Late posts

So, I bet you’re wondering why posts are getting later and later lately?

It’s not completely NaNo, though I will admit that it is taking up a lot of my free time.

But I’m also trying to pack up all of my belongings in order to move in the first week of December. So what little free time once belonged to be now belongs to the boxes.

Which I have just run out of….

This bodes so very well for packing.

If you or your family has any boxes that are causing trouble in your home, please consider sending them to the Hammer Halfway Home for Boxes. They will be well looked after, and slowly re-integrated into society as useful holding devices. And, when they have completed their training and study sessions, they will be released into the world to be given new homes and usages.

Gearing Up

In about a month, the insanity that is known as National Writing Month will being.  As such, most of us who are planning to participate in it this year have already begun planning our stories.

While it is against the rules to write one word of the novel before November 1st, there are no rules about planning for it, and it is, in fact, something that is held in high regard and pushed for.

In this vein, I hope to bring you a new series every Monday for the next month regarding different aspects about how to plan writing a novel.  I’ll use real life experiences from my own time noveling, as well as put feelers out to other authors and NaNoers on how they prepare for the task at hand: writing something you want to write.

Please let me know if there are any topics you would like covered in this series.  I’ll be happy to do research about and write about anything that is suggested.

 

 

Roadtripping and Books

Thursday through yesterday was spent Road tripping with S. as we went to his grandfather’s 90th birthday party.  I ended up meeting all of his family at once (at least on his dad’s side), which quickly got a little overwhelming.

But there were also wonderful conversations about books and writing, and how it seems now we, as readers, are more interested in the “instant-gratification” of books and story, and hate to sit through those that have too much detail and setting creation.

It got me thinking about what books are still out there today, being written today, that are written like that: poetry in the prose.  As much as I want to be able to, I can’t think of any off the top of my head (though that could be lack of sleep), and that is something that saddens me.  A lot of books in times past truly were able to take you away, and we as readers could almost hear and smell the world around us after getting sucked into that world for hours at a time.

Are there any books out there that still do that to you?

In other news, Borders is closing.  As sad as that is, it also means great deals on books.  A quick trip with S over to the local one landed me three new books for under $3 each.  Now on my reading list is Demon Bound by Caitlin Kittredge–I fell in love with the first one and lept at this one when I saw it–Mercedes Lackey’s old book The Fire Rose, which is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast in San Fransisco in the 1800s, and finally, upon much squeeage from Jim Butcher and his Gnome Priscilla, I also picked up Harry Connolly’s Child of Fire.

There’s also a surprise that I am currently working on for next week, but it involves me finishing another book first, and writing up a weeks worth of material.  For next week, my friends, is Dexter Week here on Inkblabber!

Now to get ready for work and then recover from this road trip.  See everyone later!

Writing Updates

It’s pretty amazing what can happen in a week.  I’ve gone from being an unknown in the authoring world, having self published a short story ages old, to being able to go find myself on the Barnes and Noble website.  It’s a pretty heady experience, if I’m completely honest.

I’m still working on Lover’s Requiem, and am in the search for a new and better title.  Characters have begun acting on their own and revealing things that I never knew about them.  Just last night a villain showed that he used to be religious before he was a vampire, and actually still believed it, even as he was dying.  I did not see that coming at all.  Of course, it did mean I had to rapidly go learn some Latin and Greek phrases.  Thank goodness for choir training!  I at least knew Kyrie Eleison!

I have two chapters and an epilogue left of Lover’s before that’s finished, and one of the chapters might be omitted–or pushed together with the other–so I’m closer than I ever thought I would be to finishing it.

Next I plan to try my hand at a satire piece, simply because I have this great opening for what was originally going to be a novel.  I know now that there is no way I could turn this into drama, because there isn’t really a plot to it, or a good way to make it longer without ruining the character’s voice.  And let me tell you…she has a voice and will not take no for an answer.

The 11th marks the start (and finish) of the writing contest Erika Eby and I have decided to enter into together, so expect some insanity that day, as well as my entries to be posted here when they are finished.

Being a NaNo rebel this month has been really productive so far, and has given me the ability to finish up projects that have been in the works for a while and have the support and the pushing to get through them all.

I think my next big project will be figuring out how to make a cover for Lover’s and editing it.  That promises to be a month in itself, I think