GUEST POST BY E M RAGLAND AUTHOR OF THE BOUND TRILOGY

Hello, Thank you for inviting me to answer a few questions about being an author.  First I'd like to introduce myself.  My name is Eve Ragland.  E.M. Ragland my pen name. I am the author of a new young adult series entitled The Bound Trilogy.  The first installment of the series, Yoke, was released in June of 2011.  You can check out my website and book trailer when you have time. www.emragland.com.  I've always loved reading and writing and briefly considered a writing career when I was in college.  Unfortunately at the time, I was more practical and less adventurous in my real life than I was in my imagination, and I decided to focus my attention on a more lucrative profession.  However, I found myself a decade later and in my mid-thirties in a much different place in my head and soul.  My practical, responsible persona had run its course and my imagination and desire to create new worlds was taking over. Within a matter of two months of making my decision to write a book which developed into a series, my life very organically spun in a dramatically different direction.  My schedule was insane when I began the series. I maintained a demanding full time job in the financial world and my role as mother to my six year old little girl by day.  By night I was a different animal all together.  As soon as my daughter's head hit the pillow, I began writing until two sometimes three in the morning.  And when I did go to sleep, I dreamed of my characters.  My friends and family worried about my health because of the hours I was keeping but I had more energy than I'd had in years. Sure, I looked like a raving lunatic, but I didn't care. I sometimes wore the same clothes to work two days in a row because I had written straight through the night and I didn't stop to change clothes.  It took nine months for me to complete my first book.  I was fortunate enough to find an agent with the Harvey Klinger Agency.  She loved my story but told me it was unsellable because I had written too much.  It was too long for a young adult debut author and that I had to find a way to cut the first book down by nearly a third.  I was devastated for about two days, then shook it off and began my edits.  Two months later I had cut my story from 150,000 words to 100,000 words.  After a year of trying to find a home for my series, we couldn't sell it.  No one wanted an angel series because angel series were a thing of the past.  Everyone wanted dystopian fiction.  We had a few very close considerations but in the end, my subject matter was not what the publishing houses wanted.  I didn't care.  I published it myself.  I found a graphic artist and he created exactly the cover I wanted.  We loved working together so much we decided to make a trailer together.  And now here I am.  Almost three years to the day that I wrote the first words of my series.  I am half way done with book two and hope to get that one out in the summer of  2012.    A little more information about me and the series: The Bound Trilogy is a unique, paranormal series that blends young adult urban fantasy with the timeless intrigue surrounding the two most controversial books in the Bible.  The series is a tale of spiritual mystery and light, human love and sacrifice, and ultimately, the supreme glory of the human heart. How I set out to achieve the above storyline was an exciting and educational experience.  I began with a a few key stories from the Book of Genesis and Revelations.  Then I combined the common knowledge of these stories with alternate versions found in an ancient, now banned, biblical text, the Book of Enoch, previously considered one of the most important books of the Bible. The alternate versions of the these biblical stories aligned themselves perfectly for a present day urban fantasy certain to contort the minds of readers of all ages. I laced it up with teenage interests such as love, music, friendship, and independence; then I tweaked it all a bit more to add my own twist, shifting gender roles, adding motives, a few fantastical characters and a divine blue print, and ended up with a storyline unlike any on the market.  Once all of the above was worked out and the book was ready for publication, I sought an independent production company that was willing to work with me and my limited budget to produce a book trailer.  Through luck or the miraculous efforts of positive energy, I stumbled across Solarium Productions, LLC.  These guys were young, hungry and talented.  In a nutshell, they were exactly the type of people I wanted by my side as I entered the turbulent publishing world.  When I approached the green team at Solarium Productions, LLC, I wasn't sure what I wanted in terms of the trailer.  Fortunately for me, Solarium Productions, LLC  was not only up for the challenge, they agreed to work with me and my limited budget as a point of principle. We worked together diligently for five months to conceptualize and produce an independent, artistic book trailer worthy of my story with very limited funding; a trailer that on its own is a piece of art. Why proceed with a book trailer when the market analysts are still debating the influence of the book trailer on the overall success of a novel? I'll tell you why. The market research is not giving us the complete story.  Movie trailers have proven to be extremely successful in selling movies, so why wouldn't book trailers provide the same results? That's an easy one.  The book trailers being pumped into the marketplace are often bland, cold, and unartistic photo slide-shows that provide little if any merit to the books they are promoting.  It isn't that trailers aren't the appropriate marketing piece, it's the quality of the trailers that are killing them. As an avid reader and a lover of film, and (I am embarrassed to admit) with the internet functioning as practically my best friend, I know what readers want and I know where readers go for their information.  I AM my target audience and I have scores of real life friends and virtual friends who will back me up.  A dynamic book trailer strategically marketed is exactly what every unknown author needs to entice readers to purchase their books.  In fact, it's the only way, other than word of mouth, most people would be willing to give an unknown author a try.  Now that Yoke, the first installment of the series is available for purchase on Amazon, and the first trailer is finished, we intend to market the trailer and the series via as many channels as we can. New voices need more than a platform to produce our work.  We need a dynamic means to promote these works.  I encourage all authors to unite with independent film artists and musicians and artists of every background.  This is exactly what was missing in the previous publishing regime which became more about business than art.  This is what the publising revolution is about, artists supporting each other, promoting each other, and using their innate talents to create beautiful, original works to make the world a more interesting place!  Join the revolution with us!  For more information about the series and the idea that "kickstarted" the concept, please visit my website @ www.emragland.com.  For more information about the production studio, please visit www.solariumproductions.com.