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 |  A place to talk about myself, my writing, and any upcoming projects. |
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Hello! I'm not really sure who is ever going to read this because I don't actually know anyone on this site and I highly doubt this is the sort of thing anyone would be interested in reading anyway. I'm writing it for two reasons. The first is for myself, so I have a place to sort of keep track of my progress on various projects and everything. The second reason is because I just got my upgraded membership today, and I want to try and make the most of it, which means finally getting around to using all of the features. On the off-chance that someone is actually reading this though, I'm going to do a little introduction here where I talk about myself and my writing and the sorts of things you can expect to read if you check this out. My name is Cat Voleur, I'm currently 21 years old, and I'm a professional writer. I got my first writing job a few months before I graduated high school. After that I spent about a month taking writing commissions while I looked for steadier work, and I was eventually employed as a ghost writer, where I spent about 3 years. I've quit ghost-writing very recently (and am consequently broke) to pursue my own dreams and perhaps establish a small following. I really enjoyed ghost writing because it gave me the freedom to travel and sort of choose my own schedule, but now I'm looking for something that I can take credit for. It's pretty sad to have steady writing work for 3+ years and wake up one day and realize all of the pieces in your portfolio are things you wrote as an angst-filled teenager. I'm going to take some time, edit some of my old pieces, write some new things, and try to see if anyone is interested in reading the things that I write under my own name. My commission and portfolio sites are, as of this moment, down for some maintenance work, but hopefully I'll be getting it back up soon with links to some of my work on this site. I also have a couple theme blogs run through tumblr and am currently the head writer of Toxic Bubblegum which is a zine published monthly put out by myself and my very talented friend, Alan Johnson. As for what I'd like to do in the future - I guess it just depends on what sort of opportunities I run into. I'm a big believer in just seizing the moment and going with the flow. The one thing I am sure of is that I'd like a career in writing. I sort of lucked into my first job, but now that I have a taste of being a writer I can't imagine being anything else. Ideally I would like to eventually have something published under my own name and become an author, but I'm willing to see where life takes me. I prefer writing in the horror genre, because that's where my real passion is. I look up to a lot of horror writers and if I could do anything, that would be it. I have the most experience writing in romance because that, unfortunately, is where the money is and that's what a lot of my paying gigs have been up to this point. I've been told that my strength is in fantasy. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's what most people tell me. I first got my account here a few years ago, around the time I started writing professionally, and I haven't done a lot since then other than upload a piece here and there. That's something I'm going to try really hard to get better about. I'd like to upload more stuff, get more active in the community, maybe see about meeting some fellow writers. Today is a very exciting day for me because I just purchased my upgraded membership. It was on sale or I might not have done it because I am, as I previously stated, broke. I've really wanted a membership here for awhile and I'm so glad that I finally did it because so far it really has been motivating me to get some stuff done. The first thing I plan on doing is uploading the most recent draft of Silence of the Lamps, which was the first thing I ever put up on the site, and it's undergone a lot of editing since then. After that I'm going to work on getting some more rough drafts up on here, and then maybe attempt to socialize, which is hard for me because even online I get really nervous reaching out to people. Anyway, if anyone read this, I'm sorry I babbled so long and thank you for your interest! Feel free to message me at any time if you want to chat or would like to have me read something or collaborate or anything. I don't bite, I promise. -Cat |
| Hey Guys, I've got good news and bad news, though neither one should really be considered "news" as we all pretty much saw this coming. The good part is that I officially finished "Viral" today. At 3 1/2 sections of the notebook I was writing it in, I can estimate that it's in the vicinity of 80,000 words across all three stages. (I would like to reiterate that's just an estimation of course, since longhand drafts are hard to figure out exact word counts for.) The bad news is of course that I don't know if I'll be able to validate this year. My plan was just to update my wordcount as I typed (to motivate me to actually, you know, type it AND to keep my wordcount as accurate as possible) so I haven't officially won yet, either on here or on the official NaNo site. I have all my submissions for the month complete finally - so this will be the only thing I'm working on for the next four days, but I type slow and I just don't know if it's realistic. I wish there was a way I could validate without having to do all the typing on such a tight schedule.... But in any case. I thought I should let everyone know that's where I'm at with things. I might also take a break at some point to do some reviews because, that is something I feel more confident in my ability to complete  I know I've been absent lately, but I promise you guys have not been forgotten. My emails are piling up and although I have finally made some progress responding to reviews I have been terrible about sending replies. I will though! I promise I will get to it! In the meantime, thanks everyone for not abandoning me or forgetting about me. I know it's been a hectic month for everyone and I hope to be speaking to you on a regular basis again shortly. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, I've only got two more submissions to finish for the month, and they are not going well. One I'm just having a lot of trouble developing characters for and the other one is just a huge mess. I had the rough draft finished within a couple hours the first day that I worked on it so I thought it was going to be super easy. Editing it went okay at first and the second draft came out looking pretty clean except for this one section which was kind of a huge information dump in what was otherwise a pretty evenly paced story. I sent it out to my usual group of trusted test readers and the feedback was really positive. The only suggestion that I got was from my friend who told me that there was a bit of information in that long section that I needed to back up with a couple examples because it would clarify what was up. Figures, right? That the only suggestion I get is to make the longest, slowest section longer? But I trust him, and I know that he doesn't typically like a lot of explanation, so if he tells me I need it I probably do. Plus I knew I was going to have to work on that section anyway. So I explained it, added a few examples, worked it in and everything, but it just made that section even longer and more ridiculous like I was afraid it would. So I decided to restructure. My plan was to keep all the same content but rearrange it so that the reader just gets little snippets of exposition throughout the story to piece together for themselves (or not) throughout the main story arc. My fourth draft had much better pacing, the dialogue was pretty awesome and the character development was a lot better, I got into the relationship of my couple a lot and it was great, but it also got way off base in the middle. It got too mushy and romantic and not at all what I needed it to be. So my plan at this point was to keep the structure but cut back on the romance, keep the dialogue but cut down on the history wherever possible. Only at this point I'm trying to piece together bits and pieces from all these different drafts of the story and it's starting to make my brain hurt. I have two more days to get this submission done and there's a lot of pressure. I don't think I've got a shot at making it into the anthology it's for anyway, but I still want it to be good. There's also the fact that (fanfic and sci-fi aside) this is my first time writing a multi-racial couple. I have been working really hard to diversify my characters and while I think I have the LGBTQ aspect of that down, I get really anxious writing for an ethnicity that's not my own. I am as tired as everyone else of seeing straight white couples being so predominant in the media and while I don't want to be part of that problem, I feel like writing about straight white people fits into my comfort zone as a (mostly) straight white person. I would rather not represent a community in my works than accidentally misrepresent a community, and it makes me really anxious trying to work on that. Although the race of the characters isn't a huge deal (in fact in the first few drafts, it's not brought up at all) the story is written in the third person with the limited perspective of a man of color. So on top of all this plot structure stress I'm trying to find a good balance of what does and does not need to be included in regards to race. Anyway, my point is that my submission is a nightmare, the deadline is creeping in, and so I've decided to take a break and work to one of the other things I'm running behind on, NaNoWriMo. I have just a tiny bit left of writing to do, so I'll definitely have the novel finished before the end of November. I'm more concerned about whether I'll have it typed or not...and just how long it's going to be. It occurred to me earlier when looking at my word count in the word document and looking at how far along I am in the notebook that this project might be quite a bit over 50,000 words. If I was worried about getting it all typed out before.... it's nothing compared to what I'm going through right now. But, anyway... I figure the best that I can do is just type up as much as I can. The book is broken up into three parts (one for each stage of the virus) and there's a very real chance that stage 1 is going to be 50,000 words all on its own from what I'm looking at right here. If that's the case, I might just make that it's own thing so I don't have to worry about typing up two extra books worth of words for a project I'm planning on shelving in a week either way. If it falls short and I end up having to type the rest then...well, I don't know what then, honestly. I'll figure it out though. Running out of time to make a decision, so for now I'm just going to work on the easy part, which is typing up the rest of stage 1. I'll be working on that for a bit tonight before I get back to my mess of a submission. One last thing to address before I sign off, I just want to apologize for being absent. It's been a busy month for everyone and I'm lagging behind more than most, but I have at the very least been reading through reviews, comments. I will get back to everyone ASAP, but that still might not be until after NaNo, and I apologize for that. Thanks for reading everyone, and with any luck you'll be hearing more from me soon. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys. I made really great progress on NaNoWriMo over the weekend. I finished Stage 2 and am almost ready to wrap up Stage 3, which is the final stage of the virus! Now I just have to wrap that up and get it typed, which is actually a ton of work. I'm getting really, really worried about my ability to actually finish while still completing my submissions, which unfortunately have had to take focus. I have a couple reviews to do while I'm on here today and then it's back to work. But with any luck I'll be seeing you guys soon. Hope that everyone out there is doing well. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, I have been terrible about updating, both my blog and my NaNoWriMo word count. I have been good about other things though,for instance, my submissions. This is the first month since I think June where I think I'm going to be able to make every single one of my submission deadlines.  I am one short story, one micro-fiction and a little editing from being 7 for 7 on November submissions even though I had to write material for each and every single one.I don't feel great about my chances for most of them, but I'm not terribly unhappy with the content I got done - it's going over very well so far with my test readers. Even if none of them make it into their respective zines/sites/anthologies, at least I'll have a couple new things to put in either my submission rotation or to upload here to flesh out my portfolio. Now, about NaNo. I have not forgotten about it, in fact, what little free time I have has been going almost exclusively to "Viral." What it hasn't been going into (as you may have noticed) is typing. What can I say? I like writing my stuff longhand, which is a technique that is supported by many of the writers I look up to. It's good advice. It just makes timed word count things a little bit more difficult to verify. Since I need to wrap up my submissions today, I have a feeling my brain is going to be too fried to imagine writing much more, but I am going to try and type up a couple more chapters so I can update my wordcount at least a little. After that I think my plan is just to hit my rough draft full force tomorrow and Saturday, see if I can't knock it out. With any luck I'll be at the beach or the theater this Sunday for a nice little mini vacation, and when I get back in Monday I can start typing up this monster of a thing for validation. It's going to be tight, but I think I can work everything in. I hope you guys are all doing well. I see that a lot of you have made progress on your novels and that's fantastic. I'm sorry I haven't been around much for the moral support, I am just incredibly overwhelmed - but even through that I am very, very proud of all the progress everyone is making and all the amazing things being accomplished here in the community. With any luck you guys will hear from me a bit tonight, then not at all for a few days, and then more than you can handle for the week following that. I will see you soon. All the best, Cat |
| Hey Guys, I typing up the chapter I was working on yesterday, and am going to go ahead and upload a couple chapters now, update my wordcount. Then I'm going to take a short break from NaNo to do things like answer my messages, get my studying done, etc. Then I need to finish writing my chapter for today, but maybe I'll get back to the typing part later. If not tonight, then I'll definitely get to it tomorrow. The important thing is that I stay busy and don't dwell on how I've completely lost faith in humanity thanks to this year's election. I very desperately would like to move. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, So I have some good news and bad news about my NaNoWriMo project. The thing is I had two virus stories that I wanted to work on, and I ended up choosing Viral mostly because I thought it was going to be a lot shorter. While working on it last night I realized that's my problem with the other project, it's too long. The big difference between the two stories was that I wanted one to fixate more on a small community - while one focused more on the global implications. If I had been smart about them from the beginning, I would have realized that the virus I came up with for Viral should have been the global project (and I probably would have realized it sooner if I hadn't already started the outline for the other story as a global thing.) I think both projects will go a lot better if I switch around the focal points of each - and in fact I now have much cleaner outlines that I feel much more comfortable with for both. So, the good news is that I solved my plot issues. The bad news of course is that I'm about 10 chapters into "Viral" already - and can't go back unless I want to start NaNoWriMo over and lose the 5 days and however many words that ends up being when I finish typing it out. Since I don't want to lose my progress, I have decided that I'm going to go ahead and continue writing it as is, and consider it sort of a character study project. I knew going into it this year when I didn't have an outline that my manuscript for this November was essentially going to be no good, and it's not like I was planning on pursuing this exact story. "Viral" in it's current form is not going to be usable material anyway, and exploring the small group of characters I have done for it is going to help me a lot with development, even if the story gets drastically changed after (which I now know that it's going to.) Despite the horribly crushing setback to my hopes for my NaNo manuscript, I still see a bright future for at least one of these stories, even if it's a long way off. And I'm still writing new material for my wordcount steadily - which is also good. With any luck my continuing string of giant mistakes with this project will keep giving me ideas for the other two outlines, and I can still turn this trainwreck into something useful. So anyway, that's where I'm at with that. I'm going to just keep at the long-hand portion of writing today because the internet has been kind of shaky here so there's no guarantee that I could upload in any case, plus, I'm on a roll. I hope everyone is having better luck with their NaNo project than I am. Go red team! All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, Remember how I said I was going to upload chapter by chapter? Well, I lied about that - oops. I have the first three chapters of "Viral" done (four if you count my little 300 word prologue) and still haven't typed up anything past the prologue. It's not that I didn't intend to upload it, it's just that I've been focusing on the new stuff, and it's been sort of hard to pull myself away long enough to actually type out the stuff that I've done already. I don't actually know how many words I have written (and won't really have any clue until I get this typed up) but I have been working on stuff and it's going fairly well. I'm not overwhelmed by the content or anything, it's nothing groundbreaking, but at least I'm keeping up with it. (Sort of.) I'm mostly just taking the break to let you guys know my new plan - I'll be updating periodically, so you can expect more chapters at once, but the updates will be further apart. Sorry about that. I hope that everyone is having a good time with this as well, and as always, go red team! All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys! After much, much debating and worry I have finally chosen a project for 2016's National Novel Month and of course, the subsequent WdC NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon. I am going to be adapting one of my short stories (which might actually seem familiar to you guys as that short story was closely adapted after one of my "SCREAMS!!!"  entries earlier this year) and I'm going to be going into this with no outline, and no prior planning. What that essentially means is that the story is going to suck - but it's also giving me the chance to get back into the habit of writing longer fiction without an agenda. I'm just going to wing it and try to have fun this year. It's very possible that a cleaner, more structured and properly outlined version is on the horizon, but what I'm doing now is just going to be for myself (and I guess also technically my NaNo sponsors.)I'm also going to be doing something really nerve-wracking this year - and that is showing my progress. I will be uploading the novel chapter by chapter as it is written. I'm not looking for reviews (and have in fact, disabled rating/reviewing) because at this stage I don't know what the future is for this project, and don't want to waste reviewers time (or my time) getting detailed feedback on a piece that IF I progress with is going to be largely rewritten and completely restructured. Anyway, my novel is going to suck this year, and I'm weirdly okay with that. Hopefully having fun and winging it will, if nothing else, give me some ideas for what I want to do with it later on or help me decide if this is even a story I want to pursue. In the meantime I'm just going to have fun, try not to stress, and support the red team by making my word count goals. The item is here, if anyone is interested in tracking my progress throughout the month:
Again, I'm not really looking for feedback/reviews/ratings at this stage - it's just here for word count tracking and verification purposes (and also so that hopefully my sponsors don't lose faith in me.) So, yes. That's about it. I'm going to go have some fun with this and try to squeeze in my word count quota for the day, and with any luck I'll be talking to you guys soon. All the best, Cat |
| Hey Guys, It is going to be a rough year for NaNoWriMo, I can already tell. My plan was to go to be early, wake up, and write whatever the first thing that popped into my head and then just keep at it the rest of the month. That didn't happen, obviously, because yesterday was Halloween and I was celebrating by drinking and listening to creepypasta until ungodly hours of the morning. My boyfriend woke me up at 9, and it has just been a whirlwind of things. On the bright side, it's mostly been good stuff (which I'm here to brag about briefly before getting to work on my project.) The one sad (ish) thing that was included in all of this, was that I got a rejection letter in my email today for a horror anthology I had submitted to. I normally take rejections really, really hard, (and yes, I'm sad not to have that particular piece in publication just yet) but this time around I actually sort of feel like I dodged a bullet. The rejection letter (signed by the editor of the anthology) was very poorly written. If I'm catching grammar mistakes, there's something very wrong. Typos and such aside, it just seemed very unprofessional, and although the rejection as usual has not helped with my self esteem, I think I might be better off. Plus, now the best thing I've written this year can be submitted elsewhere. And the rest of the stuff was all great! I won the Good Deeds Contest for October - "Good Deeds - October 2016 Winners!" - coming in 1st place (and it has a cash prize of $50 so I'm slightly less broke than I was yesterday)I also apparently won the Halloween Raid, which I did not know was a thing I could win. But I get an owl signature from the lovely And so that's about it. I am now about to get back to work on novel-writing. So I will hopefully see you guys soon. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, I'm just on here to wrap up a couple things before NaNo starts. I have a couple review requests to write up, and hopefully I can finally finishing responding to all my wonderful showcase reviews. It's also about time to actually start NaNo, which of course means picking a project. My boyfriend has not so subtly been requesting that I write erotic Diablo fanfiction. Although I'm not sure who would ever want to read it (myself included) I have to admit it sounds like it could be fun, and a good moment to teach a valuable life lesson (be careful what you ask for.) Anyway, I hope that everyone is doing well, and if for some reason I don't answer it's probably because I'll be busy writing with everyone else. All the best, and good luck to all the NaNoWriMo participants out there. It's going to be an intense month. Best wishes, Cat |
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