OMG, Release day

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)

#RWA10 Wrap-up

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!

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.

My laurels

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.

Good News X 2

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

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...

Behind the curve

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...

Writer's weekend...in Vegas

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

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.

Cheating on my MS

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

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.

Sunday Progress

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

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.

Goals

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?

Thinking hard

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...)

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?

I warned you...

Comment modification now on. Thank you, spammer. I've learned, as a mother, not to give more than a single warning on bad behavior, and to follow up with exactly the consequences that I threatened.

BTW, next time try creating sentences that actually make sense. On one of my other blogs I've occasionally gotten ad-type spam that kind of relates to the post I'd written. That's annoying. This junk is just gibberish.

On the topic of writing, I'm making progress. I'm also splitting my forces, which is probably a bad idea. And yet, I have ideas (probably also bad ones) about so many different projects at once. So, I am recording progress on "Appearance of Impropriety", my contemporary cateogry novel featuring Claire and Helmut, who made their debuts on this blog. And I'm making forward progress on "Leap", my sci-fi/paranromal romance/romantic-elements.

The problem is that Leap is chest-deep in action right now, and writing all the tense action leaves me feeling a little keyed up (or maybe its the caffeine...I got my caramel latte leaded this morning). The category is fast-moving, but there are no guns (or phaser-type alien weapons) blazing, and it's still in the banter-stage. It's still on the climb to that first big hill of the emotional roller coaster, where you hear the click-click-click of the conveyor belt and begin grasping the handles with white knuckles. Leap is mid-corkscrew, heading for a tunnel.

So, hooray for having a day off. I've got a little shopping to do, lunch with my husband, then some combination of house cleaning and more writing until its time to pick up the kids for preschool. Maybe Leap's word count ticker will grow a little more this afternoon :)

And, remember, if you comment it might just take a day or two before it appears on the blog. Be patient with me please :)

Why aren't you writing?

Who, me? Why aren't I writing? Um....

I did about a week and a half ago. Write. Fiction even.

Actually, I've had maybe 2-3 hours a week lately to work on writing activities. Two weeks ago I added scenes to what I'm calling Appearance of Impropriety, also known as Claire and Helmut's story, that I posted to this blog sometime last summer. The week before (actually, probably 2 weeks before that), I spent worrying over my sci fi, and finally entered the first chunk + a synopsis into a contest. Its kind of hard to write a synopsis for a book that's not complete. I made something up. I'm pretty sure the story is heading that way...

I've also joined a new crit group with some friends from RWA. Our chapter has a regular crit group, but it's so large (like 20+ people), and you only get to read your stuff about 2x a year. There are 8 of us in thsi small group, and we'll meet on weeks that the other group doesn't, and (assuming I'm writing), I can read a small piece every week. I'm psyched. They got to meet Claire and Helmut last week. After that contest entry, I didn't have the heart to keep up with Myrrah and Dominic and their whole psychic alien semi-truck chase. It will come back around, though.

Hopefully, some other stuff in my life is settling back down for a bit. I'm taking some web design classes, and I'm past 6 solid weeks of 2 night a week classes. The rest of them should be spread out a lot thinner, which is good for both my children and my writing.

So, what about you? Why aren't you writing?