“The Beauty of Eccentrics” A Guest Post on The Crafty Cauldron (Book Tour Day 5)

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Scott D. Southard

Okay, if the website The Craft Cauldron is not somehow related to Harry Potter and the Leaky Cauldron, I’m going to be disappointed. Back during the heyday of Pottermania I was a regular visitor to The Leaky Cauldron for all my Harry Potter news. I was even a devout follower of Pottercast (totally miss that podcast)… Okay, where was I?

It’s day five of my book tour for my new novel Permanent Spring Showers! Today I am on The Crafty Cauldron (which may or may not be Potter-related). One of the things that I think really make my book standout is the characters. Yeah, I’m pretty proud of them. They are unpredictable, strange, and wonderful, .

This guest post is entitled, “The Beauty of Eccentrics: The Characters in Permanent Spring Showers“. Here is an excerpt from the beginning:

To begin with, I’ve been known to hear voices.

I blame old time radio shows for this. When I was a young teenager, I was strangely addicted to them. The repeats used to play on this AM station in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Who knows? I may have been the only person in the whole listening area sitting by the radio with a ready tape deck, but I collected as many as I could. Jack Benny, Sherlock Holmes, Charlie McCarthy (a ventriloquist on the radio? How does that work?), I soon had a collection of shows filling up three tape cases.

I admit this is not something I readily told my friends then (like all awkward teenagers I did want to seem cool), but listening to those shows were almost more than just entertainment for me. In many ways they were each little lessons on finding original voices.

When I finally began to dare to dream of being a novelist, I know this time snuck its way into my own writing style. See, dialogue is always key for me in creation (sometimes it will be the foundation for an outline at the start of the writing process); and my characters, much like the ones on the old shows, speak to me.

You can read the entire post here, as well as enter for the giveaway and check out an excerpt from the novel.

This is the fifth entry in the tour. Yesterday, I gave an interview (here). This is the fourth guest post. The others are about passion (here), spring (here), and my advice to writers (here).

Just for the tour, the eBook of Permanent Spring Showers is on sale! It is on sale for only $1.99. So there is no better time to grab a copy! You can find it on amazon for Kindle here and for the NOOK here.

Why I Don’t Like Fan Fiction

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Scott D. Southard

There is a beautiful safety in books. In that time, when you are in a great novel, your focus is clear, and reality can gracefully slips away, leaving you to play in the imagination of the author. You walk with the characters, you explore the land, you fall in (and out of) love, and when the book is closed, a bit of you feels lost, returning to the too real world.

The sad thing is that when you return to a book again it is never the same. That initial spark is diminished. This is because the surprises are gone, and with each additional reading it slips more and more; until it is nothing more than words on paper, something to be almost merely analyzed. It is a memory now, a glimmer of that first magical escape.

The fact is I understand the desire to create fan fiction. As a lover of books and an author, I truly do.

It’s hard to let go, move on, especially if you want more than what the author wanted to give to you. It can feel like an early death, especially when there is so much more to live. And maybe it is that book, that author, that inspired you to write yourself! Your inspiration driven from a need for more and more.

The problem is at the heart of every piece of fan fiction there is one bit of truth, one thing the fan fiction author doesn’t want to consider:

It is not their decision whether the story continues or not.

They are not the author and only the original author should make that call. Continue reading →

My Time With Harry, Part One

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Scott D. Southard

From GreenSpotBlue.com, part one of my discussion on the Harry Potter movies–

Recently, my hosts at GreenSpotBlue said, “Hey Scott, you can write about movies if you like.” My first reaction was, well, that is impossible. I don’t really get to go out and see movies anymore. My toddler isn’t ready for the experience of the theater, so the movie going experience was always out of my reach without the aid of a babysitter. And this is really sad because I used to be one of those film buffs that would see each of the films nominated for Best Picture each year… Last year I saw one and it was the kid movie.

Okay, but when the film discussion door was open, what came out screaming before the classics or foreign moves waiting in line… was Harry Potter. Harry Potter zoomed past them like his Nimbus 2000 was on fire. Continue reading →