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Busy Busy BUSY Part Three!
Jul. 23rd, 2017 06:14 pm
So, once again, I have been busy.
I swear, I have. If you look at my Word Count tabulator for this year, you'll see I am over 300K for the year already, which hasn't happened in quite a while. And that's only fiction. It doesn't include any blogposts or articles I've been writing. Just fic.
Anyways, its cool if you don't believe me. I wanted to write in to catch you up on things if you're still following. I really should be writing and as I post this, Crossfire PROTEKT3 is open on my laptop, but I got distracted. I made the mistake of starting UTG3, Crossfire, and Immortalitys Gift at once, thinking I could finish all three by the end of June.
NOPE!
OhEmGEE, such a big mistake. My brain wasn't prepared with the overload. I was doing fine, until mid June stepped in. Nothing major in my personal life, just RL got in the way. Not only that, I'm probably suffering from a bit of burnout. After Smoke was done, I went directly into these 3 stories, thinking it would be a breeze. Immortalitys was fun and before I knew it, I spent the rest of June and part of July finishing it while the other two stories sat idle.
UGH!
I didn't want that to happen, but it did, and now, I'm at about 16k with Crossfire and very anxious about how it goes from here on out. I'm just not feeling the story as of yet. I have gotten words down today, but I found out this story is a lot of banter so far. Unlike the other PROTEKT stories, there isn't much action yet. And it's a bit of a letdown.
No worries though. I will keep chugging along. I wanted it to get done by end of this month, but its highly unlikely. Worrying about stories, sales, and RL issues has taken it's toll. So instead of stressing, I'm going to pace myself. I wanted it out this year, but it may not happen. We shall see.
In the meantime, I don't want to start on anything new. I really want to complete these then move on, but other things are pulling away my attention.
***As always, more plot bunnies. I have another new story idea that crept up on me in the last 48 hours. BL is working with co-author again. We have a story done and 3 more to do as well as a secret project we're doing together.
***Michael needs to start Immortals 3 as well as Gren.
*** Rawiya is idle.
*** Veronica is ready to go with her first story after being rejected by a pub, but I have other stories for her.
*** The secret muses have books to do as well and I'm NOT READY!
Argh.
I'm confident I will get things done, however, reading through this journal made me realize a couple of things. You may ask what made you go through the pages? Well, Photobucket decided they wouldn't allow free 3rd party webhosting anymore so all the pics I had in here needed to be updated or deleted.
F*CKERS (Shakes Fists)
AHEM
Anyway, back to my dilemma. There are LOADS of stories that need revising and some that never saw the light of day with a publisher. Since I'm a different writer now, they all need to be redone. So many of those books were mentioned in several posts. If you look at the left side of my journal, you'll see tags for them.
African Sun, Wild Horses, Trois?
lol
Neither one of them ever made it to a publisher. Its disheartening, but I won't dwell on it too much. I only have 2 hands and one brain. I would love to begin revising, but newer plots take precedence. *sighs* Perhaps I need a ghost writer? LOL
Nope. I'm not James Patterson, so I'll have to slog through the best way I can.
In the meantime, continue to check back with me for updates. Right now, I'm working on UTG3 and Crossfire exclusively. I'm hoping to start my short for Veronica in the coming days.
Oh, and the muse is Nick Bateman who is my Bastien Desmarais from Crossfire. I really love him and need to finish his story!
Back from NOLA ... with more plot bunnies!
Mar. 5th, 2017 09:20 pm
So I left on February 26th and came back March 3rd from Mardi Gras.
I've made this trip for the last 6 years straight and this time, I took my 9 year old daughter with me and my husband.
It was a glorious trip. I didn't get
She wanted to go to the cemetary, so we went on the cemetary tour because you can't go into one of the Louis cemetaries (there are 3) without a guide. Though it was pricey, it was well worth it. I learned a lot from our person, who btw, is named Daphne. She reallyw as hysterical and very knowledgable. We really enjoyed it.
We also visited the Louisiana State Museum on Thursday. And boy, did the plot bunnies snowball on me then! I mean, historicals, ideas for a couple of ghost stories. I've done cops in NOLA, and with a little help from a fmr cop friend in LA and lots of reading, I hope it did okay with trying to make the series believable.
Now, I want to do more paranormals, esp. with Michael, and more historicals. More books with Native Americans, books during the civil war, the slave trade. etc. There were so many little scenarios I thought about. And they're all in my brain. :P
Now I just need to write everything down.
EEK that's gonna be
and I have to catch up with my boys in SMOKE because believe you me, they are waiting.
Oh, and my muse? Well that's Nick Bateman. I have a story for him that BL will write and hopefully sub by the end of the year. We'll see what happens!
* * * *
So with no writing, I am still on the same WIPs.
SMOKE
Reader Request
DDFanfic
I haven't started Immortals yet, but I will this week. By the time i finish the reader's story, I should also do my 3rd book in the PROTEKT series. I hope to have that finished by June/July.
The first book in Immortals has to be released by late April for me to stay on Schedule. :)
NaNoWrimo 2016 Update #1 SMOKE 25K
Nov. 14th, 2016 07:51 pm
Yes, I know.
I really should've updated
WOOT!
But, hold on. Before we throw the confetti, I am having anxities over this damn story. Now I remember why I put this thing on the backburner for 3 plus years.
UGH!
Without giving anything away, this whole story is a clusterfuck. The premise it's built on is a clusterfuck and now, one character decides to throw a monkey wrench into my already shaky foundation by ...
NOPE, not gonna tell ya. Just trust that Santiago fucked up my plan!
GRR!
I still love him. In fact, he is my favorite character in the story. The man above is my muse for Jonas. My hotheaded firefighter who loves Santiago with all his heart. And yes, he is as fuckable in the story as he is in that pic.
SWOON.
Still, this doesn't make me forget that Santiago has pulled something in the story that might make it difficult for me to tie up lose ends. I mean, it wasn't as if I already had my doubts as to how I was going to pull it off. Now, I'm damn near ready to throw my hands up, but guess what kids. I ain't goin' out like that. I'm gonna keep hacking away and wrecking shop .... (is that term still a thing OH Well) On these sons of bitches because this book deserves an audience. It's juicy, sexy, angsty, and well, I like it because I'm writing it.
*grins*
If you're interested in following my progress, just stay in tuned with my writers blog. Yep, I update it now when I can, because as I said in a post two or three weeks ago, it's like therapy.
Thanks for listening...
* * * *
WRITING UPDATE
So at the moment, SMOKE NANO is at 25K
I am starting Hirah 3 over again and about to hand #2 over to an editor. 2 betas gave me some help which I appreciated dearly. Now, I'm going to try getting Hirah out before the end of the month.
Still working on See No Evil. Must finish by NOV 30th and the DD Fanfic I'm working on as well as the freebie. I actually have another couple of freebies based on pics, but I haven't strated them as of yet.
TA for now.
Tags:
Editing, Editing and MORE EDITING!
Aug. 9th, 2013 12:11 am
*sitting at my computer and going through stories instead of writing. A necessary evil*
Ahem, that's not me, instead just a model by the name of Fernando Sippel. You know I always like to feature pretty mens in my posts!
Yeah, okay, back to the posts.
Authors, you know the word edits well. You do it yourself, you send it to an editor, you send it back to them, you go through it again. If you have betas, they go through it, and then you do a final edit to see if the book is ready to publish. Gah? Yeah at times you add more words, you cut some too. You might change the name of a character. You catch your silly mistakes and you obsess over the amount of pink balloons on the side from your editor. But as you know, it is necessary if you're going to put out a good book.
I've been doing a slew of these and well putting them off too. Err... I'm still sitting on Closely Guarded but its got a week b4 I submit. I've put Wild Horses and Trois in Treble as well as Vertigo 2 to the side. My editor is editing ML3, I'm editing Under the Gun to be re-submitted to my other pub, oh and dont forget my epic African Sun I've been sitting on for like a year and a half.
:P
Oh man, the edits! I haven't written much in the novel department, more short stories than ever just to keep up word count. Now I'm ready to start my next 3 books. Not all at once but Jayden for Rawiya, On the Run for BL, and the sequel to I Like Em Pretty for Michael, await my attention. Once they're done, they'll need edits too.
Oh the mind numbing horror but as I said very necessary. I do enjoy the edits but at times I wish the plot bunnies would edit themselves!
Wish me luck!
Dreaming... Muses disturbing my Sleep
Jun. 10th, 2013 03:59 pm
Whew this is good right? 2 posts in like 3 weeks? Is anyone still listening? Hope so...
Anyways, the unique thing about characters is when they disturb you form doing things. Might be reading, writing, working at the day job *groans* and SLEEPING! Yes sleeping.
Something about a muse that gets you up in the middle of the night but even more special is the one that plays out like movie in your head. WOW. Yeah that happened to me last night. I was sleeping and Channing Tatum knocked on my head and climbed in bringing the last posts' hottie, Pedro Perestello with him. What did he say? Write me a story, Shar where I'm falling in love with this hot man with beautiful eyes. Make it tense, make us break apart for a bit, get back together for one night then break apart again. Then, have Chris Helmsworth as my man and make him leave me for a bit too, only to return and fight with Pedro over me.
And my head obliged. And I had a lovely, angsty, m/m military story. OOH YUM!!!!!
Yep, that doesn't happen too often. I recall Masquerade was another story that played out like a movie in my brain. Also Something Like Jayden, That Thing. And I Like Em Pretty did as well.
Oh and this... wow, is it speaking to me. No character names, 3 hot men with tempers, different backgrounds, military men who are looking for happy endings. Yep, this really is a BL kind of story since its military men but Michael is writing it. I do love when the muses can wake me up and give me a clear idea of what they want. No question, this plot bunny has wings that definitely will turn into a story before the year is out!
* * * *
Whats up now? Well I'm on pace to do my 500k. Im ahead for the month.
Im working on shorts, ML3, and edits for Mon Amour as well as Closely Guarded. I'll also be finally doing Something Like Jayden
Thanks for listening!
Lessons Learned!
Jan. 30th, 2013 11:30 am
Good morning and welcome to yet another edition of the writing journal. Let's see, Jan 30th, 41771 words of fiction written for the month as of today, an anthology from the muses for Valentines Day almost ready to go. 2 novels and 1 novella waiting to be edited, more stories to write. 2 deadlines.
Sooo, you recall when I last posted about how I can't schedule books? Well other than serials and or shorts I cannot. I did also sign another contract with Rebel for a series of shorts called Queer Fables. They will be by BLMorticia of course and released on every even month opposite The Wretched Tales. Yes I'm excited but cautious about overworking myself
While writing, of course more of the annoying plot bunnies have popped up. I have 2 more new stories to add to the ever growing folder of plot ideas since we last chatted. And of course, while all this is going on, I'm trying to edit my stories and pick up new techniques to make my stories deeper and vivid.
Today, I got a lesson on dialogue. In I Like Em' Pretty m/m, the characters are from the south and I showed their speech in the story by showing it exactly the way it sounded. My good friend and editor who is also an author, let me know this was very distracting. I didn't take offense at all but I needed to see what others said about this topic. So, I typed in southern dialogue in fiction writing into Goggle.
This link came up.
http://lmmartin.hubpages.com/hub/Good-Writing-Is7-10-common-mistakes-new-writers-make-in-writing-dialogue
Point number nine states that writing to show a dialect such as a Southern dialogue is AMATEURISH. EEK! Wow, I didn't know that. I can think of a particular book I did that had this kind of speech throughout. When that book was edited, that editor said NOTHING. I let the contract on the book run out and requested it to be pulled off the shelves. I'm re-writing it to be expanded and re-released later on in the year.
Thank goodness. Although jarring, it doesn't deter me from doing what I love. As authors, we always look for new ways to make our books stand out. By no means do I want to put put a book that looks amateurish and even though I'm still a newbie, I cannot let that slide ever again.
Now, you may ask, does that mean I didn't want to listen to my editor? No, I just wanted to seek other opinions. I did ask another author who also said, as long as it isn't overdone which I'm sure I did. lol Its all through out the book.
So what is the lesson learned today? Make sure to listen to your editors and betas when they offer the help and even though it is ultimately your decision on what to put in your book, ask others if you're unsure. Look up books and or articles on fiction writing. There is a wealth of them out there and most are spot on.
I suppose I could compare this to my own thinking. Case in point, people have always said Chicagoans have a specific accent. Recall the skit off Saturday Night Live called Superfans? That skit always bothered me, in fact annoyed me when I saw it. I often said, I don't talk like that. So in theory, why should I leave off the g's as in leavin' wantin' etc? Not every Southern person has the drawl or talks in that manner. They would be annoyed reading a book with that kind of speech. Why should I write it?
DUH!
Like I said, lessons learned.
So here is where I am my goals:
41771 words written as of today 500k is the goal
10 novels subbed and contracted? Not sure it will be done but I'm going to try.
More importantly I just want to get better at my craft. The more I learn, the easier it will be to make my career as an author a true success!
Sooo, you recall when I last posted about how I can't schedule books? Well other than serials and or shorts I cannot. I did also sign another contract with Rebel for a series of shorts called Queer Fables. They will be by BLMorticia of course and released on every even month opposite The Wretched Tales. Yes I'm excited but cautious about overworking myself
While writing, of course more of the annoying plot bunnies have popped up. I have 2 more new stories to add to the ever growing folder of plot ideas since we last chatted. And of course, while all this is going on, I'm trying to edit my stories and pick up new techniques to make my stories deeper and vivid.
Today, I got a lesson on dialogue. In I Like Em' Pretty m/m, the characters are from the south and I showed their speech in the story by showing it exactly the way it sounded. My good friend and editor who is also an author, let me know this was very distracting. I didn't take offense at all but I needed to see what others said about this topic. So, I typed in southern dialogue in fiction writing into Goggle.
This link came up.
http://lmmartin.hubpages.com/hub/Good-Writing-Is7-10-common-mistakes-new-writers-make-in-writing-dialogue
Point number nine states that writing to show a dialect such as a Southern dialogue is AMATEURISH. EEK! Wow, I didn't know that. I can think of a particular book I did that had this kind of speech throughout. When that book was edited, that editor said NOTHING. I let the contract on the book run out and requested it to be pulled off the shelves. I'm re-writing it to be expanded and re-released later on in the year.
Thank goodness. Although jarring, it doesn't deter me from doing what I love. As authors, we always look for new ways to make our books stand out. By no means do I want to put put a book that looks amateurish and even though I'm still a newbie, I cannot let that slide ever again.
Now, you may ask, does that mean I didn't want to listen to my editor? No, I just wanted to seek other opinions. I did ask another author who also said, as long as it isn't overdone which I'm sure I did. lol Its all through out the book.
So what is the lesson learned today? Make sure to listen to your editors and betas when they offer the help and even though it is ultimately your decision on what to put in your book, ask others if you're unsure. Look up books and or articles on fiction writing. There is a wealth of them out there and most are spot on.
I suppose I could compare this to my own thinking. Case in point, people have always said Chicagoans have a specific accent. Recall the skit off Saturday Night Live called Superfans? That skit always bothered me, in fact annoyed me when I saw it. I often said, I don't talk like that. So in theory, why should I leave off the g's as in leavin' wantin' etc? Not every Southern person has the drawl or talks in that manner. They would be annoyed reading a book with that kind of speech. Why should I write it?
DUH!
Like I said, lessons learned.
So here is where I am my goals:
41771 words written as of today 500k is the goal
10 novels subbed and contracted? Not sure it will be done but I'm going to try.
More importantly I just want to get better at my craft. The more I learn, the easier it will be to make my career as an author a true success!
*Colton Ford looks like I feel*
Good morning and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
And yet another edition of my writing journal.
Well, it's 430 am and I'm awake before work. Been up since two. Why? Well that's because the plot bunnies were a callin'...
Now mind you, I just finished a short story and I'm about to do another for a good friend before I do the full later on in the year. So, I really only have edits to do but in my infinite wisdom, I decided to write out all the stories in my head right now and place them in a doc.
This has happened before! When I had story ideas I put them in a doc with just details, pics of my characters, etc. However, when I cleaned my HD on my laptop, I accidentally deleted these files. GAH! Big mistake but I didn't worry too much because they were still in my head. In addition, I have others actually written out on paper with pen. WHAT A CONCEPT! No one can read it but me! :/
Anyways, to make this long story longer, I recently decided to try getting more organized for 2013. One of my goals was to make a schedule of all the books I was going to write for the year and when so I could mak my goal of 500k and 10 50k novels. Well, guess what? I stopped at like March. Why you ask? Because all my ideas were still in my head and I said, ooh, why don't I put them on paper?
Since I'm already slightly ahead of the game with part one of the Wretched finished, I attempted to accomplish this last evening
Much like the picture depicts above they attacked me. Almost every idea I'd been thinking of was in a doc with pics, small details, some with titles others without. Some had the pseudo already underneath and some didn't! EEK! Some had nothing but pics and a sentence. Jesus! This sort of alarmed me so I had to share this post with you. Lots of incomplete ideas that needed to be formed ended up on pages. And in looking at them, I'm thinking I have enough ideas to last me the next 2-3 years. That's not counting the ones I've written on paper in my chicken scratch!
So what is the lesson learned here peeps? You can't really PLAN the whole year out. I can say, okay, this year I'll write Through the Darkness, finish AS, write the Incumbent, etc but I'm not sure i can say, this month I'll do this story, the next I'll do that one. It must come naturally.
That's unless you have submission deadlines. This year I only have 3. The Wretched every other month, a sub for the military antho for IRM, and the GRL charity antho. These are the only deadlines I must make for now. Other than that, it's a free for all for the plot bunnies to race to my head first and say, hey I wanna be written, NOW BITCH!
Wow, I'm amazed at the power of the brain, how it's able to retain information and in the head of an author that could be a dangerous thing. Unfortunately, active muses don't really know how to behave. In reality though, do we really want them to?
Nah, I don't. Better to have a bunch of ragged ideas than none at all!
Oh and lastly? It doesn't help when you see new pics or videos like the one I posted up above of Colton Ford. Now I want to write an m/m story with an older singer and his younger lover... :/
Thank you for listening to me ramble
