Skim Decaf Mocha With Whip

The Business of Writing

2012-02-19T14:06:00.000-08:00

Learning to run a writing business is fun in a totally geeky sort of way. Since getting The Call last September, I've dealt with contracts, promotion, taxes, accounting, graphic design, web design, networking....and a little writing also. Each new challenge is scary. Fun-scary. And I have no idea whether I'm doing anything right.

This is the second year that I have claimed writing expenses on our tax return, with no income to go with it :) My first royalty check from The Paris Affair is coming sometime later this winter or early spring. So, I got a nice little warning from TurboTax (our accountant of choice until taxes get too complicated) saying that our audit risk is high. Oops :)

One of my resolutions for this year is to be better organized about tracking income and expenses, so I bought a copy of Peachtree Accounting software. Before you jump on the bandwagon, I will warn you: for my purposes, so far I think it's like hiring a master carpenter to hang some pictures on the wall. Totally overkill as a spreadsheet would be sufficient. But, I found a 2010 version for under $5 on clearance, so the worst I've done is waste my time. And it has a ton of online help that walks you through accounting principles, so I think I"m actually getting a bit of an education. Not bad for the money :)

On the promotion front, I've been trying a variety of approaches while trying to stay in line with my projected income (aka: promoting on the cheap). I've done a handful of blogs (here, on the Soul Mate Authors group, and a couple of guest blogs elsewhere). I've given away a couple of copies of my book. (I have a giveaway running this week over on the SMP Authors site). I've tried to be on twitter and facebook, but my playtime there has been limited by the day job (where I've been working longer hours than normal) and the night job (where my munchkins deserve better than to see me over the top of my phone or laptop screen).

Also for promotion, I am playing with online ads. My web hosting service had a bunch of ad credits that I could use, so I've been playing with Facebook and Google ads. I might have Yahoo credit I could claim as well. It's a bit difficult to see how useful the advertising really is. Authors get a small amount of visibility into Amazon rankings of their books, and my publisher can share stats if I ask. But though I am attempting a few tricks to track which clicks result in sales, I don't know if the ads are helping much. So far, I would bet that if I were paying the ad money out of my own pocket instead of a free promotional credit, that I would probably spend more than I am earning from it. I am treating this as on-the-job-training :)

For online ads, you can either use ugly-looking text-only ads, or come up with fancy-looking graphics. Hiring a graphic designer's not in the budget (though I know a couple of them who would be awesome), so I'm polishing up my Photoshop skills. And contemplating making Romance Trading Cards. A lot of authors I know also print bookmarks, and though I'd love to do that (I can never get enough bookmarks), they seem like a strange kind of promo item for a digital release. I might do them anyway, as time permits (maybe with a QR code with the digital buy link?) Hmmm...

The only bad part about all this is that I'm not spending a lot of time writing. My "season" is coming up, though. I typically pump out a lot of words in November, and then again during Lent. No religious association here, but for some reason the mid Feb-mid April timeframe has worked well for me to really get writing. Late spring and summer have been good times for me to revise.

Bits and Bytes

2012-01-19T08:15:00.000-08:00

Today I'm blogging with my fellow Soul Mate authors over at our blog. Stop by and share your thoughts about what writing sounds like to you:
http://smpauthors.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/what-does-writing-sound-like/

Also today, over on my website I'm encouraging all readers to come over to Goodreads. Its a great place to share what you're reading and see recommendations from others. Send me a friend request! I love getting a peek into everyone else's bookshelves.

Or join the Goodreads 2012 writing challenge. I'm attempting to read 25 books this year. Shameful admission: Last year I said I'd read 50. I didn't claim half that many, although I think I forgot to mark a bunch. But I also packed and purged during the great house move, so I cannot prove my claim. This year, I pledge to do better. (And I installed their android app on my phone--scanning book bar codes can keep me amused for a good long time...)

Mulligan? (Contest!)

2012-01-16T19:19:00.000-08:00

One of the silly things I keep fighting lately is technology. Ironic, huh. I'm a software engineer! For real! They pay me like money and stuff! Except, not to administer websites.

So, I tried to be smart and set up a giveaway. I found a snippet of my book, set up a post on my website, scheduled the post....and....I forgot to allow users to actually comment on it. Oops. Well, technically, any registered user could post a comment, but since I'm the only registered user and I don't think the login page was set to allow new registered users, that was kind of useless.

But! I think I'm all fixed. Er, my site is. For now :) Want to win an Amazon Gift card? Click over here and leave a comment. That's it. Your comment can be "enter me in the contest."

Teaser and a $10 Amazon giftcard giveaway

(Maybe I should just switch it to a nice static set of html pages and a link to Blogger. I'm more comfortable over here. But, you know, having my name in the domain is kind of cool, right?)

Interview and Giveaway on Warm Days, Cool Nights and Hot Guys....: Friday Fun- Meet Author Kristi Lea!

2012-01-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

Check out my interview on my fellow RWA chapter-mate, author Jennifer Jake's, blog. Comment for a chance to win a copy of The Paris Affair!

Warm Days, Cool Nights and Hot Guys....: Friday Fun- Meet Author Kristi Lea!: I'm so excited to host debut author, my friend and fellow RWA chapter mate, KRISTI LEA! Kristi brought her brand new release, THE PAR...

2012 Writing Goals

2012-01-01T08:33:00.000-08:00

I set goals for this past year and didn't quite make them :) My post was here.

Of the five items I had scribbled on the restaurant table cover with my crit partners, I made two of the five: I finished a rough draft on a fantasy novella (as yet unshopped and thus unpublished), and I didn't enter any contests on any unfinished novels :) The rest of the writing ended up on the backburner with a house move (man those things are time-sucks), plus the sale and release of The Paris Affair. Advertising and networking (aka dinking around on twitter and facebook and the like) are also time-sucks :)

For 2012, here are my goals. Maybe this time I should

New Words:
I am 21,xxx words into a re-write of my (never-previously-finished) sexy romantic suspense (Accomplice). I'm shooting for 50-60,000 words, so I'm about 1/3 of the way there. I need to finish this sucker. Jessica and Noah have been twiddling their thumbs for like 3 years now, waiting for me to get my act together.

I have too many ideas, and not enough time (or focus maybe). I have about 20k good words on a full-length (90-120k) fantasay novel that I would love to finish writing. And a few pages on another sci fi. After Accomplice, I need to work one of these.

Editing:
I need to thoroughly re-read and edit my fantasy novella (currently titled Call the Rain). And probably shop it around.

I also have some re-work to do on my sci fi romance Leap, plus its prequel Take Me Down (which as of today numbers about 10 pages of an eventual 300). Note to other authors: when writing a series you will do much less re-work if you start with book one and progress sequentially. Since I started with book two before I knew what happened in book one, I must now make book two follow book one in a logical fashion. And maybe try to sell them both.

Publishing Goals:
I would love to have published or at least contracted a minimum of one additional manuscript for 2012. Potential publishing houses have a variety to choose from: romantic suspense, contemporaries, sci fi, fantasy...I'm sure they'll be banging down my door any minute now. Ahem. Moving right along.

Improving my Craft:
I set a goal on GoodReads to read 25 books this year, which should be a Very Do-able Goal. Want to sign yourself up? www.Goodreads.com. While you're there, send me a friend request :). I love seeing what everyone else is reading.

I would love to attend a conference this year. Maybe RWA nationals, maybe something closer to home. I have learned so much from the conferences and workshops I've attended the past few years, and I totally missed going to RWA last summer.

What about you? Any goals? Feel free to share (or link!) I'd love to see what everyone else is doing.

Links and Links to Links

2011-12-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of social media sites these days. I am attempting to get set up on some of them as Writer-Kristi. I'm sure there are more, but here is my list so far:

Amazon Author Page
Goodreads
Facebook Page
Twitter

At some point, I should probably quit playing with websites and start writing again. Right?

The Paris Affair Now on Amazon Directly

2011-12-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

The Paris Affair has been available from the publisher's website since Wednesday. From there, the "buy" links will download straight onto your Kindle or Nook (or allow you to save a file for loading separately, for folks like me who have non-wifi enabled e-reader...).

But as of this morning, my book is also for sale directly on Amazon's website! Discoverability is a good thing! The image below is the buy link.

B&N should be coming soon.

OMG, Release day

2011-12-13T19:16:00.000-08:00

Gulp. I'm a published author.

Happy Dance!!!

Claire and Helmut's story, The Paris Affair, snippets of which have appeared here from time to time in the past, is for sale today from Soul Mate Publishing. Soon it will be available directly on the big online retailers websites too, but you can buy for you Kindle or your Nook directly from Soul Mate.

It's fun. Its sexy. Its 55000 words of fun and sexy. I hope you enjoy it!

I am still working on how best to handle this whole promotional gig. I've got Facebook (a profile for me, a page for me, a page for my book), Twitter, a website, a MailChimp mailing list. And this blog.

I don't wanna give it up. I started this blog back during my first NaNoWriMo to kvetch about my writing and about books and to generally be myself. So I'm going to continue to do so.

I won't promise not to promote stuff here (clearly). And there might be significant overlap between my blog and my website as I try to sort out what goes where.

I have done a bit of remodelling here lately. I removed links to my family-oriented blog. My cooking one's still there (Year of the Pancake, in case you're easily impressed by my culinary "genius"). I've added page links at the top of my blog for my new release.

Happy Dance!!! (sorry, couldn't help myself)

Decisions, Decisions

2011-12-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

I have been a tad overwhelmed lately. New house. Old house still on the market. Big deadline at work. Overtime. Working weekends. Helping judge my RWA chapter's annual contest. Attempting to find time to write (and failing).

I've also got a lot of things going on blog-wise. In addition to this blog, I started a food-focused one this year, and I have maintained one for almost 6 years related to all things motherhood. Plus I had a brilliant idea about a photo blog. And I have my author website. Oh yeah, and a bunch of authors from my publisher started a blog. And facebook (there are now two of me on there...one author-me, one just me). And twitter. And google+.

And about a million emails a day from various RWA loops. And kid stuff.

And I'm getting kinda overwhelmed. :(

So now I get to decide which of my darlings to give up (which of my writing darlings...the living, breathing ones come before all else). *sigh*

No, I haven't decided yet which things will fall by the wayside. Do I ditch this blog and send ya'll to my website? Maybe. Do I smash together motherhood and baking? Maybe. Do I just archive the whole mess, maybe pay some service to print me a copy for my keeper shelf and take them all down? Maybe.

Maybe I should quit my day job and be a professional blogger. Just kidding :) I'm thinking the tiny amount of advertising that I've earned this year (not yet enough for them to cut me a check...) is not exactly going to pay the mortgage.

In the mean time, I hope ya'll are patient. Or that you hunt me down elsewhere

My September

2011-09-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

So, what's new with you in September? Did your summer end well? Getting into the
swing of the fall routine?

Here's what is going on with me since September 1st:

We have a new house and are continuing with the Neverending Move.
It took about 36 hours before we had our fridge, washer, and dryer hooked up and working again.
We still have the old house and have done a lot of paint touch-ups, cleaning days, and still have some repair work to be done. And more moving. (We have a lot of junk, apparently). For the record: no we don't have a buyer yet. Lots of interest. No offers. I am sooo ready to be done making two mortgage payments.
I am now the troop leader for my daughter's brownie troop, and feeling horrendously unprepared to lead 11 7- and 8-year-olds to anything. I am, apparently, the only one who even half-way volunteered. The first meeting was the day after the Big Move Day (ya know, back when we were still camping with no laundry or refrigeration).
We had a death in the family (my husband's grandmother) and both kids were out of school for two days while we traveled.
My oldest child had surgery (tonsillectomy) and was out of school for a week.
I am the team-lead for a big project at work where 1/2 of my team (i.e. the other guy) spent 3 weeks out after being hit by a truck (literally). He is fine(thankfully). Our project is running way behind and we're working overtime to get it done by deadline. Note my expected schedule is 32 hours a week, not 40+ spread over 7 days.
We lived for 3.5 weeks with no cable or internet service at home, making it nearly impossible to send or receive email that involved more than a few touch-pad "texted" words with the phone. Apparently, I send and receive a LOT of email that involves attachments.
I sold my first novel.

Yes, that's my exciting news.

I sold a book!

I actually got the offer email on September 1st, Big Move Day. But I was so stressed by the move that it barely registered. The lovely editor at my publisher was so incredibly patient with me as I sent several emails saying "I'm getting to it..I am moving and don't have internet".

I was so afraid that they would change their mind and yet they didn't. Through odd-hour trips to Panera and a limited-use phone app that lets me use my phone as a network card for my netbook, I managed to get contracts filled out and signed, and am working on an art fact sheet and author bio and the beginnings of a marketing plan and...

It was just this week where I was able to take a breath and start feeling excited. Overwhelmed, but excited.

The publisher is a digital-first (which I am thrilled about...being a software gal and all, it feels right to me to be doing this with the latest technology). The story I sold is a sexy contemporary romance featuring Claire and Helmut, snippets of which have featured here on this blog. I will post some more specifics soon, with links and announcements, and probably a pointer to my official writing website.

September is nearly over, and I sincerely hope my October is a little bit less eventful.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You...

2011-09-16T19:23:00.000-07:00

My life has been hectic lately. Moving between houses is a pain worse than childbirth. At least in childbirth you have the option of meds to help you zone out. Somehow I don't think drugs would have been beneficial.

Hooray, I have a beautiful new home.
Hooray, I have my own office.
Hooray, I have been without internet service for a month.

Wait, what?

Yeah, well, you'd think it would be easy for the cable company to flip a switch and click a few keys and change the billing address. But no. A month, people. The kids have learned to live without Mythbusters and iCarly. Thank goodness for fancy smartphones that can check email.

In the middle of the boxes (we shall be unpacking for years), the chaos (did I mention 2 kids, 2 cats, a birthday party and an out-of-town funeral), I have some good news.

Nope, haven't been writing. That would be really good news. I've been plotting and dreaming, though, which might just be close enough to actual writing to count.

My news is better. But you'll have to check back later to find out what it is...

When the Past Catches Up With You

2011-07-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

I have been uncharacteristically quiet on my blog lately. I'm not saying that for your benefit, but for my own. I keep sensing that I should be writing, but other things are coming first in my life. Unfortunately, that goes for my fiction as well as my ramblings.

Our home life is upside down lately as we prepare to move to a new house in the metro area. Buying a house, selling a house, boxing and sorting and organizing our mountain of junk, and preparing for a new school year have taken over my creative energy. And, in typical Kristi fashion, no matter how much planning I do ahead of time, timelines change drastically. In this case we are closing on the new house the same week we originally had set as the target for getting the old one on the market, and doing it without a buyer on our current house. So there is also a rush job to get our existing house spit-shined and tuned up for buyers. We hadn't planned on stumbling across the new house, complete with 99% of our wish list and at a price we couldn't argue with, when we did.

Note: this is why I'm not a plotter. I never know when that perfect plot point is going to surface from the blackhole of my brain and I just frustrate myself by wasting time creating detailed plans that I know will change.

In the middle of this chaos, we made a trip to my mom's house. She is in the middle of a similar clean-out/re-org process as she and her fiancé prepare to combine two households. She presented me with a box of mementos that I had left when I went away to college. Sifting through that box was quite the memory trip. It was full of photos and scrap books and cards and school papers.
I learned a few things about myself that I had forgotten, things that directly relate to how I write and how I feel about my writing. The first thing I noticed was how many certificates I had. I kept everything--every perfect attendance award, every science fair medal, every English department award. And there are a lot in that box. I'm not saying that to show off my pre-college mental prowess. But all of the official, foil-embossed recognition was clearly important to me. So important that I have a whole scrapbook full of little besides merit awards.

When I contrast that to my college days, my daytime career, and my writing work, there is a marked contrast. Not that I'm a slouch or lazy or an underachiever. But I used to get more awards in a single year of high school than I've probably gotten in the seventeen years since I graduated. That has been an eye opener. It also might help explain how my views of myself changed in college and beyond (Did I ever mention I was once pre-med? Note I'm not a doctor. Amazing how humbling getting a few C's can be for the ol' ego...)
It has also been a struggle in my writing because I did not just breeze into in and start collecting awards. I have had to come to grips with the fact that my writing wasn't perfect. Some of what I have written might actually suck. Badly. I also have to learn to handle the subjectivity of the field. On one hand, contest results and feedback is colored by personal preferences of the judge, agent, or editor. On the other hand, sometimes their feedback isn't just personal preference but a reflection of a weakness in my skillset.
It's not them, it's me.

It kills part of me to admit that--the part of me with that filled that scrapbook full of tangible evidence of someone's approval. But the (slightly) more grown-up part knows that I should not quit writing because I don't win contests. My writing has improved and continues to improve. And I will be much prouder of my eventual accomplishments for having worked so hard to achieve them (thinking optimistically here).
The other thing that I learned (or rather, re-learned) about myself was a lot more fun and a lot less self-reflective. I have been plotting romance novels in my head for years. Decades actually. Plotting as I try to fall asleep. Plotting while I drive. But I didn't think that I'd ever written any of the ideas down until NaNoWriMo of 2007.

I was wrong.

Tucked away in my treasure box was a spiral notebook with half a dozen plot ideas. I had character notes, settings, even the beginnings of scenes. Amusingly, the style of those notes is virtually identical to my more recent idea notebooks. And every one of them is a romance. I guess I really was one of those writers who started young. But somehow life and college and jobs and a million other excuses got in the way. Excuses like moving to new houses.

Review: Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

2011-05-28T07:12:00.001-07:00

Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the daughter of an impoverished Earl, Emma was born with the title of Lady but not the wealth. Orphaned young by her globe-trotting anthropologist parents, she has made St. Gerts, the boarding school that she attended and now heads, into the center of her professional and personal life.

Texan Kenny Traveler is, according to the media, a lazy spoiled rich-kid turned professional golfer. When he gets suspended from the PGA tour, he agrees to escort Lady E, a friend of the commissioner’s wife, around Texas as she does research for an academic paper, in exchange for his re-instatement on the tour.

The future of Emma’s school is in jeopardy and the only way she can think of saving it is by sacrificing her own reputation to shake the advances of the lecherous Duke who is blackmailing her into marrying him. Creating a scandal with the sexy sports hero seems like the perfect opportunity. But if Kenny gives in to his cravings for the bossy Brit, will he lose his chance to play in the Masters, or ever again?

The plot set up is nuts, the characters are off-the-wall, but the conflicts at the heart of this contemporary romance sound all too realistic. Kenny has to not only face the demons of his spoiled youth but to prove to himself and everyone around him that he has truly changed. Emma is wonderfully unaware of herself as a woman and her hilarious attempts at “scandalous” behavior had me laughing out loud. Their romance is sweet and believeable and right up until the happily ever after, I was biting my nails, afraid that the characters pride and tempers would get in their way.

View all my reviews

#Rapture If the world is going to end today, why is everyone having a party?

2011-05-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

Today is one of those scheduling nightmares where everyone has something going on that I want and/or need to attend.

A wedding. In Texas.
A first birthday party
A graduation party
A writer's workshop
Uniform fitting/ordering day for the kids' school
A special performance by my kids' gymnastics class

I think there was more but I have stopped opening emails that mention May and 21.

Sheesh.

I'm on the plane now (safely on the ground and happily using my phone's internet connection). I chose the wedding in Texas. My husband and kids are knocking out several other items on the list, and there were a couple that we just couldn't do. I am hoping to use some of my travel time to write. Note I am already in the middle of the travelling and have not written a word yet. Of fiction. Blogging is, for me, procrastination.

I am also suffering a bad case of the crazies, with deadlines at the day job looming on the horizon and prepping myself for the travel and driving myself crazy with what-ifs on the house front (Do we move now or next year? Do we build? Buy historic? A fixer-uppper? Pull the kids from their private school and head a completely different direction? Will our even house sell?)

I'm not sure I have the focus right now to write anything but my own angst, but now that I've powered the netbook on, I feel like I should try. Maybe. After I have to turn it back off again for takeoff...

Un-news and other ramblings

2011-05-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

My great announcement for the day is that I wrote the words "The End" on a manuscript! Yes, actually at the end of it. And yes, I'm actually done. For today. With the first draft.

This is a (PG-rated) fantasy romance novella that I intended to write as a short story. 10,000 words "blossomed" into 31,000, and the side project that I thought would be done in December ended in May. Assuming that what is written down resembles the story in my head, I'm quite happy with it. I think I'll wait a week or two before I read through it to see what I really wrote.

In other, more exciting happenings, I have read two more books. The latest Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson, Towers of Midnight, was excellent. At one point my husband actually pouted at me for reading. "You like it more than me," he said. Not quite. But I think I met Rand, Mat and Perrin about the same time I met my husband, and I see hubby a lot more often...

I also plowed through Julia Quinn's What Happens in London in about 2 days, laughing outloud at the dialogue and the situations and sighing like a lovesick schoolgirl at the requisite HEA. Well done, Julia, as always. (See how I say that like I know the woman? Yeah, just because I stood in a really long line at RWA nationals last year for a signed copy of it...)

Review: Hearts and Minds by JC Hay

2011-04-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

Space pirate Syna Davout takes a commission for a basic smash-and-grab to pay for much-needed repairs on her ship. But when a second ship appears on the scene, she realizes that she was the diversion in an assassination attempt. Psi-talent Galen Fash is a leader of the rebellion against the Tse who exploit and demonize all Psi’s. When Syna rescues Galen from his wrecked ship, she is drawn into his plot to avert a Tse invasion and save his fledgling rebellion from being crushed.

Galen’s Psi-talent won’t let him ignore Syna’s passionate nature and soon the pair are exchanging more than just banter. Even hand-to-hand combat training burns more than just pent up energy. But is Syna willing to trade her precious freedom for Galen’s cause, and risk losing another lover to the hands of the Tse?

Hearts and Minds by JC Hay packs an intense one-two punch of fast-paced Sci Fi action layered with emotion as Syna and Galen struggle together through a richly layered galaxy with surprise twists that will leave you begging for more.

==

Full Disclosure: JC is a member of my local RWA chapter and I was provided a copy of this awesome novella for free to review. The review was my pleasure and frankly, it was on my TBR list :) It is available stand-alone or as part of the Impulse Power anthology (in print and e) from Samhain Publishing.

Procrastination

2011-04-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

Jean M Auel signing at the St. Louis County Public Library

I haven't written a word in 3 weeks. One might think that having 6 work days off in a row would equal mega word counts or at least some serious slash-and-burn editing. One might not be counting on the dual time-sucks that are parenting and home ownership.

In the mean time, I haven't been altogether useless in my writing-related endeavors. I have added to the slush piles of an undisclosed number of agents and/or editors. I have pondered whether, when, and how delicately to nudge other long-standing slush-pile owners about the fate of my mulch fodder. I have done a bit of critiquing for friends. I have finished a couple of books, and started a couple more.

Also, I attended a book signing tonight by Jean M Auel (in the photo) and hauled along my spiffy new hardcover of The Land of Painted Caves and two crummy paperbacks (Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of the Horses). She is fascinating to listen to and very pleasant, even to tongue-tied fangirls at the end of the line with three mis-matched books. Hey, she's a writer, and she talked about writing. That counts as writing, right?

On the reading front, I have finished:
Impulsive by Helen Kay Dimon. I've seen her name sprinkled through the blogosphere for the past few years, and finally, impulsively, picked up a copy of this contemporary romance from Brava at my local library. It was a fast read (a good thing given my recent history with late fines) and I would definitely read more from her.

Holiday Bound by Beth Kerry. I picked this up as a free read on Amazon and read it entirely on the Kindle app on my Evo. It was...not exactly my style. It was well written, but I think I would have enjoyed it more as a normal contemporary romance without the bondage. But I need to read more shorter pieces to get a feel for the pacing and level of conflict, since I feel like I don't quite "get" how novellas are structured yet.

A book on Wordpress from a Borders that is going out of business, purchased at a hefty discount along with: a book on Flash, a couple of magazines that I typically wouldn't shell out for, and some new CD's of music to write by-- Enigma greatest hits and the sound track to Lord of the Rings. The Wordpress book was eh. Would have been more helpful a year ago, but at least it's a reference that I can flip through fast (yes, all the info is probably online but I skim paper much faster than search engine results...)

And I'm about halfway through the latest Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson. Given how thick the book is, halfway almost counts as a book completion, doesn't it? Not that its difficult reading. The book flows wonderfully and is tying up plot threads left and right in ways that are making me very happy and keeping me reading for more. The end is in sight, though it's not here yet.

Plus, I'm reading a Sci Fi Romance novella for a RWA chapter mate for review (and loving it...will probably post the review here as well as in our newsletter, etc), and have Jean M Auel's latest book recently arrived and sitting at the top of my TBR pile.

Congratulations to all the Golden Heart and Rita finalists!

2011-03-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

Especially to Pat Rice, from my home chapter of MORWA for her nomination for The Wicked Wyckerly.

It is also cool to see that not just one but two sci fi romances are up for the GH in paranormal. Maybe it's because I pay more attention, now that I have a completed one that I'm shopping, but I am hearing more and more buzz about sci fi romances the last year or so. Maybe aliens, or at least starship captains, are the next vampires. No, I didn't submit my aliens to the GH this year, so there was no competition.

For myself, it's back to writing. And editing. And submitting. And yes, I did end up baking a cake this morning to help calm my nerves...

#RitaGH

2011-03-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

Today's the day. Are you nervous? I totally am.

I don't think I have much chance of getting the call. I'd love to, but all the various contest feedback on my entry was so mixed last year, that I'm not holding my breath. (And trying hard not to hyperventilate either).

I do, however, have high hopes for a couple of dear friends and crit partners. Two of them are out of town or I'd suggest a little Happy Hour tonight to drown our cheers & sorrows.

Silly, silly Kristi. I tell myself that I'm not worried, or interested, and that I'll just wait till 2 and scan the final list looking for names I know. But all morning long I've had my cell phone in my hand or in my pocket.

See, this is why I've mostly sworn off contests for the year. Here I am on spring break with the kids, and I haven't managed to write two words all week. I did a little bit of querying, but that's like scouring an open would with rubbing alcohol and salt. The waiting is a total motivation killer, and the letdown afterwards is almost worse.

I'd love to settle my nerves with chocolate, but I gave it up for Lent. Or wine, but it's not even 9AM and I have two small children in the house. I'd go for a brisk walk, but it's snowing outside. (Yes, snow. Giant softball sized hunks falling from the sky. In late March. Grr). Maybe I should go bake something. And have a cup of tea. I think I have a box of Tazo Calm around here somewhere...

Another week, another book

2011-03-19T05:53:00.000-07:00

I had completely forgotten that I had a copy of Jennifer Weiner's Best Friends Forever sitting in my TBR pile at home when I saw a copy on the library sale table for $1. Oops.

It has the lovely voice that I expect from Weiner, and the kind of chick lit (oops, I'm not supposed to use that term, right?) plot that kept me both entertained and flipping pages to find out what crazy mess would happen next. It was fairly of reminiscent of In Her Shoes in the interactions between the two main characters--one quieter, less confident of her (newly acquired through dieting) looks, the other slim, beautiful, and utterly aware of it.

The book's high school flashbacks were, in places, uncomfortably close to my own history (the main characters graduated in the 92...I was not far after). The one thing that bugged me was that the timeline seemed off. I thought at first that the characters were attending a 10 year reunion, but later there are too many references to Facebook and Twitter, which were not around in 2002. Nor would Facebook and Twitter have been around or used in quite the same way in 2007 for a 15-year reunion, but I'm fairly certain they weren't allready at their 20 year and pushing 40 years old.

Timewarp aside, it was fun. I just hope that next time I pick up one of her books, I don't buy it twice...

Attention Romance Writer-Bloggers:

2011-03-09T18:47:00.000-08:00

Quit apologizing in your blogs for being "late".

I don't care if you have a set schedule. I don't care if you're in a lineup with 30 NYT bestsellers and you're the newbie and you feel you owe 150% of your debut release success to the group blog and Holy Smokes you forgot to post your latest witty-little-slice-of-a-writers-life for FOUR WHOLE HOURS!

Don't tell me about it. No excuses. Just blog like there's nothing amiss.

I read a lot of blogs. If I leave Google Reader unattended for an entire weekend, my unread pile grows to over 400 posts. That's a LOT of posts. Honestly, I have no flipping clue whose day it is to post or by what time (and timezone) you've all agreed to post your Call Story/Recipe/Editor Interview. And besides, the beauty of blog posts and RSS and reader apps is that I, the reader, see your content on MY schedule. I don't sit around my inbox waiting for the magic "ding". I'm not tuning in on the TV at the time printed in the Sunday paper.

I guess I'm annoyed because I must have read a dozen posts this week alone that started out with "I apologize for being late to blog but...". If you're feeling ashamed of your tardiness, send a private email to your fellow blog partners asking for their forgiveness. But I am willing to bet a soda (the kind that comes in a can, shipping not included) that 99% of your loyal blog readers won't bat an eye. The other 1% are probably scary stalker-types who will have a detailed log of every euphemism for the male genetalia you've ever written in a love scene and clippings of your fingernails, and really, do you want to enable that sort of obsessive behavior?

More Books, and experiments in blogland

2011-03-02T14:16:00.000-08:00

For your reading pleasure, two posts in one.

First off, two more books to move to my ABR (Already Been Read) pile from my TBR pile:

Deep Breath
by Alison Kent. I didn't discover Alison Kent until a couple of years ago when I started hunting down writers' blogs. I won a copy of one of her SG-5 (At Risk) books on her blog, and was quickly hooked, despite the fact that neither contemporary romances nor romantic suspense were at the top of my favorite genres at the time. I think I've read 4 or 5 of the books in the series so far. Deep Breath brings yet another of her hunky spy guys, and was just as good as all the rest. I am beginning to worry that I'm going to run out of hot spy heroes soon...

Make Mine Midnight by Annmarie McKenna. This one is an erotica (M/M/F) novella by one of the talented writers I met through MORWA. I am somewhat embarassed to admit that its the first of her's I've read so far, and I can see why so many people rave about her writing.

***

On a completely different note, I've been experimenting with writing things in addition to romance. For years I've maintained a blog about myself as a working mom where I jabber about cooking and housekeeping and work and school and my kids. I've recently added another blog just for the cooking. It's called Year of the Pancake in honor of the hundreds of pancakes I make every year. I'm using that space to document my recipes and adventures in the kitchen.

On that blog, I'm also playing with adding some basic paid ads (going super-basic with Google Adsense and Amazon). I'm not exactly expecting to get rich (I wonder if I'll make enough for an extra mocha by the end of the year). But the cooking blog provides a nice contained little space for me to play around with different options. If you're interested at all in cooking and baking, feel free to wander over, say hi, maybe leave a comment. :)

More Books - a YA this time

2011-02-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

When I was in the middle school, I got to work in the school library for a semester in lieu of a study hall. It was really a lot of fun. I spent a lot of time sitting at a desk surrounded by books. I loved it. (And I was annoyed to find out in high school that the local public library wouldn't hire me after school to do the same job-library workers were required to have a graduate degree-hmph).

I discovered bunches of new books that way. Instead of having a scant 10 minutes once or twice a month as part of English class to browse the shelves, I was there every day. It was during this time that I discovered my first paranormal YA series-The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. I think I read all of them in relatively short order.

It has been over 20 years and while the details of the plot have gone extremely fuzzy, I have always remembered the title and the fact that I enjoyed it. So when I found a compilation at Barnes & Noble last fall of the complete series, I bought it. Alas, my TBR pile is still tottering precariously, but I have finally made it down to this one.

Over Sea, Under Stone is the first in the series, or perhaps it's the prequel.

Siblings Simon, Jane, and Barney find a medieval treasure map in the attic of an old house on the Cornwall coast one summer. With help from their mysterious Great Uncle Merry, they follow the clues in the map to find a chalice hidden since the days of King Arthur. Along the way they have to outwit evil enemies who are also hunting the same grail.

To my romance-reading friends, note this is not a romance. And it is a much younger YA than today's brand of sexy teen-angst novels or practically-adult paranormals. I would rank it halfway between Harry Potter and The Magic Treehouse series, alongside CS Lewis for complexity of language and age-appropriateness of storytelling for middle-schoolers.

I have not yet started on The Dark is Rising, which begins the tale of Will Stanton, the protagonist of the rest of the series, but I will certainly be reporting back on my re-read of these.

I'm not sure it counts...

2011-02-08T05:50:00.000-08:00

Judging contest entries is not quite the same as reading a book. But when I read 6 55-page entries, I start wondering if maybe it does count.

Woo hoo Golden Heart judging is done, and I'm not even right at the deadline. It is interesting to see how the entries lay out. Last year I had a range that I scored from fairly low to fairly high (though none I judged ended up finalling). This year in a different category they were all fairly close together. All good, but none really jumped out at me. I wish this batch of writers luck though. There are a couple that just might find a publisher, and a few more where the writer shows some serious talent but is obviously a bit of a newbie at writing novel-length fiction.

On other RWA-related things, when I entered the scores into the website this morning, I saw the notice about rooms for the 2011 convention being mostly full. I am still on the fence about whether I'm going or not--it is a bad time this year for me as as both the change in month and the change in days make it harder to arrange the vacation time. I keep hoping that I will have a reason that I have to go since the last two years it has been a lot of fun and a good learning opportunity, but I'm not banking on it. And now I'm hoping that if I do decide to go, that I will have somewhere to sleep.

2011 Books: In Too Deep

2011-02-02T19:04:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I thought I would be reading books from my TBR pile (which is more of a tower than a pile, and a leaning tower at that). Except last Friday my youngest begged to go to the library. I cannot turn down a 3-year old with big blue eyes and a fondness for books.

That same 3-year old with the baby blues did not spend the entire time running in circles and pulling random books off of random shelves. I was able to mostly contain him to the children's section. This time.

And the children's section is right next to the large shelf full of new releases. And there, staring straight at me from the new releases was Jayne Krentz's other newest book.

So, I read another one. In print (sorry little Sony). But it was free this time. Well, technically I spend a lot on late fees (especially for kids books that get mixed up in the wrong shelf at home....)

In Too Deep is a contemporary in her multi-pen-name, multi-time-line, multi-planet Arcane series of novels. This one is Fallon's story, the eternally grumpy head of J&J. Like all of Krentz/Castle/Quick's other Arcane books, this one is half paranormal mystery half romance. I liked it quite a bit better than Midnight Crystal. I think that her characters, especially the hero, Fallon, were better developed in this one. And Fallon has appeared in several of the previous Krentz Arcane novels, either on the page or by cell phone. And he is a dark, brooding type of hero. My favorite type :)

Whatever the reason, this book had all of the usual Krentz/Quick/Castle magic. I was incredibly happy that my kids actually played quietly today without direct parental supervision, and on day 2 of the great non-blizzard-of-2011-whose-paltry-3-inches-of-snow-still-left-us-housebound. I could barely put it down.

More Books

2011-01-24T12:57:00.000-08:00

So far in 2011, my book reading average is pretty pitiful. This is what, the second? In 3 weeks. Slacker.

Midnight Crystal by Jayne Castle
Print, actually purchased later last year (so I'm still safe on reading only from the TBR pile and/or electronically resolution)
Paranormal/Futuristic Romance

If anyone has not figured it out (and this was news to me until about 2 years ago), Jayne Castle is Jayne Ann Krentz is Amanda Quick. Midnight Crystal is one of her Arcane series of books that have crossed all 3 pen names and all 3 time periods (Victorian England, Contemporary US, and futuristic Harmony).

This one was good. Not as good as some of her other newer releases, but enjoyable. I think the romantic tension was not as high as in some of her books, but this one had a great mystery plot that reminded me of some of her Victorians (the With This Ring series).

And of course, despite her RWA talks about how she keeps trying to kill her career, I love the fact that one of my favorite romance authors writes futuristics. (see, I'm not crazy, just trying to get the career-killing over first, then move on to the NYT lists later...or maybe I won't kill my career either...its certainly working out fine for Ms. Krentz/Castle/Quick)

Books, Books, Books

2011-01-24T12:56:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I tracked my reading habits for the year. I wanted to see what I was actually reading. It was a good activity and gave me something interesting to write about (besides myself), so I'm going to try it again this year.

Like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the very act of writing down my reading changed what I read last time. Actually, the act of writing changed what I read. That year, for the first time ever, I read primarily contemporary romances. That's what I was writing at the time, too. My writing has branched to include contemporaries, sci fi, and fantasy, so who knows what kinds of books will catch my eye this year.

And this time, I'm not going to shy away from mentioning the less family-friendly books that I read. I think before I "forgot" to mention a few of the erotic novellas that I had read because, you know, my mother-in-law might be reading my blog. In the context of this blog at this time, I have admitted to attempting to write hotter books myself. If any of my current blog readers are shocked by my reading habits, then they might want to follow a different aspiring writer :)

To go along with my listing of books, I am also going to track what format of books I'm reading. One of my resolutions in general is to buy more eBooks and fewer paper ones, both to conserve precious shelf space in the house, and to get the best use of my Sony eReader. And to whittle down my TBR pile (some of which hadn't even been unpacked from RWA Nationals until I needed the bag to pack for Christmas vacation).
My first book of the year is one I started over Christmas but didn't finish until last night (I massively overestimated how much free time I would have while on vacation with the family and had packed 4 more novels that are still unopened). This book was a paper book, but it fits my "shorten the TBR pile" criteria nicely.

Also, I won't promise to write this much of a review on every book I read this year. Or maybe I will. I am at least starting out on the right foot.

The Protector by Carla Capshaw
Historical Inspirational Romance
Paperback

I picked this one up at RWA Nationals last summer because I had heard good buzz about her debut novel, The Gladiator. Both were released by Harlequin's Love Inspired Historical line and are set in ancient Rome. I don't typically read inspirational or Christian books, usually because the "inspirational" bits frequently feel like a sermon that has been sledgehammered into the plot.

Because of the historical setting of The Protector, though, I was not quite as bothered by the Christian message. I enjoyed the interplay of the different belief systems and the cultural context around being a Christian (and its dangers) in that time period. I did try very hard to suppress my eyerolling at the requisite "one character must repent and learn to pray the 'right' way" bits, but overall it was a pretty good book. The romance was well done and had more sexual tension than I think I expected (tension that is not actually resolved onscreen, however). The romantic tension was carried through and really worked for me. Overall it was a nice read for the Christmas season, and I will definitely watch for more from Ms. Capshaw.

P.S. I forgot to actually publish this post about two weeks ago when I wrote it. I only noticed just now when I went to publish the second iteration. Oops.

Goals for 2011

2011-01-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

I am blessed with four wonderful critique partners (who probably wonder why I don't provide more material to critique). We get together weekly to go over each others pages, or sometimes just talk about writing, books, RWA, and the like. Writing-slacker that I am, I look forward to Tuesday nights because it is time that I can't be distracted by kids and laundry and work and those-who-don't-read-romance :)

Before Christmas, we went out to dinner at Macaroni Grill instead of to the bookstore where we normally meet. The choice of restaurant was driven only partially by the yummy food. They also have paper tablecloths and crayons. We ate, we talked, we set goals. And when we left, we took our goals with us.

Here is a bad snapshot of mine for 2011. First off, I am about 40,000 words into a fantasy romance currently titled Unbreakable. I want to finish the first draft of this book this year. It's shaping up to sit on the epic side of fantasy (probably over 100k words, maybe 120 or more). And I'm really enjoying it.

My second goal is to finish a short story/novella that is vaguely related to Unbreakable. I'm like 7000 words in and aiming for the 15-20k mark. I was completely silly and started this last September thinking I'd have it knocked out before NaNoWriMo in November. Hah. I should finish it this year. Sooner rather than later even.

I also have two partials that I want to complete: One is another book in my Alien world (nope, didn't learn my lesson the first time around...someone will want to read these eventually right?). The other is to write a partial for another short contemporary romance. I have a nice start to it (about 5 pages that I'd probably not keep, plus pages of brainstorming notes) :)

I have a few other goals. Editing. Querying. Querying some more. Staying a bit more on top of critiquing for those wonderful (and patient) friends of mine.

And I have one anti-goal. No Contests (with two minor exceptions: my own chapter's contest, since its a fundraising thing that I benefit from, and the Golden Heart. Maybe). But the RWA contest circuit has done me more harm than good this past year--one entry was actually a contest finalist, and I had two other close-calls (where I was 4th when only top 3 were recognized). And I had quite a few more that came nowhere close to the top. In total, I spent a lot of money for no return, and spent a lot of time tweaking the same few pages instead of editing entire books or writing new pages.

How about anyone else? Any goals? Planning to finish a manuscript (or 5?) Sell something? Promote something?

Option: Failure

2010-11-30T19:39:00.000-08:00

I have declared failure on NaNoWriMo for this year. I didn't even get close, By not even close, I mean I've written less than 16,000 words.

Life in November sucked. Instead of putting in extra hours writing, I had to put in extra hours at the day job. So many hours that I actually bumped into my upper limit (crazy timekeeping system won't let a "part-time" person record more than 40 hours in a week). Funny, but the only "extra" time I got to myself to write was on the days where I came to work late so that I wouldn't accidentally work too long and end up volunteering my time. The job is important for a variety of reasons, but I won't do it for free. There were a couple of other issues around the house that sapped all the creative energy right out of me during much of the time I wasn't at work.

By the time Thanksgiving came around, I was at about 13,000 words. I was off work all week because my oldest gets an entire week off from school every Thanksgiving. I could have made the decision to plop her in front of the computer, the TV, the Wii, or sent her to play Barbies for several hours each day so I could write. Instead, I let my mom-guilt decide for me and not only had a 6-year old home with me, but her (very active and tricksy) 3-year old brother too. We had a great time going to the St. Louis Science Center, and I got the kids to help clean house (honestly, I did...Grandma's visits makes for great motivation). We hosted T-day dinner at our house and I got to spend a day in the kitchen happily cooking with my Mom and baby sister for company (and for extra hands with either the food or the kiddos). The week was really quite nice, as long as I ignored the whining from my characters about why I wasn't spending any quality time with *them*.

I haven't yet put my two manuscript pieces together (my NaNo work was in a separate file for record-keeping), but I think I am at around 30-40,000 words total on that book (out of a projected 90-120k words...yep, it's a long one, by design). Not bad for a yearly total, especially as I wrote 25,000 of my contemporary manuscript this year and did a massive editing job on my sci fi. And I have fragments of other stuff in progress (including a "short" story that might end up as a full manuscript at the rate it's going).
2010 won't have been a total failure as far as writing goes. Not by a long shot. It was just November that kicked my butt.

#NaNoWriMo 11/15/2010

2010-11-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

11008 / 50000
Not even close to the halfway mark word-wise, even though I"m at the halfway point of the schedule. And I'm full of really good excuses, like work and family and sleep. Maybe this week I'll stay on track better.

#NaNoWriMo 11/13/2010

2010-11-13T14:07:00.000-08:00

10,195 / 50,000

I actually made my quota for the day. Just over 1700 words. Of course, according to my spreadsheet I have to write over 2300 words a day, every day, for the rest of November left to meet my goal. So technically I did not meet my quota. But I still have hope. I have a week of staycation coming, and I have grand plans of pulling double-headers those days.

Quit laughing.

#NaNoWriMo 11/12/2010

2010-11-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

8487 / 50000
I'm getting there. But at this rate I have like 2600 words per day to write from now until the finish to meet my goal. My current pace is closer to 1200 words on days where I actually write.

#NaNoWriMo 11/11/2010

2010-11-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

7143 / 50000

I'm almost exactly a week behind in word count. I think I've missed almost a week's worth of writing days. Still, progress is progress.

#NaNoWriMo Update

2010-11-08T20:04:00.000-08:00

4674 / 50000.

Still pitiful. And it's a good thing I'm already mostly reclined in bed, because I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard.

Good night and happy typing!

#NaNoWriMo Update

2010-11-07T20:04:00.000-08:00

4127 Words. That's my total wordcount, not today's total. Sucky, I know.

Statistically, I should be over 10,000 by now. But according to my spreadsheet, I only have about 2000 a day from now till the end to make up for lost time.

This past week was rough, so we'll see how the rest of the month goes. Monday was perfect. Tuesday I wrote nothing as I was preparing for critique group Wednesday night, and Wednesday was out also. Thursday and Friday I managed to lose any hope of writing time due to annoyances with work (and meetings that get scheduled when I'm supposed to have already left for the day, and kids tumbling classes that get cancelled at the last minute and take over my writing time).

I hope I don't whine with every NaNo post, but its a common theme for me lately :) I tend to fit my writing into the crumbs and crusts left behind after my day job and my kids have eaten their fill of me. And it seems that everyone has been hungrier than usual.

I still have hope. If I manage to write every night before bed, and do better about sneaking away on a weekend, and actually get a day off (or at least a few hours) when I'm due one, then I ought to be able to catch up.

Goodness knows I have enough story queued up behind these fingerprints bursting to come out.

And now, off to bed.

Focus and finish

2010-11-02T20:15:00.000-07:00

Some of the buzzwords floating around the day job lately have to do with working efficiently. "Focus and finish" has to do with not getting yourself distracted. Switching between different tasks too often can make you a very unproductive worker. Its true for us as writers, too.

Yes, you heard me. *grumble grumble*. Losing focus and being distracted is not efficient for a writer. And yes, I'm the queen of the distraction.

What all am I distracted with at the moment? Well, there's NaNoWriMo, where I am attempting to write 50,000 words in the middle of my longest work in progress. It's a fantasy romance, possibly an epic fantasy romance. Before my NaNo'ing, I had about 15,000 words. Yesterday I added another 1800. Well, I made a brand new file just for NaNo and it has 1800 words. Yay me. I chose continuing existing work rather than starting something new. Yay me, again.

Today, not so focused. I'm way off track because of cleanup work for our chapter contest. I was helping to coordinate one division and entered two others. And after I got done checking for failed emails and forwarding judge thank-you's, I looked at my scores from the other divisions. Talk about distracting.

I entered Leap with a new beginning, my NaNoWriMo WIP Unbreakable, and my contemporary series. Apparently I made Leap worse with its new start. Joy. Unbreakable was a bit of a heartbreaker--once I sorted the scoregrid (they send it out with anonymous scores so you can see how you rank), I was fourth. Fourth. This, for the record, is the second contest this year where I've been 4th. Not even a finalist, but close enough to really annoy me. I don't have my scores on Helmut and Claire's story, but I'm not quite as interested in that one.

The worst distraction is the fact that I'm signed up to read at our chapter crit group tomorrow night. And I don't have anything ready. I have this lovely beginning to a new contemporary romance all started, and I thought I would write it for NaNo, so I should easily have 10-15 pages by now. I've got 5 if I really stretch the margins and I can't get a handle on the hero. And I've been futzing around for an hour now and managed to write about 50 new words.

So, no NaNo progress tonight, or probably tomorrow either. No NaNo cheating progress either. I'll be lucky to write the basic daily ration on Thursday and Friday, so not counting on catching up. Which means I'm like a week behind by the time week 1 is up. Joy.

And now, back to focusing and finishing something. For now, I've got to choose 15 good pages of some writing (preferably my own) and print.

@NaNoWriMo

2010-10-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

I am probably crazy. No I am definitely crazy. And I better be super nice to my husband (when I have the time). Because I'm going to attempt NaNoWriMo again this year.

Anyone else?

I'm britelord, in case you need a writing buddy :)

Now the trick is to choose just one story idea.

Perfect Scores

2010-10-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

I am helping coordinate our chapter contest and began thinking about contest scores. Specifically, perfect scores. No, I'm not going to give previews about if/how many entries in my category have received them.

But in previous contests, it seems that the winning entries are those that receive the most 100's. And that makes sense, mathematically. But is it fair?

But that made me wonder how many judges actually give perfects. I don't think I ever have. I have given close--scores in the high 90%'s. I gave one high 8 in last year's Golden Heart (it was an 8.8 or an 8.6, and to my disappointment, it didn't final). Are my standards just too high? Or am I not getting the good entries?

I have gotten a few perfect scores. Ironically, I have not finalled in any contest where I got one of those, because it's usually accompanied by a couple in the 60-80 range. And I am proud to say that I got both a 9 and an 8.8 on my Golden Heart entry last year. That netted me top quarter, not finalist. Given that history, I'm not sure I trust those 100%'s.

If you judge writing contests, do you ever give perfect scores? Have you ever received one? Would you rather have a 100 or a finalist spot?

Contemplating length

2010-10-03T16:38:00.000-07:00

Have you ever written a short story?

The more I read about publication options in SF/F, the more I keep hearing about writers who started with short stories. Seems to be the "thing to do". Write (and hopefully publish) a few shorts in the same world as your novel. Build the fanbase before you even sell the book.

Except...

What if I can't write anything that short?

I didn't start out writing short. Yes, I've written a few in my time. For various classes, assignments outlined by one teacher or another. But when I started out to Write (with a capital W) a few years ago, I tackled a novel. My first real, self-directed work of fiction was a NaNoWriMo 50,000 word contemporary romance that after edits and rewrites has ranged from 65,000 to 80,000 words, depending on the version. Since then I've "finished" two additional manuscripts, one at about 55,000 words and one at 90,000.

5-15,000 words? What on earth (or rather, what in space) can I accomplish in that short of page count? And is it really worth my time?

Maybe, just maybe, my brain will work better in a longer format. Maybe I will just be a novel writer. Or am I shortchanging myself?

Intiuitively, I believe that writing (and any other brain activity) is a lot like physical exercise. You have to add variety. You have to change things up. If you don't, you fall into a rut and start losing ground. Your body gets too efficient at one thing (running or bicep curls or biking or whatever), and stops having to work at it, and you plateau in your performance or weight loss or development. But if you change up your workout, and keep your muscles guessing about their next challenge, then your favorite/best/core activites get even better.
So, should I try to write short? Should I try to come up with story ideas that can be fleshed out in less than 50,000 words? I might have to *gasp* lose the romance angle if I do that. Can I write a story without a happily ever after? Or can I build up to one in such a short work?

Part of me thinks yes. Yes I can. Yes I should.

But then part of me screams No. If I divert my attention away from the "real" writing, will I ever finish manuscript number 4 (or 4 and 5, seeing as how I have another partial one in limbo on my harddrive from 2 years ago)? And what happens if I never sell the short stories either? (that's me, ever the optimist about my publication future)

How do you name your characters?

2010-09-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

Author Alison Kent recently blogged about having to change character names partway through a manuscript and how it was unusual for her.

That got me thinking: how do other people come up with names for their characters?

I think with every book I've tried to write, I've struggled with the problem. Every time I write in a new character (primary or secondary), I hem and haw over what to name them. I waste so much time on baby naming websites and census websites that it's ridiculous. Sometimes I have to name a character HISNAME for a few chapters so that I don't stall out on page 1.

For my first manuscript, I stole the first name of my 4th grade crush. Dorky, I know. For the heroine in that story, I borrowed one of my sisters' middle names. My first book notwithstanding, I am leery of picking the name of someone I know well. I'm figure I'll either offend them, or make them think that I'm stalking them. And many times the memory of an old classmate or acquaintance will interfere with me using a name for my hero or heroine. I can't name my protagonist after someone I disliked. I just can't. It's tempting to use them for the villains, though >:).

For my sci fi story, I had my heroine's name, Myrrah, early. And I have no idea where it came from. I thought it was made up, but I've since heard a reference to that same name, with the same spelling, used in a different context. Guess I'm not that original. I had a really hard time with her leading man, however, and wasn't sure about his name for half the novel. The name has grown on me now.

On my other contemporary, I've had many people (contest judges and an editor during a pitch) suggest that I change my hero's name. It's Helmut. Yes, it's unusual and kind of foreign-sounding and I'm open to changing it. But people remember the name :) And my heroine's name, Claire, came about because I wanted some identity confusion in the opening scenes. I didn't want to give her an androgynous name (no Chris or Pat), so I manipulated her initials (CJ). It worked. For me anyway.

I think the easiest so far is my newest work in progress, a fantasy. It's not Earth-based, so I can do whatever I want. And I am. I have a couple of basic approaches to creating fantasy-ish names, including name generator sites and looking up words in ancient languages and then chopping them into something pronounceable. In one case I needed four related names (four brothers) and I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I made up an A name, a B name, a C and a D.

As I posted last time, tracking all of this is a bit of a chore. As is spell-checking. I usually add characters' names to the Word spell-check dictionary. But that adds it to the dictionary of just one computer, not two, and the dictionary applies to every manuscript I write on that computer. So, my laptop will currently let me misspell "helmet" (as in headgear) as Helmut and not complain. Oops.

What about you. Any fool-proof name-choosing schemes? Favorite sites? Or am I just nuts? (wait, don't answer that one...)

Worldbuilding is Hard

2010-09-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned before that my current work in progress is a fantasy romance. We're talking made-up world, swords and magic. Maybe dragons. There's a dead one so far, but I don't think this particular storyline will lend itself to any live beasties.

I am having a lot harder time writing this story than any of my previous ones. Yes, even harder than aliens. My alien book originally started on Earth, present-day Earth. So I got to cheat and reveal little bits of the alien world as I went along. That means I didn't have to have it all figured out before I started.

This time, well, its harder. I can make stuff up as I go along. And I am. But then I have to remember it. And remembering made-up cities, rivers, mountains and kingdoms is a lot harder than remembering St. Louis, the Mississippi, and Nebraska.

I am trying to keep the focus for now on the people, but if all I wrote was dialogue then my story would be done about 50,000 words too fast. And the magic isn't separable from the storyline. Some of the major conflicts are created by and compounded by the world they're living in. I think that's supposed to be a good sign that the fantasy elements aren't taking over the story.

Yesterday I tried to write for an hour and ended up attempting to sketch a map for the first time. I had to know where my people were and where they were headed, and what was in their way. Then I beefed up my basic little Excel spreadsheet where I was tracking character names by adding tabs for Cities, Kingdoms/Regions, and Geography (stuff like rivers and mountains that need names). It felt like I was stalling and avoiding writing, but after I got done, I realized that I had a better idea of what to do.

I feel like I need all this stuff online somehow, but I am not sure how to do it. I write from two separate computers (a laptop at home that has been grounded from travel after a corner of the case got broken, and a netbook that goes to crit group, RWA, and Starbucks). I usually throw my latest version of what I write into a folder on my webserver so that I can get it from the other computer without having to remember a thumbdrive. My spreadsheet is now there too. But my sketch is on paper, and its not complete. I might have to scan it or run it through Adobe Illustrator (which I have but have barely played with, and is probably a tempting little time suck....) to create a graphic file. And short of using Windows Paint, I don't know that I have access to a graphics program to update my map with that I can access from both computers. I've got basically nothing on the netbook but windows and Open Office.

Ok, whine time over. If anyone has good suggestions for managing this stuff without installing a lot of crap (since neither computer can handle it), let me know. In the mean time, maybe I should open that file and actually write a few words...

A backwards way of shopping

2010-09-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

I love books. I love bookstores. And I love shopping in bookstores. But I don't really understand them.
I am not a market expert, but I am an expert marketer. Not the seller-type of marketer, mind you. The goes-to-the-market type of marketer. Having been in charge of purchasing of a wide variety of goods from toilet paper to computers to catering services for a small startup company (which was a sort of merger of two independents, which we then grew with the addition of two newbies within the past six years), makes me a bit of an expert. That, and my husband isn't much of a shopper. (The kids are learning though).

When I walk into Macy's looking for new clothes, I love to browse the latest fashions. The new fall looks, hot off the runway, and priced to match. $50 t-shirts. $200 jeans. Its all fresh, beautiful, artfully displayed, and I love to touch the fabrics and sigh over the colors. If I truly fall head over heels in love with something, I might even try it on. And occasionally buy. But not often. I know what that pricetag means. It means "I'm too good for your budget, but you're going to drool over me anyway."

Next I meander over to the loss leaders. These are the too-good-to-be-true deals. There's always one or two. Buy one Get one on a new style (of which there are exactly two on the entire rack). 50% off, for 3 hours only. Lowest price of the season. This is why I'm in the store in the first place. But there are rarely enough of these (and never in my size). So I'm here for the possibility of a bargain, but expect to be disappointed.
Then, I head for the back racks. The regular sale section. 20% off. 40% off. Previously fondled-and-sighed-over-and-tried-on. But affordable. This is where I do most of my buying. This is where the styles still have multiple color and size options left on the rack. This is, I would guess, where the stores expect to actually make a profit. Not from the pretty front-end styles. From the middle.

And then there's my true love, the clearance racks. Bargains galore. A rip here, a missing button there. Perfect styles that only come in size 0 or 18 extra-long. One or two gems (must be a return!) in just my size. *sigh* I love love love a bargain.

But bookstores don't work like this. For them, new-and-hot is typically treated to their 40%-off deal. Everything else, full price. The "bargain" section is comprised of books and kits and crafts, not with the items that are half a season behind on style. And clearance? Forget about it. No such thing. Well, maybe that one tiny shelf by the front door, with half a dozen lonely hardcovers that are still $15 each.

This is where I, a shopper, think that the bookstores are going wrong. The publishing industry returns system is screwy, and takes away any motivation for a bookstore to discount things. (With some of the agency pricing games publishers are playing with e-books, it also takes away the entire ability to discount things) And prices are well-publicized and printed and just don't change from week to week. So to make up the difference, to pad their bottom line, bookstores add junk. Toys, chocolates, board games, stationary, $20 tote bags, and that silly "bargain" section that is not full of "bargains" but full of seasonal merchandise. Sorry folks, that's not a bargain. And carrying fewer books and more junk won't entice me into your store more often--that's what Walgreens and Family Dollar are for.

If Borders and Barnes and Noble want more foot traffic, then add the occasional 14-hour sale. Put a 15% off coupon in the paper, and let a (non-card-carrying) member use it on anything in the store. When books get "old", mark them down incrementally instead of stripping the cover off and sending them back. Seriously, folks, if you knock 25% off the price of your paperback books, I'd likely walk out with 3 times as many of them (and possibly that hard-to-resist-full-price-bestseller too, since I'm feeling rich). I am *that* weak when it comes to a sale (and so are a lot of other shoppers). Do the math, you'd win out.

The rudest possible rejection letter

2010-08-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

This morning I received the rudest rejection letter from an agent that I pitched to at RWA Nationals. The reply was in response to a request for a full manuscript, which I had just sent. Here it is, in its entirety, cut and pasted directly from my email:

So, in other words, most of those who you pitched at the RWA have rejected
you and now you have decided to skim the bottom of the bucket? It doesn't
work that way, my friend. I asked you to send me a complete which I assumed
was completed when you pitched me last month. What has happened in the
interim that has forced you to us. That story might be one story that I'd
like to hear. Otherwise, I'm sorry.

And while I'm not above mocking, snarking, satirizing, or venting, I am not replying to this jackass.

I will tell you, my blog, "What has happened in the interim that as forced {me} to {them}":

1. The manuscript that I did pitch was complete. But possibly not polished. I hadn't read through it in its entirety for a long while. And I wanted to put my best work forward. So I didn't email it upon returning to my hotel room. Instead, I read it. And polished it. I fixed typos, removed one place where I had accidentally left {insert research here} from an earlier draft, added a cover page and made sure the formatting and chapter numbering were right (and sequential, LOL). So, shame on me for pitching something that needed work. Not scenes, not re-writes, just polish.

2. I arrived home from Nationals into crunch time at work. I have a day job, and not of the waiting-tables variety. I am a software engineer and the lead over four other software engineers on a project with an August 18 deadline. I worked overtime for two weeks, making sure we met our deadline. Missing it costs our group tens (or possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars in fees. A hell of a lot more than what my one manuscript is likely to earn should it sell. (Not that those fees go to my pocket, but they do help insure that we have another contract, and thus, a job)

Oh yeah, and this day job pays my mortgage and provides health insurance for my family, including a child with major medical problems. Ditching the day job to submit a manuscript to an agent who, statistically, is likely to reject it anyway is a bit lower on the priority list.

3) The weekend after Nationals was a family reunion. In another state. I actually got a lot of reading and polishing done in the car on that trip (much to my husband's annoyance). The weekend after that was girl scout camp. Did I mention that I have a day job? If I can't write on the weekends, then I can't write. And my family is important to me. Far more important than a novel will ever be.

4) School started. For stay-at-home moms and work-from-home moms, this is a time to rejoice. For those of us who have to re-adjust our work schedule to be available for drop off/pick up, and need to find time to go school shopping (to uniform stores with limited hours, doctor appointments, supplies, gym shoes...), its a source of stress. The first day of school was the day of my work deadline (I didn't get to either drop my daughter off or pick her up that day because I was at work).

5) Child's birthday. Which becomes a multi-part event with families spread out (and I still haven't sent out invitations to her classmates for the third round).

6) All that querying and being rejected by other agents took a bite out of my time. Um, wait a minute. I didn't query any other agents. I didn't pitch any other agents. I submitted a single partial to a single requesting editor. Then I finished polishing the rest of the novel and mailed it out. Yesterday. I guess its good I didn't have to wait 4-6 weeks for this gem of an email.

I honestly had my reservations about this particular agent after the pitch. I wasn't sure it would be a good fit for me given what and how I want to write. And he didn't even want to hear about the manuscript I was pitching. I got the distinct impression that he was looking for a meal ticket, not an author to represent.

I guess my instincts were right. I will never work with this person. After all, in his own words, he is "the bottom of the bucket".

How clean is your desk?

2010-08-27T05:24:00.000-07:00

Mine’s trashed. My bookshelves are running over. The floorspace in our office is occupied by an enormous cutting table with an unfinished sewing project strewn about the top. I have a new bulletin board and some inspirational plaques to hang on the wall above my desk. They’ve been on the floor for a month. And my collection of RWR’s and Poets and Writers magazines are sprinkled throughout the house.

Sounds a bit like my writing at the moment too.

Too many projects, all in different states of disarray. I mean completion. Different states of completion. Right. I’m not really sure that it’s a problem. Right now, I’m leaning toward labeling the messy-desk-stage as part of my “process”.

It’s nuts. And sometimes it’s overwhelming. I will hit a point where the mess is so bad that I avoid even entering the office for days on end. If I’m writing at that point, it’s in Starbucks, or on the couch. And then I’ll decide that enough is enough and clean and organize the whole space. Everything gets straightened, dusted, cleared, organized, sorted, boxed, and labeled. At that point, the space is so clean that I waver between wanting to spend all my free time in there, just to enjoy the serenity of it, and being afraid to do any actual work. Because work will mess things up again.

That’s totally how I write. Right now, I’m doing final edits on one manuscript to send it to a requesting agent from Nationals. I’m (mostly mentally) re-plotting another to fix some issues that multiple people have pointed out. And I’m in the early stages of first drafting a third. There is another manuscript simmering on the back burner, requesting tweaks and submission (I’m trying to ignore it). And ideas for three or four more keep trickling through my brain. Some days the amount of work is overwhelming, and I just avoid the writing altogether (or switch gears and start dinking with my website again, or go shopping). But I think the blitz is coming. The cleaning/organizing/tying-up-all-loose-ends blitz. The one where I finish my edits, and polish my formatting and spend way too much money entering contests and too much time sending query letters.

And if this cycle is like my last couple of cycles, once I do that cleaning blitz, I will barely touch a keyboard again for a couple of months. I’ll find myself sitting on the couch watching movies and HGTV and Food Network, and baking and planning fancy dinners (instead of the frozen chicken nuggets and cereal that we’ve eaten way too often lately).

And then, slowly, I’ll begin writing again. And I’ll collect a few pages in one spot. And leave a craft book marked and open. And maybe stick a postcard of a setting inspiration to my bulletin board. And then, before I know it, I’ll be back to the messy desk stage.

What about you? How clean is your desk?

I'm not in it for the swords...

2010-08-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

...but you could be.

The fabulous Jeannie Lin is giving away Butterfly Swords (the metal, weapon version) as part of her launch celebration to celebrate her debut book Butterfly Swords.

I mean, I could be in it for the swords. My husband would love them (I think they would go nicely with our collection of dragons, the katana, and my suit of armor).

I could be promoting because Jeannie is a friend and critique partner. And RWA chapter-mate. And natural born teacher and generous with her time (she presents talks at our chapter, is giving an online class on the RWA pro loop soon, talks at nationals).

But no, I'm promoting Butterfly Swords because it is an awesome book. I know this because I got to read a beta. (neener-neener) :) Seriously, its an awesome book.

Or, I could be in it for the swords.

In any case, go check out her beautiful website, her book trailer, read an excerpt and while you're at it, pre-order yourself a copy.

#RWA10 Photos

2010-08-13T06:13:00.000-07:00

The Dolphin Hotel.

Fireworks over Epcot.

Jeannie Lin Dressing for Historical Success in Mideval Chinese garb.

Dawn (one of my weekly critique partners) and Ellen (one of the lovely MORWA ladies).

Chaptermate Jennifer Jakes was a Golden Heat finalist in the Historical division.

Jeannie Lin's face on the jumbo tron as she presents the Golden Heart for best Historical.

A washed-out picture of me at the Golden Heart banquet.

The rest of my weekly critique group: Shawntelle Madison, Jeannie Lin, myself, and Amanda Berry.

#RWA10 Wrap-up

2010-08-12T10:14:00.001-07:00

Every time I think I’m the last RWA10 attendee to blog about my experiences, I see another post. Maybe I’m not late, exactly.

I could give excuses (too busy writing, too many requests to deal with, too exhausted from seeing all of Disney). Or, I could tell the truth (haven’t gotten to it, grandiose ideas of including photos and no time to upload them, too much laundry). Or, I could tell you to go friend me on facebook (where I did actually post photos and a few updates). But somehow that phrase “go friend me” sounds an awful lot like “go do something else that starts with an f” when you say it fast. So I won’t do that either.

In the week since I’ve been home from Orlando, I’ve done the following:

Removed pink polish from my toes. I like the nails painted, but it’s just too much effort to maintain the rest of the year.
Re-polished the first three chapters of my contemporary manuscript, and re-worked the last synopsis I had written. Funny how the synopsis changes once you actually write the ending of the novel.
Emailed three chapters and newly polished synopsis to a requesting editor.
Received polite thank-you from the editor requesting the same pages snail-mailed.
Smacked self on head with hand and said “Doh” because I really, really should have known that the house only accepts printed submissions. To be fair, she did give me an email address, and I had to look up the mailing address online.
Continued polishing about 2/3 of the remaining novel. Need to quickly finish that up and send off to a requesting agent.
Wrote 2 new scenes on my Sci-Fi-that-just-won’t-die manuscript. Last night actually. And I’m kicking myself for not doing something else (like editing or submitting or writing the other darned book that I half plan to finish before the GH deadline this fall), but that’s what happens when you let your subconscious run your fingers for you.
Laundry.
Ate a steak sandwich in the cow barn of the Indiana State Fair. Total non-sequitur, I know. And, FWIW, the steak was excellent though the location was kind of unsettling (not just because of the aroma), as there were cows being primped for competition about 20 yards away. As my husband phrased it, “There is no second place.”

Contest News!

2010-07-29T17:09:00.001-07:00

My category-length contemporary (formerly titled The Appearance of Impropriety...new title TBA at some point) placed 2nd overall in the Passionate Ink's Stroke of Midnight contest! I was thrilled to just final and fully expecting honorable mention.

Very cool.

The Passionate Ink cocktail party was also fun. Two very interesting speakers. And I managed to get a table with a couple of editors that I have (or am planning to) submitted to. Almost accidentally. Almost. Of course, I was too chicken to really say much. But maybe, just maybe, they'll vaguely recall the silent blonde who placed in a contest and sat at their table with a dopey grin on her face all night.

Or maybe not :) But I am proud of myself for at least going that far. Heck I'm proud of myself for going to a party where I knew no one :)

Ok, I'm off to meander through the hotel bar, or possibly over to the Boardwalk in search of someone to talk to (or souvenirs to buy). If nothing else, I ought to catch the fireworks from the Disney Parks tonight.

#RWA10

2010-07-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

Are you packed? I'm not.

I'm a last-minute kind of packer. I'm a last-minute kind of everything, LOL. There will be items that don't hit my suitcase until about 6:10 Wednesday morning. We should be in the car and headed for the airport by 6:15. I still have to decide which gadgets actually come with me (camera, or rely on the phone/camera? iPod or spend time loading music into phone or e-reader? E-reader or a paperback for the plane?). I probably need to make a checklist so I don't leave home without my chargers and assorted cables for whatever I bring.

I could probably safely begin filling suitcases tonight with clothes. I'm sure I can keep my 3-year old from unpacking them for a day. And there aren't a lot of toiletries that I'm packing that I will need the night before or morning of my flight, though it still annoys me to have to segregate all of the "gels and liquids" into a baggie for airport security. Totally messes with my organization.

This is my second RWA conference, and I'm excited. Last year I was nervous. Terrified, actually. And generally anxious about how my husband would do on his own with both kids for 5 days, and anxious about pitching and having to *gasp* meet strangers and just generally anxious. (And guilty about the whole leaving-hubby-with-kids thing, but mom guilt is a topic for my other blog).

This time around, I'm excited. I feel much more comfortable with myself as a writer, and much more comfortable with the RWA experience as a whole. I'm apparently in the minority that I'm not excited to be at Disney World (I was super excited about Nashville). I don't have the time or the budget to spend a day at the Disney parks, and we had already been planning a family trip down there for later this year. But I am excited to be in the middle of the whole crazy RWA whirlwind again. I have a couple of “extra” engagements to attend this year, too, which makes me feel a bit more of a part of things and less like a wannabe.

I'm still terrified about pitching my book to both an agent and an editor. I don't know why the agent ought to terrify me. Lord knows I've queried enough so far. Last year at this time, I'd sent out maybe a dozen queries. My rejections number well into the double digits by now. And the editor shouldn't freak me out. Assuming I remember my name and don't start jabbering about aliens (I'm pitching a contemporary to her), I'll probably at least get the standard-issue request-for-a-partial.

In two days, I should be in a van en route to the Swan/Dolphin. Woo hoo!

Maybe I should get packing.

Getting ready for Nationals

2010-07-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

Are you going to the RWA National convention in Orlando?

Its prep time. This past month I've been a little slow at adding new words to my manuscript-in-progress because I'm distracted by lots of other RWA-related activities.

Ordering new business cards. I'm only half-convinced at the necessity of these. I printed my own last year, and wasted hours doing it. I fought with Word for hours and ended up with a stack of cards where no two were exactly the same. No clue why. This time, I spent a few more $ (not much considering card stock and ink) and bought them through Kinkos. The upside: took about 20 minutes start to finish. The downside: hubby and I both agree that the on-screen graphic was a bit nicer than the finished product (more saturated colors, clearer text). But, they're done. Want one? Want 50? :)

Updating my website. Yep, I have one. I had one last year, with a whopping single-page. This year I tried a couple of things and ended up installing Wordpress. I have more updating to do, so be kind if you visit today and think it looks a little scarce :) And don't be shocked if the template changes color more than once. My website-building budget is limited in both $ (I'm not up to paying for a theme yet) and time (because while I have the technical know-how to do it myself, I have a job with a looming deadline and a family who still speaks to me).

Sending out query letters. What better time to get yourself rejected than a few weeks before you have the perfect opportunity to pitch your masterpiece in person? It's a bit masochistic of me, but I keep doing it anyway.

Polishing two manuscripts. my contemporary (which might finally be getting a better name...maybe more on that later), and my sci-fi romance (with which I currently have a very twisted love/hate relationship). But should I at least get the "pity partial request", I'm ready.

Polishing a pitch. Our RWA chapter did a couple of awesome sessions to help hone our pitches. By the end of it, I not only had something written down that I could read outloud, but had some good feedback on it and I think it will actually work pretty well. Assuming I remember my name and native language when I sit down in front of the editor, let alone the particulars of my book. (not a joke, I have been known to forget my own name when in a stressful situation where I had to speak outloud).

Polishing my nails. Once again, the week of RWA will be the only week of the year where I have colored toenails (fingers TBA). Its also the only week of the year where I can 1) wear sandals and 2) am in an environment where it is normal to have colored digits. My day job is working with (primarily male) engineers in a chilly basement. They don't show me their toes, and I don't need to freeze mine. 'Course, hotel conference rooms aren't particularly warm either...

Reviews

2010-07-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

I finished a couple of the e-books that I mentioned recently. I'm going to attempt my own version of reviews of both of them. Bear with me, I'm new to this game. And don't hatemail me if my opinions differ from yours. I'd just block your comments anyway, since this is my own blog.

Origins, by JA Konrath is a sci fi thriller. I think that's the right term. I haven't quite gotten straight the difference between a suspense novel and a thriller, and the normal kind of action/adventure. I'd been eyeballing this one for months, but waited until I had a reader to download it. He sells a Kindle version of the book, but also gives it away for free on his own website. I opted for the free version.

This book started slowly for me. With all the critique groups and craft books, I have a harder time getting into some novels than I used to. Konrath drops a nice chunk of backstory each time he introduces one of his characters, and there are quite a few of them: a priest, a rabbi, a doctor who's now a vet, a kidnapper who's now a doctor, a scientist or two, an army guy, and a translator. And the devil. His name is Bub. And there were some nice text book excerpts explaining different scientific processes. Those might have been more fascinating to me if they'd been newer, but as an undergrad I worked in a biochemistry lab (did I ever mention I was going to major in Biology once?). So, I skimmed descriptions of introns and PCR and the like.

The idea of the book was interesting, that the US government had Satan locked in a secret underground facility and were doing tests on him. If it weren't so fascinating, and if I couldn't see the (figurative) freight train barreling down on the (figurative) maiden strapped to the tracks, then I probably wouldn't have finished it. I'm glad I kept reading. I think the second half of the book was far better than the first half. While a lot of the action was predictable, I couldn't put it down and walk away. And my husband might have been annoyed at me for reading for 2 hours straight as I neared the end, leaving him to put the 3-year old back to bed like 5 times.

If this is what Konrath couldn't sell to a NY publisher and what didn't have a "real" editing job, then I will be buying more of his newer stuff. Yes, I did say buying. Because though I read Origins as a freebie, the PDF formatting was a pain on my Sony. I had the choice of "small" text size that would require a magnifying glass, or "medium" that was quite readable and completely mucked the paragraph and line wrapping.

Song of Seduction by Carrie Lofty. This is one of Carina Press's debut releases, and a historical romance. Unfortunately, I think the anticipation and (blog) press I'd read about Carina and of this title before its release built it up a little too high. It wasn't bad. But it wasn't great either.

I liked the unusual setting (Austria in 1804), and enjoyed the city and cultural details. And I actually enjoyed the characters. I tend to like moody heroes, and Arie was a grumpy, moody Heathcliff of a hero. Lofty's style here wasn't my favorite, and some passages felt overwritten. That and the body parts acting of their own accord. I'm not even talking love scenes, here. But there was a lot of independently-acting anthropomorphic anatomy throughout the book. Again, this is the type of thing I may never have noticed before I started writing (though I might have wondered why the book felt slow).

On the Carina title, I bought an ePub, and had no e-reader formatting problems. Line wrapping and font sizing were both fine and dandy on my Sony. And I am likely to buy more of Carina's novels/novellas in the future.

A Sci Fi/Romance giveaway

2010-07-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm all about reading up in in the genres that I'm writing. Over at Expanding Universe, they're giving away 36 copies of a 3-book e-book collection from Sharon Lee and Steve Miller called The Dragon Variation. If you're interested in Sci Fi Romance, go enter. My name's in the ring. And if I don't win, then their books are still in my TBR list.

Insecurity

2010-07-05T07:52:00.000-07:00

I gather that every writer suffers from insecurities. No exceptions here.

The RWA-circuit of critiques and chapter contests don't really help. Everyone's got an opinion, and many of them conflict with each other. I gather that I am in a similar boat to a lot of writers. Chapter contests seem a bit like the lottery. Take a good story, and it might score perfect, or it might score 30%. No telling which. And I've been all over that spectrum. I've also talked about that before.

This weekend, I've been doing a major polish job on Leap. My poor Sci Fi Romance has been beaten and bloodied in the contest circuit for over a year now. I am usually "close", but never quite finaling. The old cliche of "always a bridesmaid" doesn't even fit...more like "always invited to the shower, never a bridesmaid". And the scary part to me, as a writer, is that I think its good.

As of about 30 seconds ago, I have finished a pass through my entire novel, start to finish. I have read, polished, added a few words here and there (and a love scene, LOL). The last time I looked past page 30 was before the Golden Heart last fall. So the material is pretty fresh to me. I have yet to cringe when I read a scene, or scoff, or blush, or scratch my head puzzled by my intentions.

I think its good. At least as good as a lot of published work that I've read. But I have nothing but a bunch of "close, but not quite" contest scores and a small stack of form rejections from agents.

So where does that leave me?

Scared. Insecure. Confused. What if this is not nearly as good as I think it is? What if this is as good as I'll ever get, and its not enough? What do I do then? Can I possibly grow enough as a writer to ever understand what I'm missing?

I would so much rather be reading along and think its all crap. Crap is something I can improve on. I can't fix problems I can't see. And how do I know if the invisible crap-factor is my writing, my ideas, or just my choice of who to show it to?

And worst of all, if one of my trusty crit partners can put her finger on what's wrong with this story that its not quite "there", what do I do? Re-write? Send it to dust-bunny-camp? What if the problem is my ideas? I can't make Leap into a vampire/werewolf/shifter/demon paranormal. I can't make my hero an alpha (he's way too beta). I can't make my heroine a saint, or put her crazy (and un-politically correct) father on psych meds.

I can't fix that much.

What are you reading?

2010-06-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

Something I don’t do often enough on this blog is talk about what I’m reading. And I’m not talking the latest pages from my crit partners*.

I think I’m a little gun shy about writing reviews because I haven’t done many of them. The last real book report I wrote was probably in middle school.

I’m going to start slowly, and tell you what I’m currently reading, plus what is at the top of my TBR pile. Yes, this list will have multiple entries. I never used to read more than one book at once, but this writing gig is messing with my brain.

In progress:

Inkspell by Cornelia Caroline Funke. The follow-up book to Inkheart. This one is much slower for me than the first, so I keep setting it aside when I want a faster pace.

Origins by JA Konrath. I’m a big fan of his blog, but I’d never read one of his books. This was the first thing I downloaded to my new Sony Reader last month. Its good so far, though its not a romance. Nobody’s perfect.

Song of Seduction by Carrie Lofty. I wanted to try one of Carina Press’s titles, and had heard good things about Carrie Lofty. And its another good excuse for the eReader

The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers by Angie Fox. I have A Tale of Two Demon Slayers sitting on the shelf waiting too.

Top of the TBR Pile:

LA Cinderella by Amanda Berry*.

The Time Weaver by Shana Abe. Regency-era romance with shape-shifting dragons. This is a new release in the series that includes Queen of Dragons and the Treasure Keeper. Earlier this year I hunted down a couple of used copies of The Dream Theif and The Smoke Thief that appeared to be out of print. I’m reading these all out of order, but I’m loving them.

What about you? What are you reading? What have you read lately?

---

*Ok, so this one is by one of my crit partners, and I’ve read a lot of it already, in 10-page increments. But I finally have a real printed copy of the whole thing. Including the parts she didn’t share in the editing phase.

Where's your motivation?

2010-06-12T13:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I begin cleaning out my Google Reader, catching up on the mountain of blogs that I’ve subscribed to, I run across a blog post that reminds me of exactly why I subscribed in the first place. Earlier this week on Genreality, Charlene Teglia was talking about motivation. And her post really resonated with me.

She says:

It turns out that what motivates people to flex their mental muscles takes a combination of three things; autonomy, mastery, and meaning.

Yes, yes, and yes.

I have struggled with these three problems all my life.

Mastery. In early elementary school, my mom despaired that I would ever be good at completing my homework. You see, I’d do the first problem or two of a worksheet, and then declare myself done. I’d already mastered adding 2+2, why on earth would I need to repeat it? I was ready for something else. At the time it took several patient teachers to understand that if they just keep feeding me more challenges, that I would keep moving forward. If they sat me in a desk and made me do the same thing over and over, I was likely to daydream or find trouble. Funny, my kids have the same problem...

At work, I’ve done much the same job for twelve years. Once in a while (in a LONG while), I get excited for a few days/weeks/months when I get to try out a new programming language, or a different technology. But usually, I already know this stuff. I know it well. And my specific job is far from the bleeding edge of change (the bleeding edge is slightly ahead of the cutting edge, you know...welcome to the world of techno-cliches). My job deals more with the healed-over scar tissue from a long ago surgery. There’s nothing new. There’s nothing different. That makes me some kind of technical expert (a title that is far more boring than it sounds). What it means is, I can do this job equally well when sleep deprived or decaffeinated, and still have enough brain cells left over to plot a new romance novel (which I don’t get to type until I get home).

Writing is still new. I am learning every day to improve my craft. And with every new manuscript I write, I have more research to do, more things to learn. More stuff to master.

Autonomy. This one has bitten me at work for years, and is one of the stronger driving forces that got me into writing. As a software engineer, I work as part of a team. As part of a team, I have to conform to the team’s pre-existing structure, the team’s styles of programming, the team’s established patterns of designing code. Many days, my programming job feels like a Mad-Lib. The outline is there, I just get to fill in the blanks. And if I choose the wrong verb, someone else will make me change it.

When I started my first manuscript three years ago, I was in desperate need of a creative outlet that I OWNED. With no outside voices telling me what I could or could not do, or say, or write. I needed autonomy in some part of my life. Solving the motivation problem at my day job is a whole ‘nother post.

Meaning. This one still gets me. “Meaning” in my work is not the financial reward. If it were I’d be one of the serial-overtime workers. The ones who make 150% of their so-called salary because they habitually work 60 hours or more per week, and have to be threatened by HR to take their accrued vacation days before they expire. I learned a long time ago to scale my lifestyle to my salary without going into debt. I’m not in this for the money.

And I won’t get into whether there’s meaning or not to my day job. That question has more layers than an onion, and smells far worse.

But my writing. That has meaning. Personal meaning. Emotional meaning. I write in a genre that expects a Happily Ever After for a reason. I can fix problems as I write. Fictional problems that my wacko brain cooks up, yes. I can take a small scrap of a feeling and blow it into 80,000 words of exploration.

Each of my manuscripts so far explores a theme. Themes that are at work in my real life. I’ve explored the ideas of what happens when you make lots of "right" decisions only to end up in the wrong place (Hold on to the Knight). What happens when you put all your life eggs in one basket, and someone backs over it with a car (The Appearance of Impropriety). Self-identity, accepting your whole self, and believing that you can be strong no matter what everyone else expects of you (Leap). This stuff has meaning to me. And maybe to a reader someday.

So, I write. I’m motivated to write. Maybe someday I’ll look at writing like I do my day job: as lacking in those things that motivate me. But I’m an optimist, so I hope I won’t. And the motivation to write is helping with the motivation for the day job. Sometimes it takes a little creativity, a little daydreaming, and getting in a little trouble to put you on the right track.

Contests, Contests, Contests

2010-05-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm all about the contests lately.

In case you haven't noticed my "work in progress" bars on the left side of this blog,

<========== Over there

I have a new entry, currently titled "Unbreakable" for lack of a better name. This one is a fantasy romance, as in dragons and magic and curses and the-world-might-end-if-the-romance-fizzles. Fun, fun, fun.

Don't worry, I'm still loving contemporaries, and the secondary characters from my Sci Fi Romance keep pestering me about *their* books.

My local RWA chapter hosts an in-chapter, 1st page contest every year called the Chocolate Rose. The winners get chocolate and roses, duh. Our published authors judge the first page submissions from unpublished writers.

I wrote the first page of Unbreakable specifically for the contest, and it won Second Place out of (I think) twenty or thirty entries.

No, that wasn't First Place, but I'm still proud. Doubly proud because I submitted it without a single word of feedback from my trusty critique partners. So I got a little recognition all by myself. And I'm feeling a little smug. Actually, most of the reason my crit partners didn't see it first was because two of them were judges in the contest, and I didn't want any bias for or against it.

Now I will probably have to start sharing my new baby, and let them help me improve it. I am cautiously optimistic that I could finish most of the first draft of this one by the end of the year. Wish me luck!

Guide to Literary Agents - ''Dear Lucky Agent'' Contest: Fantasy and Sci-Fi

2010-05-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

I love a free contest, and over at Guide to Literary Agents, they're running a series of them. Up this week is one for Sci Fi/Fantasy, and you can bet that Leap will be a contender. And if you're not writing Sci Fi or Fantasy, still check out the blog. They're always interviewing agents across all genres (not just Romance) and educating us about publishing and writing.

Here's the contest link:

Guide to Literary Agents - ''Dear Lucky Agent'' Contest: Fantasy and Sci-Fi

My laurels

2010-05-13T19:57:00.000-07:00

No, not blogging about my garden. I've yammered enough about that elsewhere. I don't have any actual laurel bushes growing. Not sure I would recognize one. Maybe I'll look them up. Then I'll know that upon which I've been resting.

I have been busy un-writing. Un-writing is the process by which one takes a perfectly good 52,000+ word manuscript and systematically cuts it to 50,883 and counting (down). Chopping words. "Tightening." Putting the whole thing on a diet devoid of "he said", "she said", "so", "that", and "just". Someone stop me before I have to either buy a whole new wardrobe of sub-genre (like "novella"), or else add scenes. Scenes without dialogue tags. Because I use too many of them.

I am taking an on-line self-editing class over at AccessRomance.com, and have been treating my poor short contemporary as a whipping boy. Leap, my sci fi, does not have a "bye", just a temporary reprieve. So far, I'm learning a bit, and practicing a lot. And I need practice. And I've got a running list of my own writing sins and exactly what sort of penance I should be doing for each. Here goes so far:

Upon this manuscript, thou shalt
1. Run spellcheck. Seriously. Ignoring the cases where MS Word things that "goddamnit" is a misspelling of "goldsmith", but otherwise heeding the almighty dictionary.

2. Highlight all dialog tags such as "said", "asked", "muttered". Then write them out. Thou shalt refrain from using the structure "blah blah blah," he said, as he did something far more interesting.

3. Thou shalt not use two spaces whereupon one space is required. Find and replace. And repeat until it says it found none to replace. Because I like my space bar and sprinkle it generously thorughout my writing.

4. Highlight every "its" and "it's" throughout the manuscript. And examine each one individually. Not because you don't know the difference, but because sometimes the right-hand pinky fails to heed your warnings.

5. Highlight "garbage" words: that, so, just, very, really, totally, practically. This list may grow. So far, I'm keeping most of the ones I find in dialogue because they sound more natural in speech. And I'm toasting ones that are truly extraneous. And leaving a whole lot more highlighted because blue and yellow blobs all over the file will make me come back and re-read when I have more brainpower.

The class isn't even half over. So maybe I'll be back with a few more commandments.

The best kind of promotion

2010-04-30T06:13:00.000-07:00

My friend and critique partner Amanda Berry is giving away a copy of her debut book, June Silhouette Special Edition LA Cinderella on her blog. Click on over and comment for a chance to win.

Here's the official blurb:

Career-driven accountant Natalie Collins wasn't the type to wish for a Hollywood hero to rescue her. She preferred life away from celebrity glitz. Too bad the man who drove her wild was an A-list actor.

With her understated beauty and brains, Natalie was the one person Chase Booker could trust. He could see the strong, sexy woman beneath her shy exterior, and she stirred a blinding passion in him that made it easy to forget that they were from different worlds. But when she was in his arms, their worlds were dangerously close to colliding….

I got to read a lot of this book while it was in progress, and it is funny, sexy, and charming, just like her Hollywood hottie hero Chase :)

Good News X 2

2010-04-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

The Appearance of Impropriety finaled in the Passionate Ink RWA chapter's Stroke of Midnight contest!

I am so excited. My first contest final! And I totally missed the email that was sent out Sunday night about it.

I arrived tonight at Borders for my weekly crit group meeting, and my partners jumped into congratulations. I was sooo confused. And happy for the free wi-fi, so I could read the email for myself.

At first i thought the congratulations were about my Golden Heart scores, which I'd posted to the crit group by email. That's my second piece of good news this week--Leap placed in the top quarter in the paranormal category of the GH. And received one perfect 9!

So, two sets of good news in one week. And now I have a ton of work to do. Luckily, the crit group gals are awesome--they critiqued a sex scene for me tonight. That is way harder to share than regular chapters, but given the final in that particular contest, this is something I want to nail. Ahem, pun totally intended :)

Done

2010-04-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

I did it!

It wasn't NaNo, so I don't get a cool little icon, though.

But I put the words "The End" at the end (duh) of my first draft of The Appearance of Impropriety, my 50,000 contemporary.

FYI, this was NOT a church-approved Lenten activity (somehow I think they would frown on much of the content, especially the lack of a wedding at the end...). And it took me a few days past Easter to actually finish the last scene. But I wrote approximately 25,000 words between Ash Wednesday (February 17th) and yesterday, April 7.

That worked out to around 500 words a day, which was more like 3500 words per week. I managed to write about 3-4 days most weeks, and a typical session for me is 1000-1500 words long (though I had a few days of squeaking out 500 and a few of 3000 or more).

I also managed to draft about 15 pages of something brand new in the middle, take a trip to Vegas with my sisters, and a trip to Indy for Easter to visit my Mom (which is why it took me 2 extra days to finish...I didn't write at all Friday, Saturday, or Sunday).

I know it was just a first draft, and I wrote it with blinders on (no editing!), so there's lots of re-writing to do. (you know, making sure i have complete sentences and that my characters don't change names in the middle and that I didn't drop a whole plot thread or anything).

But for the next couple of weeks, I'm taking a break from the two of them. I have edits to do on Leap, my sci fi work. And I have my "something new" and Accomplice (a suspense which has been suspended since October of 2008) and research for a steampunk that has been brewing for a couple of years and...

2010 Golden Heart

2010-03-25T15:01:00.001-07:00

Nope, didn't final in the Golden Heart. My goal all along has been to do better than last year's scores. Guess I'll find out in a couple of months whether I achieved that.

Am I disappointed? Sure, some. But not suprised. I get such a mixed bag of feedback on all of the contests I enter--usually one or two judges love it to death, and at least one thinks its utterly crap.

I'm kind of noticing that the contest circuit is a bit of a crap shoot. The feedback from most contests is great, but there's no guarantee that the same manuscript will be judged the same from one judge to the next, or one contest to the next. I've heard of manuscripts that win with perfect scores in one lineup score only middle of the road in the next.

And judging this year shows it too. I scored one Golden Heart manuscript fairly high (high 8's out of 9). It didn't final. Either all the finalists were pretty much perfect (which is possible...they don't release the finalists' scores, so we don't know how many 9's and 8's they actually receive), or taste varies widely among the judges.

So, how did I celebrate my non-remarkable afternoon? With leftover birthday cake and about 400 new words on my current work in progress. That's a pitiful amount for me, but I fully admit that I was having attention trouble :)

Congrats to the finalists!

Behind the curve

2010-03-24T14:07:00.001-07:00

I've been a little busy lately, and am falling off my pace on finishing the draft of Claire and Helmut's story. But today, I hit a big milestone: 40,000 words. Oficially 80% complete. I'm a little worried at the moment that my story will come out on the short side of 50,000 words, but its so darned hard to tell. After feedback from my critique group last night on a much earlier chapter, I realize that there are some scenes that I could actually expand upon a bit. Well, that, and I don't know how exactly the HEA goes from this point. I'm at a really black point of the novel and somehow I have to pick up the pieces and get Claire and Helmut back in the same room again. I had an idea earlier on for how it would work, but now I'm not sure. But hey, that's why I don't write from an outline. Because outlines never quite work out the way I think they will :)

It will be a tight squeeze, but if I buckle down I think I can get the draft done by Easter. I might be writing in the car on my way to my Mom's though...

Just Breathe

2010-03-19T05:42:00.000-07:00

Over at the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood blog, they're talking about getting the Golden Heart call.

No, I'm not a finalist (I wish). Well, I might be. Though I guess I don't know for sure till next Thursday. I'm really trying to talk myself down so I won't be too disappointed when I don't get the call. And its really killing my writing mojo this week.

Well, that and a trip to Vegas, a mountain of laundry, my birthday, my son's birthday, my mom's birthday, our chapter RWA meeting, and is there some kind of alignment of the planets this week or what? I think I forgot to mention the birthday party my daughter's attending tonight, and her soccer game (right in the middle of RWA), and the enrollment forms due back to her school today (which I totally forgot about until I was already at work), and a little incident at work involving excrement and fans (no, not literally, thank goodness).

I had this trouble last fall around the time of the local chapter contest. See, I got a hint that my MS was scoring really well. In fact, it was given one perfect score. But it was also given one "pretty good" score and one not great at all one, which meant that I didn't final. The whole waiting killed all my motivation to write something. Now, darnit, the Golden Hearts are doing the same thing to me. See, the results could go several ways: lots of judges love it = finalist. Lots of judges hate it = lucky to be in the top half. I'm trying to keep my expectations low. Really really low. Top half. Seriously, that's all I'm aiming for. Top quarter would be a bonus. And I won't even know that until late spring.

It doesn't help that I am honestly rooting for several other writers I know. Including one of my crit partners, who's in the same category. And a chaptermate, whose manuscript finaled in our contest (yes, ahead of mine, and the parts of it I've read were really good). What are the chances all 3 of us would final? About zero. So I'm thinking that this is not going to be my year :)

Besides, aliens and a hot male nurse. I almost can't write that without giggling. And sobbing that I'm incapable of a dreaming up a sexy cowboy vampire or werewolf or something *normal*.

Correction: For some reason I was under the impression that finalists were announced on Sunday the 21st. Nope. The date is Thursday the 25th. Even longer for me to drag my feet and wring my hands. Just what I needed to hear. (Now what on earth is happening on the 21st, because that date is circled in my cerebral calendar but I appear to have lost the accompanying mental sticky note...)

Writer's weekend...in Vegas

2010-03-13T13:09:00.000-08:00

I'm on the road this weekend. In Las Vegas :) Ok, so its not a writers weekend. More of a long "spring break" with 3 of my sisters (the 4th is still a teenager...she was, unfortunately, not inviteable). And this is intended to be a fun break, but I'm getting writing done. Woo hoo! It helps that the local timezone is two hours different than my own, and that I'm used to being at work by 7am. So I slept in this morning until the very decadent 8:30 St. Louis time (6:30 in vegas), and managed to call home, buy a cup of coffee, and write 600 words before my sisters woke up. That plus my writing time on the plane (about 2000 words), and I've almost made up for not writing all last week while dealing with last minute stuff (like renewing my drivers license), and packing.

Today's count: 37,952 words.
I didn't bring my laptop with my spreadsheet, but I think that leaves around an average of 575 words/day to finish the draft by my self-imposed goal. Perfect. And I have a 2-hour layover on the way home Monday morning. And plenty of people watching in the casino, restaurants, clubs, and airport to file away for future use....

Thursday Progress

2010-03-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

Today's wordcount: 558. I don't know what my overall total on Claire and Helmut is, because I don't trust the wordcount of OpenOffice. Will post that later.

I'm probably behind overall. But I wrote 4300(?) words on my "something new" for crit group for last night. That new thing was fairly well received, and most of the comments from the table echoed concerns I had, which is good (I think). Now I must put it away and focus back on my goal of finishing C&H's story :)

And today I had a really hard time getting started. I think the last scene I wrote was a little premature, but I"m not sure where to fix it. I ended up giving up and moving forward, but I keep thinking that at my current rate, I'll run out of plot about 10,000 words too soon. Ah well, something to work on, I guess.

Contest Promo

2010-02-27T21:20:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I'm querying Leap, my sci-fi/urban fantasy/paranormal romance (btw, I have a hard time classifying the whole concept of aliens and midwest cornfields...but that's a whole 'nother post). And totally not giving statistics how many queries or what the results are. Just saying, query(ies) have been sent.

Right now, entering a contest on QueryTracker.net for urban fantasy/romance. I believe I qualify (is "rural fantasy" an label option here? hmmmmmm...maybe I'm starting a new subgenre). If you're writing something similar check it out.

Cheating on my MS

2010-02-27T20:48:00.000-08:00

I did write on Thursday, but didn't post my progress. Bad Kristi. Actually, OpenOffice and MS Word count words very differently, so I didn't trust the progress on OpenOffice (it was high by about 100 words).

As of Thursday, I've written 30948 words on Claire and Helmut's story (out of a projected 50-55k). Friday, nothing. Today, about 1500 words. And I'm totally cheating on Claire and Helmut.

This is something new. New new. Like I'm at 2800 words total. I'm scheduled to read at my RWA chapter's crit group on Wednesday. I have another, smaller crit group that meets every week. The chapter one's monthly, and a much bigger group (up to 20ish, usually broken into 3 groups of 6-8). Folks in that one get a lot of feedback at once, and from a nice variety of folks (some multi published, some newbies, all different backgrounds and genre preferences). Its like entering a free contest (plus we all go out for dinner afterwards). But when you read 3 or 4 times a year, and to different people every time, its hard to show up with the middle chapters of a book.

So, I'm bringing the start of something new that no one (even my weekly group) has seen yet. And then it ought to go right back on the shelf until I get Claire and Helmut to their HEA. (no promises that i won't break down and cheat again).

Tomorrow is all about C&H, though, so I'll get back on track. Actually, I'm not really off track. I've been getting out text in about 1000 word chunks, every 2-3 days. So I still need about 5-600 words/day average to finish by my goal. Still quite doable, and I'm not slipping yet.

Wednesday Progress

2010-02-24T20:36:00.000-08:00

Total Words: 30019
New Words: 994 (About double my daily goal, but I wrote 0 yesterday)
Words/Day left to meet my goal: 525

It goes. 500 words a day really doesn't feel like much. Tonight, I struggled to about 180, and then blew through the next 700 without realizing how much I'd written. I guess NaNoWriMo was like that too. Kind of like exercise. Once you get in the habit, its not that bad.

I wonder if I'll have to set a pages/day editing goal to be able to clean this thing up once the draft is done.

Shameless Free Promotion so I can enter a contest :) And find a new book to read...

2010-02-22T19:35:00.000-08:00

Here's an intriguing new book that I'm going to have to check out (not just interesting, but set here in St. Louis). Check it out. And check out her blog for a contest to win a nook...

Shattered

Quinn Rafferty is working as a bounty hunter and bail bondsman in St. Louis when a new neighbor catches his eye. He’s tempted by her beauty—but he knows from experience that anyone desperate enough to live in his building is damaged goods. Besides, he has his own soul to mend before he can worry about anyone else.

Desperate

Sara Davis is on the run, but not for the usual reasons a woman goes on the lam. She’s not an abused wife, and she’s not a criminal. But she does have a plan for her future. And as much as she finds herself attracted to her gruff, tough neighbor, she can’t risk telling him the secrets she’s hiding. There’s just too much at stake.

Driven to desire…

But Quinn must get closer to Sara when she turns out to be the target of his new missing persons case, and he discovers that there is something more complex and dangerous to her than he thought. Now, both Quinn and Sara will have to expose their true feelings—as well as their fragile hearts—if they hope their love will survive…
EXCERPT

He opened the door—

And stopped dead in his tracks as somebody all but fell into his arms. Somebody…a woman. And not Theresa.

He caught her just above her elbows, automatically steadying her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft and low.

Then she lifted her face and Quinn found himself gazing into the biggest, brownest eyes he’d ever seen in his life. Feeling a little dazed, he studied her face while she stammered out another apology.

Quinn barely heard it.

He was too busy staring at her mouth. A very pretty mouth, a cupid’s bow mouth slicked with deep, vibrant red. Under his hands, he could feel silken smooth skin and unable to resist, he stroked a thumb along her inner arm.

Her skin was soft, soft and warm. He was also pretty sure she had the creamiest, most flawless skin imaginable. Her shoulder-length hair was a shade caught between blonde and brown, nondescript, but for some reason, he found himself thinking about tangling his fingers in that hair and holding her head still while he kissed that red-slicked mouth.

Well, hello…he could all but feet his libido kicking up as he stared at that mouth. Every last one of his senses tuned in on her—

The way she looked…sex and sin.

The way she smelled…sex and sin.

The way she sounded…sex and sin.

The way she felt…the way she might taste. Sex and sin. He knew it without a doubt. She’d taste like sex and sin.

His mouth was all but watering.

“Ahhh…excuse me,” she said, tugging against his light hold.

“Uh…yeah.” He uncurled his fingers and let go, although he hated every second of it.

She immediately backed away, putting a good five feet in between them and eying him nervously. In that moment, he was acutely aware of the fact that he hadn’t bothered shaving that morning, or the morning before. He was also acutely aware of the wrinkled state of his gray T-shirt and the worn jeans he wore. He hadn’t gotten into the habit of wearing the unofficial uniform worn by most of the guys who worked for Gearing, but he’d swapped out the black T-shirt that read Bond Enforcement for a plain one. Wearing those particular shirts outside of work had ended up causing him a headache or two so when he remembered, he changed out of them before leaving the office.

She continued to stare at him, her face expressionless and her eyes measuring. She might have just continued to stare at him indefinitely if Theresa hadn’t come bustling down the hall. “Quinn?”

Tearing his eyes away from the unknown woman, he smiled at his landlord. It no longer seemed so weird to smile at somebody—as in he didn’t worry his face might crack if he wasn’t careful. Still, the smile on his face did feel odd. “Hey, Theresa. I didn’t know you had company.”

She beamed at him. “This isn’t company. This is your new neighbor. She just moved in to the upstairs apartment. Sara…I’d like you to meet Quinn Rafferty. Quinn, this is Sara Davis.”

Sara.

Neighbor.

Staring into Sara’s dark brown eyes, his heart sank just a little. Great.

Some people collected books.

Some people collected knickknacks.

Some people collected coins.

Theresa collected lost souls, as evidenced by the fact that he was living in her basement after she’d charmed him into changing her tire outside Dierburg’s a few months earlier.

The last woman to stay in that apartment had ended up being a battered woman hiding out from her ex. Before that, it had been a girl who’d been all of nineteen, with two kids and a third on the way. When that one had left, she’d ended up stealing from Theresa and skipping out on the piddling amount of rent that Theresa had coming.

If Sara Davis was living in Theresa’s upstairs apartment, that made her pretty much off limits. It didn’t matter that his dormant sex drive was all of sudden flaring up on him.

The last thing Quinn needed to be around was another lost soul, not when he still struggled to find his own.

Monday Progress

2010-02-22T19:30:00.000-08:00

Total Words: 29075
New Words: 584
Avg Words/Day left: 523

Sunday Progress

2010-02-21T18:33:00.000-08:00

That's actually almost 1200 words for the day, though I went backwards yesterday. I incorporated some edits I'd made in a separate file back into the primary working document, so it looks like I'm spinning my wheels.

Nope.

At this point I have an average of 524 words/day left to make my goal. I think that slipped a bit from Thursday, but still doable. Now comes the tricky part--the week, and all of the weekly excuses.

I don't usually write every day, and still may not for this little self-challenge. But I have to make up for the missing days on my writing days.

Friday Midday Progress

2010-02-19T13:01:00.000-08:00

That's 22,183 left to go. Well, somewhere in the 22-27,000 range depending on where my total ends up. 44 days left. 504 words a day to finish.

I hoped I'd have more time during the day, but instead I have a new fridge and tires on my car. Which are also important. Hopefully tonight I can work on finishing the chapter (or at least the scene) I was starting when the delivery truck arrived.

My first progress

2010-02-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

27973 out of 55,000 (approximately). I need to dig up the code for one of those cool graphical counters again. Maybe tomorrow.

Goals

2010-02-18T14:39:00.000-08:00

I don't know when I last set a real goal that I kept. I'll probably fall flat on this one too, but here goes.

Here is my exceedingly irreverent writing goal. Maybe even blasphemous? Somehow I doubt most churches would smile at a writer using Lent to write a sexy romance. >:)

I want Claire and Helmut's story finished by Easter. Its a fairly reasonable goal. Lent lasts 46 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday (40 if you don't count Sundays). I have about 25,000 words to write between now and April 4th. That's an average of 543 a day. Way less than my NaNo pace.

Actually, my NaNo writing pace is usually around 1000 words an hour, so that works out to 25 hours of writing, or about 4 hours a week. That won't count RWA meetings, or crit group, or (heaven forbid) editing (which I probably need).

Think I can do it?

On writing advice

2010-02-04T14:53:00.000-08:00

I am forever reading advice to new writers that goes something like this: Treat your writing like a job.

I completely disagree.

I have a job. I show up, put in my time, get stuff done. I don't goof off. I try to treat my employer and my coworkers fairly and professionally. And it pays the bills. But you know what? I'd leave it in an instant if a good enough offer came along.

Is that really how I should look at my writing? As a bunch of motions I go through because I need the money to help feed and house my family? Or a set of outside requirements that I have to live up to?

I prefer to treat my writing like a friendship.

Any good relationship takes work, as any married person can tell you. I have to spend time writing, sometimes when there are other things I could do. I have to work hard to uphold my end of the friendship--improving my craft, sending my work out for critique, querying, pitching. But like a good friend, the writing is a whole lot of fun.

And God, do I need fun. Especially since this particular friendship isn't exactly making me any money yet.

Defining Success

2010-02-01T06:32:00.000-08:00

If you need a little boost to your Monday morning, go take a peek at Robin Bielman’s latest blog post, "Are you successful?"

All too often I find myself in the trap of comparing myself against everyone else, and coming up short. When I hear the words “Are you successful?”, my first thought is "At what?" I look at my day job, and compare myself to coworkers who routinely work twice the hours I do before going home and reading software manuals, and think, "No way am I success at software engineering." I join writing pals for my weekly crit group and see two contracted authors and one agented one, while I have an inbox full of rejections and not-quite-finaling contest entries and think "No way am I a success at writing." And then I go home to piles of laundry, terrible-twos-tantrums, and too many dinners of hotdogs or frozen chicken nuggets and think "No way am I success at motherhood."

Its way, way too easy to fall into that trap of seeing everything that’s wrong instead of what’s right. And today, what’s right is this: I have a wonderful husband of eight-and-a-half years (almost fifteen years together as a couple!), two beautiful and smart children, a good job that is flexible enough for me to be home with my kids when I need to be, and a writing hobby that’s a heck of a lot of fun, even if I never make a dime at it.

Thanks, Robin, for reminding me this morning about what success really is.

Contest Judges

2010-01-30T20:33:00.000-08:00

My writing buddy Amanda Berry is talking about contests on her blog. She has some great points about the pros of entering writing contests and what you might get out of them at different points in your writing career (or development of a career).

But what about judging? This is a new one for me. I volunteered to judge the Golden Heart for this year. My entries are scored and I'm not revealing what category I judged, so there's no use attempting to bribe me or anything :) But for me it was an interesting process.

This is actually the first contest I've had a chance to judge. And it was very revealing. I received five entries, each 55 pages long, and re-read the scoring instructions about twenty times. One number. No feedback goes to the entrant. And this is a contest that can help launch careers. Gee, there's no pressure on the judges or anything :)

For each one, I wrote a page full of notes about things that I thought worked for the author and things that I didn't, as well as a score range that I thought to give. That score range was purely a gut reaction, and until I read the last one in my pile, I was afraid I was being way too harsh.

I was picking up entries in a fairly random order and it just happened that I picked up my lowest scoring one first, and the highest last. I have my fingers crossed for that last author--I'd have kept reading all the way to "The End", and I hope to see the entry in the finals. Two of the middle-scoring ones were also really promising, but I could see where they needed work.

And, I could see exactly why I got the scores I did on last years entry (those scores were not particularly great, and I re-wrote most of that work after that..and mostly shoved it under the bed as well). Its amazing how much I've learned in the last year, and I hope some of those middle-of-the-pile authors keep working to improve their craft, because they have some awesome ideas.

As I went back to type my scores into the RWA website, I re-read all of my notes and skimmed bits of the entries to see if I still agreed with my original assesment of scores. Yep, just like the SAT's, I think my first instincts were solid.

Judging is like critiquing. The more you do it, the better your own writing gets. I'm glad I did it. And I'll definitely be doing it again.

Happy Snow Day

2010-01-07T03:46:00.000-08:00

Writing over Christmas was productive. I didn't get my early-morning writing time every day, due to visitors and the need to sleep. Not that I got an excess of that either :) But I am making forward progress on my edits.

This morning's early-morning editing session brought to you by a Snow Day! My 5-year old's first. Well, her daycare had one or two also, but that almost doesn't count.

Normally, right now I'd be showering and preparing to get into work before 7am. Its a nice little change to check email and sip my coffee instead of rush around. I already turned my daughter's princess alarm clock off, and we were out late last night, so I might get a solid hour or more before I'm interrupted. Yay!

--Kristi

Early Morning Writing and a recipe

2009-12-29T05:49:00.000-08:00

I'm trying something new for the week. Unfortunately, it can only last for this week. Wake before 6am and write until the hubby and kiddos drag themselves out of bed. Originally, I thought I'd throw on clothes and hit the local Starbucks (they open at 5:30). But this morning, I didn't feel like dressing. And my homemade lattes are much cheaper.

Today, so far, so good. I've got a lot of solid editing time in. Don't know if I'll make it up so early tomorrow after going out tonight for my weekly crit group meeting. We'll see.

Next week it will be back to the regular work schedule, where I'm at work by 7am and pick up my kindergartner around 3:30. Fitting writing time in on normal work days is a pain. I either stay up late (so I'm exhausted at work), or pay for after-school activities so I can write before picking my daughter up from school. In theory, I only work 4 days a week, but that "day off" is frequently needed for kids doctor appointments, schools out days, and catching up on hours at work for when I don't quite arrive by 7am. But the writing goes, if slowly.

Back to those homemade lattes. I don't have an espresso maker, so I'm doing the next best thing. Instant coffee. Seriously, it works.

I've found that if I use brewed coffee, then all the extra water waters down the flavor. By using mostly milk plus instant coffee, I come closer to a real coffee-shop latte experience. And one of these days I want one of those silly hand milk-frother whisks to try and give my drink that signature foam cap.

I also picked up three bottles of Torani flavored syrup at World Market a month or so ago, complete with pumps--sugar free vanilla, sugar free caramel, and peppermint (which does not come sugar free, alas). My Starbucks yesterday had their own brand of flavored syrups on after-Christmas clearance.

Directions for the poor-writer's skinny latte:

Fill a coffee cup with skim milk. Nuke for ~2 minutes (I use the "beverage" button on the microwave).

Add a heaping teaspoon of instant coffee (I use Nescafe Clasico at the moment) and stir.

- Add 2 1/2 pumps of flavored syrup.
- For a peppermint mocha, add 2 pumps peppermint syrup, plus a tablespoon or so of sugar free Hershey's syrup. I don't recommend the sugar free choc. syrup on its own, but that peppermint syrup is pretty sweet so it balances.
- You could also use a little sweetener + maybe 1/2 tsp vanilla extract if you don't have the syrup.

---
Note: Yes, I mention a few brand names here. No one pays me or provides me free anything to mention them. Truthfully, I've never tried to attract advertisers. Don't want to. If I mention a brand name, its because I found it on my own and tried it and maybe liked it.

Looking back, looking forward

2009-12-04T06:33:00.000-08:00

November was a slow month, writing wise. Well, word count wise. I did write new words, mainly on Leap. But I also did a lot of editing, and hand-wringing. I entered the Golden Heart with Leap, and owe my crit partners about a pound of chocolate for the help in polishing. One in particular (Amanda Berry, soon to be world-famous Silhouette Special Edition author) proof-read my entire entry, catching way more comma mistakes than I ever believe I'm making. Commas are the bane of my existence.

Preparing for, and angst-ing about my GH entry ate up about 3 weeks of my creativity. And then we went on a week-long vacation and I wrote NOTHING. Well, one lonely blog post on my other blog. I did lots of reading though (its research!) and even found enough of a wireless connection to read blogs and tweets a few of the days.

Now, I need to re-gain my momentum. Get back on schedule. Because its December, and there are fewer distractions. Right?

Ok, stop laughing.

So, yesterday I submitted my completed contemporary manuscript to an e-pub. I'm not holding my breath, but at this point, it really can't hurt me to try. If they say no, there are a few other e-pubs I have kicked around (though I'm limited because it was a sweet contemporary, not erotic...) And I keep trying (and failing) to draft a query letter for Leap (though I need to edit pages 51+ in case someone should actually request it...). I have Claire and Helmut waiting (though I suspect they've been keeping busy, seeing as how I left them alone in a hotel room...). And Jessica, from my suspended romantic suspense story, has boarded a grayound bus, and is taking a really really long ride.

And last night I penned about 400 words of another idea that's been brewing for the last two years. Something different. Historical. I haven't tried a historical yet. (Please refrain from rolling your eyes at the sheer number of sub-genres I've tried out so far). I've been dithering for a while whether to write it as a straight historical or a paranormal (magic, not aliens). I think I'm going steampunk. Late Victorian era with gaslights, telegraphs, steamer trains, clockwork. I have some ideas to warp some modern technologies into the technology of the era, and it would gain me that "magic" aspect that the story needs. I think I'll have to research this one, and probably plot it more than I usually do. So, dont' expect a word counter to appear just yet.

Besides, I have Claire and Helmut, plus Noah and Jessica to keep me busy for when I need to just pour out a story.

Here's hoping that I'll get my grove back over Christmas!

Patience

2009-11-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

One of the things in contest entries that drives me crazy is where a judge deducts points because they have questions about where the plot is going. If picked up a random book off the shelf at the bookstore, and read only the first 25 pages, with no cover picture and no back cover blurb to help out (i.e. no synopsis), I’d probably have questions too. If I didn’t, I’d put the book down. If I know in 25 pages exactly where a story is going and how its going to get there, I’m bored. With my Sci Fi, you really can’t guess on page 1 or 25 where the book will head. I hope that’s a good thing because I had no idea exactly where that would be until I got there, but I know the characters ended up in the right spots. Yes, I’m a pantser :) And some parts of my plot are kind of unexpected (I hope). I like it that way.

These aren’t short stories, folks. You don’t get the whole scoop in 25 pages, and nor should you. In my opinion, the first 25 pages should be starting the action, starting the conflict, starting the plot. Not handing it to you wrapped in dancing snowmen and ribbons. I do think that the suspense judges were kinder about not knowing everything on page 1 (or on page 25).

I also get a lot of questions on romantic conflict. And I think its related to how I’m showing my stories and the same comments about wanting to understand where the book is going. I don’t necessarily delve into every romantic conflict on page one. I’ve been trying to uncover them, layer by layer. For example, in my single title, its clear from page 1 (or maybe 2) that the hero is engaged to someone other than the heroine. But you have to get much further in the book to understand why he’s rather adamant about staying engaged, despite events that keep leading him elsewhere. Nope, I don’t feel like speeding that up. I’d kind of like it to be frustrating to the reader until they get a little aha moment where things really click into place.

Again, don’t think I had any questions about it on my suspense entry—I guess FBI agent vs someone on the run makes the romantic conflict pretty darned clear, even though as the author, I know that there is more to come.

I also had entered Leap in the Daphne last spring, which is a suspense contest that has categories for various flavors of romantic suspense. Leap didn’t final, but I got rather consistent feedback (I forget the actual numbers, but they were all between 80-90% of total points, and I’ve made improvements since then). I wonder if the storytelling I’m doing is leading me down the suspense road. Its definitely something to think about.

Oh yeah, my scores for Leap: 100, 85, 70 Interesting spread, if you ask me...

Trickling In

2009-11-06T08:15:00.001-08:00

My contest scores have been arriving, one at a time, all week. I mentioned that I entered 4 different manuscripts, right? 4 different categories :) No finals :(

Its been interesting to read the comments and the scores that I've received. I apparently average about 80% across the board. Occaisionally, I get one judge who dearly loves me and/or one who hates me. I think that's just the way it goes. I'm taking a bit of a chance here and posting my scores. These are out of 100. For final rankings, they drop the lowest score and total the other two (the 3rd score would be a tie breaker if needed).

Hold on to the Knight (Single Title): 94 71 64
Accomplice (Suspense): 95 79 80
The Appearance of Impropriety (Category): 54 89 83

I don't have scores for Leap, though I hear (informally) that it recieved one rather high mark, and two that were not so exciting.

The contest coordinator sent along a spreadsheet showing the scores of all the manuscripts, including which judge judged which ones. No names, just code numbers, so you have to read all the scores to guess which code number your own manuscript was.

I find it interesting to compare what my 3 judges scored me vs other manuscripts. On two of these (I think HOTK and Appearance), I had exctly one judge who judged any of the 3 finalists. The other ms was NOT judged by any judge who judged a finaling ms (say that three times fast). That doesn't mean much, but it is interesting. Actually, on Appearance, the one judge who also judged a finalling entry scored me higher (that was my 89).

And, I entered the GH. Rather, I've paid to enter the GH. With Leap. So, I have a couple of weeks to polish and print. Oh yeah, and maybe add an ending :) I'm hoping for the contest feedback on it by sometime this weekend, so I can see if there are any repeat comments on things that need to be improved before I send it off.

Debating

2009-11-02T12:23:00.000-08:00

I'm still debating whether to enter the Golden Heart. A week ago, I was thinking Yes. With both of my latest creations. Today, the answer is no. To either.

I'm running out of time to decide, and definitely running out of time to finish my category romance if I decide yes. So I've really got to choose.

I had both manuscripts in the local RWA chapter contest, and I did not final with either. And now, I just want to know the scores. Because not finalling might mean I was one point away from sitting in front of an editor. Or it could mean I was forty points away. I have no basis to guess. Especially with the category romance. An intra-chapter 1st page contest yielded scores that range from perfect to less than half of hte possible points. So, yeah. I'm just stuck there.

And I've started re-reading and editing Leap, starting at page 1. I have close to 80k words on it already--it is not too far off of a state I could deem "finished" and mail off to RWA. Much closer than the other story, which sits at 50%. The problem isn't lenght or relative completeness. Is Leap a romance? I keep thinking that it straddles the fence with plain ol' sci fi. Sure, there is a romance between the two main characters, and conflict that keeps them apart until the very end. But as I go back and re-read the pages starting at 26 (i.e. one page after my contest entry), I see the story begin to focus on the rest of hte plot. You know, all the stuff that's happening when Dominic & Myrrah aren't pining for one another.

I just don't know. Part of me asks, "what can I lose?" And the other part answers "$50, postage, paper, ink, and many hours of precious time." And I know already that waiting for contest results doesn't exactly make me a happy person. Nor does the not-hearing my name announced.

So, what am I doing now? Preparing for the Golden Heart? Polishing a manuscript and query letter? Nope, I'm surfing the web and wringing my hands.

Why I Write

2009-10-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

In no particular order.

(Seriously, if I wrote this tomorrow, the list would be mostly the same, but
shuffled to account for the phase of the moon, the price of gasoline, and the
quantity and colors of polka dots on my socks.)

After having children and turning my sewing room into a bedroom, I needed a
creative outlet that was neither potentially harmful to small children (pins,
needles, and shears oh my!), nor loud enough to keep them awake (my serger sounds
something like a swat team helicopter).
Occasionally, one of the voices in my head hacks into my central nervous
system and starts looking for a keyboard.
I had to legitimize my Starbucks habit.
I'm tired of punching a (computerized) time clock. Does anybody really care
what I work on down to the tenth of an hour? (That's six minutes for all you
non-math types). And the answer is YES. They do. Even if 5.5 of those 6 minutes
are spent in the restroom.
I want windows. Not the computerized kind. I'm talking a pane of
translucent glass through which I can see things that grow and the occasional change
of season.
I have always claimed that my ideal job would pay me to go back to school to
learn a large variety of completely unrelated and barely practical bodies of
knowledge. Stuff like Mesoamerican history, the science of puff pastry, and the
design philosophies of high-end women's shoe companies. Writers call this stuff
research.
And of course, buying romance novels by the baker's dozen is also research.
I like women. No, not that way. But when having only 4 women in a group of
20 co-workers means you have a more diversified team than any other in the
corporation, you start really missing girl talk.
Sex with hot men. And since they're all make believe, it prevents the
awkward conversations with my husband...
JK Rowling's net worth. Yeah, that kind of success is a pipe dream. But
one that all writers secretly share.

Tweet Tweet

2009-10-21T06:24:00.001-07:00

I'm on twitter. elitsirk. That's me.

Warning: I'm not likely to tweet all that often. Today, maybe. I've got a "sick" toddler (He threw up yesterday at school, so he can't go back today, but he is eating and acting overly healthy right now...).

Um, that's about all I had to say :) (I'm sure you're now waiting anxiously for my tweets, huh).

NaNo: It's a verb

2009-10-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

Are you NaNo'ing?

I feel kind of torn this year. I'm not planning to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yes,
that's a mouthful. So I'm verbifying it. I'm not NaNo'ing this year. Just add it
to the dictionary and get over it. And add "verbify" while you're at it :) Ahem.

I've done NaNo (and won) the past two years in a row. It was actually the motivator
for starting and "finishing" my first book. I use the quotes because I've written
at least three separate endings for that first book, and have made a couple of
rather thorough edits to it since the first time I "finished" it. And I have half
an idea for a further edit that would be rather significant (changing wordcount, and
hacking apart the entire beginning). Not sure if I'll ever do that.

I can't seem to stay on topic this morning, can I? Well, therein lies my problem
with NaNo this year. I have three WIPs. Three! One that I started almost a year
and a half ago--a romantic suspense. Love the idea, love the characters. Paused it
to start NaNo last year. The second one is last year's NaNo book--Leap, my sci fi.
Its not done. But its sooo close. And I'm closing in on being able to finish it.
Really! Number 3 is the book I never thought I'd actually write, and started as a
lark, by writing a single scene. On this blog, no less. And here I am, closing in
on 40% completion.

So, it's Mid-October, and I have on my plate about 20,000 words left to write on
last year's NaNo book. And 30,000 more on my contemporary category-length. And,
say, 85,000 of 90,000 (or perhaps 50,000 of 55,000, depending on where I take it) on
my suspense. So, should I scrap it all and start a new book for NaNo?

Um, no. I think that would be bad, bad, bad.

And, did I mention that my family is taking a vacation in November? Going for a
week. To the beach. Not even to visit family. I'm reveling in the selfishness of
daring such a thing during the Holiday Season. We are driving to our destination,
and it is entirely plausible that I'll be able to crank out a few thousand words in
the car each way. But I'm thinking my hubby will be annoyed with me for holing up
in the hotel room writing alone while he's with the kids.

So, my official participation in NaNo is out.

But I'm going to try to finish both Leap and my category romance by the end of
November. Starting now. Maybe I'll even start tracking daily word counts. 50,000
between October 19 and November 30. NOT NaNo. But it will be a stretch for me.

I'm thrilled to cheer on everyone else who's doing it for real!

On POV

2009-10-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

I haven’t worked on my sci fi manuscript for the better part of a month, maybe more. I’ve felt, for quite a while, that something was not quite right with it, and I think I’m beginning to see what that might be. I’ve known that part of my problem is the conflict—the external conflict. My two main characters are in a race for their life, but I didn’t feel like it was coming across the page that way. Yes, they were racing, but I knew that things didn’t read that desperate.

Now, when I first began the manuscript almost a year ago (ack!), I started with a prologue told in a secondary character’s point of view. An important secondary character. And the prologue wasn’t back story—it related one of the opening events of the book, and planted a clue for later in the book. I read the prologue and the first part of chapter one at my chapter’s critique group meeting, and got lots of negative feedback on the prologue. Not on its actual writing, but on the (temporary) focus on a secondary character. “Cut it,” I was told.

Ok, scene cut. The story mostly works without it. And the rest of the writing sticks to the H/H POV’s. But because of that, I’ve struggled to show the whole story. This is sci fi—with a big badass enemy, 3 additional crew members on the heroine’s ship, plus a small assortment of other secondaries who help drive the story (and provide jumping off points for other interwoven stories that are still tangled in my brain). And the H/H don’t see everything that’s going on, some of which is rather significant.

“But this is a romance, right? You need to focus on the romance.” Yes, and no. I realized last November that I might be writing Science Fiction with Romantic Elements. And then I let the voices of the chapter critique group and other crit partners lull me into thinking I was writing Romance with Science Fiction Elements. But it isn’t working.

I must remember to listen to my own gut sometimes, and not get caught up in the herd mentality. Don’t get me wrong—both my chapter’s critique group and the smaller one I belong to are great, and have many talented, print-published writers who are generous with their time and experience. But, most of them write pure romance, several are category-length pure romance, and I’m wracking my brain to come up with one who’s published in paranormal (published in another subgenre and writing paranormal, yes). So, maybe their advice is perfect, just not for the manuscript that I’m writing.

So, I’m about halfway through Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. I love it. Just like I loved his previous two novels, and the two National Treasure movies. The adventure. The chase. They mystery. I wish my story worked like that, with the added bonus of a little forbidden love to tangle everyone’s emotions along the way. Hence, my little revelation overnight about how I’ve killed my story.

I’m not Dan Brown, and Leap is unlikely to sell millions of copies before its even released (assuming its ever released). But he uses multiple POV’s (like a dozen so far), killing many of these secondaries while in their POV (and thus, pulling that camera back to a very omniscient view point). And its effective for me as a reader. Very effective. Forcing-my-husband-to-fall-asleep-with-a-pillow-over-his-eyes-to-shut-out-my-reading-light effective.

No, I’m not going to have like 20 POV’s in my novel, and I’m not going to kill every other one that I do use. But by golly, “rule” or no rule, I’ve got to show more of the story than I am. Because to reveal all of the action that the H/H don’t personally experience through dialogue is literally “telling” it, not showing it, and its not working for me. Some of that “off-stage” action is significant (in quantity and impact on the story), and it doesn’t deserve to be “off-stage.” My prologue might or might not come back. One of the other crew members might get a voice. And my big badass enemey (BBE?) might just get to cackle gleefully and rub his palms together over his evil plans to take over Earth. Shortly before he realizes how grossly he’s underestimated us lowly Earthlings, of course.

There, decision made. Of course, while I’ve been waffling on my “Leap” into sci fi, I’ve been chugging away at my category-length contemporary romance. That one’s fun too. No BBE, the whole story can be shown through the H/H. And a little forbidden love to tangle everyone’s emotions along the way. And Helmut and Claire are about to take their little affair to the most romantic city on earth (after a quickie in her kitchen, I think…)

God I love writing romance (and sci fi).

Big Girl Panties

2009-10-08T15:08:00.001-07:00

At least twice in the past three days, I've read references to putting on one's "big
girl panties." Its kind of funny, really. The first time I read it was in a novel,
and I first pictured the heroine putting on a pair of granny panties (in lieu of a
thong?). Or that she'd grown by half a dozen sizes and was suddenly a "big" girl.
Then I realized that she was thinking it was time to grow up a bit.

The second instance was similar. It was from someone who is also a mother, who was
annoyed that a kid's school activities prevented her from participating in some
activity of her own. By putting on her big girl pants, she was letting go of the
selfishness and embracing the responsibility and sacrifice of motherhood.

One would think that, as the mom of a potty-training toddler, that I would have
leapt to the correct conclusion a little sooner. Alas, no. Maybe because my
toddler isn't yet wearing "big kid pants" (he's a boy, so I kind of hope he'll never
need big "girl" panties). Or maybe I missed it because when my daughter switched
from pull-up diapers to "big girl panties", then she started wetting through two to
three outfits a day in her stubborn refusal to use the potty. I guess, to me,
switching to panties is more like jumping without a parachute than a rite of
passage.

Every now and then phrases like this strike me as hilarious. Slightly overused, but
hilarious. At work the other day, we had a "stand-down" meeting. I still don't
quite get that one. I've been to stand-up meetings, so named because they're
supposed to be so quick that everyone could just stand for them. And sit-down
meetings where everyone comes prepared for a discussion. But I still don't know
what I was supposed to do during that stand-down. I certainly didn't stand. And I
won't even get started on how many times I hear the phrase "bird-dogging" a problem.
Ahem.

But back to the panty issue. As far as my writing goes, I'm more of a pull-ups kind
of gal, rather than a panty person. I'm too much of a scairdy cat to really "get
out there". I need to. I need to do a lot of things. I need to buckle down and
revise my paranormal. I need to do a bit of querying. Or, I need to enter more
contests (though querying is a tad cheaper).... But like my 2 year old, I'm
sticking to the old fall-back plan. I keep hiding behind my (paying) career, and my
family as excuse not to try harder at the writing (and submitting). It makes it
easy to deal with lack of progress (I'm too busy to put in that kind of effort) and
rejection (I don't give enough people the opportunity to do so).

Thinking hard

2009-09-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

In my category romance (with Claire and Helmut, who made their debut on this blog), I have an early scene in the boardroom where Helmut is trying, unsuccessfully, to defend a series of presentation slides to Claire, who's his boss. His very sexy boss. One he'd met earlier that morning and had attempted to hit on, before he realized she was the new CEO.

One of the critique comments I heard on this scene is that the readers wanted Helmut to come out of the scene having "won" or at least "tied" with Claire. While I agree that the scene could use some tweaking, upping of the sexual tension in the subtext of the dialogue, I'm not so sure that Helmut gets to "win" a contest of wits at this point in the story. (Don't worry, he does very well in the next few scenes...can't keep a good man "down" ;).

I have scientific evidence to backup my portrayal of Helmut and Claire. Check out the article from the Telegraph int he UK, detailing a study that found that Men lose their minds speaking to pretty women. And thanks to my hubby who kindly passed on the link to me (though I have no idea where he got it...)

Plotter vs Pantser vs Top-Down Design

2009-09-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

And no, the title doesn’t refer to articles of clothing.

I frequently get struck by the fear that I’m not doing things right. Over the last two years that I've been writing, I've read a handful of books, talked to an armful of authors, and read a stadiumful of blogs. (No, I don't think stadiumful is a word...maybe it ought to be...)

And the consensus is that there are two main types of writers: plotters and pantsers. I can't write an outline before I write a book. In fact, I don't know that I have ever written an outline before writing a paper of any sort that wasn't a technical manual. Those are basically outlines anyway, because in the world of computers, we assume that no one reads paragraphs, just bullet points. Even when I'm writing an outline-style technical document or presentation, I can't do it linearly. I jump around, starting with what my brain considers the most important points to be.

So, I have always assumed that makes me a pantser.

But, I'm not so sure. I do plan what happens in my books. I know the general direction that the action is going, and have a pretty good idea of the character arcs. But if I outlined my book ahead of time, it would be about half a page long. Or 90,000 words. There doesn't seem to be an in-between.

And then, when I write, I can't work linearly. I cannot start at the beginning and progress toward the end in order. Just can't. In small doses, I can. But I'm better at hopping from major point to major point, and then filling in the details in between.

I am not a plotter or a pantser. I write the way I program: top-down, object-oriented, designing individual components and their interfaces, and writing the implementation details later, and changing them when I find a pattern that works better.

My brain has been wired and trained to work this way. When you design a software program--anything longer than the simplest script--you simply cannot start at "Go" and write one long program until you hit "exit". That's not the way software works. Think of a web page or a blog (things that most writers are familiar with): you could write a single HTML document that lays out every graphic, every link, every word. And tomorrow, when you want to update it or write a new entry, you would have to re-write most of it. That's not the way we design websites. We have templates and style sheets and "gadgets" and databases full of blog entries that you can plug in or switch around as the need arises.

That's the kind of thinking that I do. I see the overall frame of the book: The characters, the primary conflicts, the setting if its important. Then I begin filling in the blanks: how they meet, when each first realizes that they're in love, black moments. And then I keep filling in the blanks, with secondary plots, dialogue. Sometimes my brain gets carried away with a series of scenes and I'll write 10,000 words in order. And sometimes I have to write "insert xyz scene here" and skip ahead.

I can't write a successful beginning to my novel until I have finished the end, even if I know exactly where the book starts and what happens in the first few pages. I have, with some success, written both my contemporary and then my sci fi almost exclusively from one character's perspective first. And then gone back to add the flip side, and to adjust the original ideas to match. And then I go back and tweak some more: re-configuring, smoothing, dividing scenes, combining scenes, swapping out new ones to replace something that is buggy. And yes, writing can be buggy.

I have got to stop fighting this tendency by comparing myself to people who think differently. I have got to start working with my strengths.

2009-08-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have three works in progress. Three. That's probably two more than I ought to have, accordign to every teacher/parent/manager who's ever told me to focus on one task at a time and finish it. But its way fewer than I would probably have if I gave my fingers free rain to listen to my idea-generator-brain.

I have to have a game plan, even though I don't always follow them. Right now, Leap, my sci-fi, is nearing Draft-1-Completion. The happy couple are even in the getaway spaceship, preparing for blast off. And I'm a little stuck as to how to wrap it up. I think I may have to stop here, and do an editing pass from the beginning. That worked for Chivalrous--I wrote 3 endings before I was satisfied with the final plot. My brain does a lot of its writing and plotting subconsciously, and providing time for it to churn out ideas tends to help a lot.

At the same time, I have beginnings to my romantic suspense, Accomplice, and a contemporary category, The Appearance of Impropriety. I think I'll be working on those next, and letting Leap simmer.

I also entered 4 different MS's in a contest--all 3 in progress, plus Chivalrous. In fact, I entered 4 of the 5 categories that the contest offered (the only thing missing was Historical...maybe next year LOL). I'm expecting good feedback on all 4, Hoping for an honorable mention for at least 1, and secretly wishing to final on any one of the 4. Time will tell.

Then, depending on my contest feedback, and general progress on Leap, I have to decide on the Golden Heart. Chivalrous was entered last year, with a less than stellar finish, but the beginning's MUCH better now. But, if it doesn't read well in this contest, it might go back under my proverbial bed. Leap, well, I just don't know. Again, it might depend on how well it scores in the current contest. And the ms has to be complete. Complete enough to save to a disk for a quick verification, anyway--I am fairly certain most entrants (and finalists) continue to revise long after they send in the entry.

Anyone else? Whatcha working on?

Something to chew on

2009-08-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

I can write contemporary romances. And I’ve dreamed up one or two (hundred) historical plots that have not yet made it to (e-)paper. And I’m wrapping up final scenes in a manuscript involving telepathic aliens. I have notes on two more paranormals—one time travel the other more of a wizardry/magic thing.

But I just can’t do vampires. I try. I’ve got a couple of amusing titles in mind, and half an idea for a novella/short story. But I can’t even plot it out without the whole thing looking cheesy in my mind. And I blame Count Chocula and the Count from Sesame Street. Every vampire I try to picture has a purple face, a turn-of-the-century tuxedo and cape, and a hokey eastern European accent. “One, one kiss for the pretty girl, ha ha hah”.

And then there are the werewolves. Can you say doggy style? Is that really attractive? I’m not much of a dog person. Maybe that’s my problem. Had I ever been deeply enthralled with a Doberman or a German Shepherd, maybe I could translate it to romance? But then again, I hope not. Never had those kind of thoughts about my cats either.

Hmmm.

For the record, I have nothing against vampires or werewolves. I just had a silly title pop into my head, and started thinking about the sub-subgenre, and why I’ve never gotten into vampire or werewolf paranormals as a reader. And how I could possibly write one (and why would I want to, except that I liked the goofy title, which I’m not sharing….) But I try to never say never, so no promises. Maybe the next thing I fall in love with will be vampire werewolves.

Peer Reviews

2009-08-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

I have a like/hate relationship with critiques. I can’t say love/hate. I’m not sure I’ll ever love a critique. I might love the final product, though.

The whole concept of critiques is basically the same as the peer review process that software engineers use. At work, when I write code, it gets looked at by 1-4 other people on the same team. Not by managers--we are not students turning in our papers for a grade by the teacher. But by peers. In peer reviews at work, I get a variety of types of comments, depending on the specific people reviewing the code.

Some people get very caught up in what we call "coding standards". These are things like how we name variables, where blocks of comments go (comments are human-readable notes that explain the program code, but don't actually affect what the program does). In writing, this would be the spelling and grammar. I've noticed that the people who are excellent at checking this kind of detail frequently get so caught up in a typo in a comment that they couldn't tell you whether the program will actually work or not.

Do we need them in our peer reviews? Absolutely. The same goes for our writing. If there are so many spelling and grammar mistakes that they get in the way of the story, then the writing is not the best it can be.

At work, there are some reviewers who wouldn't know, much less care, whether your strings variable names start with str or sz or abcdef. They follow the code. They can read what is happening, and tell, without even running the app, whether the code will work or will throw up big ugly error messages and bring down your entire computer. For writing, these people are like beta readers. They can digest an entire story and tell you that the hero is too much of a jerk, or that your villain is too flat. They know when the romance has your toes curling, or your stomach curdling. But they might not have noticed that you have twice as many commas as any sane writer, and that you spell "heroine" "heroin" nine times out of ten.

Do we need them in our peer reviews? Absolutely. The same goes for our writing. We need someone who can see the big picture and tell us whether our puzzle pieces will fit together into a cohesive whole.

And then there are the "I Know Better" folks. You know the ones--they don't like something because they would have written it differently. In code, they would write a "for" loop instead of a "while" loop, and will insist to their dying day that the "for" is best, regardless of whether the "while" loop worked correctly and efficiently and ended up with the same result. They just think that their way is better.

In writing, these are the contest judges who re-write half of your manuscript in the margins. They insist on "rules" being followed that don't work for your manuscript. They don't like your setting (even though its integral to the plot), think your alpha-hero should be beta, and want to see more sex in your inspirational.

Do we need them in our peer reviews? Well, this one gets tricky. At work, these people are frequently the team leader, or the chief architect for a project. In this case, their word is the final word. If they say, and insist, that you use for loops instead of while loops, then sometimes you say "Yes, sir" and just do it, no matter how aggravating. In my opinion, a good team lead or architect will either 1) recognize the value of an alternate solution or 2) Explain very clearly and non-condescendingly where the weaknesses are in your work and why they feel that their own idea is better. But I've met many who do neither of these things.

Do we need them in our writing? Heck, no. Most of the time. When you are writing, you are the team lead. You are the chief architect. It is your name that will show up on the cover, so you call the shots. There is a caveat here: If you are getting this kind of advice from someone who is published in the sub-genre that you are working in, then don't discard their advice out of hand. Keep it. File it away. And come back to it later, when the pain and annoyance isn't quite so fresh. There might be some nuggets of truth or help hidden in there. If not, keep on ignoring.

At work, as in writing, we need a mix of people to help us critique our work. And it might change depending on where the writing is. If you've written a fast draft, or just an outline, then you're going to want to listen closely to those big-picture folks. If your story is nearly carved in stone, then you want that close-read by the grammar guru to really polish things up. And most critique partners will fall somewhere between the two extremes.

I am lucky right now that I have a good small critique group with a mix of folks. We're at different stages in our writing--from contracted to working on the first draft of the first book. We write in different genres--historical, contemporary, light and dark paranormal, suspense. We write at different speeds. But we all have something different to bring to the table.

So, even though I cringe every time I send out a few pages, and hold my breath waiting for the critiques to come in, I know I'm getting valuable feedback.

Always a day late...

2009-08-19T11:29:00.001-07:00

I’ve been a lot quiet over here lately, because of all the chaos. Sometimes I write my way through chaos, and sometimes I have to hunker down and wait for the twister to blow over.

The past two weeks have been the latter. Hiding in the basement, covering my head and neck, away from all windows.

I might have mentioned that I got two requests out of my trip to the RWA national convention—1 from an editor, 1 from an agent. I'm fairly certain that the agent request was standard issue, as she only requested a partial. The editor, on the other hand, seemed fairly interested. It helped that I was pitching something that met their standards to a tee.

I submitted partials to both (I had forgotten to check whether the editor wanted the full) on July 26th, and proceeded to check my email daily thereafter. Not just any email--this particular address had only been used to send two messages ever, so there would be nothing there except for a reply to my submissions. It was silly and driving me nuts, so I gave it a rest for almost a week.

Of course, the editor had emailed me, a WEEK earlier, requesting the full. "As soon as possible". That sent me into full-fledged panic mode and I spent a frantic week (probably 20 hours or so, working around the day job and evening classes and oh, yeah, kids) polishing the manuscript and emailed it last Friday, August 14th.

I check my email again today (the 19th), and find a nice note, dated yesterday, from the editor thanking me for the submission. But she's leaving the company, effective yesterday. She's passing my manuscript on to colleagues.

I didn't even read the message early enough for a polite, "Thanks and good luck" kind of reply. And my hopes, which were artificially inflated by that "asap" wording, have just hit the slush pile.

I can hope that this is really the eye of the storm, but I'm thinking that I'm back to the calm.

Oh well. I have some contest entries to polish, and some Aliens to blast into space. And someday, that storm will be back.

Word Counts can be deceiving

2009-08-07T13:36:00.001-07:00

About two week ago, I updated the word count on my Sci Fi WIP. 78k and change. Using Open Office on my netbook. But then, I moved my files back to my laptop, updated a few chapters where I had critique notes, and ran another wordcount. 73k and change. Had I really lost 5,000 words? I removed a prologue that I'm going to save for a sequel, but it was not a 5,000 word prologue.

I don't believe that Word counts words the same way Open Office does.

In other words, never trust a wordcount. Open Office thinks I'm back to 78k and change, up about 3,000 words from my post-prologue edit.

I have been aiming for 90k for a long time, and now I'm wondering if I'll hit 85000. I'm in the wind down. More like the wind up for the big plot high point--the part where things explode all over the place. Yes its sci fi, but no, I'm not blowing up a planet. Just a ship or two, I think. I think much of emotional/relationship tension has peaked. Now I just have to get everyone off Earth and on their way elsewhere.

The end is in sight. And then the real editing begins.

Submission

2009-07-27T08:38:00.001-07:00

I have submitted. 2 copies of my contemporary romance (code named Chivalrous, but with a slightly more imaginative—and totally negotiable—title). One to an editor, one to an agent. Actually, only three chapters plus a synopsis. The editor might have been willing to read more, but in my nervousness during the pitch, I failed to find out exactly how much to send. So, I decided to be cautious and only send a partial.

OK, cautious and freaked out. Because I have had the book sitting on the shelf for about a year, and it’s been edited. But every time I open up something I write, I want to edit some more. And I knew that if I was going to send the whole book, then I would want to re-read and probably re-edit the whole thing. I need to do that (I am also incapable of sending my children off in public without brushing their hair one last time). But I wasn’t going to get through it all last week, with work, and an evening class, and kids who hadn’t seen me in 5 days.

So now, why am I so nervous? Its not like I haven’t queried before. I sent out a dozen or so query letters last fall for the same book (and got a dozen or so rejections, though one partial request before the rejection. The worst these two can say is “no”. I think maybe its because the whole situation is more personal—I saw their faces, and talked to them in person. I saw real interest (not necessarily grandiose enthusiasm, but interest) in the idea. Not like a faceless cold-call query letter to an agent found online who had “romance” listed in their areas of interest.

So now, I’m torn between dusting and polishing Chivalrous (thereby investing time and emotional energy into something that is likely to be rejected again), or wrapping up my Sci Fi, and preparing to start something new, or finish something else that’s in progress.

Maybe I should count myself lucky that I have precious little time this week either, so even if I waffle over the decision for a couple of days, I will have wasted minutes, not hours or days, of productive writing time.

About the food

2009-07-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

My least favorite parts of the RWA National Convention involved food.

I am no country hick. I expected high hotel prices for snack, room service, and restaurants. I fully expected the catered lunches to all include some form of chicken and pasta or chicken and rice (one of each, as it turns out). I expected hotel food to be, well, institutional to some degree. I did not expect to be appalled by the table manners of some of the other attendees.

I am not a country hick, but neither am I an etiquette maven, and I was raised far from any semblance of the country-club set. But I have attended my share (maybe more than my share) of fancy business dinners and weddings at places like the Ritz-Carlton downtown Chicago, the Frontenac Hilton, the Chase Park Plaza and the Starlight Roof, the Fox theater (dinner on the stage!), and City Hall in St. Louis. (Not that the events were put on by City Hall, but were private events held there—it’s an exceedingly beautiful venue, btw). Some of them black tie, some business dinners with networking opportunities.

At none of these other events that I’ve attended have I seen diners arrive at their seats twenty minutes early and devour their salads, all scraps of bread on the table, and half of their desserts before all seats at the table are even filled! Nor have I seen people wait with their fork and knife in hand, hovering over their food and practically salivating while waiting for the entire table to be served (this one person in particular had at least noticed that others were politely waiting for all to be served). At the Rita/Golden Heart reception, I saw people carry entire serving trays of appetizers off of the buffets, and set up their own private mini-buffets to share with 2 or 3, while others waited in long lines for a bite or two of shrimp.

I don’t care how tight your budget is, YOU ARE NOT STARVING. DO NOT PRETEND THAT YOU ARE. There is no reason to fall on your food like a rabid wolf. There is no call to arrive thirty minutes before an advertised meal time and stockpile your plate like you’ll never see another bagel again. It is not polite, and is very very far from considerate to hoard food while others are still waiting. Wait your turn. Wait politely. Wait for the entire table, if not the entire ballroom, to be ready. Take your share and no more (if you want seconds, you wait until everyone has been served). These are the same kinds of table manners that my husband and I are working very hard to teach to our 2 and 4 year olds. I certainly hope a few fellow RWA members remember them for next year.

I don’t believe that the hotel or the planners helped matters much with some of their choices of presentation and location. The continental breakfasts, and the GH/Rita Reception were served in a landing area outside the main ballroom that was, in my opinion, far too small. The reception was a crush. Literally, a crush. I’ve read about them in Regency Romances, but I’ve never actually experienced one until now.

The food tables were too tightly packed together so that long lines formed around them as if they were a dinner buffet, instead of a more civilized cocktail hour. Maybe some budget-conscious attendees treated them as dinner buffets. The dessert table was too sparse and many of us watched the table emptied by vultures before ever arriving at the front of the line for a single bite of chocolate. And if there was water, coffee, or iced tea available at the reception, I never saw it. Just the bar—with small ticket-sellers set up next to them. $5 for a single soda, alcohol more expensive, and no alternatives in sight.

I am hoping that people will be better behaved next year in Nashville. And that perhaps, our conference fee will go a bit farther so that the 7:30-8:30 continental breakfasts are not stripped bare by 7:52. I would hope that the Rita/GH reception would merit as nice of a venue as the actual awards ceremony—at least one of the side ballrooms, instead of a landing between the stairs and some bland meeting rooms.

Myabe I expect too much. I’ve been to some awfully nice events, after all. And though I didn’t expect Ritz-Carlton from a Marriott crowd, maybe my expectations were just a tad higher than they should have been.

More on Nationals

2009-07-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I meet someone who knows everyone. And I do mean everyone. As in, everywhere I go, every stranger I meet, they all know this person. There was a guy from college that I met within the first few days of arriving on campus (no romantic involvement here). He was everywhere, super-involved in lots of things. Everyone knew him. I attended Wash U in St. Louis, which is not a tiny school. Not mammoth either, but with 5000ish undergrads on campus, its not like everyone knows everyone else. He graduated probably 2 years ahead of me in a different engineering discipline. After graduation, I started work at a small local consulting company, where most of the company had worked together for over 10 years. One day, I was sitting in the conference room at a client site, and one of my managers was chatting with the client (they used to work together elsewhere) and they were talking about some guy named (ThisGuysName). Its not a common name, and my ears pricked up. Um, are you talking about (HisName)? Yes, yes they were. Small world. Even smaller when he later married a friend of a friend. I still run into him once or twice a year, and occasionally find a coworker here (at my 3rd employer) who knows him. Weird how that works out.

Recently, I met another one of those everywhere people. Jeannie Lin. She’s been around RWA for a while, attended a bunch of conferences, and been active in at least two chapters—LARA and MORWA. And every other person I met at the RWA conference knows her. The neat thing was when I introduced myself to a stranger and she said, “Oh, you’re one of Jeannie Lin’s crit partners.” It’s a small, small world, and Jeannie has perfected the art of networking. She’s also very nice and a superb writer. So its no surprise that everyone knows her.

In addition to that little observation, my conference experience was great. I’m not quite the social butterfly that others are, but I do warm up with time. I had two pitch appointments—one editor and one agent. I intended to pitch my sci fi to the agent, and my contemporary to the editor, and ended up with 2 requests for the contemporary. The only bad thing is that the editor might have requested either the full or the partial, but I forgot to clarify which. I think I’ll send the partial to both, offering the full as well. And, of course, though I claim that the book is “done”, I feel the need to dust it off and do a quick editing pass before sending it on (I can’t help it….but I think it’s a compulsion that many writers share). I still want it sent by the end of this week. I may have a few late nights ahead of me to make sure I meet that self-imposed deadline.

I loved seeing the faces of editors and agents. Hearing their voices, seeing them laugh and smile, and sometimes even stammer through a Q&A session makes them feel so much more human. Not just an all-powerful being somewhere with the power to make or break my writing career. But a normal, approachable person. And I have noted the names of 2 NY editors in particular who expressed interest in Sci Fi and futuristic romances. I was too scared to talk to either in person, but I’ll be polishing Leap and either tossing it for the slush pile, or waiting for a contest or other opening to get it in front of them.

RWA Celebrity Sightings

2009-07-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of a fangirl. Well, I am, but I'm too chicken sh*t to ever consider approaching a celebrity. The first author-signed books that I've ever acquired were from my RWA chapter meetings (from my chaptermates themselves).

RWA National was an interesting people-watching and celebrity-watching event for me. I was not only surrounded by famous people (and quasi-famous people, whose names I only know because I write), but I was almost their peer. Almost. Without the suite and the assistant and the book deal. Even still, I saw the faces of lots of famous folks, up close and personal. With some, I even mumbled my name and waved at my badge so they could sign a copy of their book.

Here's my list of up-close celebrity sightings:

Kit Bond. Ok, he's not a romance author and was not (to my knowledge) at RWA National. He's a Senator from Missouri. But I sat right behind him on the plane from St. Louis. Not even in first class. I did not ask him to shake my hand, like many of my fellow fliers did once he was officially recognized.
JR Ward. Right before the RITA awards, I was checking the back of my dress in the bathroom. She told me it looked great. She was probably laughing at me :) (Hello, anyway, should you be googling yourself! I'm the blonde in the cream dress with a big black bow on the back....)
Brenda Novak. I helped her stock a box of give-aways in the Goody Room during my stint as a volunteer
Angie Fox, NYT Bestselling author of the Accidental Demonslayer series. I'm cheating, here. She's a chaptermate in MORWA. I did sit with her and another chaptermate during the Dorchester spotlight.
Kimberly Killion, RITA-nominated author of medieval Scottish romance. Cheating again--another chaptermate. Doesn't stop her book Her One Desire from being awesome. She should have won!
Jeannie Lin. Cheating again. She's a chaptermate, a crit partner, a Golden Heart Winner, and she sold (at conference) her first novel! So, by this time next year she'll be a bonafide celebrity that folks outside RWA will recognize.

There probably ought to be more. I certainly attended enough workshops led by famous people, and had a couple of editor/agent appointments with names that fellow romance writers might recognize. But I didn't ride an elevator with anyone I recognized, or have a drink with someone. I'm not good at starting conversations. Maybe next year I'll get to chat with Jayne Ann Krentz or Susan Elizabeth Phillips (I did love their workshop...).