Friday, July 17, 2015

Guest Post: J.E. Nicassio


Writing is about opening your soul and letting your vulnerable side shine through. You have to have a thick outer skin. Being an author is not giving in or giving up and never ever listening to the people who said you couldn’t do it. You just do it and never give up on your dreams. I have been kicked down and had the wind knocked out of me but something in me kept me going.  

I had just finished graduate school for writing and struggling with the loss of my sister when I made a huge mistake. I wrote a science fiction romance and I stupidly send it out to a writing factory. Before I knew what happened it was torn apart and used to make a novel and then a movie. My heart was crushed. I had a group of Intellectual Property and Copyright lawyers come to my home to try and do something about my novel but of course the people who took chunks of my novel knew exactly what they were doing. They took my main protagonist’s name, the town, school, story plot and even my son’s names in my dedication and used them for their main characters. My lawyers said they tweaked it just enough to make it too hard and costly for them to pursue it further and I was barely surviving financially. I was crushed and heartbroken. They advised me to change my title and my characters and some of the plot’s premise. After months of wanting to give up I listened to my attorneys and decided to do just that. I re-wrote, and re-wrote until I was blue in the face. I sent it to agents under the title MOONDUST. I received rejection letter after rejection most saying I had to have an agent. How are you supposed to get an agent if no one will take a chance on an emerging author I asked myself? But I did not quit. One day I got a message on Facebook from a new publishing house. I was ecstatic and sent them an email. I made another mistake and didn’t research the publisher before a signed on the dotted line. My new publisher made false promises and didn’t do right by me or my novel. Again I was devastated. I fought to get my rights back and after another year I did. I felt like I was in the movie Groundhog Day by making the same stupid mistakes over and over. I re-wrote again and this time researched until I found www.secondwindpublishing.com.  My determination and perseverance paid off and found a reputable publisher. 


The lessons I learned were made the hard way. The best advice I can give emerging authors is to be patient and treat your manuscript like your child, nurture it, love it and guard it with your life. Protect your child and your rights and trust no one with it. Even though my novel was copyrighted I stupidly let my desperation take hold of my instincts and I succumb to a moment of carelessness and hit the submit link. I regretfully sent it out on the Internet to a group of predators who unfortunately took my desperation and made a huge financial gain for themselves with my blood, sweat and tears. Be cautious aspiring authors. Research every agent, and publisher on the web before you hand over your manuscript to individuals without scrupulous intentions.




About From The Sky:
When Samantha Hunter and her father move to New Mexico, it's a chance to get away from the bittersweet memories of her past and start over. However, the arrival of a dark-haired stranger into her life changes everything. The stranger, a boy, named Lucien introduces Sam to the hidden world of real-life aliens. Redemption and romance follow Sam in her new life as she works to decipher her complicated alien-human relationship and discovers what connects her to this strange alien boy.






About the Author:

J.E. Nicassio is a former freelance writer, MUFON field investigator and the mother of two adult sons based in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since early childhood, she dreamed of creating characters readers could fall in love with while taking them beyond our reality letting them dare to believe in something more beyond the stars. Those dreams were put on hold while she focused on raising her sons as a single mother. She finally listened to the whispers in her mind to pull herself together and make her dreams a reality. She earned two degrees and followed her gut and typed up the courage not to listen to the naysayers and let her fingers be the guide on her keyboard. From The Sky made its debut a few months after the death of her beloved father. She is also the author of Rocky The Rockefeller Christmas Tree and Louis Joseph’s Ooh Rah.





Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

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