Guest Post with author Chris Reynolds

There’s a magical thing that happens when you read a novel as a child. You have an amazing adventure with a whole set of characters, then you get to the end, you turn the last page and... they are gone. It’s that same feeling of moving to a new house and a new school and leaving all your old friends behind. It’s sad and you wish it would be different.

So I would pretend the adventure wasn’t over, that the characters could live on in my imagination and I would make up a new story for them. Every night, before I went to sleep, I would play the best bits of that new story to myself in my head.

I would make up stories for the television shows I used to watch, too. But it was different for TV; I didn’t miss the characters at the end of the episode, because they would be back next week, but I did get frustrated by what they did. The classic example is of the character who walks down into the dark cellar on her own when there is a murderer around — how stupid is that? So I made up a story where she bolted the cellar door shut and called the police instead. Or there would be an episode where the main character was shot and nearly died, then next week he would be walking around as if nothing happened — shouldn’t he be taking it a bit easy? Well, in the episode I wrote in my head, he was wincing every time he walked up the stairs and being more careful every time he met someone with a gun.

I imagined some brilliant stories, but they were only in my imagination. The time to write my stories down was when I was at school. Sometimes, instead of the usual assignment of writing an account of “what I did at the weekend”, we were allowed to write a story. I would launch into a big adventure with a boy in a spaceship who travelled to another planet where he met a giant talking rabbit who helped him escape from the lizard people and— “finish the last sentence you’re on,” the teacher would say, “and put down your pencils.”

What? Now? But my story’s only half way through!

I found this really frustrating and it would happen to me over and over again. I tried making my stories shorter, but my imagination simply wouldn’t allow it. So I never finished one of my stories.

Then I had an idea! Why did I have to wait for permission to write a story? Why didn’t I just write it at home?

I loved it. My stories could be as long and elaborate as I wanted and, if I didn’t finish them by bed time, I could continue them the next day.

By the age of 12, I had written my first novel and the thrill of finishing it was amazing. So I kept doing it, and the more I wrote the better I got. All thanks to brilliant books, terrible TV shows and frustrating English lessons.

Chris will be awarding a $10 Amazon GC to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour. One randomly drawn host will win a $10 Amazon GC.  The more blogs in the tour you visit, the more chances you have to win. The tour dates can be found here: http://www.goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2012/05/virtual-book-tour-mind-secrets-by-chris.html

About the Author:

Chris Reynolds is a lover of adventure stories. Chris spent her time growing up avidly reading them, watching them on TV and writing them in her school exercise books. She was often frustrated that stories written by other people didn’t go the way she wanted them to, so she decided to write her own. In the interim, she has worked for the BBC and independent radio as a journalist, written for magazines and some published non-fiction books. Now her stories are available for all to read, following the release of her acclaimed debut novel “Mind Secrets”.

Chris lives among the Chiltern Hills, north of London.

http://www.chrisreynolds-writer.co.uk
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Twitter: ChrisReynolds_1