New Novel Release!

I know I've been really quiet on this front, working a full-time job can do that to you, but I finally got the sequel to Kaleb's story picked up by Silver Publishing.

One Two Three, Salvation now has a cover and a tentative release date of September 7th, and I'm currently working on the first round of edits on it. It made me realize just how often I use the word 'was' in my manuscripts, and I've been going back and fixing it in my other stories as well.

Before I go off on that tangent, this is the beautiful cover for One Two Three, Salvation. I worked with the same cover artist that did One Two Three, Shatter, and I think she did just as great of a job. She had more of a challenge with this one because I was incredibly picky about my models, but it turned out wonderful in the end despite that.

Now, I've got to go dive back into my edits. I'll post more information as I get it. Cheers!

Next Big Thing Pt. 2

So I got tagged for this puppy again, this time by Erin O'Quinn. Since the other one was NaNo-related, I figured I'd do this one for one that I'm about ready to publish.

1) What is the working title of your current/next book? Kill To Believe.

2) Where did you get the idea for that book? Honestly, I can't remember! It just sort of came up one day. I wrote the first draft a couple years ago. It was a prequel of sorts to another story I wrote but will probably never publish called Impress Me.

3) What's the genre of the book? Noir, crime, M/M romance/erotica.

4) If you could pick actors to play the lead characters in your story, who would you pick? Oh Lord, this is a difficult one. Nathan would probably be played by Brad Pitt, Snatch and Se7en-era. Mike, possibly Cillian Murphy? He might be a little bit too moody for his character, though. For Charlie, I'd have to say Mark Wahlberg.

5) How would you describe your book in one sentence (10 words or less)? Nathan's been through violence, but Mike's a whole different animal.

6) (a) How will your book be published, submitted through the traditional route to a traditional publisher or will you be handling it yourself through Indie Publishing methods? (b) If you're an Indie Author, will you be publishing through your own Indie Publishing company or in a collective with other Indie Authors? I've got it submitted to Total-e-Bound Publishing right now and they're looking it over. :)

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of this book? A few months, I believe.

8) What other books within your genre are similar to yours? Hmm, another good question. I'd have to say Scarlet Blackwell's Fade To Black.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book? Honestly, it started with me reading one of Scarlet Blackwell's stories. She's always been a source of inspiration for me.

10) What about your book will pique the reader's interest? If you like dark story-lines, a little crime and guns in your romance, and intense erotica, this novel is for you.

I'm tagging Samantha Kay, Kate Vines

Day 25: First Day Of Winning

I've officially won this year, and with not a bad word count, if I do say so myself! This is great, considering before this, I'd been in a complete slump writing-wise. I hadn't written anything all summer because I'd been at home with my parents and hadn't had any sort of inspiration around me-- except about eight thousand words of a WIP zombie-apocalypse story that I plan to revisit sometime soon-- and then in November something just clicked and I haven't been able to stop writing since! It's liberating, it really is.

The biggest issue I'm going to end up having is the fact that I now have so many WIPs and I also have so many finished novels that need a good, thorough second-draft editing, and with so many different ideas for new stories in my head, it's hard to commit myself to doing a hardcore edit of the things I've already written. This is something I've always had a bit of trouble with, though, so I'm not too surprised.

Anyway, that's my winner's bar for this year's NaNo! I'm very excited about it and proud.

Introspect: Bane of My Existence

I think the hardest thing about being a published author is looking back on work you've done years past-- published or not-- and realizing how much better you could have made it if you'd been patient enough to write the stories when you had the skill and experience to execute them more effectively.

Take Kaleb's story for example. When I wrote it, I thought it was the most intense story I'd ever written. I frequently called it my masterpiece and I didn't think I'd ever be able to top it. Then, about a month ago a reviewer pointed out that with that story, not only did I leave questions unanswered, I pulled back in the more poignant parts and wrote it like it was in a third person point of view instead of Kaleb's, and it took away some of the power of the emotional scenes. That's something I try not to do now, and I'm more aware of it because of that comment and just growing as an author, I just wish I'd waited and rewritten Kaleb's story until I had more faculties, more ability to put emotion into writing.

I learn a lot every time I publish something, and I think through publishing something I thought was my masterpiece, I found a story that was similarly worth telling without the sheer amount of angst. Kaleb's story is one angst after another until he settles down, but the one I'm working on now isn't that way. Kay's more or less just a normal young adult who, sure, had a different upbringing than most people, but it doesn't ever cause him angst.

I think it's a little bit funny that Kaleb and Kay have about the same amount of words to their stories, but Kaleb's is all in one novel and Kay's is spanning three now. I should have broken Kaleb's story up into more than one novel, because there was so much more about his life that I could have touched on, some less intense and some more. Live and learn, I suppose.

I feel the same with my novel, Phoenix. I could probably write that novel so much better now if I'd waited to publish it. I could have given Blake an intensity that I hadn't managed when I wrote it. I do have a sequel in mind for that world, but it's on the backburner. It's almost funny, how different the writing is going to be between the two sequels.

Baby, It's Cold Outside (but the blog's not)

So, I decided that my blog looked a little bit cold and closed off with the monochromatic spectrum, so I added a little heat to it. Well, a lot of heat, I suppose. I like it quite a bit better now. It's more engaging, more welcoming. More me, I guess is what I'm going for. It needed something to hook the reader.

Now that I've got you hooked, I hope, I've been hard at work on Kay and Johnny's third novel, and I've got a lot of great ideas for it. Total word count for November is 92k today. I'm also looking into places to submit his first story to. I already sent it to Silver Publishing for consideration, but I think it was a bit preemptive considering I'm doing some editing on it now and it's a hot mess. It's getting better, but there are typos everywhere, stilted sentences, the works. It was sort of a NaNo on its own; I wrote the whole thing in a span of a few weeks, about 55k, back in June and July. I can't wait to introduce you guys to these boys. I'm very passionate about them.

I've only let one person read anything of theirs so far, and I got a great response. Maybe she's biased, but she's also objective when it comes to writing-- she's not afraid to speak her mind and tell me something's off-- so I take her at her word. I'm excited to pull you all into their world. To start you off, I'd say read One Two Three, Shatter for a nice, solid backstory on the universe. To buy, click on the cover in my sidebar! It won't bite. Maybe then you'll start to see what I'm babbling about, but Kay and Johnny are a whole different beast than Kaleb and Trent. Not better, just...different. I love them both to pieces, though.

In the next couple days, I'm gonna be talking about my WIPs due to the blog hop I'm taking part in, so you'll get an introduction there as well. For now, back to editing for me!

'Til next time. :)

Day 11: One Down, One To Go

So, finally, I finished my first novel, Drawing By Heart. You say, finally? Really? It's been eleven days! I say, yes this is true, but I also got tackled by another plot that was ten times more challenging and interesting to write because it's been so long since I wrote a suspense novel. I wasn't sure I'd be able to go back to Kay's story once I'd started Craig's.

I'm happy to report that I have given Kay's second novel a very tentative ending that I will revisit in December, albeit it's open to a third book in his series, which shouldn't be surprising. He's a very complex little muse, isn't he? I have no idea where he's going to take me next.

In the meantime, I have Gallagher's Torment, in which Craig is slowly losing his mind. It's quite fun to go back to my roots of horror and suspense writing, and I've found that I missed writing that sort of thing immensely. I don't know why I stopped writing them, because I have such a passion for the weird and the macabre. I don't know where I ended up forgoing my instincts for the darkness in favor of trying to write one-dimensional romance stories.

At any rate, I'm glad to be getting back into this groove, and while I feel like this story isn't going to breach even 25k, I can't wait to see where it ends up. Craig is a very interesting character, and the supporting characters are all great too. They're making it difficult to choose who should end up being the victim of the madness. Oh well, I'll let Craig choose once he slips from reality.

So I ask before I go back to noveling: Has anyone else ever gone back to a genre after staying away from it for so long only to feel like you're being welcomed home?

National Novel Writing Month

So, I have done National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo or NaNo for short) since 2008, and I've completed every year but once. I am going to embark on that goal once more, but this time I am going to be moving and working on top of it. The joys of being an indie writer!

I digress. I'm gonna talk a bit about the story I have in mind for this most prestigious event. It's called Tempestuous Heart, tentatively anyway. Since I've been re-reading both Wuthering Heights and The Count of Monte Cristo, I've decided I want to write a historical fiction novel. Historical romance, to be more specific. Well, it might end up being romance. It might not. We'll have to see what kind of rollercoaster ride these characters take me on.

It's about two neighbors, both orphans adopted by English well-to-do families, and the way the differences in the way they grew up influence their relationship. One, Samuel, is a stickler for rules and adheres to society and the Catholic faith. The other, Thomas, is a wild child who would rather run in the fields and hunt than sit in a pew for church. The way they clash will, I'm sure, be a lot of fun to write.

I'm excited to begin it.

Thoughts On Writing With A Big Bonus Quote

"Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins. It has no job security of any kind, and depends mostly on whether or not you can, like Scheherazade, tell the stories each night that’ll keep you alive until tomorrow. There are undoubtedly hundreds of easier, less stressful, more straightforward jobs in the world. Personally, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do, but that’s me.

If you want to be a writer, write. You may have to get a day job to keep body and soul together (I cheated, and got a writing job, or lots of them, to feed me and pay the rent). If you aren’t going to be a writer, then go and be something else. It’s not a god-given calling. There’s nothing holy or magic about it. It’s a craft that mostly involves a lot of work, most of it spent sitting making stuff up and writing it down, and trying to make what you have made up and written down somehow better. …

It does help, to be a writer, to have the sort of crazed ego that doesn’t allow for failure. The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering “Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!” and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there’s nothing left to write. Because the rejection slips will arrive. And, if the books are published, then you can pretty much guarantee that bad reviews will be as well. And you’ll need to learn how to shrug and keep going. Or you stop, and get a real job."
— Neil Gaiman: On Writing

I agree with Neil, because there's nothing in the world I'd rather be doing than writing, even though it's not easy to keep going when the rest of your life's got you down. The fact is, though, that writing can take you away from whatever's going on in your real life and put you in another universe for a few minutes, a few hours, or even a few days. It's my chance to build a whole new world.

It's a great attitude, to respond to rejection letters with more determination, and that's what I've done before even though sometimes all I want to do is rip my manuscript to shreds. It's better to channel whatever I'm feeling into something beautiful, something better than what I'm feeling.

I know for a fact that I'm never going to stop even if I do have to hold down a demure job for a while until I can become the next great America bestseller. I hope someday that happens. I am determined to make it as a writer that everyone knows and loves. Right now, I'm just a blip on the radar.