Tag Archives: books

Wolfsong: Now available!

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Whoo. Holidays are officially over (for me, anyways. We don’t really celebrate New Years). We had an awesome Christmas, saw a bunch of family, had a couple of great dinners. Despite my holiday-anxiety (which is a reoccurring theme LOL), things went awesomely.

We got a Wii. >3 It is blue and full of amazingness. So I am a happy Kodi!

Speaking of happy: I have an announcement. After multiple edits and revisions and polishes, my debut novel, Wolfsong, is officially available for sale through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. I will be updating Wolfsong’s page as additional distribution venues become available. Also, I hope to have it for sale in paperback by mid-January!

That said…

When his wolf-dog goes from furry to beautiful girl in 2.7 seconds, 17-year-old Kia doesn’t believe it. Arii’s been recruited to bring Kia home, back to her realm, where werewolves are real, the supernatural exists, and tension between the two wolf packs is threatening to erupt into a full-scale war. With his father missing, Kia is the rightful heir and without an Alpha’s power behind them, their pack is defenseless in the face of an oncoming battle.

Kia has spent his entire life being a wallflower—he’s not leader material, but he’s not given a choice. Stolen away from all he knows, he’s thrust into a world where rank is dictated by the color of your eyes and where the light of the full moon transforms you into a powerful beast. All Kia wants is to go home, where his only worry is not flunking calculus.

With the help of his new-found friends, he soon realizes that the only way to return to the real world is to end the war—but not everyone wants Kia to succeed, and as he starts to enjoy his awakening confidence as a leader and he falls deeper in love with Arii, he starts to doubt if he wants to go back at all…

~

So whoo! Much excitedness! :D

You can read the first chapter here.

And it’s available for sale ($2.99) as an e-book here: Amazon, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

I hope everyone enjoys Wolfsong as much as I have <3

Now it’s time to open up Spellbound and work on finishing it. Back into Word I go!

Writing Woes…

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Argh. I’m having issues, man. I’m not happy with my WIP, Souljacker. I loved the idea. I loved it as I wrote 11k in 7 days. Lucy is wounded and snarky, but cute. Her voice is sharp and witty. I liked it even, for the first 20k. Then it started dragging its feet. I skipped a few days of writing, just avoiding it. I’m now at 35k and each word is like pulling teeth. With rusty pliers. And no laughing gas, even.

I know myself well; I do this pretty much every WIP. Some of them I give up on, are just halted indefinitely at 35k. Some of them I powered through and finished. I just need a moment to say…

Brain: AHLKFHLDSHKASD THE PAINNN! Why do you make me do this?! I hate it, I hate it, nonononononononooo! -flails like a 4-year-old throwing a tantrum because Mommy won’t let her get a Barbie doll-

-cough- Now that that’s over with. I know my solution. I’ve always known my solution. I need to push through it. I need to sit down, figure out where the heck I’m going with it. Outline the rest of the novel, scene-by-scene with Sticky Notes; transfer it over to a Word document. Write 1k or 1 scene a day, even if it sucks major eggs, deleting the Sticky Notes with each scene I check off. By Jan 1st (my goal-date, giving me 35 days at 1k a day = 35k = 70k (which is my usual length) I’ll have a finished book ready to go out for edits. By spring, I’ll have a shiny new story ready to share with the world, which I will more than likely love and forget all about the pain.

If I know this, why am I resisting (and complaining :P ) so much?

-off to wallpaper her screen with Sticky Notes-

A Body In Motion (or: Arghhhh)

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A body in motion tends to stay in motion.

While writing Wolfsong back in April, I wrote every single day, sometimes twice a day, because the story wanted OUT. Out of my mind, onto the page (hey, that’s fine with me!) and I had fun with it. I found myself waking up automatically at 7 am (and I’m a wake-at-noon sort of girl :P ) with the next scene fresh in my mind. I’d boot up Seven, write 1500-2000 words in a sitting, then crash til noon. Then depending on what I had going, I might’ve written another 2k before bedtime. I was Turned On.

Then I got tangled up in a hangup that I thought was a Big Deal…and I stopped writing, put the brakes on and skidded to a dead halt. I fretted, stressed, and worried (but ultimately figured out my problem)…but I didn’t write for a week and a half. And it was so. so. so hard to get back into that story. I was no longer a body in motion, but a body at rest. It sucked, but I powered through it and wrote the rest of the story that month (but still, I whined…a lot).

At this point in time, I’m 90% through my rewrite of Spellbound…alllmost to the point where I get to finish the rest of the book with Brand New Words. But I haven’t written in like, ehhh…almost two weeks. And I’ve found myself avoiding all things writerly. Which is Bad, seeing as I need to get “the Trio”  up by Halloween. Blargh. I know it needs to be done. I just would rather slack :P (I know -tases self- BAD WRITER!)

It’s hard, when you don’t want to do it. When you’re making up excuses (“But I need to clean the bathroom!”) BUT I know if I can -just- get myself back into the habit of writing daily, I’ll be back on the Train of Awesome! (And the soap scum in the tub will wait until I finish that story, I assure you!) …guess I’m headed to Seven to finish up the rest of the rewrite part before NaNoWriMo! XD

Anyone else having trouble motivating to do something? Do you have tips to make Jumping Back Into Writing easier? :)

The Adventures of Gumby and Pokey

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Surely you guys remember Gumby and Pokey. Little green clay guy with his faithful pony-pal, Pokey? Their clay buddies, Prickle and Goo? The rambunctious deeds of the Block Heads? They’re featured on today’s Google Doodle and it made me remember simpler times in my life…

Gumby and Pokey

When I was about 6 or 7, the Nickelodeon channel played Gumby and Pokey episodes and me and my little bro would watch them. Mom recorded them on an old VHS tape and we watched it over and over until it finally warped and our VCR ate it in a mess of screeching and pulled out tape. That was a sad, sad day…

Last year for Christmas, we found a DVD of some of the ‘best’ episodes of Gumby… And I had to laugh. Nothing like I remembered as a little kid. So we showed it to my then-5-year-old stepsister. She thought it was “lame” and would rather watch Sponge Bob and Scooby Doo (her two staples when she’s here).

Still, I got a kick out of watching it. Oh, how it would feel to be 6 again, endless energy and the biggest problem of the day being earwigs in the sandbox and warm strawberry Kool-aid! LOL Simpler times.

Do you remember Gumby? Did you love it, hate it? Or do you have another nostalgic memory, from when you were little? :)

Don’t Squeeze That Dolphin!! :0

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So. I’ve got a habit of picking up animals and…glomping them? Especially my cats. And I’ve got several cats…so I try and hug them daily. All of them. (Not at the same time, because they sometimes don’t like each other and it just sounds like a recipe for disaster! I like my arms not sliced up, color me selfish.)

We’ve got this little cat named Venus. She’s just so tiny; she’s a year old and maybe 4 pounds, and just petite and she has a nub-tail. We saved her and her brother Toki when they were 3 weeks old and were starving cuz their momma quit producing milk. So, naturally, I love to cuddle her…and she hates me for it, because let me tell you–this cat has Demon Eyes. One sidelong glare at you with those gold eyes and you’re vaporized. (Which is sad, because isn’t Venus the goddess of love? Not feelin’ it).

Almost Demon Eyes...almost

So we’re at my grandma’s house, and she’s got aides that come over and just help her out and generally do stuff she can’t do. And this one woman, she’s hilarious; I told her about glomping Venus, just in passing, and now she won’t let me live it down.

We got onto the subject of the Bahamas. Mom says, someday when I’m rich, that I should totally pay for them to go to the Bahamas. LOL Or better yet, buy a place down there.  Someone said something about swimming with dolphins and the aide is like: Swimming with dolphins would be fun…but you’d just glomp them. The person running the place would be like ‘Hey! Lady! Let it go! Don’t squeeze that dolphin! :0 :0 :0′ and you’d be like ‘I LOVE YOU DOLPHIN! I LOOOOVE YOUUUUUUU!’ (in Gir-voice) and then they’d drag me out of the water and I’d be banned from the dolphin pool. Yeah, I totally lost it. I can imagine myself hugging one? But come on! I wouldn’t squeeze one :P

And this show comes on the TV involving Australia and I’m like: Okay, guys. I’ve totally figured out where I’m moving someday when I’m rich. NEW ZEALAND! And the aide goes: Oh, here we go. You’ll be squeezing kangaroos next and–oh wait. Kangaroos would kick the crap out of you. You’d be rushed to the hospital and they’d be like: what happened to you? and you’d be like: I squeezed a kangaroo… -feeble cough-

C’mon guys… I’m not that cruel to animals. I wouldn’t hug a dolphin OR a kangaroo.

Just cats…

Venus: -does Demon Eyes-

Okay, and Remy, but he likes it :)

New Project Feels…Nice

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So I tell myself: Okay. Today, you are going to get back in the saddle and write. I decided to take a break after doing Camp Nano. Okay, true, I failed to hit 50k? Buuuut 50k wasn’t -my- personal goal. Hitting the big, shiny “The End” on my novella was. I hit 42k and The End. I felt time to congratulate myself was in order. So I took a break and started plotting my next few projects and how I’m going to approach them.

Well the project I finally decided to tackle was the rewrite/revision (because not all the words need rewritten, just rewording) of my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel, Spellbound. I wrote 50k of it, plotted out most of the end (but not…the ending? Why not? I don’t remember…) and filed it away because, in that instance, 50k was my goal for that month. I figured I’d get back to it in January and all would be awesome. Not so much. I kept passing it off until a Shiny New Idea came forward…and I wrote that.

Oh well, what’s done is done. Well I’ve decided to rework Spellbound, which is the tale of a desert Wyvern princess and a Magi slave. I’ve figured out character motivations, their goals, and my conflict. I fleshed out the characters a bit (because Spellbound was my first pantsed novel; I jumped into it with wild abandon, not even knowing the characters’ names) and figured out a real beginning. And I ran with it.

Things have changed, but I found (pleasantly!) that I was able to reuse a lot of my ‘old’ words. They just needed…reworded. Some of it has changed, because the plot and pacing is different, but on the whole, it feels nice. It feels nice to be writing again. I figure I’ll run with it through everything I have plotted, meanwhile figuring out my ending.

I’m aiming for 1.5k a night, which will give me…24,000 words by September 30th. Not bad for half a month’s work :) I would like it done by Halloween, right before NaNo 2011 starts up :)

Speaking of Halloween…I cannot wait >3 I love Halloween.

Of course it's a cat :)

Music Is My Drug

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Music has pretty much always been a huge part of my life. When I was a toddler, I’d sing myself awake every morning. I grew up listening to old 90′s country, wailing along with the radio station or whatever cassette my dad had in on his hulking surround-sound stereo.

One of my most amusing memories is when my dad would watch football…and of course, Hank Williams Jr. sang the Monday Night Football tune back then. Me and my little brother would dance to it, wildly thrashing, dancing, and end up rolling on the floor, tears of laughter in our eyes (I know: strange kids are strange).

Moving on up the years, my brother and I would hang out in his room after we were put to bed (hey, we were both being homeschooled! No harm done) and listen to the Weird Al CDs we’d borrow repeatedly from the library while playing with toys and making up our own stories (the most memorable toys? A bendy arm/leg frog-man and a guy from some show…who we just ended up naming Some Guy. Oh, and George, the one-legged boating guy…)

My first-ever CD was N’Sync and I played the crap outta that CD (and I still love it!)

By then, who listened to country? Not us! We were listening to 90′s pop on an epic channel that’s no longer around, and late at night they’d play remixes. Remixes and techno/trance…oh I love them. They used to play this one song and we ended up buying DDR JUST to dance to that song. XD

I starting saving allowance just to buy CDs; I gathered everything from Britney and Backstreet Boys, to Savage Garden and Three Doors Down. Dad gave us his old Matchbox 20 CD even though it had a few -gasp- cuss words in it.

Now? I’m a music hoarder. I love almost everything, but prefer pop/punk, rock, alternative, indie… The list goes on. I like some screamo, but only if I’m angsty or angry. I don’t like oldies at all, the exception being the Beatles, and I’m not fond of most country (but that’s because my stepdad plays it nonstop) though I do love Garth and some older country. Nothing too twangy though xD

My sibs and I, we have different tastes in music. My bro is more of a The Shins/Arctic Monkeys/MGMT sort of guy, who listens to some odd stuff… Some of it I kinda blink at, as I don’t get it at all. It’s just not MY sort of music. My sister, on the other hand, listens to harder rock and screamo: I Set My Friends On Fire? Scary stuff. It’s rare that we all can agree on music to play if we’re all doing something (because we typically have to appease Mom too) but Panic! and Relient K seem to all work. Maroon 5, sometimes. John Mayer usually. My sibs tell me my music is “Mainstream” but yanno? I don’t care. I like my music and I’ll play it proudly :)

What sort of music do you listen to? Any favorite artists or genres? I’d love to hear what everyone likes! :D

Another One Bites The Dust

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So, after burning out of my YA paranormal, Hunger, and taking a long break, I decided I needed to switch it up. Maybe I was just burned out of YA. I decided: Do something adult for once. Well, characters formed in my head and I came up with a plot, and it slowly became my Camp Nano novel, Bonedust.

It was absolutely freeing to write something with no holds barred, where my characters could be as down and dirty as they needed to be, and the violence could be wonderfully bloody :) I just -needed- it. And loved Bonedust for several thousand words. My characters were witty, it was romantic and sexy, and I enjoyed it.

But of course, around 40k, with just a few scenes left on my outline till THE END, my mind started coming up with new ideas. Fluffy YA ideas. I wanted so badly to shelf BD and work on a Shiny New Idea. My bff and crit partner, Sadie Hart, told me I wasn’t allowed LOL. So after a few days of procrastinating, I decided to just…sit down and do it. Get it over with, for better or worse. Ever have that feeling?

So last night, despite the hundreds of breaks I took, I finished Bonedust. It was hard…but yanno? Also rewarding: I finished another book this year. Score! -cue applause- And I can’t wait to put it on my Kindle and re-read it. Once I’ve taken a break from it. I may attempt to publish it…someday. I’m not 100% sure yet. I don’t have to make that decision today. Or even tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I’m considering finishing up my 2010 (yet unfinished but sitting at 50k) YA Nano novel and making that 3 books finished this year. We’ll see!

Officially Under Construction

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As you might be able to tell from the generic-looking preset header…I’m finally getting my blog under construction (cue applause…no? crickets work too!) I’ve figured out exactly how I want my banner to look, I’ve picked out the stock images I’ll be buying, and it’s just a matter of putting all the images together in one final image that I cannot -wait- to finish :) It’s so…me and I’m so excited to reveal it :D

Meahwhile, I’m working on getting two of my YA shorts edited, polished and ready to submit to Smashwords. They will be freebies, to give you a little taste of my writing style. You will be able to find them shortly under the Free Fiction section of My Projects. Descriptions will be up soon, but they’re both romantic and about Faeries. (I’ll admit, I went through an uber-Faerie phase! Who hasn’t?)

And on the Camp NaNoWriMo front…yeah, I’m not gonna finish before the 31st! LOL. BUT I did get a short story as well as most of an adult romance novella (I’ve got about 5 scenes to go before THE END!). I’m gonna work like crazy to see if I can reach the end of Bonedust by August 31st…but as for reaching 50k? I doubt it’ll happen. STILL. I’m proud of myself.

At the same time, I’m working on Wolfsong’s query and synopsis, as well as the plots for  a possible sequel (although it can easily stand alone), and I hope to start sending it out to agents by January 2012.  I’ve been busy, but it’s a good feeling to start accomplishing stuff again.

I need to jump back into my shifter/kelpie WIP, Hunger, and finish it before November, because I do plan on competing in NaNoWriMo again! Probably another full-rewrite, rather than a Shiny New Idea (though I’ve got a crapload of those!) Which would be epic if I won, because that would mean I’d finished…4 books this year? Go me!

But we’ll see. No one knows what the future holds! Anyone else planning on doing NaNo this year? Do you already have your stories chosen, your charrie bios filled out and your plots fiddled with? Or do you wait until November 1st and just jump in?

I Love Cats…

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Let’s face it. I’m probably going to be the Crazy Cat Lady when I’m old and cranky (crankier? xD) I love cats. I just love cats.

Once upon a time, I had a Siamese kitten named Missy. Missy came into my life when I was 3. I would pull her tail/ears/make her meow and Mom would send me to my room for “being mean to Missy”. What did Missy do? Sit outside my room and cry because she wanted me back. LOL.

Missy also liked to lay on whatever I was reading. Coloring books? She’d flop down. ATTENSHUNNN. I’d get mad and push her away and she’d come back. Silly cat.

And then, when I was eight or nine, I saved up my money and bought my first Betta. I named him Toby and he was blue and shiny. He was safe on my desk. I went to go play and when I came into my room for bed…Toby was gone. The tank was empty. There was no trace of Toby. …Missy had eaten him.

I shunned her. I hated her. I hated cats until we moved.We ended up volunteering at the local animal shelter and I fell for this beautiful 5 month old kitten. She reached out and grabbed me and stole my heart. Mom said no. I begged. Mom said no. Maybe I could have a cat when Missy (then 14) died.

Missy wormed her way back into my heart just in time for her to get sick. She was 14 when we put her down and it felt like my heart was broken. (I remember listening to the song “Dare You To Move” over and over in my grief.) The next day, we went to the shelter. That kitten, even months later, was still there. I took her home and she became my baby and the reason I love cats so much. She healed me.

Pandora is my baby. She ended up getting pyometra (a uterine infection) last month… I thought I was going to lose her. I’ve never cried so hard…  I ended up begging my grandma to loan us the money, but it was thanks to Care Credit that we were able to save her. She was sooo happy to come home from the vet–she purred and loved and rubbed and…I love her. If it had been any other cat…I wouldn’t have opted surgery; Mom knows this. She knows how much Pan means to me. She had a cat like that…

I love cats >3 Maybe not as much as this person. (LOL) But I love them. And I will probably be the Crazy Cat Lady someday. :)