Through the Nethergate by Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Through the Nethergate
by Roberta Eaton Cheadle

About Through The Nethergate

Through the Nethergate
Supernatural Fantasy
1st in Series
TSL Publications (September 3, 2019)
Paperback: 214 pages
ISBN-10: 1913294021
ISBN-13: 978-1913294021
Digital ASIN: B07ZJTW2DF

Margaret, a girl born with second sight, has the unique ability to bring ghosts trapped between Heaven and Hell back to life. When her parents die suddenly, she goes to live with her beloved grandfather, but the cellar of her grandfather’s ancient inn is haunted by an evil spirit of its own.
In the town of Bungay, a black dog wanders the streets, enslaving the ghosts of those who have died unnatural deaths. When Margaret arrives, these phantoms congregate at the inn, hoping she can free them from the clutches of Hugh Bigod, the 12th century ghost who has drawn them away from Heaven’s White Light in his canine guise.
With the help of her grandfather and the spirits she has befriended, Margaret sets out to defeat Hugh Bigod, only to discover he wants to use her for his own ends – to take over Hell itself.

About Roberta Eaton Cheadle

 

‘I am an author who has recently branched into adult horror and supernatural writing and, in order to clearly differential my children’s books from my young adult and adult writing, these will be published under the name Roberta Eaton Cheadle. My first young adult supernatural novel, Through the Nethergate, has recently been published.

I have two short stories in the horror/supernatural genre included in Dark Visions, a collection of 34 short stories by 27 different authors and edited by award-winning author, Dan Alatorre as well as three short stories published in Death Among Us, a collection of murder mystery short stories by 10 different authors and edited by Stephen Bentley. These short stories are published under Robbie Cheadle.

Interview With The Author

How long did it take you to get your first work published (from creation to actual book)? What was your first published work?

I used to enjoy writing poetry and pieces of descriptive prose when I was a teenager. When I was 18 years old, I kept a diary of my first year out of school and recorded all the new experiences I had in my first year at college and my social activities. After I decided to change course and go to university to study to become a chartered accountant, I didn’t spend any time on creative endeavors. All my energy was directed towards my studies.
I started writing again in 2015 when I was helping my younger son learn to read a write. Michael did not enjoy writing and used to try and distract me from his homework by telling me his stories about Sir Chocolate, a little man who lived in a world where you could eat everything. I encouraged him to partner with me to turn his stories into little books. I converted his ideas into rhyming verse stories and he did the writing. I was doing a lot of cake decorating at the time and we decided to go a step further and create illustrations for our stories. We collated the photographs of our illustrations and the stories into short books which I read to the children at Sunday School.
One of the ladies who also helped at the Sunday School has a sister-in-law in publishing. She encouraged me to send my stories to TSL Publications and see if Anne was interested in publishing them. I did that in May 2016. At that time, Michael and I had written, and partially illustrated, seven Sir Chocolate books. Anne loved the idea and so I started down the pitted path to publication. It wasn’t that easy as I had to re-do many of the illustrations and improve the quality of the photographs. I also had to learn a lot about layout of a children’s story book, but in August 2016 the first Sir Chocolate book, Sir Chocolate and the strawberry cream berries story and cookbook, was published on Amazon, Lulu.com and TSL Publications own website. It garnered a fair bit of interest from friends and family and other people who saw my amateur attempts at advertisements on Facebook. A few people in the book industry contacted me via Facebook and with their help I have built the social media network I have today.
I now have three blogs, one for my children’s books, and one for my young adult and adult writing as well as a showcase website with a blog for promotional purposes. I also have two twitter accounts, two Facebook pages, Pinterest and Instagram. This is more than enough for me to cope with and these are the social media I focus on.
I have recently released Through the Nethergate, which is my first young adult supernatural fantasy novel and Michael and I have a new Sir Chocolate book coming out in March/April next year. I am currently working on an adult historical supernatural novel about the Second Anglo Boer war which I hope to publish in October 2020.

Plotter (one who plans or plots out every detail of the writing process) or Pantser (one who writes by the seat of his/her pants)?

I am a mixture of both. I plan the outline of my books and have a good idea how the story will flow and pan out. As I write though, new ideas come to me and I frequently veer off on a new writing path. It all comes together into the original writing idea in the end though. I don’t change the entire plot or premise of the story.
Three of my books, While the Bombs Fell, Thought the Nethergate and my current WIP, all have a significant focus on history. I meticulously research the detail, often using up to ten different sources on various historical events or aspects of the book.
For my book, While the Bombs FelI, which is aimed at children aged 10 to 15 years old, I had to prepare an entire timeline of WWII up until D-Day when the book ends. This book is a fictionalized account of my mom’s life growing up in an English town during WWII and so I had to superimpose her life and personal milestones over the historical timeline to get the whole story to work correctly. It was interesting and I have used the timeline again when working with different timelines in stories.

What advice do you have for a new writer?

I still consider my self to be a new writer although I have more writing and publishing experience now that when I started. I had already written a series of non-fiction publications in my work environment dealing with the capital markets environment in Africa. From those experiences I gained a lot of knowledge about how to write and edit a book, but that was non-fiction and changing over to fiction involves its own challenges as the style of writing is very different.
New writers need to work at it and become immerged in the writing, reading, reviewing and blogging environment. There are wonderful communities of people out there who share their knowledge and experience and offer advice to all of us, new writers, intermediate writers and experience writers. Embrace the opportunities they offer you and learn from them. Participate in writing challenges, these help you train your brain to generate and develop ideas and you get to see what other people do with the same prompt. It is a marvelous learning opportunity.
I make use of the services of a developmental editor for my books. I find this works better for me than beta readers and Esther notices plot holes and writing flow issues that I just don’t see because I am to close to my own writing. I have had some wonderful new thoughts and ideas to improve my stories that have come from her comments. I have also entered writing competitions and submitted stories for anthologies. This year, 2019, I have had eight short stories featured in three anthologies. These are exciting opportunities for writers as you are introduced to all the readers and fans of other contributors to the anthology. You also meet new writers and friendships and collaborations are formed.

What is the easiest part of the writing process for you?

I enjoy the editing after the story is in place and its plot and characters complete. I enjoy the process of trimming and improving my stories, amending point of view flaws and any plot holes and addressing any confusion or lack of clarity in the dialogue and prose. I love receiving the comments back from my developmental editor and experiencing the growth and development of my writing through implementing her advice and comments. I also have my books edited after the re-writing process is complete with a focus on language, spelling and punctuation errors. After this process is complete, I give my book to my greatest critics, my mother and my husband, to read and comment on. My mother is a huge reader and gives me excellent feedback. My husband is a meticulous man who is used to proofing documents and looking for flaws in consistency and content. His feedback is also invaluable. Finally, the book goes to my publisher, Anne, who also goes through it carefully and gives me further feedback and changes.
By the time the book is published, I am confident that most of the flaws have been ironed out. Somehow, complete perfection is hard to achieve, despite the care I take and the lengthily process I follow. I aim for near perfection otherwise I would never publish anything.

What is the one thing about the writing life that you didn’t know until you were published?

As will everyone else I know in my writing community, I didn’t know that authors had to do so much of their own marketing. I had never really thought about it when I published my first book and didn’t have any social media, not even Facebook. I quickly learned that I needed to get my work out to a wider community and joined Facebook and twitter in September 2016. In October 2016, I started my first blog, Robbie’s Inspiration on Wordpress. My blog opened a whole new world to me as I met other writers, readers, authors, poets and interested parties online. Blogging is very interactive, and you need to become immersed in the community to really gain form it. I make an active effort to learn from everyone I meet, not in a competitive way, but in an open and sharing manner. My collaboration with Dan Alatorre in respect of Dark Visions and Nightmareland, both Amazon number 1 best selling horror anthologies, taught me a lot about getting reviews and marketing. Stephen Bentley, who compiled and edited Death Among Us murder mystery anthology, taught me about book trailers and marketing advertisements and Kaye Lynne Booth, who compiled and edited Whispers of the Past, paranormal anthology, taught me about writing in the active present tense and about strong endings.

Follow Roberta Cheadle Eaton at:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertaEaton17
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robertawrites/?modal=admin_todo_tour
Blog: https://wordpress.com/view/robertawrites235681907.wordpress.com
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19631306.Roberta_Eaton_Cheadle
Website: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/

Purchase Roberta Eaton Cheadle’s Books from: 
Amazon
TSL Publications https://tslbooks.uk/product/through-the-nethergate-roberta-eaton-cheadle/
Lulu http://www.lulu.com/shop/roberta-eaton-cheadle/through-the-nethergate/ebook/product-24208518.html


a Rafflecopter giveaway


TOUR PARTICIPANTS
January 15 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
January 15 – Brooke Blogs – GUEST POST
January 16 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT 
January 16 – I Read What You Write – REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST 
January 16 – This Is My Truth Now – REVIEW
January 17 – Literary Gold – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
January 17 – A Chick Who Reads – REVIEW
January 18 – The Book’s the Thing – REVIEW, GUEST POST
January 18 – Reading Authors – REVIEW
January 19 – fundinmental – SPOTLIGHT
January 20 – eBook addicts – REVIEW
January 20 – I’m All About Books – SPOTLIGHT
January 21 – Ruff Drafts – REVIEW
January 21 – Diary of a Book Fiend – REVIEW
January 22 – Readeropolis – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
January 23 – A Wytch’s Book Review Blog – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
January 23 – Diane Reviews Books – CHARACTER GUEST POST
January 24 – StoreyBook Reviews – GUEST POST
January 24 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

Have you signed up to be a Tour Host?

Click Here Find Details and Sign Up Today!