We at Panhandling Fantasy are proud to announce the newest addition to our shelves - an audiobook! Yes, Temperature: Dead & Rising has made a giant leap into the audio world. Our narrator, Joanna Withey, has a beautiful storytelling voice to convey Adam Santo's debut novel. The new audiobook is available through Audible, iTunes, and Amazon.

Joanna has also agreed to read Adam's second novel, Temperature: Bitter Cold, set for an early 2014 release date.

We at Panhandling Fantasy like to support our authors any way we can. Adam Santo is working with Indiegogo to promote his third novel in the Temperature Trilogy and seek out pledges to finally publish it. If you are a fan of his work but cannot donate at this time, you have another way to back up his efforts that means just as much to him. Sign in to Indiegogo and share the link provided under his video trailer. By doing that little bit you have helped Adam find untapped resources for his campaign he might not have reached alone.

Please use the campaign link above to find Adam's Indiegogo page and take it from there. Thank you so much for your help.

We would like to bring your attention to our featured author, Adam Santo, which is currently writing a blog about the fundamentals of building a book. His expertise falls under the genre of fiction. Please give him a warm welcome on his blog as he tackles the wonderment that brings novels to life. Each week Adam Santo brings a brief understanding towards outlines, plots, dialogue, and other elements that breathe life into stories.

It's the beginning of the year and once again Adam Santo comes by to be our guest blogger for our first post of the year. If you'd like an opportunity to be our guest please shoot us a line at webservices@panhandlingfantasy.com with "Guest Blog" on the subject line.

At the beginning of this year you might've found a little bird sitting on your shoulder and tweeting new book ideas for the coming year. As cheery and prosperous as the chipper bird's song made you feel, self manufactured doubt seeped in-between the delightful choruses regardless - it's a demon we all face at the beginning, climax, and finale of any story.
This delusional sabotage we, as writers, create is inevitable. Writing is a solitary job, done over endless hours of seclusion and sleep deprivation. Indecision plagues us from the very first words to hit the page until the final period completes it. By the end of a manuscript, hope of crafting a stupendously superb story taunts us back into the light where civilized people still dwell. That becomes short lived.

Someone has to read it now.

Fear and trepidation prevent us from handing off our newly crafted baby to an unknown critic for review. Your critic may come in the form of a family member, close friend, or one of the big review companies. Whichever course you take it still leaves behind unconscious twitches of anxiousness on your face awaiting word of what they thought. It should have accrued to you that coffee might not be a good thing to drink while someone dissects your wordsmith skills like a mortician with a dull scalpel and fogged over spectacles. What you should be doing is questioning your inner-self as to why this net of frightful mien is consuming you. It's unfounded. So far only one person has read the manuscript thoroughly: you.
Critics, reviewers, and their ilk will always draw out the worst in a author. There is a way to stop the painful anticipation of hearing that thunderous judgmental hammer strike at the end of being reviewed. Continue writing. Sounds so simple: right?
Remember, hearing any kind of feedback gives you the best chance to succeed. Why? Even bad news improves your skill. In today's time, we expect instant gratification, someone to stroke our ego and bloat our heads with false claims to keep from hurting us. As writers we need - and at times crave - to hear what went wrong. If we don't rejection letters from large publishing houses will bury us where we sit blindly typing another supposedly great piece of work.
My word of advice - listen to everything everyone says. We learn from mistakes and writing puts some of us too many chapters deep into a story where what happened in the beginning has been long forgotten. Bad reviews are not the end of the world; they begin a new understanding of storytelling.
Don't let bad or indifferent reviews drag you down. You topple your own success by burying your head in negative feedback. Take them for what they're worth and grow from it. You control what's on the next page in your story - now turn it and see what's coming up next. Believe.

It's your next novel I want to read.

What a year it has been for all of us. The world almost came to an end (again), our faith in Wall Street sits on a fiscal cliff like lemmings waiting to take that final step over the edge, an outcry over SOPA went out to the masses, and Facebook tried the stockmarket.  We had a run for our money in 2012. Now that the Mayan calendar has run out, what will 2013 bring us?
On a personal note I accomplished a few goals. Two more books went out with my name on them - Ocean's Fury (a tale from your own view of events about a cruise ship in peril) and Temperature: Bitter Cold. They are available at any online bookstore along with Temperature: Dead and Rising.
I also had a small book signing locally to kick off the release of Temperature: Bitter Cold with some of the proceeds going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (It's never too late to donate. Contribute directly or purchase a book to help out). I also made time to print out fanfare for the coming novel - Get quality work at VistaPrint http://vistaprint.tellapal.com/a/clk/34Bhzd .
The holidays would not be the same without family there to support you. I had a great support team this year, which allowed me to spend way too much time in my office to finish writing instead of partaking in routine events around the house. So, to make up for it I stopped blogging, making notes for the next manuscript, and killed off the majority of time I spend on social networks promoting my work to spend quality time here in my home. Time management isn't my friend and Santa forgot to gift wrap me some. I hope to fix that in the coming year by spreading my time evenly between family, a paying job, and my passion to write. To that end, I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and good tidings for the coming year.