My friend and critique partner, Sadie Hart, is doing a little giveaway for one of her novellas, What The Heart Haunts, a sexy little paranormal romance that tells the story of Nalla, an ex-Hound of the Wild Hunt, exiled to live out the rest of her immortal days on the earth, never to run through the skies again…all because she did the forbidden: She fell in love.
Note that this is an adult romance, not YA.
But if you like it, I encourage you to spread the word! 
Happy reading!
I’m having a little trouble with WordPress, so a few of the pages are no longer showing under certain categories? And I’m not sure why? But I’m working on figuring it out and hopefully things will be back to normal soon!
Meanwhile, why not check out my guest post/interview over at the lovely Sadie Hart’s blog, where we talk about Wolfsong and you can read an excerpt of my next YA fantasy project, Spellbound.
Have a wonderful day!
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!
So. I joined #ROW80…to give myself goals, and to keep myself blogging. Is it working? Heckno. I’ve fallen so far behind with the blogging aspect that I’m like “Dude, srsly? We have to BLOG?” xD Yes, yes we do. I’m majorly ADD lately, zinging from one subject to the next…and Wednesday and Sunday pass without a blog post. LOL Whoops. My bad. I seriously need to create a giant sticky note. Or a reminder…or something.
Anyway: what have I gotten done in the past two weeks, you ask? Well I shall tell you :3
I finished Wolfsong. Completely and utterly finished the first draft. Well…yes, technically it’s a first draft even though it’s a rewrite of an older work. I didn’t use one bit of wordage/dialogue/etc from the Original (which was 50k and…well, bad LOL) Wolfsong is also the longest piece of work I’ve written to date at 75,000 words! -cheers self on- I never thought I could write so much And it might puff out a few thousand words once I get to work on the edits!
Also, a little mini-squeal: I’ve had a couple of betas read Wolfsong. They’ve picked out a couple of inconsistencies and “hey, that should be-”‘s and overall gave me good reviews and requests for a sequel (which, I have a cast for but no plot atm! Someday!) I’m very pleased with myself–and with this version of Wolfsong. -hugs the cast- Thank you, Revel and Reena, for reading
And, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve decidedly joined SocNoc! 5 days in, and I’ve got a whopping 11.3k on my new YA Paranormal, Hunger. Very proud of myself here. Hunger’s cast is decidedly a little strange and are giving me small bouts of issues, but I’m bulldozing through. Changes are for rewrites, yeah? XD Yeah! So. Bulldozing on…
Now, for my Goals. I have decided to change them a little bit.
1: Write 1667 words (or more) a day on Hunger.
2: Edit 3 chapters (or more) a day on Wolfsong. (this involves the notes/suggestions Revel and Reena gave me)
3: Get my buddy Sadie to teach me how to format Wolfsong for CreateSpace (so I can get my NaNo-won free copy!)
4: Submit Wolfsong’s file/cover file to CreateSpace and get it approved and sent out
Just gotta get through June…and then I’ll let myself think about new betas, maybe another crit-partner, and how I wanna pursue publication: indie or traditional. Big Scary Things! :0
Ohboy. I haven’t done any check-ins for a week or two now. My bad, but life’s been hating me lately. Between drama on both families, my stepdad getting fired, as well as my Grandma getting a treatment done at the hospital that was supposed to make her stronger (but only seemed to make her weaker!) and just…blah. Stuff. Very sucky stuff.
It seriously zapped my writing muse. Yeah, true, I probably could’ve pushed through and written anyway…but when my desktop picture is depressive and gory and I’m cranking My Chemical Romance as high as it will go just to feel the angst? LOL Yeah, I decided writing wasn’t high up on my priority list. So I skipped it.
But I’m back now; life has settled down (for the most part) and just in time. I am… -counts- 4 scenes away from The End on Wolfsong. I’ve decided to do SocNoc in June and am pondering ideas for that. My friend Sadie Hart has just finished her novel Big Cats Don’t Purr…and it’s making me a bit competitive. >3 So! I wanna get this DONE. I am READY to see “The End”!
Anyway, I’ve lost track of all my wordcounts.
But I’ve done 5,908 words since Friday morning, bringing me to a total of 69.9k and my longest piece ever written to date
I aim to finish this thing by Friday. Let’s see it happen
I’m slowly getting back on the big ol’ Writing Horse. After a pretty bad fall (hey, it’s really high up, don’t judge!) I was hesitant and wary and scared, I’ll admit. I eyed Word like it was a hungry kelpie ready to rip my face off…and then procrastinated. A lot. Typical avoidance behavior. Yeah, yeah, I practice avoidance behavior a lot too. What can I say, I’m a nervous person!
Either way, I feel I’ve got my feet jammed in the stirrups and my hands wrapped in the horse’s mane. I started at a walk… Slow-and-steady wins the race.
Thursday: I don’t remember…but I calculated my 37k from Wednesday’s check in, to my total…and think I slacked. I should really tweet this stuff -so bad- So zilch!
Friday: 1,035. Not quite my goal of 1.5k…but still. Trotting now. Getting braver. Getting a little more confident.
Saturday: 4,035 words. Really picked up the pace. Not just a jog, but a freakin’ lope! My goal was 40k. I wanted that 40k so bad! My friend and critique partner, Sadie Hart, had passed the 40k threshold and was gliding into 45k range on her WIP, Big Cats Don’t Purr…and I was uber jealous! :0 I wanted to kick and scream… Okay, not really. But I wanted 40k! I ended Saturday night (read: Sunday morning at 2:45 am) with 42.1k… Very proud of myself.
Sunday: 665 words, but not for lack of trying. I’ll probably add another thousand to it tonight before bed. I just wanted to get Sunday’s post out on, well…Sunday! LOL
SO: total words for #ROW80: 5735 words for this week. Bringing my total Wolfsong wordcount to 42.8k -pats self on the back-
Next milestone: 45k! I’ll get there, slowly but surely! As I said before, hoping to finish this by the 20th of May! This gives me…19 days! I can do it!
I’ve beaten the Procrastination Monster…at least for now. After two days of stalling, whining and moaning “please don’t make me do this”, I sat down and did it. Yayyyyy. Plugging in my earplugs, I picked one of the scenes that’s been definitely playing in my head, a scene somewhere smack-dab in the middle-of-nowhere, and taking a page out of Sadie Hart’s book, used Seven’s* Sticky Notes program to flesh out the outline for my WIP, Sweet Dreams.
Strangely enough, whenever I’d think of outlining via Sticky Notes…I’d do a little freak-out: “What if I can’t think up what happens next?!” …Did I have this issue? Not really. I picked a random scene, fleshed out a little where I’d like it to go, and pushed the little plus for a new Note. Just kept going. If I lost my way, I’d start a new note and pick a different place. I did this for a little over an hour and my desktop background is now littered in yellow notes.
I don’t really know how to connect Point A (ie: the last scene officially written) to Point B (ie: the first scene in my plot)…nor do I have the Notes arranged in any semblance of an order, BUT! I know the ending! I know the main issue! I have successfully integrated (is that the right word for it?) all charries introduced into the plot so that they weren’t introduced as a “Hi, my name is Charlee Flannagan and I have no freaking POINT in Sweet Dreams!” sorta characters. She has a point! They all have points! Yayyyy, go Kodiiiii! -pops a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne…or a pop works just about the same-
But not into the clear yet! I still have to rearrange them…figure out what goes where, what happens when, who’s POV each scene will be in and how the heck to connect points A and B. Still, feels damn good to be accomplished!
*Seven = the name of my new Dell, just fyi And Seven is most-definitely female!
