NaNo Success

Yesterday I hit the 50k word count for Nano and it was pretty satisfying considering there was a short time whenI thought I wasn't going to continue. In my opinion things were against me from the start, I'm a plotter and I had no outline, only a short description, and I had just finished a book and it's usually a few months before I start another. But I went in anyway, and somehow overcame a three day roadblock where I didn't write at all, and here I am, more than halfway through the book and an outline never really materialized. Writing this book has been fun and I'm looking forward to finishing it and happy to have been successful with my first Nano. Then again I think I would have been disappointed if I hadn't won considering I cranked out a book in 12 days once and in general my books take about a month to write. I guess I set the bar high for myself, uh oh! Anyway, to those of you still in the Nano trenches, good luck! Only 9 days left!

Warm Fuzzies blogfest - week 4

For the final week of the Warm Fuzzies blogfest we're supposed to write about what makes writing worth it for us and share something from our WIP.

Man, this is a question I could easily go on and on about, but when it comes down to it, I write because I love it, because when the urge to get stories out of my head and build worlds around different characters come I can't ignore it. When I first started writing it was mostly for escape, to find myself in a reality other than my own where I had all the control. Nowadays, even though I get frustrated sometimes by my efforts to get published, I still remember that basic reason I started writing and it makes all the frustration worth it. It's fun, and it's rewarding, I love having a finished product that I can be proud of. Writing is who I am and what I do, and I can't imagine not doing it.

I settled on sharing a steamy scene...the first close encounter with the MC and her love interest, who she knows she has to resist for very good reasons, but of course he's just so irresistible.

He took a step closer to me and I wanted to back up, but when I moved I stumbled, and ended up with my back pressed against the window. He moved in, and braced his arms against the glass on either side of my head. I craned my neck away and squeezed my eyes shut, but that did nothing to break the connection between us, and my exposed neck was left vulnerable to his lips, which he was slowly trailing up my skin. The soft touch of his lips combined with the warmth of his breath tickling my skin, and his heady, seductive aura, tore a gasp from my lips. Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed a handful of his shirt, pulling him in to my body so he was pressed up against me and I could feel our heartbeats echoing against each other. Somehow I had gotten the rest of his shirt unbuttoned, and while he continued to play his lips against my skin, trailing up to my chin and very dangerously close to my lips, I was slowly moving my hands down his hard chest, following the planes of his body down to his slim hips. I wanted to stop, but I was already in a very dangerous place, and I felt like I wasn’t even in control of myself, I wasn’t thinking, I was just feeling, and if I kept going I knew that what should never happen would.



(overall 15 pts)

Warm Fuzzies Blogfest - week 3

This week for the Warm Fuzzies blogfest hosted by Juliana Brandt, our challenge is to:

Take a moment to look at the trouble you get your MC into. How do you kick them while they’re down? Without revealing too many secrets about your WIP- take us through your MC’s arch.

The challenge for this week is to visit as many blogs as you can and based on their exert/summary, come up with a title for their WIP. Your title can be funny or serious, whatever you’d like. (The winner will receive one of Juliana's hand-made journals).

In my WIP's arch, my MC, the human who is "irrevocably linked to another," who I will say is one of the demons, has to try and stop a country wide worth of demons who are being controlled to slaughter each other and humans. Helping her is the witch and the other demon, her "linked" demon got lost in the fighting fray, so there is the added complication of him getting himself killed, which would kill the MC. They've figured out a way to stop the fighting in the area they are in (NYC), which would draw out the ones orchestrating the fighting, so that way they could try to stop them. Their method is a unique power MC gained from her linked demon, and they use a special Tower to channel her power and target the fighting demons. The idea is to use her power to drain them of energy which would in essence not kill them but make them pass out, but in return MC has to take all of that energy into herself and when she does it almost rips her apart. The plan seems to work though, they draw out the bad guys, but an important oversight causes MC's allies to be blasted through a window to their supposed deaths (they are at the top of the Tower), and MC to be taken by the bad guys to be used as a tool in their destructive plan. It doesn't look too good for MC after that, but in the ninth hour she comes out on top.

When I thought about what I put her through in this part of the story I realized what a harsh, harsh life she would have if she was a real person, and she would most likely never survive what I put her through! It's fun to write those hard scenes where your MC suffers though, because when they come out on top it's all the more better.

Warm Fuzzies Blogfest - week 2

I'm participating in the Warm Fuzzies Blogfest hosted by Juliana Brandt. I wasn't able to jump in week one, but for week two:

This week, we’ll cater to those of us who are completely possessive over our WIPs and don’t want to give anything too telling away. Instead of posting something intimate about our writing, post a picture or piece of music that describes your WIP.

What do you look to when you write? What inspires you? How else do you use your creativity? Music? Pictures? Art?

Oddly enough, this falls in line with the post I did for the Casting Call bloghop, so I hope a bit of recycling is okay. This picture of my four main characters is what I'd like to share:

We have one human, one witch, and two demons. And here are some other vague facts:

• One of them discovers something about them that irrevocably links them to another one.
• One of them betrays another in a big way.
• One of them makes an ultimate sacrifice to save another.
  
• One of them is definitely not what they seem in a major way.

Maybe you can guess who is who?

Once my idea materializes in my head, it's usually a few days or weeks of making notes, getting frustrated, then going back in and making sense of the notes before an outline appears and I can start writing. I'm always at ease once I have my outline going. My latest novel was a particularly difficult one for me, I came up against a wall more than I'm used to, which I didn't enjoy. When I was done though, and had the opportunity to do something artistic in relation to the book, I had a lot of fun doing this drawing, looking at it definitely inspires me to keep working with these characters until I get things as perfect as I can. This isn't the first time I've done character art and I've always enjoyed it. To be corny, it's kind of like the icing on the cake.

Book I'm Most Thankful For

Nano is upon us and I've already started typing away, I don't have a full plot outline to work with so I hope I don't run up against a wall, but we'll see. Good luck to anyone out there doing NaNo!

Author Beth Revis (Across the Universe) is hosting a cool 19 book (all signed) giveaway on her blog, and to qualify you have to do a post about the book you're most thankful for, so here's mine. Find out more info on the giveaway: Here.

I'd have to say the book I'm most thankful for is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I don't tend to re-read books, but The Secret Garden is on the very short list of books I've read over and over, from my childhood well into my teenage years. If I had time nowadays I'd probably still pick it up from time and time. With some books that you read, there is always something about them that instills certain feelings in you that you may or may not be able to explain, and this book is one of them for me. I think what I took away most from this novel is the belief that things can get better once you have faith and perseverance. I loved the innocence the characters had, Mary, Colin and Dickon. Their world was a very small one, but to them it was vast and full of things for them to discover. I love the idea of just finding one small thing in life, no matter what it is, and what it may mean to anyone else, and holding on to it because you find something special about it, and that's what Mary did with the garden. She didn't look at it and see ten years of neglect, see what an overwhelming task it would be to bring the garden back to life again, she started with just one small seed, and eventually the garden blossomed again. I think the feeling the book gave me that the garden was it's own little world, an escape from everything else, where anything could happen (like Colin realizing he could walk) is something I still carry with me today, something that helps me look for the small things in life to find joy in no matter how bleak everything else is.