#Authorpalooza2010 Featuring Sean Cummings @saskatoonauthor

A warm welcome and special shout out goes to author Sean Cummings!! Lucky for us we get two wonderful authors for the price of one today!!

Many Thanks Sean for participating in my celebration. *hugs*

How long have you been writing?

I've been writing since I was a kid. I've been writing with the goal of getting published for about two decades now.

How thrilled where you when you heard Shade Fright was going to be released?

Oh... bouncing off the walls, jumping for joy, beaming at people, grinning from ear to ear. THEN I got excited. :)

What's one day in the life of Sean Cummings like?

I get up at around 3 AM to write - I seem to have better focus for putting words into my word processor when it's super quiet and the world is sound asleep. I write for a couple of hours, head off to my day job (because I'm not in a position yet to write full-time - I hope to, eventually.) and then work until 4:30 P.M. I come home, eat, hit the blogs and do a bit more writing then off to the land of slumbery goodness. Back at it the next day.

Do you have a current project you’re working on or something you plan to begin soon?

I'm just doing the finishing touches on book two in the Valerie Stevens series. It's called Funeral Pallor and it will be in bookstores on July 1st. I'm also doing revisions for an agent on a young adult novel about a teen witch and her geeky best friend. I'm drafting the outline for a new book about a failed grim reaper.

In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of being a published author?

That's a good question. Being published isn't hard ... getting published is the real challenge. If I experience any difficulty at all now that I'm published, it's trying to figure out how to strengthen the quality of my writing and of course, trying to foster a fan base for my work.

What’s the most rewarding?

Seeing that book for the first time. It's about a jillion kinds of cool.

If you could co-author a book with any of your fellow authors or anyone from anywhere, who would you choose and why?

I would love to co-author a book with Nancy Holzner who wrote the fantastic "Deadtown". She's a brilliant author and her book kicks ass.

Describe your writing process.

I flush out what I want to happen in my head and then I do a point form summary of what I think should happen in a book - that's sort of my outlining process. Then I sit down at the computer and begin to type. I bounce ideas off some of my geeky colleagues both online and in the real world and I see where the story goes. Once the draft is done, I read it over and start to pick it apart, looking for loose ends that don't match up with the outline. I start working on the second draft and I'm usually finding places where the plot needs work or where the dialogue could be better, so I work on fixing those areas. Eventually, after about three months, something resembling a finished second draft is complete.

What is the most interesting place you’ve ever visited?

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

What can we expect to see from you in the near future?

As mentioned, I have the young adult novel I am working on. I'm flushing out book three in the Valerie Stevens series and of course, I'm plotting an outline for a spinoff novel involving that grim reaper dude I'd mentioned.

You can find Sean online here:

Website http://sean-cummings.ca/

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/people/Sean-Cummings/1580080339

Here's some blurbs about Sean's books:

Shade Fright

Valerie Stevens Book #1

"I fell into this job quite by accident, when I discovered that I possessed the ability to see the preternatural world. There are a handful of people with similar abilities, and part of my job is to locate them, since Government Services and Infrastructure Canada likes to keep track of these things. Don't ask me why."


There's a malevolent force in town, and it's quite literally Valerie Stevens' job to determine who's behind it and why they want to destroy the world, starting with Calgary.


She'll have help, in the form of her best friend (now more or less a zombie, unfortunately), a powerful dwarf troll, and the ghost of former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (but he goes by 'Bill' these days). But that's not all - Valerie has some tricks up her sleeve and, she hopes, luck on her side. Oh, and her boyfriend, Dave. He drives a dump truck.

And coming soon:

Funeral Pallor

Valerie Stevens Book #2

There's a nest of rotting husks in an old Calgary warehouse and they've got a hankering for human flesh, but that's the least of Valerie Stevens' problems. While necromancers are a dime a dozen, these mindless killing machines all share one thing in common: they're former occupants of every funeral home in the city.

The evidence points to the zombie Caroline, especially now that she's been experiencing short term memory loss and an inability to account for her whereabouts. If Valerie plans to clear her best friend's name, she'll have to move fast: someone has dispatched a zombie assassin and Caroline's only hope may rest with a pair of middle-aged head-bangers with a few secrets of their own.

To enter for chance to win a copy of Shade Fright you must do some of the following:

Tweet with #Authorpalooza2010 hashtag and include link of this post.

Follow Sean on twitter @saskatoonauthor -Say hi to Sean and tell him V sent ya! ;-)

Those who don't have a twitter, facebook, myspace, etc accounts can just click to become one of my blog minions.

Sorry the only eligible blog minions that can enter this giveaway would be from Canada, U.S. and the U.K.  But worry not my blog minions as there are still plenty of other author's giveaways you can enter to win some awesome books or prizes.

Answer me this..

What would you do If you discovered you had usual talent/gift for communicating with ghosts and fighting off evil beings?