I'm Back

For real, I swear. Until my next blogging hiatus. But with four works in progress, a volunteer non-profit charity biz, a new jewelry biz (very new), a new job for the first time in 3 years, continued chronic pain, exercises to keep up on, chronic migraines, two cats to try and get to stop killing each other, and a sick/dying parent, it's hard to keep up on the blogging. But I want to blog. I want to do all the things.

As is tradition for when I've taken a blogging hiatus, I will discuss my current writing projects. Because that's how it's done. More about all that other stuff later. And it's a lot.

Four works in progress.

My first priority: "Pieces" A contemporary mystery with light paranormal elements. It's in the final stages. I've gotten good feedback from drafts 2 and 3 from different sets of beta readers and am working on the 4th draft, which is more editing than rewriting. Finally! When you've moved from constant rewrites into actual edits, you've gotten somewhere. Because I said so. I think it may be done by mid-year, maybe sooner. It's hard to say. But I'm super excited. I plan to enter it into some contests and try to attend some writing conferences this year to meet with agents in person. I think this one is the most commercially-marketable of all my stories, so I'm definitely going to try the traditional route with it. I think I will be in fully querying-swing by Fall, definitely winter.

Priority 2 is "New Year's Revolution" (Formerly Bloody New Year and Vampiric Vanguard. Still thinking of using Vampiric Vanguard as a series title.) This is an urban fantasy/paranormal/post-apocalyptic novel. It's my first baby, and has therefore seen many rewrites/edits. Somewhere between 7 and 10. But I've discovered the solution: it's not a three book series, as originally planned. It's four. The first book needs to be cut in half. I feel confident about these changes. My goal is to have this ready to be queried (again) by the end of the year. It's doable. I've queried agents for this in the past and gotten roughly 30 rejections (go me!). I'm aiming for the 3 digits. When your number of rejections hit the hundreds, you know you've made it. I plan to query some agents, but mostly small/indie publishers.

These two books will keep me busy most of the year, but I have not forgotten my other two children. I began my fourth novel "Eternal" in November (NaNoWriMo 2017). While I got it past 50k, I did not complete the rough draft, but that's okay. I know where the story is going and felt like continued work on the sloppy rough draft wasn't productive. I don't know when I'll be ready to work on it again, but I feel like I'll be ready to write a solid draft two when the time comes. Oh yeah, it's a speculative romance. I know, I'm writing a romance. Who would've thought? While I won't be writing on it for a while, I will be reading in preparation: lesbian romance novels, stories that take place in the 80s, and stories that feature mixed race characters.

Last but not least is "Caribou Canyon" later called "City of Secrets". This is my second baby. I love it, but don't know where to go from here. It's a YA paranormal, and the story is too big. There are 3 MCs, and I fell in love with all of them and gave each character many subplots. The polished first draft rounded out at 250k words. Yes, you read that correctly. I started releasing it as a serial on Jukepop, but that didn't pan out. Then I started releasing it on my blog, but I'm not sure that's what I want to do with it. I think I'm going to remove it from my blog and set it aside in my mind, but I definitely want to continue it. At this point, I would likely polish it up and self-publish it, maybe in installments.

Okay, so those are my writing projects. I'm having a busy 2018, and that's just about the writing. So many other things are happening, many of them painful and trying and sometimes I just want to curl up and sleep, and keep sleeping, and keep on sleeping. But writing is my passion, my art, my life. I will take all of this crap and funnel it into my stories.

Get ready world. They are coming.

It's finished!

This post is a wee bit late. I have finished the 3rd draft of Pieces. Yay!

This is super exciting. In case anyone missed the news, Pieces is a literary mystery with paranormal elements, and it's "the one." Some authors say you shouldn't bank on having "the one." But I have it. It's Pieces. For the 3rd draft, I took into account most of the feedback I got on the 2nd draft from my wonderful Writ & Art group. I have found 4 new beta readers, two of which are my experts: an Army vet and a psychotherapist.

I was hoping that I wouldn't have to do more than 3 drafts, but there will definitely need to be a polish/edit once I get their feedback. I'll probably name the file 4th draft, but I should be able to do it very quickly, unless I totally effed up the military stuff, in which case I'm screwed. But I don't think I did. My wonderful Writ & Art group will be reading the "4th and please for the love of god let it be the final" draft.

The thing I'm still worried about (of course) is the freaking word count. Word counts are the bane of my existence.

At 135k words, it's still way too long. I'm not sure what to do about this. I love all of it. I have already trimmed most of the fat, though there may still be some hidden fat to trim here and there. We'll see, but I don't want to compromise what it is to make it fit the standards of today's novel. Today's novel is short. I blame the internet and shortened attention spans.

I'm excited to hear what people have to say. And nervous. But it's also almost November, which means I'll have a wee bit of something to distract me from thinking about Pieces.

More updates later.

Psst! Like me on FB!

Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes, and Picking the Marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms

Because come on, don't try and tell me you didn't pick out the marshmallows. Those are the best part. Sometimes I just wanted to have a bowl of nothing but marshmallows. I mean, what was even the point of those, those--what were those other things anyway? Were they even healthy? Probably not.

The second best thing about the cereal was of course digging through the box for the toy. Even better, when you had to get out a big mixing bowl to dump the cereal in just so you could get the toy. And then your mom would come and get all mad about it. My boyfriend bought a box of Cheerios a couple weeks ago that had a toy from "The Secret Life of Pets" and I started reminiscing about this very topic. He informed me that he'd never done this. I was appalled, and insisted that we do it right then and there, but he refused.

Some people.

I just don't even know.

Anyway, you're probably wondering why I'm writing a blog to talk about breakfast cereal, and actually, I'm not. I intended to talk about a serial. Not serial killers. I mean, sure, there's plenty of interesting stuff to talk about along those lines, but I'm in a pretty good mood after thinking about that bowl full of nothing but marshmallows, and I don't want to ruin it. So instead I'm going to talk about web serials. Books. The reading kind. Books books wonderful wonderful books.

In case you haven't heard me mention it once or twice or eight hundred times, my YA paranormal "City of Secrets" is being released chapter by chapter on JukePop serials. In all of my excitement in getting it ready and hyping it up and promoting it, I'm not entirely sure if I fully explained exactly what a serial is. My boyfriend pointed this fact out to me. I was like, "Oops."

Serial fiction is not a new thing. Charles Dickens and his contemporaries made it popular. (I feel like I got smarter just by composing that sentence.) It sparked up again recently as sort of a cross between reading and social media. Some of the most popular sites are Wattpad and Jukepop. It's free to readers, and while most authors get to choose when they release their chapters, readers have the luxury of just reading one chapter at a time. So, it totally fits the fast-paced lifestyle of the 21st century.

Mine's been up for almost three weeks (chapter 3 goes up tomorrow--hint, hint). It's going fairly well so far. I'm still looking into the best ways to advertise. I started out with the standard Twitter, Facebook, and blog, which I'm learning aren't the best. I think when people are on Twitter or Facebook that's where they want to be at the moment. They don't want to click a link to read a book. Or maybe they don't understand that it's free, or that they don't have to commit to reading an entire novel. I'm not completely sure, but those are my best guesses. So, I'm looking into advertising on more reading/book oriented sites. But it's a lot of work, in addition to the eight million things I'm already doing. But it's been fun so far, and I've started reading some of the other stories up on JukePop, and I've found some good ones.

I will definitely share more of what I've learned from this in the future, so you will all know what to do and what not to do in case you are thinking of following in my footsteps.

But definitely, have a bowl of marshmallows.

And also, read the first 2 chapters of "City of Secrets." You know you want to.  Oh look, the link just happens to be right here for your convenience. http://bit.ly/2a7FNDD