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Just a spot for random musings. No one ever accused me of being a conscientious blogger. |
| I am miserable at blogging. Life and other things (like writing) keep me from doing any musings on a regular basis. We'll have to see how it goes. |
| So I’ve decided I need to NaNo just for the sake of my sanity. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, November is National Novel Writing Month. During that thirty day period of time, writers of all genres and levels of skill and accomplishment all have the same goal: to write 50,000 words. Now before anyone shakes their head and says “impossible”, break that number down. That is only 1667 words a day or about five pages. That’s entirely possible. The trick is to do it every single day. That’s on Veteran Day. Thanksgiving Day. Black Friday. Weekends. Wednesdays. Every single day. NaNoWriMo is about more than the word count; it’s about setting writing goals and meeting them. About creating good writing habits and writing every day. For me, it’s about all that and about setting aside time for myself every day to simply let my brain wander and release some of the ideas that crowd my skull until I can’t sleep. So, I will be a participant this year in spite of the holidays, two birthdays, one wedding, one anniversary and work. I’ve even decided what I’m going to work on. Want a peek? “Charley!” Elena’s scream ripped through Kaiden with the force of a laser canon. Smoke clogged his throat, clawing tears from his burning eyes to fog his vision. He couldn’t see his daughter through the dark of the burning lab, but he could hear her, outside, beyond the flare and whine of gunfire. Laser fire pierced the blackness and the computer behind him exploded as the guardsmen assigned to his protection seared through the armored attackers with devastating efficiency. Kaiden clutched the insulated container closer to his body and edged in the direction of the distant door. Four techs, dead. He would never get the smell of smoldering flesh out of his nose. The burns on the backs of his legs pulled as he moved, sending searing pain up his spine to join the cluster of cuts, bruises, and shards of broken glass embedded across his shoulders. He gritted his teeth and persevered. He had to get to Elena. He had to get them out of here before the rest of Hell came visiting. The rest is subject to change without notice. |
| Lookie what just showed up on the coming soon list! http://bit.ly/H5mjPR Crystal Dreams. Crystal Lowden has a problem. Dreams of shadows have taken over her life, waking and sleeping. When therapy does no good, her doctor suggests a second opinion. The man she suggests, however, has other ideas. Chance Griffin left the Realms years ago to avoid a death sentence. Now, a lost soul has shown up on his doorstep. If he helps her, he will be drawn back into the tangled web of magic he's fought to escape. But if he doesn't, the shadows will consume her. The magic of the Realms is reaching out, but will it bring them together or rip their souls apart? A touch of fantasy... https://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com |
| Holy freaking cow, but it's done! Styx and Stones is done at last! As a note of interest, the first version came in at 115K words and involved things like ESP and aliens. Not happy with it, I kept two chapters and tossed the rest, and started over from scratch. I finished the new version last night. No aliens or ESP, just action and espionage and romance. This version? It came in at a whopping 170K making it the second biggest novel I've written. Now to edit it into some kind of polish and send it off. Wish me luck |
| Wilding Heart, the third Faery Tale, is out today! Yeah! Melody’s dreams are filled with fairies but her nightmares are haunted by Arawn, the Horned King of Anwyn. While the life of a restaurant hostess leaves little time for fantasy or romance, her dreams are about to collide with reality with life-altering consequences. Carradoc ap Arawn is the Horned King’s heir, a man born to wield magic created and fed by death. A man who dreams of life. Seeking a woman strong enough to break the curse that binds him to Anwyn, he finds himself tangled in the fate of a woman too gentle to serve his purposes, one he can’t find it in him to abandon. Time grows short. The Winter Solstice is drawing closer. As war looms and the balance of the Fae Realms threatens to topple, Carradoc and Melody will have to decide if love is worth risking the most final death of all. Now, all the faery tales are fun stories, a touch of romance (without all the erotic encounters that slow the story down) but I have to admit I have a soft spot in my heart for this one. Carradoc and Melody are not perfect, beautiful people. They aren't powerful or rich. Each has their own baggage they deal with along the way but together they are stronger than they ever will be apart. They fit. It's as simple as that. To check out a short excerpt from the book, you can follow the link: http://bit.ly/QQBuNE Let me know what you think.... |
| Ok. So here’s the deal. Like any writer, I’ve had ups and downs, times when the words flow like water from my fingertips and others when it’s been more like summer in the Sahara. Writer’s block? There’s really no such thing, in my opinion. A block implies permanency and I refuse to allow that to happen. It’s more of a creative lull, usually stemming from either too much stress in my everyday life or a period of perfectionism overtaking my muse and strangling her into silence. (Duct tape doesn't work). The past few months have been slow, word-wise. I have stories galore rambling about inside my head, but the words won’t come out my fingertips. There have been days when I’m lucky to get ten words on the page and those I’m usually not happy with. A few days ago (in the throes of dealing with the stomach flu) I decided to do something about it. What is the point in staying home from work if I can’t even write? But what to do? Going through the list of suggestions I’ve received over the course of my writing career didn’t take very long. Sit and force myself to write? No, too much frustration in the exercise. Put it aside for a while? Nope, life would fill in the time with something else and I’d have to fight to get back to where I am, story-wise. Write the scene from another character’s point of view? Only one character is actually in every scene in the chapter so that won’t work not to mention it’s always more fun to read about someone doing something than reading about someone watching someone doing something. Start a new project? Oh, come on. I know myself better than that. I’d work on the new project and never finish the one I’m on. I’ve invested too much time, sweat, and tears to give up. Some of these exercises have worked in the past (some just don’t work with my psyche) but nothing really resonated here. Instead, I treated myself as I would a new writer who has hit that section of calm waters for the first time. I sat myself down and gave myself a stern talking to. “Just get the words on paper,” I scolded myself. “Edits and revisions fix the stuff that’s missing or not working. Just get it down.” Well, it apparently worked. Yesterday, I finished the chapter I’ve been struggling with and started the next. This one is flowing much better, thank you for asking. I should be able to finish these last five chapters fairly quickly if the pace holds up. So what happened? Perfectionism. I’m so used to the words being there, of being able to craft and tweak and smooth as I go that I forgot that, sometimes, they aren’t. Sometimes, I don’t have a scene as clearly in my head as I think I do and I don’t really know how to lay it out. Putting it down in paper “as is” allows me to see where the weaknesses are, where the wording is wrong or needs smoothing. I didn’t really need to find some cool and wonderful way to tell you that the ceiling opened up. It’s not integral to the story beyond the fact that it does, indeed, open. If I think of a cool or wonderful way of saying it later, I can edit it in. The trick here is to not give up. That list of things to try? Some have worked and worked well in the past for me, especially writing the scene from another character’s point of view. Not all of them work for me but I know writers who they do work for and work well. If you’re a new writer, or even if you’re not, one thing is true. You are going to hit that bump in the road, the calm with no wind in your creative sails. You are going to stare at the screen or paper in frustration without any words in your head (at least, none that apply to the story at hand and most of them unprintable). Some last days, some last months. Bottom line? You can’t quit. Self-doubt, perfectionism, frustration, stress, a bad review? None of these things can be allowed to stop you. Only you can tell your story. A touch of fantasy... https://www.deborahmcnemar.webs.com |
| So it's official. The third and (hopefully) final Fae Tales book, Wilding Heart, is set to be released on July 29. You can check out an excerpt here: http://bit.ly/QQBuNE I'm still a bit bemused when it comes to my faery tales. They are romantic (as opposed to erotic), silly and fluffy most of the time, and without any real purpose beyond escapism. So why do people like them so well? I've been told it's partly because of that fluff brained sort of humor. I have to admit I have fun writing them. The first (Faery Tail http://bit.ly/Qtxa4Q ) was something of an accident. I starting writing "chapters" simply as a running joke for a friend and discovered that, somewhere along the way, I'd developed a plot. It's a contagious thing (no known cure for it that I know of beyond finishing the book) The second (Griffin Feathers http://bit.ly/S11ias ) was written quite simply to assure several people that I hadn't killed off one of their favorite characters. Damien has his own charm but I love Eithné and all her quirks and temper. And I had to meet his mom. She's cool... Wilding Heart was written for me. I've been curious about Carradoc since I mentioned him in the first book. Melody is, quite simply, one of those people everyone likes. Happy and easy going and without all the drama so many people think makes them interesting. Not to mention that I started a war I didn't finish. And a love story involving Lady Luck and a Fairy Prince. Longer than the first two, it covers two love stories, a war, several coronations and a few Cymric Myths. |
| Nearly had a melt down today. Went to open my current WIP only to discover that the file was corrupted and wouldn't open. I went to my back up file on the computer only to get the message "file not found". 365 pages. Lost. 132,000 words. Gone. Not to be deterred, I went online and spent an hour downloading patches and security patches and anything I could think of that might help. Finally, one of them opened the file and I was able to save my baby. *whew* Now, granted, I have most of the manuscript here on WDC. Most. Not the most recent, incomplete chapter or the edits I've done or my thoughts on what might be coming. I've always relied on a single backup for my work with nary a problem. One on the computer and one on a memory stick. I've learned over the years that one just isn't enough. Today, even two wasn't enough so now it's four. One on the computer, one on WDC (private, my inner ramblings would scare you), one on each of two memory sticks. Now, I just have to remember to save to each of them on a regular basis. Well, the horror factor is now edited in ( I couldn't seem to move ahead until I did and now it's flowing again) and I'm nearing the first big part of the climax of the story. I have a small computer schtick and then a fight. Got a couple of pithy things to toss in for dialogue and then this chapter will be done. Then it's Walt's turn. Probably not as long a chapter. It's more up close and personal kind of thing and then two chapters of denouement and a wedding to plan. I'm hoping I can pull it off with a my grandson's birthday coming up, inventory at work looming and about a million projects I need to finish in the near future. Not to mention Wilding Heart is coming out soon. You can check it out and even read an excerpt at http://bit.ly/QQBuNE Now, back to stopping world domination... |
| According to my stats on Free Cell, I've played 118 games and won 101 of them. Not too bad if my aim is to become a Free Cell champion. Bad since my real goal is to finish writing this book. Designing a military facility built into a mountain is much harder than you'd think. I'm not a gamer so no Halo or Metal Gear Solid to fall back on and the military does not put up pictures of their facilities on Google for me to see. It didn't help that my need to edit overwhelmed my ability to write new stuff the past two weeks and nearly derailed me again today. Now I have to decide if I should continue with the climax of the story or go back and rewrite an earlier chapter to up the horror factor. Not to mention it's pretty outside, not too hot and not too cold, and that makes it even harder to stay in my seat and keep working. However, I did finish the chapter which leaves two more to finish the climax of the story and then three for denouement. It's progress even if it's not as fast as I might have liked. |
| So, what’s a girl to do when her high school sweetheart blows back into town after ten years, intent on rekindling their romance? Colleen Moran faces that quandary one Halloween night when she discovers that her small garden is far from ordinary. There are vampires out to kill her, werewolves circling to protect her, and she still has to endure her stupid boss’s stupid costume party. How Does Your Garden Grow? is a romp of the romantic paranormal variety with a little bit of something for everyone. Does a woman ever forget her first love? Can a handful of flowers and true heart protect her from evil? Take a peek and find out. http://amzn.to/10o22rg |
| So, another chapter finished last night and the 120K mark passed. Six chapters left so 140K limit will be left in the dust. I'm sure of that. Now whether I have to chop, edit and rearrange or if I have to wheedle my publishers is left to be seen. Probably a bit of both. Ok, so Walt is in trouble now and his girl is heading out to save the world with nothing more than a data pad and a few outdated cyborgs. Got to love it. This next chapter will be long, I already know that, but a lot of stuff gets covered that was started early on in the book. I'm looking forward to it but this one is going to take some time to write, balance and make sure I've touched on everything that needs done. I'm trying really hard not to stress that word limit but that's what I get for actually reading submission guidelines. I've never had to worry about a word limit because most of my work comes in right at the 100K mark. Where the Forest Meets the Sea is the only truly long book I've written and it came in at 176K. And, yes, I read submission guidelines even though I've already contracted seven books and a short story through them. It always pays to be polite and follow the rules. The contracts give me that little leeway to open a dialogue about the problem if I can't work the book down to a reasonable length. If you want to take a peek:
Let me know what you think. I always like to hear opinions on my work, good or bad. The only thing I ask is that you give a reason for "love it" and "hate it". |
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