Pump Up Your Book Virtual Book Tour: No Story to Tell by KJ Steele (Guest Post)

Today I'd like to welcome new author KJ Steele to Reading Between the Wines who is on tour with her debut book, No Story to Tell. Make sure to check back Sunday when I will post my review for this gripping tale!

Vicarious Living as a Career

I do not journal. A pursuit, I am led to believe by some, that is almost synonymous with being a writer. I had a writer friend once, who was so distraught about my lack of journaling, that she promptly went out and bought me my very own journal, as if that would somehow rectify the problem. Writer’s write, they say. Which is true enough, of course, but we do not all necessarily write in journals.

To be fair, I must admit, I did attempt to fill that gift-book of accusingly empty pages. I even had a good run at it, diligently filling several. ‘Ah,’ I’d thought, so this is how it is to journal. Not so hard. Just a random run through the mind and an effortless setting down of thoughts. Easy. Until I glanced back over my words and read what had crawled onto my page. A few quick rips, the flick of a Bic, and my journal became empty once again. And stayed that way. 

Writing is a courageous act. An author allows their innermost self to blister and fester and swoon across the page. You display yourself in a glass jar, out on the shelf for others to peer into, and judge or mis-judge, at leisure. And, you do not have the luxury of ripping out the un-pretty glimpses you would rather keep hidden.

Writing, at least for me, is bound by a certain contract. I do not so much think up what I will write, as I listen for the words that want to be written. Sometimes, the words are pleasant and playful. But, more often, they are direct and insightful. Sometimes, they dig a little deeper than I have been happy to follow. But, like I mentioned, for me, writing is a contract. I am committed to writing down whatever comes forward. Whether I want to own it or not. We all have our secret selves that act out discreetly inside our minds. A writer takes that self and exposes it straight across the page.

Which is not to suggest that all writing is a direct reflection of its author. Part of the fun of writing creatively is having the chance to play ‘dress-up’ with various characters. I don’t necessarily want to be a swamp-mouthed, whiskey-drinking ex-nun living in an abandoned rail-road car in upstate New York–but it really is interesting, and often surprising–to try that character on and roam around inside that sort of life for a while. Vicarious living as a career, I suppose you could say.

And that is where writing really opens doors for an author. There is no place that can hold us or restrict us. With the pen as our steed and our imaginations as our wings, the author becomes a Pegasus of freedom. As long as we are willing to be swept away into worlds never visited–and courageous enough to share with our readers what we find there–there is simply no place we cannot go, no character we cannot be, and no life we cannot live. And there is a great expansiveness in that.




No Story to Tell
by KJ Steele 
ebook, 388 pages
Published October 4th 2011 by The Fiction Studio
ISBN 1936558211 

Have you ever wondered if you can be born into the wrong life?This is a question Victoria Lackey, a once promising dancer, tries hard not to ask herself as she wanders through her days, tending her secrets and burying her past.It is a question that begins to whisper to her after a chance meeting with Elliot, a sensual artist from the city, who recognizes the dancer’s spirit within her.A question that presses for an answer after softly seductive anonymous telephone calls encourage her forward into a life of her own.A question that demands an answer when the woman she is explodes inside the woman she has become.Buried dreams, anonymous telephone calls, and a heart full of secrets. NO STORY TO TELL is a story that demanded to be told.

You can find out more about KJ and her books at KJSteele.com