Close Enough to Taste [Birth of a Novel Blog Chain]

It's so close I can taste it. I'm almost there. Only one more day. Then I can stop and take a break. I can go to bed before twelve. I can read again. It will be glorious! And made all the better by the two new first drafts that will be sitting beside me.

Current word count? 97,053. That leaves 3,138 words until I'm finished (the count is a little off because SHADOWMAN was completed at 50,191 words). Completely manageable compared to other days.

I'm afraid my story might exceed 50k. Though it would be awesome to actually write a longish novel, I would really rather be finished with everything NaNo related before December. However, a few of my plot points have fallen off the wagon so perhaps I won't be that far over.

Tomorrow might be a tough day for writing. My cousin is coming home after quite a few months away and we're celebrating with a family dinner. I'm even going to get out of school a little early to go pick him up at the airport. Well, I guess that's what notebooks are for because, no matter what, I am going to finish this thing tomorrow.

The Rest of the Blog Chain

Charity Bradford Angela Brown Brooke Busse Tessa C Elizabeth Davis Miranda Hardy Mia Hayson	Lena Hoppe Huntress Fida Islaih Jen McConnel Anna M. Nyxie Moon Elizabeth Pool
Zoe

What We Should Remember

We writers often complain that no one understands us. People look at us strange when we profess writing as more than a hobby and yet have nothing published. Family members clammer for attention on all sides just when we finally sit down for some solid writing time. They don't comprehend how much time and work go into revising, editing, querying, and then the publishing process itself, that it's like raising a child.

We look at all of this and forget about the positive things they do for us. They sit and listen to us ramble on about something that doesn't make a lick of sense to them. They let us push the dishes back another hour and bed, too. Or they make their own dinners when they hear the clack of the keys. They offer encouragement and support through texts and shipments of notebooks.

Recently, I posted about getting three flash fiction pieces in an ebook, no big deal seeing as it was a collection of Campaigner challenges and all three pieces were Campaigner challenge entries, but my family was pleased as a plum. My mom spent two hours (Two hours!) on the phone calling and texting anyone and everyone who would listen. All who could immediately went and purchased a copy. And then, on Thanksgiving, I got the picture you see above. Though I wasn't even there (my parents were too sick to drive six hours), the maternal side of my family had erected a banner in my honor. The feeling of love and being loved still fills me when I think about it.

And that's what really counts. Those are the the things we should really remember.

30k in 5 Days [Birth of a Novel Blog Chain]

Word Count: 69,804
GHOST SISTER Word Count: 19,613

I'm behind. By the end of today to be exactly on track, I should have been at 23,331 words. And I'm not. However, I have a plan.

There are eight days left of NaNoWriMo. 30,387 (how many words I have left to write) divided by eight is 3,798. That's how many words, at a minimum, that I have to write everyday for the rest of November. There is another part of the plan. And this, if I accomplish it, will definitely make my goal feasible.

For the next five days I have no school, no serious obligations (besides Thanksgiving and that's why God gave me two hands, one to eat with and the other to write with). It's like a (business) week long weekend. Just what I needed. 30,387 divided by five equals 6,077. Totally doable for a day I don't have school.

I'm going to do it. I'm going to try to write roughly 30k words in five days. Good Lord, I must be crazy.

The Rest of the Blog Chain

Charity Bradford Angela Brown Brooke Busse Tessa C Elizabeth Davis Miranda Hardy Mia Hayson	Lena Hoppe Huntress Fida Islaih Jen McConnel Anna M. Nyxie Moon Elizabeth Pool
Zoe

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving. :)

Prompt #44

[Fell down a well

It should be pretty

Like a little fairy tale]

            I was going about my business, walking along the ceiling as usual, when something that had never happened before, happened. I fell. And I didn’t just fall. I fell into a well. And I didn’t just fall into a well. I fell into a well with another dimension at the bottom of it.

            How did I know it was another dimension? Because everything was on the ceiling and I was on the floor. Imagine the oddity of it!

            I tried to go back immediately, of course, but it is extremely hard to jump down a hole that is above you. Once I decided that that plan was not going to work, I resorted to something much less dignified. I yelled for help, hoping that someone might drop a bucket down and whinch me up. No one did.

            Giggles filled the air at my sad attempts. I looked up and around, hoping to locate the person who had made the merry sound. No one. I scratched my ear, partly as a nervous gesture and partly because the thought occurred to me that I might be hearing things in my distress. Then I sat, because if I was so distressed as to be hearing things, it was probably not wise for me to stand for my balance would be off-kilter and I could fall. Imagine the disgrace I would feel if that happened!

            The giggles came again, and now I was truly concerned. I dug in my ear and shook my head, trying to dislodge anything that might be stuck inside. Anything and everything that was inside my ear, stayed there. Then I got to thinking that perhaps it wasn’t my ear, but my brain causing all the mess.

            It was about then, as I doubted my own sanity, that a small man walked by. He did not walk opposite me as most people do and which, in this case, would have been on the ceiling. He strode across the wall, as if it was perfectly normal and not strange at all. Imagine the nerve!

            I stared, with an open mouth, as he walked right by me without so much as a hello. And I knew he wasn’t a figment of my imagination, because any figment of mine would have had better manners. I stood and cleared my throat. He did not stop in his determined walk.

            “Excuse me?” I called.

            He looked over his shoulder, his pace slowing but not altogether stopping. “Yes?”

            I hurried after him. “Do you hear the giggling, too?”

            His eyes crossed and a small line appeared along the top of his nose. “Giggling?”

            The high-pitched laughter cut through the never-ending room once more.

            “Ah,” he said, the confusion disappearing from his face. “You must be new.”

            “I assure you, sir, that I am most definitely not ‘new.’” I huffed as I talked and I could feel my face turning red.

            “You are most definitely new if you’ve never experienced a turn.” He turned back to the front, not even gifting me the respect to meet my eyes when I spoke.

            “If you would, what is a ‘turn’?”

            He spun his finger in the air. “A turn is when the Great Ones turn our little box. When that happens, we get put somewhere else. For instance,” He pointed above him. “Before the turn, I was over on that wall. Now I am on this one.”

            “And if you do not mind my asking, who are ‘The Great Ones’?”

            “The bigger people outside the box,” he said with an air of irritation.

            I pondered that. The white walls did not feel like a box nor did I feel like I was in a box. But then, something had made me fall.

            “How did the Great Ones get outside of the box?” I asked.

            His foot fell to the ground with a heavy thump. He stood still, arms at his side, feet together. He twisted his neck to look at me. “That is not the question to ask. The question is how do we get outside of the box?”

            The giggling started up again.

One Down, One to Go [Birth of a Novel Blog Chain]

SHADOWMAN, my first NaNo novel, was completed at 50,191 words on November 13. As of yet, no one has read a word (well, except a few short paragraphs I posted on Angela Scott's blog) because Alisha hasn't been at school the past two days for me to give it to her. -.- She's normally one of the first people to read my novels (you know, besides my mom).

I plan to start GHOST SISTER tomorrow so I'm laying my plot out in order. I was working on this last night and a whole bunch of new ideas came to me. I'm so excited! And it's all because of  a few characters that popped up in SHADOWMAN. I'll be building their personae as well.

I don't really have anything special for you today (summary for GHOST SISTER is pending, plus run out of WriMo songs) but I do have a question. Anyone have any good last names to go with Derik?

The Rest of the Blog Chain

Charity Bradford Angela Brown Brooke Busse Tessa C Elizabeth Davis Miranda Hardy Mia Hayson	Lena Hoppe Huntress Fida Islaih Jen McConnel Anna M. Nyxie Moon Elizabeth Pool
Zoe

Help Harry Help Others by Purchasing Campaigner Challenges 2011

So, you remember Rachael Harrie's Third Platform-Building Campaign, right? And the challenges we had to do (1, 2, 3) along with my entries for them (1, 2, 3), right? I knew you did.

Ms. Katharina Gerlach has been so kind to put all of the challenge entries (the ones she had permission for, anyway), including mine, into an eBook cleverly titled Campaigner Challenges 2011 (at Amazon here and at Smashwords here). This eBook costs $2.99 and all proceeds go to Help Harry Help Others, an organization dedicated to helping those with brain cancer.

The book went up 3,000 places in the rankings for the Kindle Store in just one day and currently stands at #9,777! I challenge all of you to buy this book, and tell as many people as you can to buy this book. Let's see how high we can get those rankings. Let's Help Harry Help Others. (I've already done my part. My mother spent at least two hours on the phone yesterday calling relatives to tell them I'd been published. -rolls eyes-)

1, 2, 3 or I, II, III?

We all know the book title is hard, but what about the chapter names? Have you ever given any thought to them? About whether they'll be funny or short or long or interlock with the book's title or all share the same theme? Or perhaps you won't even have any. The chapter name will simply be a number. But will it be a number by itself or with the word 'chapter' in front of it? Will it be 1, 2, 3 or I, II, II? How do you decide?

• Some people base it simply off of what they like to see in books they read. This is the reason I made sure each chapter for my first two novels had a name, even if it was entirely ridiculous.
• Some people base it off of point of view. This is the reason THE LULLABY no longer has chapter names, but THINKING OF YOU does. First person is more personal and real chapter names instead of numbers go along with that.
• Some people go off the tone of their book. Look at Rick Riordan and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. His books are hilarious and so are his chapter names.
• Some people choose chapter names that will add depth to their book. In SHADOWMAN, I call my chapters 'verses' since my MC is very into music.
• Some people name their chapters on a book by book basis as I have done.

How do you name your chapters? How do you like your chapter names in books? Have any examples you would like to share, whether out of your own books or others?

Sittin' Pretty at 25k [Birth of a Novel Blog Chain]

One week down, three more to go, and if I write 25k for all of them, I'll be sittin' pretty. At the end of yesterday, I had a total of 25,517 words. Roughly 500 more words than I had on that date last year. Something else I surpassed this year? I wrote 7,036 words on Saturday, the most words I've written in a single day to date (I was going to post a picture of it, but we've been having earthquakes and big storms down here and the Internet was down).

By Monday night, I hope to be finished drafting SHADOWMAN and the NaNo website tells me I'm right on track for that. Then I'll take a day or two to catch up on Chrysalis stories, edit the first chapter of THINKING OF YOU (I won a critique over at Unicorn Bell), and make sure I have all the last minute details for GHOST SISTER.

But for right now, there's still work to be done and I better get on it. This time, instead of a video, I'll leave you with my summary of SHADOWMAN.

Kierra's family controls her life. She has to tiptoe around her sister, Erinn, not even able to speak freely around her. Her mom stifles any chance she has at a normal social life with her outrageous safety precautions that range from not eating peanut butter to not plopping in chairs. Her dad is almost never available and even when he is, he always takes Erinn's, who reminds him of his dead first love, side.

When Logan Hartley, the homeschooled boy-next-door, transfers to her high school, Kierra starts learning what it's like to be her own person, whether that means dying her hair red or rapping in front of a full auditorium. Then, Erinn goes into one of her rages and breaks Kierra's arm, casting the Croc family into a downward spiral that continues when her Dad is identified as the serial rapist who recently moved to town.

Kierra reaches for Logan to keep her from falling into the undertow. He promises he'll take care of everything, like her own personal guardian angel, a comparison that turns out to hit a little too close to the truth. Promises don't do much good when her mom ODs, landing in the hospital, and her Dad is sentenced to death.

Amongst the tragedy and sudden changes, Kierra is only certain of one thing: Logan Hartley sucks at being a guardian angel.

The Rest of the Blog Chain

Charity Bradford Angela Brown Brooke Busse Tessa C Elizabeth Davis  Miranda Hardy

Mia Hayson Lena Hoppe Huntress Fida Islaih Nyxie Moon Elizabeth Pool

Like the Polar Express, but Better

The conductor gives her last call, the train whistle blows. You run across the platform, holding your hat to your head, suitcase flying behind you. You jump through the open doorway just in time. The conductor smiles at you. "First stop, Cherie Colyer. Look to your left for some fine examples of blogosphere scenery."

The other passengers oooh...

and ahh...

and oooh some more.

"You should take your seat. You'll be much more comfortable." You follow the conductor up front and slide into an empty seat. She stands, beaming in front of the whole car, her body moving naturally with the rhythm of the train.

"Next stop is Theresa Milstein," she informs everyone. Then she leans down to whisper in your ear. "Of course, we won't really be stopping there. It's haunted, you know. The old houses are filled with vampires I hear." She straightens up, her face never changing expression, and winks at you. The town whizzes by. The place definitely looks scary. No one seems upset that you didn't stop.

"We are now entering the town of Trisha-" The conductor catches herself on one of the poles as the train lurches left to right. The wheels squeak horribly and you throw your hands over your ears. "And by the looks of it we're going to be staying here a while."

She slides open the door and pokes her head out. Someone calls to her and she answers back. You wait to learn what's going on. "Okay, it looks like you folks are going to have to get off for a bit. But don't worry, this place is full of attractions." You file off with everyone else. She hops out and starts walking toward the front of the train. You look around and a sign catches your eye.

Most Beautiful: Pocket Writing
Most Helpful: Never Feel Bad About Squashing A.N.T.s Again
Most Popular: Bess Weatherby - Closet Novelist
Most Controversial: This Message is Brought to You By Brooke's Inability to Write Book Reviews
Most Successful: Where's the Finish Line? -Pointing- It's Behind Me
Most Underrated: If You Give Your Muse a Makeover
Most Prideworthy: First Rejection

A shrill whistle signals that it's time to return to the train. And you'd been having such fun. Oh, well. You'll have just as much fun where you're headed. You climb back onto the train, at a normal pace this time, and resume your seat. The conductor plops down next to you. "Don't mind if I sit here do you?" You shake your head.

"Thanks," she smiles then turns around to face the seats. "We will now continue on to Steph Sinkhorn. You lucky ducks who are getting off here are in for a real treat. The town is holding its annual Agent Carnival. You'll have lots of chances to win books and other prizes."

When the train stops, there's a holdup at the door as everyone tries to push through at once. "One at a time. One at a time," the conductor orders from her seat.

The train is strangely quiet as it starts moving again. "People do love a good book." The conductor sure is a talker. "Personally, my favorite is the next stop. Music is more my thing." She raises her voice. "If you're getting off at the Sarah Pearson station, better get ready."

There's a big welcome sign at the edge of town and another one at the station and another as you pass back out into the open countryside. "Friendly people, Pearsonians."

Suddenly it goes dark. You look out the window to see a cluster of clouds swarming the sun. "Of course, they have to be. Otherwise they would never be able to live so close to their demonic neighbors."

"Yvie Gonya. If you want off, you're going to have to jump. No stops here." The conductor leans over you, gazing out the window. "Looks like the carnival's in town here, too. I pity the fools that go for those prizes however."

You and the conductor are the last ones left in the car now. It feels strange to sit there with all the empty seats behind you. You're anxious for your stop. "Figment." You hop up. The conductor stands to open the doors for you. "Don't forget, you have to register at the gate before you can get to the main attraction. And here's a pamphlet for more information." The conductor shoves a piece of paper into your hand.

You step off the train, and immediately it's off, heading on to its afternoon stops.

Afternoon Stops [7x7 Link Award] Teralyn Rose Pilgrim Charity Bradford Sarah Pearson Michael Offutt Michelle Fayard Theresa Milstein Angela Scott

Evening Stops [Thumbs Up From Skunk Award] Teralyn Rose Pilgrim Madeline Bartos Michael Offutt Trisha Angela Scott Theresa Milstein

To 5k and Beyond! [Birth of a Novel Blog Chain]

November. National Novel Writing Month. Love it. Live it. Eat it. Drink it. Sleep it. Breathe it. This is the one month of the year that you don't need oxygen to survive. Just caffeine and your writing utensil of choice.

What do I plan to do this November? Not write just one novel in 30 days, but two. That's right. Due to last year's great success with THINKING OF YOU, I have decided to plan and write two novels this year, SHADOWMAN and GHOST SISTER (go here and here to learn a bit more). I will post summaries when I have them.

As of right now, I have written 3,454 words toward SHADOWMAN. By the time I go to bed I want to have 5k. Just about another hour and a half of writing which shouldn't be that bad as I'm finally getting excited!

Last night I went to bed as soon as I got home and took a shower. I woke back up at 11:45 and prepared for the countdown. I then proceeded to write 1,101 words before climbing gratefully back into my bed.

I started writing again as soon as I was ready for school in the morning. I didn't feel like it, but I did it anyway. I was not going to let the fear of this year's previous failures stop me. As the day progressed it got better. I wrote about 500 words simply in Biology (my teacher was just lecturing, no big deal). I came home after staying with my grandmother for a few hours and hurried to type up my words.

Now I'm off for that last hour and a half. In the meantime, listen to this song (because I certainly will be) and visit the others in the chain.

Charity Bradford Angela Brown Brooke Busse Tessa C Elizabeth Davis  Miranda Hardy

Mia Hayson Lena Hoppe Huntress Fida Islaih Nyxie Moon Elizabeth Pool