Somewhere Over the Sunnovels

"This book is lovely..."

The latest review of Somewhere Over the Sun on Amazon.

It is one of those rare gems that can be read and adored by literature lovers and casual readers alike. It makes you smile and reminds you why you loved reading books in the first place. Within its pages is a genuine and moving portrayal of the human experience that lets you learn to love its characters and reminds you to never take the many wonderful characters and little moments of perfection you find in your own life for granted.

Most definitely a text I will revisit and one I will be sure to share with anyone who will let me.

∞06:02 pm, by somewhereoverthesunnovel ∩7

So You Want to be a Novelist?

Want to be a novelist? Follow these easy steps:

1) Put the human experience down on paper in a fresh, engaging, entertaining narrative.
2) Announce to the world that you exist and have put into words an entertaining and fresh and engaging narrative tale that speaks about the human experience.
3) Ensure as many literate people know about your existence and the existence of your novel as possible.
3a) Ownership of a major media outlet or solid, interpersonal connections with people with over 100,000 twitter followers would be helpful.
4) Take in varied, often copious amounts of human interaction, coffee, and alcohol.
5) Alternate between being completely certain of your future success and completely certain that your genius will only be recognized after you:
   a) Fake your death, causing the first 83,000 words worth of your soul that you    packaged into a 200-page book to climb up higher and higher on the best-seller charts.
   b) After a couple of months, when sales have begun to stabilize, announce to the world that you are still alive and well, causing outrage, which in turn will lead to a bump in sales for both the old novel and the new, more refined and more mature novelization of everything that went through your head for those fake-dead months and that you are now releasing to take advantage of all this publicity.
   c) Repeat.
6) If any of this fails, develop an addiction (see step 4 for ideas).
7) Compose a list telling other people how to become novelists.
8) Include a step in aforementioned list so that people understand it was written under the influence of sarcasm (which immediately cheapens the entire list, since you’re not bold or trusting enough to take the risk of letting readers interpret your list as sarcasm without throwing out an overly verbose wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
9) Dance.

∞06:28 pm, by somewhereoverthesunnovel ∩30

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Letter to a Young Novelist (Reprise)

You don’t learn love from listening to people who have loved telling you what to do and not do. You lay in bed with a person and do or not do things. You spend time in the nooks and crannies of who they are. One person at a time you decide what you love in people.

You don’t learn to write from the didactic (if well meaning) advice of teachers. If you want words to grab a hold of you and shape themselves through the tips of your fingers, take a book and treat it like a person.

If what’s on the surface intrigues you, dive into the rest. It is, after all, what you do with people.Take it to coffee shops and restaurants and the beach, talk to it during commercials, be seen in public with it and then take it to bed. And there, notice what you love and what you don’t about its story.

Be a whore. Take them all to bed. Even if you never learn to write, at least you’ll have spent your time in the company of some lovely books.

∞10:08 pm, by somewhereoverthesunnovel ∩87

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Latest Amazon Review of Somewhere Over the Sun

I’d like to start with one fact: I don’t read. It makes me sleepy. With that said, you can safely assume that my frame of reference for judging a book is very narrow, but don’t allow that fact make you dismiss my review immediately. There’s a reason it’s mentioned.

This book is an adventure through the life of someone who, by the end of the book, you feel like you have their number saved in your phone. The relationships between each character are so eloquently described, you can swear you’ve seen these characters interact at a coffee shop or some arbitrary place that you’ve nestled yourself before to people watch. The fiction isn’t over the top, but at a point where with just enough wishing on your part, you think could totally be possible. The feeling you get after you’ve read this book (which I don’t know if it’s a feeling you get with any book) is a drive to seek out another person who has had the same journey as you, just to talk about it, just to try to re-live the experience again, because reading it a fourth time isn’t cutting it anymore.

Experience it for yourself. Buy the book for someone who says “Oh, I don’t read.” Make them read the first chapter (because like myself, it may unfortunately take a while for them to even open the book). They’ll do the rest of the work. They may not turn into an avid reader, but their life will be just a little better after reading Somewhere Over the Sun.

∞05:01 pm, by somewhereoverthesunnovel ∩7

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The Novel in Everyone

I came up with a new game today. It’s one of my favorite types of games; the sit at a bar and imaginatively judge people kind of game.

You know how (the proverbial) they say that absolutely everyone’s got at least one book in them? Well, next time you’re out in public people-watch and try to figure out what kind of book people around you would write. That bartender with the impossibly meticulous facial hair, the popped collar and the very impressive skill of making an avocado martini taste like an orange muffin; there’s something about him that just screams detective novel to me.

Most people in bars look like they’d write memoirs. Excusably self-indulgent works, since most lives are self-indulgent and you should write what you know. Or romantic comedies. A lot of people would write romantic comedies. They do already, I guess.

Incredibly smooth segue into…

My writing contest is over tonight! Let out a little bit of the novel inside of you and you could win a free copy of my book, Somewhere Over the Sun. The contest closes at 2/19 11:59 p.m, Central Standard Time (check what that means for you). The guidelines are simple:

The Guidelines

If you had the ability to turn fiction into reality, written words into truth, what story would you write? As per the limitations that my protagonist Alan lives through, assume that you cannot summon gold, or cure diseases or reveal any kind of deity. Entries should be between 200-1,000 words (I won’t strictly adhere to either limit) and can be the story itself or just the idea behind a story. I will pick the winner based on style, content, originality and that ever-subjective quality of likability. With his/her permission, I will post it on this site. All stories should be emailed to adi.alsaid@gmail.com. This contest is open to absolutely everyone on the planet.

∞12:00 pm, by somewhereoverthesunnovel ∩3

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Author Interview with Girls Just Reading

After yesterday’s review, Alice from Girls Just Reading picks my brain a little bit. Click through for full interview.

GJR: You have an amazing gift of giving life to inanimate objects. Is it harder to write personality into people or things (like trees and mattresses)?

AA: Why, thank you! I love personification. I think if you can see what’s hopelessly human in something that is hopelessly not, the absolute humanity in everyone becomes apparent. If a no-smoking sign at a pub can feel longing and loneliness, how can you justify not seeing that humans all around you do as well—even the most incomprehensible of strangers, or the friends whose inner worlds we forget. I think giving objects human characteristics makes it harder to deny that we see those traits in ourselves. You can ignore a fictional character’s greed because, even if he’s imagined, he’s just one person, and that trait is specific to him, just like you ignore real people’s deeds and misdeeds, even if they seem slightly familiar, by saying to yourself that you are not that person. But when a tree feels jealousy, or an electrical socket can feel absolute joy when connecting with something which is its exact opposite, it makes it easier to see in ourselves all that which makes us human.

∞02:02 pm, by somewhereoverthesunnovel ∩6

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I'm an obsessive writer and I dream to books published as soon as I'm out of college. If you don't live near Cali, New york etc., then how would you get your book noticed ?

Hi there, dear reader (by the way, as much as I love names, their consonants, vowels, nuances and how different they are from each other even when they’re exactly alike, I love addressing you as my dear reader).

I apologize for how long it took me to respond to your question. I like being accessible to my readers, especially fellow obsessive writers, so please don’t let my lack of timeliness keep you from asking other questions.

Now to actually answer your question. There’s absolutely no need to live near the Publishing Mecca that is New York, or even near any independent publishing house or literary agency anywhere in the country or the world. Everything is achievable electronically. As long as you have easy access to a computer and the internet, you can do all you need to do to get noticed.

You can query agents, promote yourself with a website, Twitter and Facebook profiles, even communicate with self-publishers to get your first project done and build a name for yourself, all from as remote a location as Mexico City.

Having the means to travel is probably helpful. If you’re lucky enough to draw the interest of an agent, you might want to meet face to face to make sure the match is right. And signing contracts, although it can be done electronically, is something that might call for a trip to New York or wherever the literary agency or publishing house is.

Aside from that, our profession is a rootless one. We can live anywhere we like. So continue to dream about publishing books, dear reader. Distance is nothing these days.

∞12:51 am, question from Anonymous, answered by somewhereoverthesunnovel ∩9

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Shameless and Necessary Self-Promotion

Praise for Somewhere Over the Sun

“…By page 5, I was hooked. By Chapter 3, I was in love. By the end, I had decided to recommend the book to every reader I knew.” -Stephanie Seifert, freelance editor

“…manages to create happiness in the smallest moments, visionary imagination in the ordinary, and beauty where you didn’t think it could be. It is whimsical and uplifting: the best kind of story about life, death, and love. I found myself constantly smiling and repeatedly falling in love the English language…” -Dawn Ryan, marketing assistant Aladdin & Simon Pulse, Simon & Schuster

“…you’ll enjoy seeing the world through the eyes of the different characters, and holding on to that new sight as a precious, inspirational relic. And the sex scene is hands-down the best I have read, ever.” -Katie Campbell

“…it’s the kind of book that makes you stop and imagine what it’s like to be the rose that it encourages you to stop and smell. we could all do with at least a taste of the sort of out-of-the-box thinking that hugs these pages.” -Mike Ndosi

“…There were certain sentences and passages that I read over and over again simply because they put a smile on my face. It’s extremely well written and deserves a spot in everyone’s book collection.” -Alex Fairchild

“…an amazing combination of family, friendship, love, romance, and life. The author does an amazing job at talking to the reader and pulling the reader into the story line. I honestly felt like I was standing next to the character the entire time, like an invisible friend, that at times became visible. This book is a must read…” -Maggie Vazquez

“…beautiful and captivating…a must read, not only for the story, but for the elegant and renewed level of writing that this generation needs to remember still exists.” –Loryn Barclay, book blogger

Just received the figures for December’s sales, and though patience is important right now, I’m not thrilled with the numbers for those first two weeks of the novel’s availability. I need to wait for word-of-mouth to build, particularly after the book reviewers to whom I sent copies get the chance to read and post their thoughts.

Until then, if you’re intrigued by what people are saying about the novel, you can buy the book, too! You can also explore my site to see excerpts from the novel as well as other samples of my writing which I hope you’ll enjoy enough to want to read my novel.

As always, I’m more than open to comments/questions/recipes either through Tumblr’s messaging service or via email at adi.alsaid@gmail.com

∞02:53 pm, by somewhereoverthesunnovel ∩4

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