Josh of the Damned Virtual Blog Tour—Andrea Speed

 Fanfiction gets disparaged a lot, and you can’t say there isn’t a good reason for it, as quite a bit of it is bloody awful. But please note I said quite a bit and not all. Because I honestly think fan fiction has a place, even for the published writer.

For one thing, it’s really good for getting out of your own head. Fanfic can be kind of Zen. There’s no world to create - someone’s done that for you. You don’t even have to create original characters if you don’t want to. When you’re stuck with an original story, you can go write fanfic and come back to your original story refreshed and hopefully ready to tackle your problem. It’s such a different beast. It’s like coming in as a journeyman and writing a script for an established show, as opposed to creating your own script from the ground up.

For me, fan fiction was my first exposure to showing my writing to a crowd. I suppose if the reception had been negative it would have been a big setback for me But I got positive feedback, and this led me to posting my writing online. Not just fanfic, but “regular” writing, and I must admit that an online audience is probably responsible for me having a writing career at all. An audience can be brutal or it can be helpful - or both - but the feedback is almost immediate, and there’s something addictive about having that kind of instant feedback. Although, to be fair, it’s not for everyone, and the built in anonymity of the internet can encourage people to be asshats on an epic scale.

While fanfic was fun to write, and easy, it got to the point where I started to like writing for my original characters more than the others, and it was then that I gave it up. But I made great friends during the process, and my associations with it have all been positive. (And I created some original characters I just love and would like to transition to regular fiction. Haven’t yet, but I still have time.) It’s easy to paint fanfic as something negative, but if you look at it as a writing exercise, there’s much you can learn from it.

Here's the blurb from Pretty Monsters:

Josh knew the night shift at the Quik-Mart would be full of freaks and geeks—and that was before the hell portal opened in the parking lot. Still, he likes to think he can roll with things. Sure, the zombies make a mess sometimes, but at least they never reach for anything more threatening than frozen burritos.

Besides, it’s not all lizard-monsters and the walking dead. There’s also the mysterious hottie with the sly red lips and a taste for sweets.

Josh has had the hots for Hot Guy since the moment he laid eyes on him, and it seems Hot Guy might be sweet on Josh too. Now if only Josh could figure out whether that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or something in between. After all, with a hell vortex just a stone’s throw away, Josh has learned to take nothing at face value—even if it’s a very, very pretty face.

This title is #1 of the Josh of the Damned series.

To read an excerpt and purchase Pretty Monsters, please click here.

Here's the blurb from Peek-A-Boo:

As night-shift clerk at the go-to Quik-Mart for monsters with the munchies, Josh Caplan believes he’s seen it all. Battling lizard men, werewolves chasing cars in the parking lot . . . nothing fazes Josh anymore.

Or so he thinks, at least, until a yeti with poor communication skills drops a dead skunk on the checkout counter. Josh can’t figure what a living, breathing shag carpet wants with him, or why it won’t leave him alone no matter how hard he ignores it. But hey, at least it seems harmless . . . if perhaps a little slow on the draw.

But Sasquatch is plenty fast when two of Josh’s human customers try to out-monster the monsters. Times are strange when creatures from the hell portal save the day, but in the protective hands of a lovesick yeti and a sexy vampire boyfriend, Josh realizes that maybe his new normal isn’t so bad after all.

To read an excerpt and purchase Peek-A-Boo, please click here.

If you're following Andrea's tour and looking for the question for the Grand Prize (drawn at the end of the tour) here you go:

What two things does the yeti try to give Josh? Simple, but you'll have to read the story.

Grand Prize- Infected series ebook collection.

Email address: aspeed2@gmail.com

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