Ted Saves the World Blog Tour and $25 Amazon gift card Giveaway!

A possessed cheerleader. A cursed gang of criminals. Mysterious telekinetic powers. An angry ex-girlfriend in gym class? One second, sophomore in high school Ted endures his first breakup in his favorite place in town. The next, a mysterious blue light turns him into a worldwide superhero sensation for taking down a posse of grisly murderers. As his views on YouTube increase and his friend Dhiraj tries to capitalize on the marketing potential, his dangers increase as well when a presumed-dead cheerleader begins taking a personal interest. Can Ted survive his first week as a superhero in the public eye? This novella is the first taste in a series of full-length novels about the adventures of Ted Finley and Erica LaPlante. 


Available for just $0.99 on:
Amazon 
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Smashwords

I'm happy to welcome Ted Saves the World author Bryan Cohen here today with a guest post as part of the Ted Saves the World Blog Tour.

Writing in the Shadow
By Bryan Cohen

As an avid reader in my youth, it made sense for me to become an English major in college. I loved the classics and I gobbled them up, especially over the summer. I once won a reading challenge at my local library and I think the gap between first and second place was something like 30 books. I was a machine. But I was also brought up to think these books I read were extremely complex and difficult to write. This is one of the reasons I never really considered being a writer because I believed I'd never reach the heights of an F. Scott Fitzgerald or even an R.L. Stein (loved Goosebumps as a kid).

Early on in college, I discovered a love for the theatre as well and added a Dramatic Art major to my degree plan. Possibly a result of not having been exposed to as many famous playwrights as I had classic writers, I quickly found enjoyment writing scenes and sketches in my spare time. During my sophomore year, I held a small reading for a short play I wrote about a couple visiting the grave of one of their deceased former spouses. It didn't win a Tony or anything, but the fact that I put it up and it wasn't a complete disaster made me think this play writing thing wasn't so hard.

I wrote plays and scripts for nearly a decade before I attempted to publish any fiction. I'm not sure what finally clued me in that fiction writing had a major thing in common with playwriting: by writing it and putting it out there, you are already far ahead of all the people who are too afraid to show their writing to a single soul.

Personally, I think that a lot of people might like or love my first fiction book, Ted Saves the World: A Novella, but it's a fact that more people will like it than if I'd never let it leave my computer. All writers are writing in the shadows of the amazing authors that came and published before us. We can't help but be compared to these authors, it's just a way of life. But if we let the fear of "potentially not being as good as them" stop us from writing, then we may never get to reach our full potential as creative artists.
I'm pleased to have kicked fear's butt long enough to get Ted Saves the World out to all of you. Whether or not you love it, I'm proud of my work and I hope to bring you similarly entertaining fare for the rest of my writing career. Who knows, maybe I'll even be successful enough to cast my own shadow.

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Thanks Bryan!

Giveaway:


Bryan Cohen is giving away four $25 Amazon gift cards, one for each week of his month long blog tour. To enter, simply comment with your e-mail address (feel free to substitute @ with (at) or other tricks to stop spammers from getting it). Bryan will draw the four names at the end of the tour, picking one entrant at random from each week’s set of blog posts. Entries will be counted through Monday, August 15th, 2011. Enter on as many sites as you want, follow the tour at Build Creative Writing Ideas. If Ted reaches the Top 100 on Amazon at any point during the tour, a fifth $25 card will be added to the giveaway.

Biography:
Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor and comedian from Dresher, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art and a minor in Creative Writing. He has written seven books including 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More and 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade.


Contact Bryan through:
http://bryancohen.com
Build Creative Writing Ideas site
Twitter

*Be sure to stop by YA Book Lover Blog tomorrow for the next stop on the Ted Saves the World Blog Tour
*Ted Saves the World Tour Schedule