When Time Stands Still - Book Tour and Giveaway

When Time Stands Still
by Sara Furlong-Burr
Genre: Romance
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It’s been nearly a decade since Elle Sloan last saw Luke Hutchins. Close to ten years since she broke up with him over a single phone call, providing him with little explanation. Since the end of their relationship, Elle has done everything she could do to move on, marrying, proceeding forward with her life, almost allowing herself to completely forget about Luke.

Almost.

Out of nowhere, Elle receives a phone call from Luke’s mother. Luke has been in a horrific car accident and, a month later, has just awoken from a coma. However, instead of celebrating, his family is stunned to learn that Luke is suffering from amnesia and only remembers his life as it was before his breakup with Elle. Not wanting to tell Luke that he and Elle aren’t together anymore for fear it may compromise his recovery, Elle is asked by Luke’s family to come to the hospital to see him. Their hope is that she will slowly be able to jog his memory and cushion the blow. 

Guilt-ridden over how their relationship ended, Elle readily agrees, finding herself transported back in time with Luke to the life they once shared and the future they could have had together.


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​I heard voices even before I stepped inside of the room. They were soft, but one by one, I was able to discern who was speaking. The first voice struck me like a freight train, catapulting me further back in time with each word he spoke. The second one made my heart skip a beat.


As I walked farther into the room, I saw another vision of my past sitting next to the hospital bed. His attention, at first, was entirely focused on the occupant in the bed, until movement from me diverted his attention to me. He locked eyes with me, surprise on his face quickly turning to an odd combination of contradiction. Anger, excitement, and suspicion all appeared to be waging war and were enough to give me whiplash just looking at him. Peter Monroe—or just Monroe, as he preferred to be called—had been Luke’s best friend since pretty much the dawn of each other’s existence. He’d aged. His boyish good looks had hardened into a man who would have been difficult to recognize to me, save for the same square chin, overly large nose, and mischievous eyes I had remembered so fondly.


Another step inside the room revealed a sight I had fought valiantly to keep from infiltrating my dreams for the last several years. Like Monroe, he didn’t notice my arrival at first, and I was grateful for that because the shock I was feeling at that moment would have undoubtedly transferred onto him. His head was turned, his eyes, from what I could see of them, were closed. Most of his features were facing Monroe, but from what little I could make out of them, he looked exactly how I remembered him. The rest of his body, however, was a different story.

His hair had begun to grow back after having obviously been recently shaved to prep him for surgery. On the side of his head that was visible to me, a bandage was secured to his scalp just above his ear and was wrapped around his head. Both of his legs had been broken and were secured with immobilizers, resembling large boots. He’d been through hell and back physically, and I feared he’d soon go through the same emotionally, all because of me.

Tears fell down my face before I even had the chance to realize they had formed. Not wanting Luke to see me upset, I dabbed my eyes with my sleeve and did my best to maintain my composure before he realized I was there. With a lump in my throat, I took a step closer to the bed, approaching it on the opposite side of Monroe. There another chair sat, which I was grateful for in the event my legs felt like they were going to give out on me. Monroe sat watching me expectantly, silently screaming at me to announce my presence and put an end to the torment Luke must have been going through since regaining consciousness.

Closing my eyes, I took a breath and spoke. “Luke.”

Sara "Furlong" Burr was born and raised in Michigan and currently still lives there with her husband, two daughters, a high-strung Lab, and three judgmental cats. When she's not writing, Sara enjoys reading, camping, spending time with her family, and attempting to paint while consuming more amaretto sours than she cares to admit. She's also an advocate for melanoma awareness, having been diagnosed with stage 1b melanoma in 2017.


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​Overcoming Self-Doubt

"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong." ~Peter T. Mcintyre

"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."  ~William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1604

"Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room   for anything else."  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Self-doubt: the bane of any writer's existence.  It's the dark cloud looming on the horizon, threatening to rain down self-loathing, inferiority and regret.  In short, it's the one thing that can end a writer's career before it even has a chance to take flight.  With its uncanny knack for stifling one's creativity, self-doubt renders its sufferer an empty shell. 

I don't believe there has ever been an author who--at one point in time--has never suffered from a minuscule amount of self-doubt.  Recently, I've had my own bouts with this affliction and the symptomotology has been enough to render me virtually useless.  In going through my manuscript and some of my former blogs, I've noticed glaring typos and grammatical errors--I should, at times, be locked away for comma abuse--as well other cringe-inducing faux pas.   As my blogs are being shared and re-tweeted (of which I'm extremely appreciative of), I often find myself critiquing the hell out of what has been passed around and fear I may not be living up to the high standards I try to set for myself.  This stems partly from sheer fear; fear of being rejected by those in the community I'm striving to gain acceptance in.  The other part is being exposed to those who write so flawlessly and so seemingly effortlessly that I often wonder if they have the same fears and self-doubts that I do.  The answer to that is, I'm certain, a resounding YES. 

The question is how do you prevent it from consuming you and your writing?   I believe the answer to that is through lots of practice, support and self-motivation.  Now let's analyze some techniques, shall we?  (Too bad, we're going to anyway...)

Find a writing partner--
A writing partner or support group of fellow writers is invaluable to any word- crafter.  It's imperative to receive both good and bad feedback (constructive criticism) and to have mini cheerleaders, motivational speakers and drill sergeants by your side at a moment’s notice to both encourage your pursuits, celebrate your victories, tell you what works and what doesn't, and most importantly, to prevent the storm clouds from rolling in. Before I started involving myself in social networks, I had a small group comprised of family, friends and co-workers who would read my work and provide me with the encouragement I needed when I wanted to chuck my laptop across the room (because a bad writing day is all that blasted computer's fault, don't cha' know).  After I joined social networking sites for writers (or ones that just harbor a substantial writing community such as Twitter, Blogger, Absolute Write, Query Tracker, Tumblr, Facebook, Goodreads, etc.), I felt as though I'd arrived home.  These communities offer a seemingly unlimited amount of talented aspiring authors and published authors, alike willing to dispense a plethora of advice and support.  After all, we're all in the same boat so why not travel together?

Quit standing in your own way--
I know there are famous quotes out there that roughly state something about being your own worst enemy and creating the barriers that block your own path to success.  Well, they're all completely true. The human mind is a beautiful oddity with the ability to both propel a person into greatness or cast them aside in the gutter at the slightest twist in thought. However, it's when one allows those negative twists in thought to consume them that the problems really begin to erupt, and minor problems such as grammatical errors and the writer's own fickleness in wording forces them to question their abilities. It's one thing to be critical of your work with the intent to make it the best it can be, it's a completely different story to beat yourself up over a misplaced comma.  Have faith in yourself, your errors aren't as glaring as you believe them to be.  And when you feel like giving up, take a walk, watch a movie, or do the moonwalk to take your mind away from the negativity. You'll be pleasantly surprised by how much a break and a set of fresh eyes will vastly improve your disposition.

Not everything you write is going to be bestseller--
Wouldn't that be great, though?  You, sitting at home and typing away, knowing there are a whole slew of famished individuals out there ready to feed upon your every word.  Alas, for most of us it's time to wake up from this dream, for we know it takes work--lots and lots of agonizing, frustrating work--before we even see a tenth of that kind of success.  That is, if we ever see any success at all.  To be a writer, you must remove the stars from your eyes and humble yourself with the sobering truth that writing isn't going to make you rich and famous.  With that truth, thankfully, also comes the equally as truthful statement that that's pretty much the norm for most writers and it isn't because your work isn't up to snuff that you aren't a multi-millionaire.  Write because you love it; because it makes you happy.  Don't write because you believe it to be your meal ticket or that success equals validation of your abilities.

Comparing apples to elephants--
The worst thing you can do as a writer is to compare your work to that of others because, unless they're absolutely terrible or you have a slightly inflated ego, you're probably going to surmise their work as being on a level much higher than yours. I'm insanely guilty of this.  Whether it be friends, fellow bloggers, writers, or published novels, I'm constantly critiquing my work against that of others.  Where does this get me?  A night without a single word written, a woe-is-me state of mind and a chocolate massacre on my hands (and face, and probably somewhere in my hair, as well).  Your novel is yours and no one else's.  Your writing style is unique to you. How you write and what you write is a mark of your true identity, setting you apart from the rest of the pack.  To compare your work to the work of another is like trying to compare your DNA with theirs.  In the end, the strands will never match and to tinker with one to make it comport with the other will only result in a contrived, mutated product.  Different is good; variety is the spice of life; Pepsi is way better than Coke...oops wrong blog.  The point is, your style is unique, special, something to be proud of and chances are the person you're relentlessly comparing yourself to thinks the same way about their work when compared to yours.

You possess the same tools as the next person-
The beauty with fiction writing is there isn't a single person out there who is more qualified or who possesses a clear advantage over you (unless they're a celebrity, but that's a topic for another day).  We all come equipped with a brain comprised of creative, technical threads, enabling us to put sentences together to create characters and worlds beyond the scope of reality. Although some naturally have more than others, all of us come off the biologic assembly line with drive and determination ingrained deep within our souls. Our collective brains, drive and determination, though differentiated by thoughts, execution and persistence are the tools every writer needs to succeed.  It's how one chooses to use them and how one lets their self-doubt affect their potency that makes all the difference in the world. 

Great expectations--
If you're like me, you tend to set the bar at the peak of the mountain. Some days you're able to clear it so effortlessly you think your writing will ascend into orbit.  Other days, you're barely able to hurdle over a blade of grass and you feel your writing is on par with that of your toddler's (my daughter can blow me out to water most days with her creativity).  At the risk of ripping off Charles Dickens, setting great expectations for yourself is both healthy and necessary if you plan on succeeding at anything you set out to do in life. Yet those same expectations--if left to run rampant--can also be your undoing.  Don't make your great expectations impossible ones.  Instead of trying to clear hurdles in the sky, concentrate on those down here on Earth first.  Not to be cliché, but Rome wasn't built in a day.  Like your literary dreams, it takes time for empires to emerge. 

Creativity is key--
For a writer, creativity is second nature. Telling a writer to be creative is like telling a kid to play at Chuck-E-Cheese; it's just going to happen.  When you write and you get stuck on the way your dialogue, sentence structure, narrative, or overall thought process is panning out, don't think to yourself, well, I'm not going to be the next Sara Gruen, keep writing. Allow your creativity to flow until you've either worked out your problems or completely replaced them with new, even better ideas.  Perhaps open a different document to draft alternative scenarios or move on to a completely different chapter in your book and come back to the section that's plaguing you when you feel you're better able to tackle it.  After all, the world doesn't need another Sara Gruen, it needs to be introduced to you.

Be positive--
I know it's hard to do every day and I'm not saying that it's not healthy to have a good cry from time to time to clear your head.  It's just that, after you dry those tears and finally leave the pillow you were beating the hell out of alone, you need to move on.  Don't dwell on your problems and frustrations. Fix them.  Even the longest, darkest tunnel ends eventually, and so will the sudden resurgence of negativity encapsulating you.  This is where the writing group mentioned earlier comes particularly in handy. If you're stuck on a plot point or a grammatical dilemma, they may be able to supply you with the ideas and information needed to fix said dilemmas and reign in your self-doubt before it breaks you. 

One final tool I've found particularly helpful when I'm in a slump is to read positive remarks I've received on past projects.  Those kind comments and helpful suggestions have a way of rejuvenating me like emotional coffee, giving me the drive to carry on and the ability to leave those negative thoughts in the dust.

Follow the tour HERE for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!

​July 23
kickoff at Silver Dagger Book Tours
Mythical Books

July 24
Lock That Door
Romance Novel Giveaways

July 25
Novel Addiction
What Is That Book About – GUEST POST

July 26
Books all things paranormal and romance
Books a Plenty Book Reviews

July 27
Bookish Reviews – GUEST POST
books are love

July 28
Readeropolis – GUEST POST

July 29
Anna del C. Dye official page
Chapters through life

July 30
Sweet Southern $avings
A Mama's Corner of the World

July 31
3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, &, Sissy, Too!
A Pinch of Bookdust

Aug 1
Bedazzled By Books
Book Lover in Florida

Aug 2
Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers
Books,Dreams,Life

Aug 3
Bound 2 Escape
Brianna Remus Books

Aug 4
C Exley Books

Aug 5
Luv Saving Money

Aug 6
Girl with Pen
Mallory Books

Aug 7
SSLY
Inside the Insanity

Aug 8
Kerrific Online – REVIEW
Momma Says: To Read or Not to Read

Aug 9
Book-Lover
Midnight Book Reader

Aug 10
Read and Review
SJ's book blog

Aug 11
Maiden of the Pages

Aug 12
Casey's Corner

Aug 13
My Chaotic Ramblings
SnoopyDoo's Book Reviews

Aug 14
Paranormal Palace of Pleasures
Sylv.net

Aug 15
Cranky TBC – REVIEW
Scrupulous Dreams

Aug 16
Rabid Readers Book Blog
T's Stuff

Aug 17
Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer
The Book Dragon

Aug 18
AC Squared Book Blog
Triple A

Aug 19
Jazzy Book Reviews

Aug 20
eBook Addicts
Teatime and Books

Aug 21
Twisted Book Ramblings

Aug 22
LaGina – REVIEW

Aug 23
Stormy Nights Reviewing & Bloggin' – REVIEW

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