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Happy 2015!

Dayo Benson

2015For some reason I’m really excited about 2015. I’m not quite sure why. I just like 2015 and feel like it’s going to be a great year 🙂

I’ve been thinking about my resolutions and what I want to achieve this year, and as usual I have so many things. I’m pretty private about my goals. I know some authors will write about all their goals on their blogs, but just the thought of doing that gives me chills. I will share a few of my goals though. Not just writing related ones.

Prayer

Last year, I didn’t do so well. Because I’ve been going to church for as long as I can remember, and I made my personal decision for God when I was nineteen, a day doesn’t pass when I don’t pray in some form. But I also set time aside to have more focused prayer. Last year I had a rough time in the first quarter of the year, even ending up in hospital in March, and after that I got stuck in a rut where my praying was more daily adhoc prayers rather than dedicated time. I felt horrible about this when I was taking stock a few weeks ago. I have to get back on track this year because prayer really is my sustenance. Occasionally I would set a day apart and tell my husband I’m praying, but still, it wasn’t good enough. I think daily dedicated time is best for me.

God is so faithful. He still inspires me even when I haven’t been faithful to Him or given Him priority in my life.

Writing

I’m the kind of person who likes to set aside large chunks of time to write. On a Monday and a Tuesday I can write for about eight hours each day. On a Saturday I can probably snatch four hours to myself to write while my husband and my eldest daughter go for the evangelism programme at church (I stay home with our youngest). This year, I’m going to try to write for two hours every day. The reason for this is, if something comes up on one of my heavy writing days I lose all that time and my word count for the week suffers. Also, it’s hard to stay in the ‘flow’ if I’m having a writing binge at the beginning of the week, then not writing again until Saturday. If I just write two hours a day, there’s no need for a binge, and I figure I can write almost a full book each month if I stick to two hours a day. (Although I love my eight hour writing sessions).

So, there are two of my goals. I have more spiritual and writing goals, as well as marriage/family goals and workout/diet goals. I’m not trying to lose weight (I just want to make that clear in case my mum or dad read this, ha ha. Mum thinks I’m too skinny). I’m just trying to be healthy because I eat too much junk i.e. sweets. I’m trying to stick to water and healthy snacks this year. I’m trying to be a good example on this for my kids too. I can’t really tell Rhema off for always eating sweets if she knows I keep a stash of mentos, chewits, haribos and lollipops 🙂

I also have a big birthday coming up this month so I’m evaluating my life and where I’m at. A few months ago I was dreading this birthday, but I’ve come to terms with it now and I’m looking forward to it. Partly because the husband and I have some cool plans. I’ll try to get Insurrection (Crystal 3) published this month. I’ll do a cover reveal soon.

What are your goals for 2015?

Dayo xx

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Cover Reveal: Searchlight (Crystal 1)

Dayo Benson

searchlightSo, I finally have cover for Searchlight (Crystal 1). I didn’t want a bright cover because that could cause people to think they’re getting a light ‘easy’ read when the book is actually pretty dark in places.

Searchlight should be out over the next few days. If you’re on my email list you’ll get an email alert. If you’re not on my email list Click Here and sign up so that you’ll get the alert.

I’m sending book 2 in the series to my editor tomorrow. I finished my own ‘self-edit’ of it yesterday and I asked myself: if someone else wrote this, what would my verdict be? And guess what, I really couldn’t answer. If I hadn’t written it, I would have been scared reading it because there are some intense scenes and I’m a bit of a wimp (seriously I can’t even watch anything above a 12a). So, I honestly don’t know how I can write dark stuff.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself talking about book 2 when I haven’t even published book 1 yet. Book 1 will be out this week.

What do you think of the cover?

Blessings xx

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Announcing…Searchlight

Dayo Benson

SearchlightGuys,

I’ll come to what the picture to the left represents in a minute. First a quick update: I haven’t been blogging much because I’ve been doing so much writing. I’ve noticed that when I’m writing a lot, I blog less. I guess the writing fulfills my need for creativity and I have nothing left to put into a blog. I’ve hit a few 10,000 word days over the past two and a half months. My record is 11,352 words in a day 🙂 I’m so loving it.

Anyway, I finished 4 books, and I started the fifth book, then stopped and thought, ‘I need to publish the first four’. My husband was like ‘yes, stop writing and start editing the books you’ve written and get them out there.’ So that’s what I’m doing.

I was editing Pressure (Book 4 of Pure Passion Series), but I’ve put it aside. Something is just not going well between me and that book. The last book I was like this with was Blurred Vision (Drew Ashley 2). I’m just not feeling Pressure. I think it’s a good book, and the message behind it is strong, and the character arc (the transformation the main character goes through) is heavy. And the male lead is lovely. But, I’ve set it aside for when I have the mental strength to face it.

So, I started editing ‘Searchlight’ which is book 1 of Crystal’s books. The image above is the image I think my husband is going to use for the books cover–I absolutely love it because it really represents the book. Remember Crystal? Lexi’s daughter? She was a child in the Beauty for Ashes series, but she’s grown up now. I have written the first three books of her series, and I’m 18,000 words into book 4. I’ve decided to stop and get books 1 to 3 out. I finished editing book 1 on Saturday and I’ve sent it to an editor, so it should be out in November.

Let me just warn you. Crystal’s series is dark. Searchlight (Book 1) is dark-ish. Surrender (Book 2) is extremely dark. I haven’t read Surrender yet, so I might change my opinion when I do that. But writing it was hard, and slightly painful. But I didn’t hold back because there are people out there who go through worse things that what Crystal went through. Don’t worry, it’s not domestic abuse like what Lexi went through. It’s SOT- related.

When I finished writing the Beauty for Ashes series, I got a number of emails from people wanting to know more about the SOT. Crystal’s series is all about the SOT. If you remember her as a toddler in Red Carpet and Refiner’s Fire, she liked to sing. Well, now she’s 18 and she’s in a band, and the SOT want her. Book one of the series is about the SOT forcing her to join them. Book two is about her trying to get out of the SOT. Books 3 – 7 are about her, and a bunch of ex-SOT members that leave with her, trying to bring down the SOT. The series is cross-genre: YA, NA, action/adventure, romance, suspense. It will be a gritty read.

If you’ve read Bondage (Pure Passion Series, Book 2), I kind of wrote that in preparation for writing this series. I wanted to see how people would respond to the cult and the dark themes. Crystal’s series is a bit similar to Bondage.

Anyway, I’ll stop going on about it. Here’s the synopsis for Searchlight (unedited):

A heart-rending tragedy. A passionate love. A firm resolution.

Ambition
For as long as Crystal remembers, she has wanted to be a singer.
For as long as she remembers, her parents have feared the SOT, a celebrity cult that will make you famous, but destroy you in the process.
When Luke, leader of the SOT, sets his sights on Crystal will Crystal have the courage to stand her ground, or will she give in?

Destruction
After the SOT deal a deadly blow, Crystal has no choice but to obey their orders to sign up for Searchlight. Searchlight is the biggest talent show on TV. With the SOT’s backing, Crystal could win, but is she willing to pay the price? When she unexpectedly finds love, she is afraid to pursue it for fear that darkly handsome Juda could become an SOT target, too.
At Searchlight, her dreams and nightmares collide. According to Juda, it’s the darkest places that need light the most, but the SOT is much darker than Crystal imagined.

Heartbreak
Not everything is what it seems to be, and not everyone is who they say they are. Crystal is tough, but she’s only human. There’s only so much heartache and betrayal one girl can take.
Then she is tested, and she is forced to make a choice.
It’s a choice between light and darkness.
Good and evil.
Faith and despair.
But choosing God, might mean choosing death.

The SOT is back, and this time they mean business! Lexi escaped. Will her daughter, Crystal?

***Fans of the popular Beauty for Ashes Series, by the same author, will love this new novel, which focuses on supermodel, Lexi Washington’s daughter.***

You will be shocked. You will be drawn in. You will be entertained. The only thing you won’t be is bored.

Let me know what you think guys. I get told that my book descriptions are boring, so we tried to switch things up a bit for this one. Tried to make it sound more like a movie trailer, lol. Does it work?

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New Book – Purity – Available Now

Dayo Benson

ImageWell, I was considering holding Purity book back until the next book in the Pure Passion Series is ready, so that I can publish them both at the same time. But Purity was just sitting there on my computer, ready, doing nothing, and I felt kinda sorry for it. So it’s out. Check it out on Amazon UK, Amazon US & Smashwords. It’ll be on Kobo soon. They take a bit longer to process things.

Anyway, guys I need a favour. I’m trying to get Lust to be free on Amazon. Which is impossible, unless it’s free elsewhere and then Amazon might decide to price match. So here’s where you come in. If you would kindly Click Here and go on the Amazon page for Lust, and click ‘Tell us about a lower price’ which is about halfway down the page. You want to select ‘website (online), paste the following url into the ‘url’ field:

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/lust-pure-passion-series-a-christian-novel

And report the price as 0.00.

I would be very grateful if you could do that. In fact, email me or leave a comment below to let me know. As anyone who has followed my blog for a while knows, I’m pretty openhanded with my books so you can have a free book in return.

Blessings xx

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What l learned from reading a book that I hate!!!

Dayo Benson

ImageGod has numerous ways of helping us learn certain lessons. Around this time last year I downloaded a book to my Kindle that I’d been eyeing for a while. For me, each Kindle purchase is a struggle because I already have hundreds of books on my Kindle that I haven’t read. But this book looked really good and it had all these five star reviews.

Anyway, the book started off really slowly and was just all over the place but I thought ‘let’s give it a chance to get good.’ I thought I just needed some patience, but what I really needed was to just throw the book away because it got so bad I wish I could just delete it from my memory! Seriously it was that bad. The main character cheats on her husband, which I saw coming, but it was so ridiculous. They could have worked their problems out but it’s like the author had decided that she needed to cheat. The author tried to make the couple’s situation seem desperate but it just didn’t work. There was nothing desperate about their situation. The husband was unreasonable but so was the wife. And the description of the man that the wife cheated with was supposed to be oh so sexy but it was so ridiculous that I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or grab a pen and scribble the words out. But I was reading on Kindle so I couldn’t scribble them out. I had to accept them and move on.

I don’t want to give too much away because I don’t want anyone to ever guess which book I’m talking about as I hate to slam a fellow author’s book. Especially a Christian book. But something terrible happens to the husband and we’re supposed to still hate him anyway because he’d been seeing a white woman. Like the fact that she was white was the unpardonable sin. Seriously, I just felt sorry for the man.

The book was just a horrid mess and had a horrid message. A year later I’m still thinking about what a horrendous experience it was to read such a horrendous mess. And guess what, God taught me so much. I used to get all sensitive about people not loving my books and giving them negative reviews, but after reading a book that angered me I understand. Seriously, if someone hates any of my books, I understand. And I now accept the negative feedback. If one of my books hurts someone the way this awful book hurt me, then the reader is sooooo entitled to their feelings and yes, rant, let it out, I understand how you feel. I’m sorry you had to endure my book if it made you feel the way this book made me feel. That’s why there are millions of writers out there. God has given so many people the ability to write so that everybody will be able to find a book that they enjoy.

I was convinced that all the five star reviews for this awful book were fake, but I felt God telling me off about that. Just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who loved it.

I’ve never disliked a book so much that I wanted to delete it from my memory, lol. I’m so glad this happened to me. It made me put myself in the shoes of my readers. And it made me mature as a writer.