Today, I’m pleased to introduce Cynthia Carver! She is an author and psychic. Enjoy!

You have an interesting background. Can you give the readers a synopsis of it?

Hi Pamela. It’s always a pleasure to catch up with you. My first clairvoyant experience happened at age three, and my invisible friends continued to multiply. With daughter number four, I began looking for work online. PsychicChat dot com was six months old and welcomed me with open arms. That was somewhere about the time AOL hit America’s living rooms.

Thirty years of being an online psychic! What was this like for you? Did you work on one or more lines? Any Stories you like to share?

Thirty years of reading online was exciting as well as challenging. I’d drive my girls to school and return to log on every morning at eight. I’d break for lunch and exercise, then log on for a couple more hours before picking the girls up from school.

The exciting parts were when attorneys would contact me about a case they were working on, or a detective would ask about his caseload. This was the catalyst that pushed me into working cold cases. It isn’t anything like TV. There were NDA (non-disclosure agreements) that went both ways. I couldn’t talk and the law enforcement officers couldn’t talk. The information I brought forth had to be proven through hard evidence. That was the challenge, to bring the information through that allowed them to actually track it to the verdict.

I haven’t worked the psychic lines for seven years and am not sure how they work anymore. Remember, I began working for them before they were big. Bitwine, Kasamba, Keen, were the go-to for readings and insight. PsychicChat, although it changed its name three times over the course of its life, had a very steady stream of clientele for the readers. StarzPsychics is a boutique site that interviews the psychics that work for it. Many have closed their doors like PsychicChat.

Simultaneously, I would log into all the programs. I’d have my opening introduction ready to paste while I logged off the other sites. Then slowly, each company tracked if other programs were open and not run if you had a program other running on your computer. I had six computers once, with each program running on each. If there is a will, there is a way. But this was my livelihood.

Then I developed burnout. Not with actually helping people, but with the ‘Who’s my baby daddy?’ or ‘Am I pregnant?’ queries. To me, these were nonsense questions because an EPT was considerably cheaper than what I was charging per minute. Now, I can understand the baby daddy question if the client had a choice of two, but often that question came with a handful or more of names. Not that I should judge, but someone wasn’t being responsible. When those two questions outweighed career, love, and spiritual quests, I knew it was time for me to take down the shingle I had hung thirty years prior.

I understand the burnout, Cynthia. One question I got tired of hearing was when is he going to call? Anyhow, why did you decide to become an author of fiction books?

With my abilities as a medium and knowledge of the paranormal, I had been a room host in the Writer’s area of AOL. I hosted Realities of the Paranormal every Wednesday evening for seven years. It opened me to the genre of paranormal and the lovely authors I met encouraged me to write and fictionalized the stories I heard or was an assistant too. That’s how “Small Bit of Justice” came about. Cait London, a romance writer I had met in Cincinnati, convinced me to tell the story. Then I followed it with “Shamaness In Silhouette Series.”

The Shamaness in Silhouette series is dear to my heart. At the front of each book, there is a poem that one of our tribal elders wrote to or about me while I was in my apprentice stage. Four novellas and one novel make up this series.

The next book will follow ‘Small Bit of Justice’ and is called ‘News from Wild Rose Hollar.’ It’s about the same main character that goes to visit her sister and then a manhunt ensues and things go wonky. Tracy is our main character, and she has two teenage daughters that are staying with their aunt. What could go wrong or right with four intuitive women under one roof?

Everything I write reflects my life experiences. In News from the Wild Rose Hollar, the experience with the dogs and the runaway car is very real in a story of fiction. Oh! And the scene with the shark and flamingo, semi non-fiction. We actually used bubble wrap and cardboard instead of a shark and flamingo. If you read my stories and decide you want more, please join my Facebook group for readers, https://www.facebook.com/groups/cynthiacarverreadergroup

The next series, To Call a Maverick, will happen between the Shamaness in Silhouette series and Small Bit of Justice. There will be five books in this series and it will have elements of romance.

Writing is a release of stress for me. Some people may get lost in a television show, and I have my favorites there too. But when I am writing the first draft, it plays out in my head like a movie. I’m writing so fast that I miss words, details, and mix things up. I keep a cheat sheet of my character’s physical traits handy. That attests to the fact that I need help in keeping facts straight.

When I began writing Shamaness in Silhouette, I used my husband’s physical looks for the main male character. The main female character was Sandra Bullock with teal eyes. When I introduced the private eye, Maverick, in book five, I became enthralled with the television show Leverage and I used Christian Kane’s appearance to describe Maverick. It was the fifth season, I think, when he had long hair.

My advice to writers who desire to become authors is to find a support group. I found mine in a local offline NaNoWriMo group in 2017 and we still meet-up to cheer each other on. Critique groups can be harmful. Be leery when using them. Everybody’s experience is different, but if you seem to write, change, and then told to change it to the way you originally had it (yes, it happens and happened to me), it’s time to move on to a developmental editor or a grammar editor.

Can you tell us about your process and if your life experiences help shape the story?

For now, I will do the rough draft, then I edit it while reading aloud, add details and facts that I missed while getting the bones of the story down. The third edit I will drop it into ProWritingAid and not all suggestions are valid. The third edit is the draft I do before sending it off to my editor. When my editor sends it back to me, I read it carefully with his suggestions and then I do my fourth edit using his suggestions before I call it finished and ready for beta readers.

There are two ways to become an author. One is to be exclusive to Amazon, and the other is to go-wide. The benefit of going-wide is your books are available in Barnes and Noble and their unlimited books on Kobo, libraries, and other distributors. Amazon focuses on exclusive rights with their KU or Kindle Unlimited program.

I love ProWritingAid and being wide is a must for me. Where can people find you and your books?

On my website, I have free books not offered anywhere else, as well as all my books in the digital form. Once you order the book, you will receive an email with the link to Bookfunnel to access your copy. The upside to doing it this way is you can support authors directly, and from my website that author is me 😂 Bookfunnel offers support to your chosen eReader and if you need help, Bookfunnel support is there. The benefits are awesome. You may find my books at: CynthiaCarver.com

Please join my newsletter at the bottom of my home page on CynthiaCarver.com It will be delivered to your in-box once a month and give you information about my latest travels (I’m a nomad), newest releases, and book events or psychic holistic fairs where I will appear at. When I am at the psychic or holistic fairs, I offer a lecture on Dream Interpretation. So stop by if you are in the area. Or connect with me here:

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