14. Jenny Moore 15. Elizabeth Hughes 16. J. Lloyd Morgan 17. Close Encounters with the Night Kind 18. Billy Boulden 19. Scott Bryan 20. Maria Hoagland 21. Shirley Bahlmann 22. Shelly Brown

23. Marcy Howes 24. Lynnea Mortensen 25. Jaclyn M. Hawkes 26. Diane Stringam Tolley 27. Gail Zuniga 28. Betsy Love 29. iWriteNetwork 30. Canda's InkBlast 31. Stacy Coles

Learn more about October Blog Hop here.
View More October Blog Hop Participants
Get The Code

Powered by... Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.

The 1st ever BOOK MARK CONTEST!

Welcome to the first ever BOOK MARK CONTEST. Well, it's more of a free giveaway than a contest but still, check it out:

Front

Back

The first 10 people who send me self addressed stamped envelopes will receive a free book mark and the FIRST TEN PAGES of DARK BIRTH!

Envelopes must be sent to...

Scott Bryan
128 West 200 South
Tooele, Utah, 84074

Looking forward to receiving your envelopes!



Book marks are here!

Hey guys, my book marks arrived! Here is an image of the front and back...

I'll be giving theses away at the four school visits this month.

Tomorrow I'll announce the first ever BOOK MARK CONTEST!
Keep your eyes pealed to this site!

Zach's Game Room now has puzzles!

At the top of this page is a link to Zach's game room. Go try your hand at some puzzles. At the moment there are four to choose from but more will be added in the future.

Author Reflections

It's so hard for me to realise that Book One is on Amazon. I simply can't get over the fact that this book, the self same one I've tiled over for seven years, is now available for others to enjoy.

All those many years ago I couldn't get her out of my head. I had to write about Annabelle. At first I thought she belonged in the Parodyverse (a beloved fan-fiction site I belong too). As I posted tiny stories with her there I realised she needed to reach further. She had to be in school libraries and book stores and regular libraries. She needed to inspire and entertain children everywhere.

Is she doing that now? Of course not. These things grow very slowly.

But I feel inside that she will. One day.

For now, Smashwords, Kindle and the Nook will be the beginning...

My review of Dark Birth on Goodreads

Night Children: Dark Birth by Scott Bryan


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What more can I say about this book? It was fun to write it. Obviously I’m biased as the author, but there is something about Annabelle and Roland. Once I step into their world, I just can’t let go. I thirst for more. I hope you feel the same way.




View all my reviews

I won the Liebster Blog award again!

Another big THANK YOU, this time to my fellow Tooele Writer and a great friend, Roseanne, for giving me this award...

This is my 2nd time winning the Liebster Blog award and I'm very grateful to have another chance to pass it onto others who need some attention.
As I mentioned before, Liebster means "friend" in German.  This award is aimed at those who have fewer than 200 followers.
Here are the rules...

- Link back to the person who gave you the award.

- Pick five other people to give the award to and notify them on their blog.

- Post the award on your blog.

- Bask in the camaraderie of the most supportive people on the internet—other writers.

- And best of all—have bloggity fun and spread the love.


The winners are...

Terron

Clare

Emily

J. A. Bennett

And my fellow writers at Tooele Writers

Night Children: Dark Birth News!

All sorts of news about THE book.

Night Children: Dark Birth is my first novel. "Wait Scott, wasn't Dark Threats your first one?"

Actually no. Seven years this month I watched Interview With a Vampire and found myself searching for something. Days later I found it as I tried to write my own vampire child story and Annabelle walked out of my imagination and onto paper.

Years of beta readers, critique groups, 6th and 8th grade classes, a professional editor and several drafts brought me to the current version of this novel. 

Dark Threats is one chapter removed from that original novel plus a lot of new stuff written just for the my debut  into the world of eBooks. Threats is a collection of short stories to introduce people to the world of Annabelle and Roland.

Months ago I decided to break the first novel into two books; Dark Birth and Dark Trials. Last Friday I changed my mind. This story stands better as one.

I've gone through and formatted it for online publishing. I had some troubles but I finally mastered it last night. I uploaded it to Smashwords and it's available there.

Dark Birth on Smashwords!

I wont reveal it to Facebook and Twitter yet because I'm waiting for it to be reviewed by the Smashwords team for any format errors.  Once it's good, I'll load it on Amazon and Barns & Noble.com.

Also, thanks to my Highland-loving coworker and pal, Don Phillips, I have a pic that has been used for the cover.

So much going on! I can't wait for you to read my real first book, Annabelle and Roland's origin story! Hope you like it!

10 years ago - 9/11/01

I was reading a book about life in America after the world collapsed. It was by Orson Scott Card and seemed to be pretty good. The UTA bus dropped me off at the International Center, on the outskirts of Salk Lake City. Just another day. I don't remember September 6th or 5th or the 1st but I remember that morning.

I get to my desk, turn on my computer and got ready for the day. Chuck (a coworker and fellow drafter) had his radio on. Normally the morning DJ's would be goofing or music would be playing. Pop? Country? I don't remember. I think country but it doesn't matter. It was 7:50 AM so NYC time it was at that fateful hour.

Those morning DJ's weren't joking. They were talking about a plane that crashed into the 1st tower. At the same time they were trying to figure why a plane would crash (they thought it was a small one) I opened my Internet explorer.  The same event was plastered on MSN.com but they were stating it was big. I remember those DJ's reporting the second plane and the Pentagon crash. One guy on the radio said their were dog fights in the air of New York. It's amazing how panic and fear can affect how we report things.

The office was a buzz. It was a small staff of 10 to 15 people but on that morning we were less than ten. Soon everyone was in the conference room watching Good Morning America. We were in shock.

The personnel manager called a meeting and told us we could go home and be with our families or since we were contractors to the government, we could keep working to show the terrorists life will go on here. We elected to stay.

I do feel pride in the American spirit. Even as a child I welled up with tears when I heard America the Beautiful.  I love this country and am fiercely loyal to it. I hope my future novels will illustrate some of my patriotism.

To this day, however, I question if remaining at a small company, trying to focus on drawings that don't matter in the grand scheme of things, and listing to the radio play patriotic songs all day, was the best place for me. That job went under. They are a foot note in time. I couldn't focus on tracing PDF files of electronic F16 harnesses into Auto cad. All I could do was force back the tears as Amazing Grace played with bagpipes and I thought of those poor people.

I wanted to be home. My wife and kids were glued to the TV and I wanted them in my arms. I was and will always be grateful that we are blessed to be alive. I just wanted to be with them.

It was hard those days. We felt defeated as a nation. Maybe the last time Americans felt that defeated was when Kennedy was shot. I don't know. That was seven years before my birth. But we also felt something else. Remember? Yes, we had hate and anger and those are wrong but understood because of the circumstances, but we felt pride.

Strong, unified, powerful pride. Like Pearl Harbor. Like the Alamo. Like those long gone days of the Revolution. The kind of pride that made Paul Revere and Sybil Ludington race at night to warn their countrymen.

We have our differences. We cant agree on money or jobs or the environment. We believe lies about each other and worse, spread them. We lose faith in one another and fear the future.

BUT WE LIVE ON. In ten years we will still be what we are now. In twenty, eighty, a hundred years. We will be Americans. We were forged by a desire for personal liberty. We will not die. We will continue to be a nation and we must forever remember who we are and how we became.

Remember.

Proof II The Sequel

I've experienced a lot during this journey as a writer. I've watched the dream die only to be reborn. A legion of helpers have carried me each step. I've gone in different directions and return to the starting point more times than I'd like to think of.

But I've never held my own story in my hands. I don't mean a print out, bound or loose, I mean a gloss covered BOOK.

My first proof arrived in the mail last Friday, right before I headed off to the critique group no less. I shared it with them, then my adoring wife who shouted with excitement! After that we took it to family and showed it off. I even carried it to Wal-Mart to show people I knew. I also compared it to other books on the shelf to see A) What Annabelle would look like next to the likes of Percy, Harry and the rest and B) To compare the text size to see if mine was indeed too small.

Thanks to the help of my wife, daughter and the crit group, I found various things that needed to change. Over the extended weekend I made those changes and resubmitted it.

Tomorrow I'll send for another proof. Once Dark Threats passes the proof stage, it'll be ready for people to order soft copies right from Amazon!

Passing friendship to others...

A big THANK YOU to Krista for giving me this award...

The Liebster Blog award! "Liebster, for those of you who are not Nightcrawler or cannot speak German, means "friend" and is aimed at those who have fewer than 200 followers. Yes, that is me. But we'll get more. I swear it!

At any rate, here are the rules...

- Link back to the person who gave you the award.


- Pick five other people to give the award to and notify them on their blog.

- Post the award on your blog.

- Bask in the camaraderie of the most supportive people on the internet—other writers.

- And best of all—have bloggity fun and spread the love.

1st I want to say something about Krista. She's always warm and supportive and I'm grateful she takes the time to post a reply. It means a lot when us struggling writers get replies to our posts. I try to do the same.

The winners are...

My wife and strong defender for those with ADHD, Janeen

Katie

Nicole

Laura

Melanie

Proof!

I ordered my proof! What does that mean? It means that I ordered the pre-printable version of my soft cover book from Create Space. Once I review it and OK it for distribution, everyone will be able to buy a soft copy of Night Children: Dark Threats!

Can't wait till it arrives!

Here is the cover before I added the price on it.

The Blog is a-changin'

I'm sure some of you have noticed but I'm slowly improving this blog. I've had it since '06. I started it right after I finished the rough draft for my first book. I didn't realise back then how much learning I had coming.
I'm still far from perfect and I look forward to much more education coming my way.

Anyway, watch this space. I've added info pages about the books, the characters and so on. The store is up (soon to have print on demand books). I'm planning out a place for some small games, maps and so on.

It was difficult choosing a color scheme for the blog. I really wanted to keep it black with white text. After all, this is a vampire adventure series. But ultimately I decided to go with a off-white with black text. After all, you need to be able to read it!

So... more changes coming. Watch this space!

I won an award for the blog!

I got a blog award!

I received a Brilliant Writer Blog Award from Author and artist Deirdra Eden-Coppel.
You can find her blog here. A great place to visit and learn so much about the crazy world of writing and publishing.

Thanks Deirdra!

I'm in the local paper!

Reporter Emma Penrod did a story on my hometown's local e-published authors. I'm going to scan the article and post it because it's not on their website.

I spoke heavily about e-publishing and why I do it. In the interview I mentioned by book's title (Night Children: Dark Threats) and where it could be found (Amazon) but there was no mention of that.

At any rate it's a start. Now to find my way into other papers and such.


UPDATE...

Here is the article.

BOOK REVIEW: Night Children : Dark Threats

Night Children: Dark Threats by Scott Bryan


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Would it be wrong to say I love this book? Yes, I’m biased because I’m the author, but I can’t stop reading or writing her stories. I have to tell them, share them, and get them out into the world.


As the author I’ve fully aware this story isn’t perfect, but I believe it’ll entertain.


Give it a shot!






View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW : Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan

The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Just finished! I loved it! I can really like being in the heads of Carter and Sadie. I enjoy reading their adventures. Riordan is always fresh and an inspiration to me as a writer. There are surprises and very fun characters. Some twists in the story throw you for a loop. A+




View all my reviews