Funeral With a View: Schedule

~ Schedule ~

Funeral with a View by Matt Schiariti:

• October 27th – Laurie @ Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews
  Book Tour Post with Tens List

• October 28th – Lindy @ Author Lindy Zart (Guest Post)
• October 28th – John @ Illuminite Caliginosus(Guest Post, Review)
• October 29th – CCAM @ Mythical Books(Spotlight)
• October 29th – Belinda @ Belinda Frisch, Author(Review)
• October 30th – Tamara @ The Avid Book Collector (Spotlight)
• October 31st – Nely @ Author Nely Cab (Guest Post)
• October 31st – Sarit @ Coffee, Books & Art(Spotlight)
• November 3rd – Jaidis @ Juniper Grove(Interview)
• November 3rd – Denise @ Rantings of a Closet Vamp Princess (Spotlight)
• November 4th – Tabitha & Gia @ Amazeballs Book Addicts (Review)
• November 4th – Angela @ I Feel the Need, the Need to Read (Review)
• November 5th – Lisa @ Sweet Little Pretties(Review)
• November 6th – Pam @ The Book Lover’s Lounge (Interview, Review)
• November 7th – Hooligans @ Platypire Reviews(Reviews x3)
• November 7th – D’eBook @ D’eBook Sharing Book Reviews (Guest Post)

Funeral with a View blog tour signup is now live

This one will be short and sweet ... for a change. The blog tour for my latest novel Funeral with a View is scheduling now. Head on over to Juniper Grove Book solutions if you'd like to see more details and get in on the action. Enjoy the following linkification:

Click here for details!

An electronic copy of the book will be provided for review purposes to participating tour hosts. There will also be a tour-wide giveaway for the chance to win one of five kindle copies of Funeral with a View as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. And who doesn't like the chance to win stuff? Amiright or amiright?

So, have a blog? Know someone who does? Head on over to Juniper Grove and check it out! Here's a direct link to the sign-up, because I'm all about convenience!

See ya round the interwebz!

MJS

Funeral with a View is ALIVE!

It's been a long time coming, but my foray into the world of contemporary romance is live on Amazon. *waits for applause to die down* Thank you, thank you very much! In case you haven't seen it yet (shame on you), here's the blurb and the killer cover (complete with convenient buy link caption):

Thirty-two-year-old Richard Franchitti didn't believe in love at first sight until he met free-spirited Catherine and started a brand new life. A devoted father and husband, Richard fought to keep his family together when it would have been easier to walk away.

Tragedy left him with unfinished business.

Now a disembodied spirit, Richard relives his most important days. From the beginnings of unconditional love, to the joy of his daughter's birth, and all of the difficult times in between, each treasured moment brings him closer to answering the question:

"Why am I still here?"

He was born Richard Franchitti, but his friends call him Ricky. Welcome to his funeral.

 

Buy me! Love me!

 

 

 

Writing this book was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I'm happy and EXCITED that it's out in the world ... but writing and publishing are only the half of it. Now comes time to grease the wheels of The Great Promotion Machine. That means twittering tweets, fabulous facebook posts, buying ad time on local access cable TV, smoke signals, hiring one of those planes you see down the shore with the banners trailing behind them (Eat At Joe's! Buy Funeral with a View), you get the idea. I've booked a blog tour for October 27 - November 7, so this here blog is gonna get a whole lot busier in the next few weeks. Guests posts! Interviews! Giveaways! Contests! A three ring circus! Dog and cats sleeping together! Mass hysteria! It's my first blog tour and it's sure to be interesting. Keep checking this space for further developments. There should be a banner for the tour soon. I'll share it as soon as it's available.

Th-th-th-that's all for now, folks! To all of you who keep reading my sparse posts, thank you! To all of you who've bought Funeral and are reading it or plan to read it, thank you, too! To all future readers, thank you in advance! 

Until next time, see ya'll in the funny pages.

MJS

The Writer Who Cried, "Work In Progress!"

Hello to all you faithful followers. It's been a while since I've written anything on this here blog. There's a couple reasons for that. Actually, there are a great many reasons for that, but I can sum it up in a few simple words right from the get go: I've been really fucking busy. What have I been busy with? Read on, True Believer, and you shall have the answers you seek!

Before I get into the whys and wherefores of my absence, let me give you some good news. My work in progress, the novel I've been going on and on and on about over the past year or so, IS NEARLY COMPLETE! Yep, you read that correctly. Still, I'll say it again to bring home the point. FUNERAL WITH A VIEW IS NEARLY READY FOR PUBLISHING. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think? I sure think so. All the comments I'd gotten from the betas who'd read the first draft were taken to heart, and I busted my ass to incorporate them and make the book much better than it was. Once that was completed, I sent it out to betas once again and waited on pins and needles for further comments. Many cigarettes were smoked and much beer was consumed as I waited on the final judgement. Turns out that any worries I had were unfounded. Every one of the six ARC/beta readers loved the final product. Sure, there are a couple 'niggling bugaboos' (Patent Pending) left to be ironed out, but they're minor; change a line or two here, condense a couple chapters into one there ... you get the idea. The point is, all the work I put into the book has paid off major. For those of you who know me, you know I don't publish something just for shits and giggles. If I don't feel it's publishable, I ain't gonna publish it. Funeral With a View is publishable and then some. I'm extremely proud of how it turned out, and I have a good feeling that readers are going to dig this one. The Fake It Till Ya Make it contingent is strong in Indieland, but I don't adhere to that philosophy, so if I say I love the book, you know I mean it. And trust me, I DO love the book.

Now to the topic of why it's not only taken so long, but why I haven't been around much lately.

The working manuscript of what is now Funeral With a View was written in five weeks back in early 2012, and I didn't get back to the book until after I'd written and released Ghosts of Demons Past in June of 2013. Why did five weeks of writing turn into over a year of editing and rewrites? There were problems with that first version, but there were many outside influences. Here's a laundry list of some of the personal crap that I've experienced during that time:

• Hand surgery in late June, 2013 rendered it nearly impossible to type (although I did manage to turn in Chapter 7 for The Carnival 13 anthology during that time and ON TIME, something I'm still pretty proud about)
•  My son, Babyface Vinster, aka 'Boog Boog' Vinnie, was born in January of 2013, slaughtering all spare time and eliminating sleep for weeks.
• I was involved in not one, but TWO car accidents
• One of our pets died (RIP Charlie)
• I had pipes in the house burst not one, not two, but THREE times, the most recent of which was last week, and the one prior to that jacked up half my basement, not to mention these two incidents happened no more than a month apart
• My wife underwent not one, but TWO major surgeries in the past couple months

While most of the above has been somewhat spread out over the last year and a half or so, it's easy to say that the past eight or twelve weeks have sucked in epic fashion. As the song goes, it's a cruel, cruel, cruel summer, and I'm happy it's getting smaller in my rear view mirror. Tying this all into Funeral With a View, compartmentalizing has never been my strong suit, therefor there were periods when I couldn't pull my mind out of the quagmire of personal issues to work on the book. Remember, folks, I also have a nine to five that I go to Monday through Friday, and my moonlighting has to play second fiddle to begin with. It amazes me that I finished the book in the first place, and it's damn near miraculous that it turned out this well. As i said before, I love the damn thing and I ain't ashamed to say it either!

So, that's all I have for now. A few things are left to be done, but they're small. I'll be finishing ironing out those 'niggling bugaboos' (Patent Pending), doing a final read, then it's on to the front and back matter, and finally, formatting for kindle. Woot! Oh, before I forget. The book has a page on Goodreads! Click on the groovy cover below and add it to your To Be Read list! And there's also a couple of ARC reader reviews. Check them out! Yes, I know, I don't have a blurb yet. I'll be working on that in the next couple days, too. Silly me thought it would be a good idea to finish the book first before I beat my head against the wall trying to summarize about 100k words into a hundred ;) 

Aren't I pretty? Add me to your TBR list!

Take care and see ya 'round teh intarwebz!

M.

You say it's your birthday?

Hey, it's my birthday, too, yeah! That's right. On this day in history thirty-nine years ago, yours truly came kicking and screaming into the world. Mom and Dad (R.I.P.) have been shaking their heads ever since, as have my siblings who were witlessly under the impression the parental units were done having kids eight years prior to my arrival.

How am I spending my day? That's easy: I ain't doing jack squat. I took off from work, content to sit here and do a shitload of absolutely nothing. But I figured I'd use the time to type up a blog. Consider it PT for my gimpy pinky finger.

Undoubtedly you're all dying to know what goodies I've received on this day that shall live in infamy. Here's the list:

• Socks (which I desperately needed...don't ask)
• An Amazon gift card (ALWAYS WELCOMED!)
• A variety of comic book-themed T-shirts (can never have too many of those)
• A sports watch (picked out by my very own almost-eight-year-old-daughter...AWWWW)

And that's not even counting the little things. The wife treated me to a Schwartzie from Primo Hoagies . It was delish. (Note: If you haven't had a sub from Primo's and there's one close to you, I highly recommend you drop what you're doing and go get one right now. They'll ruin all other sammiches for you. Holding a busload of nuns hostage and demanding one of their delectable deli delights as ransom is a distinct possibility once you've experienced their splendor. You've been warned. (Also note: I do not suggest in any way, shape, or form, that you take anybody hostage for any reason, nuns or otherwise.)) Then there was Babyface Vinster, my sixteen-month-old who strutted to 'What Does the Fox Say'. I witnessed much twerking, grinning, and arm waving. Not one to be left out, The Boo (previous aforementioned almost-eight-year-old daughter) got in on the movin' and groovin', and managed not to trample her baby brother. Winning!

But wait! There's more! What's a birthday without well-wishing and good vibes from some of my bestest book buddies? Joooooood (that's Jude to you and me) has the spotlight trained on me and Ghosts of Demons Past over on her blog. In addition to that, my great friend and fantastic author pal, Belinda Frisch, went so far as to buy me advertising for GODP. How cool is that? It was as unexpected as it was touching. It's nice to know that someone believes in the book so much they'll go out of their way to help it be seen.  Thanks to you two, Angela Pratt, and Venture Cecena, who've been flooding twitter with pimpage and birthday wishes!

In other news:

My most recent foray into the world of short story anthologies is live, right in time for my birfday. Padwolf Publishing's latest collection, "Lucky 13: Thirteen Tales of Crime & Mayhem" is now available in paperback on Amazon. My story is entitled 'A Dollar and a $cream', and it's, like, groovy in a far out way. The e-book version will be available soon, and marks the first time anything I've written will be read by a professional. Yep. There's gonna be an audiobook version. Despite my lobbying, James Earl Jones was unavailable to commit to the gig, but it'll be awesome regardless.

As far as Funeral With a View goes, I cranked out over two thousand words yesterday, thus increasing the feelz factor by 26.7%. Don't delve into the math. It's a series of highly complex equations and algorithms that would explode your head like Michael Ironside in the movie 'Scanners' if you were to dwell on them for an extended period of time. Because I typed so much awesomeness yesterday, I do not feel the least bit bad about sitting on my buttocks all day doing next to nothing. Anyway, I'm so very close to completing the final draft of this book that has been following me around for the past few months. Is my summer release target feasible? You betcha.

And that's all there is for today, folks! As always, thanks for reading, and see ya 'round Teh Intarwebz.

M.J.S.

MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR

Big thanks to Belinda Frisch for approaching me to participate in this blog tour. She's a fantastic author and a great friend who has a proclivity for keeping my butt in check. 

Here's a little bit about her:

After fifteen years of working in healthcare, Belinda Frisch's stories can't help being medicine influenced. A writer of dark tales in the horror, mystery, and thriller genres, she is a storyteller at heart, and has been writing since her teens. Her fiction has appeared in Shroud Magazine, Dabblestone Horror, and Tales of Zombie War. She is an honorable mention winner in the Writer's Digest 76th Annual Writing Competition. Her novel, "Cure", is the runner-up in the General Fiction category of the 2012 Halloween Book Festival and was optioned for film. She is the author of "Better Left Buried", "Fatal Reaction", "Cure", and "Afterbirth", in addition to a number of short stories. She resides in upstate New York with her husband, son, and a small menagerie of beloved animals. 

As you can see, her work is as eclectic as it is prolific, ranging from zombies, to dark horror, to medical thriller, young adult, and now romance. Want to know more? Check out her blog, Facebook page, and follow her on twitter.

On with the tour!

MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR

1. What am I working on?

Back in early 2012, I got an idea for a story. The idea came about when I asked myself "What happens when a guy walks into his own funeral?" Five weeks and 130,000 words later the rough draft for what is now known as Funeral With a View was born. What type of novel is it? While it started as something completely different, FWAV ended up being a romance, of all things. Yes, a romance. Written by a guy who's published stories about mobile scrabble games gone horribly awry and an alcoholic ghost hunter who can not only see ghosts, but can talk to them, too. You heard it here first, folks. I don't have a blurb as of yet, and the cover isn't finalized (I've seen the preliminary and it looks great!), but Funeral With a View is a life story.  It covers dating, family, friends, life, death, marriage, tough decisions, betrayal, forgiveness, letting go, and all points in between. I'm looking to have it out this summer, and I can't wait for readers to get their hands on it. You know what? How about a peek at the rough cover? I'm hyped up on coffee, so I'm feeling  generous. Once again, this isn't the final, but you get the idea. I'll be posting the official blurb and cover when they're ready.

Come see the softer side of Matt Schiariti

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

The short answer is: it's different because I wrote it. Style, tone, dialogue, characterization, these are things everyone does a little differently. 

Now for the long answer.

When I was writing Ghosts of Demons Past, I didn't want the main character, Seth Gabriel, to be your typical paranormal 'hero'. He's not a gun-toting alpha male who always has the right answers. In fact, he's a bit of a screw up. I also wanted him to go through some growing pains. Seth isn't an established ghost hunter, and has only been in the business for about a year. He freely admits that he doesn't know what he's doing half the time.

Funeral With a View is an entirely different kind of flying. Altogether. First off, it's a romance written buy a guy, told through a male first person point of view. That's not exactly the norm for the genre.  Secondly, it's a bit of a personal story. Some events in the book are things I've lived through. It's not a memoir by any stretch of the imagination, but there are some experiences in there I didn't manufacture. As for what separates fact from fiction? I'm not telling. If a person held a gun to my head (please don't do that) and demanded I find other things to compare it to, I'd say it's part The Story of Us, part Defending Your Life, part Get Low. Take those and put my stamp on it and you have FWAV.

I like flawed, but not severely broken characters that readers can relate to. There's a little bit of me in each story, including a liberal dose of my odd sense of humor, which makes my work different.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I write whatever story interests me. The lion's share of my work to date falls under the paranormal or horror umbrella, but I'm not limited to that, as evidence by Funeral With a View. If I come up with a monster story that jazzes me (and I do have one), I'll write that. If a thriller idea tickles the back of my brain (got one of these, too!), I'll explore it. My ideas are all over the place. As long as the story is intriguing and features characters I can sink my teeth into, I'll write it regardless of what label ends up attached to it.

4. How does my writing process work.

So far, I'm a confirmed 'pantser'. Everything I've published was written by the seat of my pants without an outline. An idea comes to mind, I think about the plot for a while, then I start writing, keeping in mind where it's going and a few key scenes along the way. Before writing Funeral With a View, which is actually the first novel I'd ever typed up, I tried outlining, going so far as to Google how other writers do it. I came upon Jim Butcher's old LiveJournal page and read it dozens of times. When I tried it I fell flat on my face. I was getting too caught up in thinking every detail through, spinning my wheels and getting nothing done. Needless to say, that was abandoned in short order. Being a 'pantser' is fun and a pain in the ass. I like letting the story and characters take me in directions I didn't plan on, but it leads to a lot of editing and rewrites and consistency checks. I do keep notes in my Word file, adding stickies in the margins for notes, what needs to come next, where I'm thinking of going, etc., so I'm not completely flying without a net. FWAV has been a long, involved undertaking because it was written early in my writing 'career'. As such, it's gone through many changes and rewrites. It hasn't been easy, but it'll be well worth it once I'm done fixing it up. This experience has made me reconsider the advantages of outlining. In the future, as I get into multiple perspective third person point of view, I plan to at least have a rough sketch from which to work where I can fill out the details as I go. 

Who's Up Next?

I've picked two authors to join in on this blog tour. That's how I roll. They're both very different, both very good, and it should be interesting to see what they have to say.

They are fellow Jersey author, Dave Conifer, who writes in a variety of genres, from topical young and new adult to thrillers, and fellow metal-head and Carnival 13 contributor ,Armand Rosamilia, who has written everything from the zombie apocalypse to non-fiction about women in the world of heavy metal music. I kid you not. Armand used to live in Jersey but has since relocated to Florida. Lucky duck.

Here's a bit more about them:

Dave Conifer is a fitness fanatic living in South Jersey with his wife and three kids. When he's not coaching wrestling or soccer or working as a boy scout leader or girl scout leader, Dave likes to read non-fiction history. He also blogs about the 48 solar panels on his roof and how they generate nearly all the power needed by his family of five.
Dave loves to hear from his readers. He can be found at daveconiferfanpage on Facebook. Send an email to daveconifer@rocketmail.com to be added to the mailing list and find out when something new is coming, or just to say hi.

Or visit Dave's official web site to sign up for emailed updates about new releases.

Book three of the Cold Cases series is currently in the works!

daveconifer.weebly.com

Armand Rosamilia is a New Jersey boy currently living in sunny Florida, where he writes when he's not watching the Boston Red Sox and listening to Heavy Metal music... and because of him they won the 2013 World Series, so he's pretty good at watching!

He's written over 100 stories that are currently available, including a few different series:

"Dying Days" extreme zombie series
"Keyport Cthulhu" horror series
"Flagler Beach Fiction Series" contemporary fiction
"Metal Queens" non-fiction music series

he also loves to talk in third person... because he's really that cool. He's a proud Active member of HWA as well.

You can find him at http://armandrosamilia.com for not only his latest releases but interviews and guest posts with other authors he likes!

and e-mail him to talk about zombies, baseball and Metal:

armandrosamilia@gmail.com

Look for their contributions on Monday, May19!

 

I lied. Funeral With a View is NOT dead. Oh, the irony.

Afternoon, all. Been a while since I posted much of anything. Truth be told, I haven't had much to say. But don't mistake my silence for lack of activity. Oh no, no, no! There's been plenty of activity...off and on.

When last I wrote anything in my little corner of the blogosphere, I went on a long diatribe about my work in progress, Funeral With a View, going so far as to infer that I'd dragged it into the street and shot it like a lame horse, or was well on my way to doing so.

Time and some distance did a world of good for the book, my attitude toward it, and my feelings on writing as a whole. I started delving back into it in March, and as of right now, my rewrites have reached the last 15 to 20% of the novel. Most of the 'bugs' have been ironed out, and while the portion of the book I'm currently at gets a bit sticky, I know what I need to do and how to go about doing it. Now all that's left is the actual 'doing'. Duh, right?

"Time is a luxury you do not have, Admiral Kirk."

I know what ya mean, Kahn. Trust me, I do.

Life's been interesting these past couple months. Toddlers, and car accidents, and health issues, oh my! It hasn't been easy trying to juggle all that's going on while fixing FWAV, thus why it's taking so long to 'get 'er done'. Then of course there's working a 9 to 5, finding time to sleep and live life...you know, the small stuff. But I'll tell you this: when I complete this thing, not only will I be proud of it, I'll feel as if there's not much I can't do in the world of writing as long as I put my mind to it. So all the spare time I've sweated this thing, the hours of reading, rereading, rewriting, and rewriting again? It'll be time well spent.

So, when will it be out? Summer-ish, maybe sooner if I can swing it. I've said it before, I'll say it again: I won't publish it until I'm happy. One of the best things about this 'do it yourself' type of publishing is that there are no deadlines other than those I impose upon myself. Not always the best for cranking stories out at a rapid pace, but considering I'm my own worst critic, it gives me plenty of time to get things right.

Now that that's all been said, I can tell you Mr. Roy Mauritsen will soon be working on my cover. Very excited to see what he comes up with. As the man behind the covers for Ghosts of Demons Past and Words With Fiends, I'm confident that he'll knock Funeral With a View's cover out of the park. You'll all be the first ones to know when it's ready.

That's all I've got for today.

Until next time (and here's hoping it's not another four months between posts...hehe),

See ya 'round the interwebz.

M. J. S.