Hmmm...

Everything was going too well, I should have know better. I almost had a mini heart attack over the weekend, when my computer crashed and wouldn't come back to life! Luckily it was my motherboard and NOT my hard-drive with all my writing on it that died. Also luckily, my husband and I were able to craft me a working computer out of three dead ones and now I am back in business! Well, except for loading everything from my old computer and reinstalling all my programs and fixing all my settings. But that shouldn't take longer then an eternity to do.

The experience did get me to realize I need to back up my work onto our external hard-drive more often. And thankfully it was a lesson that I didn't need to learn the hard way. Alright, back to installing.

Have a great day! :)

Fine Art Print by fosterbk

Hello again! Remember me?

Okay, so I'm not very good at blogging regularly. I've been busy, but I guess you figured that out. Hmm...I guess when I'm gone this long without posting it's best to read my last post so I remember what I was talking about last time. Be right back!
* * * * *I'm back! Wow it's been three weeks since I posted last? And you are all still following me? Thanks! I promise I'll try to post more from now on.

Anyway, since we last met, our hero (me) had just finished editing her first book and submitting it to a contest. I probably told you this already, but I ended up splitting my book into two novels. The first book is done and I am now working on the second. I had thought that the second book was about 1/3 of the way done. Hahaha! Apparently I was mistaken!

I finished editing it and then broke it into chapters that were about the same length as the chapters in the first book. My first book ended up with 19 chapters and a word count of about 98K. My second book currently stands at 7 complete chapters and 44K words. So if I want the two books to be about the same length, then I'm actually about halfway done. But the story isn't!

I had no intention for this story to be two books long and I certainly had no intention for this story to be three books long! Well that and I don't think I have three books worth of story. It's more like 2-1/3 books worth, 2-1/2 at most. Now I was planning on doing a third book, but it would be about what happens after this story is over and also cover some backstory on one of the main characters.

I'm not sure how this story got away from me, but it seems to have a mind of its own. I feel like I'm stuck in Zeno's paradox. No matter how close I am to the end, I just can't seem to get all the way there! Does this happen a lot? Because I'd really like to finish this story sometime in the near future and it is just not cooperating with me. And I thought my characters were troublemakers...

Story Time Fine Art Print by elr104

Well That Would Have Been Nice To Know...

If read my last post you'll know that I stayed up till ungodly hours of the morning formatting and editing my story so I could enter it in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. I was and am very happy I got it done on time. However, it turns out that after you submitted your work you can still edit your document until the contest submission period closes. So really, I didn't have to rush like a crazy person to get it done. I had two more weeks to play with it once it was entered.

::sigh::

Oh well, if I had waited and given myself more time then the contest would probably have filled up then I would have been really annoyed!

The nice part about this realization was since I was able to go back and edit it, I was able to do one last leisurely readthrough. Now I thought I'd taken out a lot of adverbs and unnecessary words during the first edit, but apparently not. My husband has jokingly dubbed me the Queen of Adverbs and Monarch of Commas. I think I reduced my document by over 100 words just be removing slightlys and quietlys!

I am now REALLY glad I got to do one last edit as I'm sure this story would NOT have made it past the second cut with all those adverbs! And now that I know I add them too often, I can be more careful when I'm working on the second book.

I read an article someone posted on Twitter, which I unfortunately didn't save, about how every author has one thing they repeat in their writing that they shouldn't. The article's author's problem was repeating lists of three things, like "It was old, gold, and cold." I now know that no matter how good it sounds in my head, adding slightly to almost every verb is NOT the way to go.

Do you have a quirk that you've noticed in your writing that you usually end up cutting out come editing time? Let me know in the comments.

Have a great day! :)

Comma Print by papergangsterprints

Done!

Phew! I finished! Between my husband and I, we got my first book done and edited in time to enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest! And I only had to stay up till 3:30 in the morning last night to get it done! In other news I am VERY tired this morning.

I don't know if I'll win, but I hope I at least past the first cut. If you're not familiar with the contest, it has four parts. The contest starts with 10,000 entries: 5,000 in general fiction and 5,000 in YA fiction. For the first stage the only thing the judges look at is your 300 word (or less) pitch. In the second stage they only get to see a 3,000 to 5,000 word excerpt from the beginning of the book. And if you make it to stage three, they read your whole novel. I'd love to get to round three, but I'd be happy with making it through round one.

I had a whole bunch of people help me with my pitch. And without their help I would not have been able to enter at all. So a giant thank you to all my Twitter buddies, with a special shout out to BethHautala for sending me some really in depth critiques. Also my NaNoWriMo friends on the Central Jersey forum, and everyone on the Amazon Breakthrough Novel boards who were willing to give my pitch a look see. Thanks everyone! Here's the pitch I submitted for the contest:

All Genevieve wanted that night was to make a quick trip to the grocer’s and have a nice quiet dinner at home. Equipped with coupons, she made her way to a new store, intent on picking up some cheap produce.

What she got instead was a trip into another dimension.

In this bleak, futuristic world, each person's fate is determined at birth and marked on their skin for all to see. But as strange as this new world seems, Genevieve feels oddly connected to it. And the more answers she unravels the more questions arise. When she finds herself caught in the center of the kingdom’s biggest mystery, the questions of ‘how did I get here’ and ‘how do I get home’ take a back seat to her own survival.

The Essence Heart, the kingdom’s missing royal mystic, has been sighted almost twenty-six years after she first disappeared. Both the King and a secretive organization known as the Resistance are rushing to locate her, for whoever controls the Essence Heart controls the kingdom. Although Genevieve’s birthmark does resemble the missing woman’s, she can’t imagine how a girl from the real world could have anything to do with this place of mystery and magic. But whether this is a case of mistaken identity or not, both groups seem intent on trying to capture her.

She enlists the help of a seedy shopkeeper and his fortune-telling sister to help her discover the answers she seeks. But can she stay free long enough to find a way home? And when she finds it, will she really want to leave?

MARK OF THE ESSENCE HEART is a 98,000-word epic fantasy novel set in a world of magic and high technology.

I also posted the first chapter of my story here if you're interested in reading it.

Anyway, it's going to be a long wait to see if I make the first cut. Well, not that long, but it will seem long. So I'll be using that time to finish up the second half of the story (book two) which is half done at present.

And here I need to devote a separate paragraph to my husband, who actually went to work yesterday so he could sit in the quiet office and edit my store the whole day! I love you honey, you're the best!

Good luck to everyone who entered and thanks a million to everyone who helped me out!

Also if this entry seems to float around a bit, it's because I'm running on 3-1/2 hours of sleep. I promise I'll be more coherent next time. ;)

Cat Fine Art Print by eringarrisondesign

I Swear I'm Going To Finish This!

Only four more days until I need to be done with this story!

I did decide to split the story into two books. There was no way I would be able to edit it down to 150K words AND finish writing it in time. Now I just have to finish editing it, write my pitch and maybe figure out a title for it.

The pitch is hard. I didn't really expect that. But I did get a lot of awesome feedback from some of my Twitter friends. I'll post the finished pitch once it's, well, finished.

The thing that is really giving me trouble, and kind of came out of left field, is the title. Why can't I think of a good title for this book? I know the story, I know the themes, but I can't come up with a good title to save my life! My husband likes my working title, which is Tattoo. In the story everyone in the world is born with a tattoo that dictates what their future role in society will be. It's not a bad title, but since this is now two books instead of one, I have no idea what I would call the second one. Anyone else have this problem with their stories? It seems so silly that I wrote a whole book and now I'm having trouble naming it.

I guess I better get back to editing. My husband is going through and tracking changes, then I'm going back and fixing them. We are done with two chapters and have eighteen to go. This is going to be cutting it close!

Wish me luck! :)

Punctuation Earrings by nerdgoddess