Guest Post from YA Author Amy Blakeman Durham on Writing PLUS Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

Please welcome YA author Amy Blakeman Durham to Tabor Lane!

Thanks to Kathy for the invitation to visit Tabor Lane. It’s always a thrill to visit other authors’ cyber-homes and meet the people who follow them. Kathy and I have known one another for several years. We’re a part of the same writers group. The authors in our group often talk about why we write… what benefit we receive from the process.

Writing is hard. No doubt about it. It’s a long and difficult process. But it’s so rewarding. For me, writing gives me something that's mine alone. I think many women are in the same situation as me... with jobs and families that need our attention and hang lots of responsibilities on us. Everyday I'm a teacher to over 300 students, a wife to a really cool guy, a mom to three wild boys. But sometimes I forget about myself. Sometimes days and weeks go by before I realize that I'm something to everybody else in my life, but nothing to myself.

Writing gives me a place to craft and create… a place to imagine and enjoy. My characters are who I want them to be, even though sometimes they become something other than I originally intended. I get to go places in my writing that I only dream about in my real life. I experience adventure, intrigue, romance, and humor. I control the destinies of the people in my stories. I escape the real world for a bit in favor of a world of my own creation.

I write because I have to, and for whatever bit of life I give my characters, the writing gives me SO MUCH MORE than I give it.

My latest young adult paranormal romance DUSK is now on sale. It’s a story of forgiveness, grace, and second chances… something I think everyone can relate to!

Zoe Gray lost her father... in more ways than one. Angry and bitter, Zoe spends the summer before her senior year of high school doing everything she can to forget, legal or not. But a close call triggers a reality check, and Zoe decides to put her life back together, a task that proves a lot harder than she thought.

Adrian Shaw shows up on the first day of school, creating quite a stir with his striking good looks and gleaming black motorcycle. But Adrian is much more than a "biker boy", and as Zoe discovers, he may just hold the key she needs to put her life back on the right path.

But as they do battle with evil forces that want nothing more than to destroy Zoe's chance at a normal life, will their feelings for one another make them stronger, or be the reason Zoe's happiness slips away forever?

And will Zoe learn to forgive before it's too late?

Dusk is available online at: Amazon B&N Kobo and will be available soon at iBooks and in print edition from Amazon.

I can be found on the following social media sites: Website Facebook Twitter. 

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If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesteday, here they are again: 

1. How to Attract More Facebook Fans (Without Wasting Your Time!) — Amy Porterfield http://ow.ly/spL1m
2. Have you ever wondered how to disable right mouse click? Here's your answer http://ow.ly/spOhU
3. RT @elizabethscraig: 6 tips for protecting your images on social networks: http://t.co/g8C0Mby1Eu @jessienuez
4. Subplot: 7 Ways to Add Subplots to Your Novel | WritersDigest.com http://ow.ly/spOGh
5. Neither Wind, Nor Rain, Nor Polar Vortex Can Stop Selfies http://ow.ly/spOW7
6. Five Signs You May Be Sabotaging Your Writing Career - Writer's Relief, Inc. http://ow.ly/spP2F
7. Fiction Notes | If You Only Do One Revision, Do This http://ow.ly/spVup
8. 10 Words Often Misspelled in Business Correspondence http://ow.ly/spVxc
9. Writing Fiction: Dialogue Tag Basics | The Creative Penn http://ow.ly/spW5C "Dialogue tags can present problems for some writers."
10. The Cure For Bland Characters http://ow.ly/sqjWU “There’s nothing better than a vivid hero or crusty villain who jumps off the page..."   

Happy writing and running, Kathy