Category Archives: Novels
Back On Track!
The craptastic nature of the beginning of the new year has given way to some fantastic new developments! This is a writing blog, so I won’t bore you with the details of my mundane job, but sufficient to say – things have simpled up for me a lot, in a good way. So, that frees up some of the space in my mental warehouse to turn towards writing novels again!
Before month’s end I hope to:
Submit my revised novel Pretty Witches All in a Row to the agent who asked for the changes late last year.
Finish editing down Moonsong, because it is just too damn long at present, and get it out in its new incarnation.
Finish up at least one of my vampire diaries fanfics, so I’m not spread quite so thin.
Get some notes down on the next vampire diaries fanfic before the ideas fall out of my head.
Finish watching season one of Deadwood because I have become addicted to this show! Actually I’ve become addicted to all things Olyphantastic, and I can’t wait for Justified to come out on DVD so I can finally get a look at that show too!
Make some reservations for our anniversary weekend coming up. Twenty years of wedded bliss! Damn, time goes by fast… (love you baby!)
Start brainstorming on the next novel! Hopefully to start writing in the month of February, even if it is a shorter month than most.
I figure posting it here makes me sorta accountable to get at least most of these done, right? 
December Tidings of Joy
Wow this month is just flying by! I’ve enjoyed decompressing a bit from the stress of NaNoWriMo and the pressure to update so often and now I’m trying to wrap up at least one of my fanfics before I start writing a new novel in January. At least I think I’m gonna shoot for starting a new one in January. That might be a bit ambitious, given that I still have some marketing to do with the first three that might tie me up and I actually have zero ideas on what to focus on for my next book. 
I have no shortage of ideas but I’m having trouble narrowing down what to tackle next. As usual, too many ideas, not enough time!
okay random thought – Just read a trivia fact that Usher likes to set a romantic mood with his own music. How douchey is that? Sorry, will return you to the regularly scheduled blog now…
All that time I’m saving from not having any new tv shows to watch and no recaps to write is less fun than I had hoped. Instead I find myself just wishing it was time for Vampire Diaries, True Blood and Nikita to come back on the air. Is anyone out there watching Nikita? It’s really started to grow on me, I’ll have to think about writing something for them in the future, but for the moment people seem to be voting for another Vampire Diaries fic with a darker Damon, big surprise.
If I don’t end up updating here again in time, let me just wish everyone a Happy Holiday season with lots of hugs and good food and hearts and flowers. Here is our tree!
Another NaNo Bites the Dust!
NaNoWriMo is officially over and I’m happy to say I managed to crank out 67,154 words of fanfic last month! I have to say it was nice getting all the instant feedback from my readers and their waiting for updates kept me going when I wanted to take a break. That translated into 71,440 hits from 20,715 readers on fanfiction.net! That just blows away the numbers from the previous month completely and I’m floored that so many people are regularly reading my stories. I mean it feels like a lot, is that a lot?
New episode this week on Vampire Diaries, yay! I can’t wait to watch it, the promo looks amazing! It’ll be good to get back to those episode recaps here too.
I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday for those of you who celebrate it. We had a nice day with family and food and I’m say to say the turkey leftovers are all gone now. Gearing up for Christmas now, the tree is up and presents all wrapped.
In other news, I was just contacted by an editor of a local publishing house who wants to work with me on editing Pretty Witches All in a Row! No guarantee of a book deal as of yet, but I’m glad of the interest and his generous offer to work with me. Fingers crossed this ends up with a publishing deal!
Winner for NaNoWriMo 2010!
So I’ve been so busy lately that I forgot to update that I hit the 50k mark for NaNo a few days back. I’m currently at 59,403 words for the month and still going strong. I might take a day or two off for the long weekend, but we’ll see.
I’ve been watching a lot of Firefly lately and I’ve been feeling a powerful need to write me a one-shot that takes place between the series and the movie I’m thinking. Yeah yeah, I know I need another story idea like I need a bullet in the brainpan, but I’m still toying with it. My three fanfics are still going strong with no sign of any of them wrapping up just yet, so I’ll have plenty of writing to keep me busy in the near future.
I have to admit that my fingers have been itching to start on some original work too, but I haven’t even gotten to a synopsis for Angel of Mercy yet, so I’m leery of taking on another novel just yet. I think instead I’ll just enjoy the holidays (Already got the tree up! I know, I’m one of those…) and see what happens when I come to the other side of them.
So Far So Good for NaNoWriMo!
At the end of day 3 I’m up to 8099 in words written, not too shabby I think. It’s definitely a different vibe writing fanfic for NaNo rather than an original novel. I don’t have the freedom of writing complete unpolished crap because it’s a first draft and won’t be seen in this incarnation since I’m posting updates as I go and I’ve got to make sure they’re up to snuff before they get posted. And I also don’t have the benefit of having the fairly detailed outline I had for the other 3 novels I’ve written during the month long writing challenges since I just didn’t have time to get anything down this time.
But on the plus side, it’s gratifying to have people see the results right away. And I’m normally a pretty ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ kind of writer when it comes to fanfic, so that’s okay. And there’s less pressure to come up with something super awesome that I have to then figure out a way to market because my fanfic is just for fun and for the fans. With things so stressful at work, I’m glad I went this route even if I won’t end up with a book to publish at the end of the month.
I wanted to give a heartfelt thanks to everyone for all the support and feedback on fanfic.net! I had over 55,000 hits for my fics last month alone, that is amazing! You guys are the reason I write there, and I’m so touched to have so many people reading.
In other news, I heard back from a publisher today who’s about halfway through reading Pretty Witches All in a Row. He emailed me to let me know that he’s really enjoying it so far and with a little editing he thinks I’ve got the makings of a great book. How cool is that?
NaNoWriMo Fast Approaches…
And I am having some serious waffling issues. So far I think I’ve chosen and discarded easily a half dozen ideas on what to write about. I had started with the sequel to Angel of Mercy, No Mercy for the Wicked. But then I decided to go with something fresh and something my eleven year old might enjoy reading. I even sat down with her and did some brainstorming, which was a lot of fun. I helped her decide what she’s gonna write for NaNo!
Only the thing is… we can’t seem to agree on anything for me to write on that she wants to read! She’ll like part of my idea, but not others, or we’ll have a serious disagreement on what the characters should be like. So I’m thinking… writing kids books is not my forte. Which is fine, and I thought I’d still try and tackle a young adult book since it’d be smaller overall and I’m so pressed for time.
But then I started editing down Moonsong and felt like writing a sequel to that one… and ugh there are too many choices! And I’m still trying to refine my three completed books and pitch them to agents and publishers. To top things off, work continues to consume more of my time than I would like and I’ve started to entertain the notion of not writing anything for Nano.
I know. Sacriligious! It pains me to even think of not doing it.
Then I thought about having one of my new fanfics count as a NaNo entry. After all, I could start it in the month of November and then I could kill two birds with one stone. But somehow that seems like cheating. It’s national NOVEL writing month, does fanfic count?
So now here I am, 4 ish days from the start and I have no idea if I’ll be doing it, or what I’ll be writing about. Yikes!
What do you guys think? Any ideas? Comments? Does Fanfic count as writing towards Nano?
