Category: The Lokana Chronicles

Yay Friday! :)

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Multitasking: I found the portal to Lokana while hiking at Pine Lake on a family vacation. Family time + research FTW! :)

Multitasking: I found the portal to Lokana while hiking at Pine Lake on a family vacation. Family time + research FTW! 🙂

So, it’s Friday.  Woohoo!  It’s been a week of big, exciting things around the country, and it’s been a week of big exciting things right here in my own backyard.  It’s going to be a super busy weekend, too.  So what am I doing to prepare?

I’M WRITING, Y’ALL!

I’ve been working on Remnants again the last couple of days, and it feels great, but I can’t get my inner editor to shut up, which is irritating.  I have a buttload of revisions left to do on The Lokana Chronicles, but I really need a week or so of peace, quiet, and no internet to get them done. 🙂

Still, it feels wonderful to be enjoying my passions again.  I’ve missed playing with my camera and visiting imaginary worlds and the people that populate them.  And since I’m starting a new job next week, it’s nice that at least a little bit of the change going on in my life is change that I enjoy (not that I’m not excited about the new job – I totally am).

So for now, it’s back to writing.  Big things are in the works and I need time to prepare.  Have a great weekend, everybody!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

WIP it! WIP it good!

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The wip it good blogfestSo last Friday, I stumbled across a post about the WIP IT GOOD Blogfest.  I found the original detail post here and thought it sounded interesting, so I decided to participate.  There was just one tiny problem: My current pitch kinda sucked.  Like, bad.  So I thought, “Okay, no biggie, I’ll just fix it.”

Yeah, that turned out to be a bigger challenge than I had anticipated.

I finally finished the polishing this morning.  It took me a week of scribbling and thinking and trying not to pull all the hair out of my head (bald isn’t a good look for me), but I finally finished the polishing.  At least for now.  Till someone tells me it could be better.  Because really, in all honesty, it probably could be.  I’m still not convinced about the transitions between paragraphs.  And I’m only halfway through writing the darn thing, never mind revisions, so it could still go in a completely different direction.  But this is the direction in which it’s currently heading, and I think it’s on track to stay that way.  So.  A plan.  I kinda sorta maybe have one.  Possibly.

Anyway, to the deets!

She winds up for the pitch…

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That’s right, I’m working on my pitch again.  But this time it’s for my WIP.  I stumbled across a WIP blog hop the other day and I want to participate, but first I need to shine up my pitch a bit.  I’ve been polishing since Friday.  But I think I’ve just about got it hammered out, so I’ll be posting regularly-ish again soon(ish)!  I hope. 😀

All this is to say that I’ve been doing a fair bit of writing and even more thinking about writing of late.  If I’ve been a bit absent, well, everywhere, now you know why.  So in the meantime, please enjoy this pretty, pretty picture from The Great Gatsby:


Happy Hump Day! 🙂

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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Pitch-tastic!

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Yep, that’s right, I’ve been working on my pitch for The Lokana Chronicles again.  Though (as far as I’m aware, having not checked Twitter in the last couple of hours) the Query Kombat picks haven’t yet been announced, I’m not holding my breath that I’ll get in They’ve announced the picks for Query Kombat and I didn’t get in, but I’m not surprised because what I submitted for a query was, well, not very good.  Even I knew it, but I crossed my fingers and hit submit anyway.  Huge congrats to everyone who made it in, though – out of something like 210 kontestants, only 64 made it through to the next round and I think 32 are being eliminated in the first cut.  Pretty brutal, but pretty awesome, too.  Good luck to everybody who made it in!

Anyway, as I was trolling Twitter the other day (and by trolling, I mean more like scrolling through my feeds, not being a troll), I happened across this from the lovely Stacey Trombley:

So I took her up on it! Read all about it behind the cut. Come on, you know you want to. Clicky clicky! 🙂

Progress!

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Yes, that’s right, I’m making progress!  My synopsis-writing project is almost at an end (meaning I hope to be finished with it by tomorrow or the next day) and if you follow me on Facebook, you’ll know that I started a new short story.  I plan to post it here when I’m finished.  I’m really excited about it – it’ll be my first foray into sci-fi, but it’s not hardcore.  At least, I don’t think it will be.

I was inspired by the news I heard over the weekend that a Dutch company plans to launch an expedition to colonize Mars within the next decade.  I started writing late last night and kept at it today.   As I was driving home tonight…

Outlining, synopsis-style

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He crossed the room slowly as the unseen hand of his tutor banged on the door again. The knocking had a tone and texture all its own, not unlike a voice. It was at once demanding, frustrated, and annoyed, as if the person knocking would much rather be somewhere, anywhere, else. Michael had never noticed such a thing in a knock before; he wondered what else he’d missed as he had sailed through life trying to engage fully with a half dozen different things all at once.

-The Lokana Chronicles: Fog of War

I’ve been working on my story again. It’s been a while, though, and I’ve lost touch with what I’d written before, so I’m rereading it and creating a synopsis so that I have something to look back at any time I need a bit of a refresher. The quote above is from Chapter 7.

Of course, the problem is…

Easter clean-up

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Okay, so I didn’t get this posted yesterday. I did, however, get three others drafted and ready to go for next week (still have some others to put together yet). I know, I know. But it is Easter weekend, and we have company today. Why am I writing this now, then? Because I’m in the backseat of my car on the way to a family gathering that’s two hours from home and I can’t hear the conversation happening in the front seat well enough to take part.

In other news, I’m hanging out with fellow author Mary Fan over at her blog today and talking about writing process. She’s a wonderful host and you should all check out her site. You can find my post here.

So! What are all these mysterious and entertaining posts I’ve been promising? My good friend, Will, is out on tour at the moment, and will be stopping by next week. I’m sprucing up the place in case he brings his friends, the Banned Underground, along with him (which means I’ll be stocking up on pizza and beer and reinforcing anything that might be prone to shattering as a result of feedback). For a full list of tour dates, check out his publisher’s page here.

Also, tomorrow is April Fool’s Day. Since April is National Poetry Month, I think I’ll take it upon myself once again to try writing a poem a day. I’ve done it before and really enjoyed it, so why not? This serves as your warning: Prepare to be inundated with bad poetry. 🙂

And now I think I’ll leave you to it. I hope you all have a very happy Easter!

(c) 2013. All rights reserved.

Sunday Sunday Sunday!

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So this weekend I wanted to get a bunch of different writing projects squared away between a surprise party and visiting family.  No problem, right?  Wrong!  Well, I got one of them taken care of, anyway, but a visiting headache kept me from the others.  Our weekends are always so busy, it seems, yet they’re the only time I really have a chance to get caught up on things at home.  So this morning is going to be catch-up time till the family arrives.

In the meantime, I acquired a shiny new DSLR a while back and have been having loads of fun with it.  For your viewing pleasure until I return with a post of more substance, behold, the things with which I’ve been filling my weekend: behind the cut!

The madness continues. . .

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. . .but not for me.  The emails are out, and I didn’t get one, which means I’m not moving on to the second round of Pitch Madness.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, but I’d also be lying if I said I’d been holding my breath.  My pitch needs work.  Maybe I should have gone with my gut and used the short pitch I’ve got up on authonomy.  But the competition was pretty stiff; 300 or so people were culled from the competition, so I’m hardly alone in my disappointment.  Besides – I’ve made a bunch of new friends, and that is quite obviously the best part of these competitions. 🙂

So for me, it’s back to querying the old-fashioned way – research and submit, research and submit.  Oh, and pray.  Cuz, you know, you gotta pray.  A lot.  The competition out there is stiff, and marketing is not my strong suit (I’m working on that).  Meanwhile, there’s always the #PitMad contest on Twitter next week… 😀

Congratulations to all those moving on, and good luck in the upcoming rounds.  I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines and doing my best to keep thinking positive while I hunt for agents to add to my query list.

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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Pitch madness!

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LipeiArtwork by Hazel Butler

Lipei
Artwork by Hazel Butler

That’s right, folks, I’ve got pitch madness!  What, pray tell, is pitch madness?  Why, it’s a lovely competition run by the lovely Brenda Drake and it’s happening right now! 🙂  Well, kind of.  The submission window was yesterday and the task for those who chose to accept it was to submit a 35-word logline (a pitch) and the first 250 words of their completed novels.  The slush zombies are currently wading through all the submissions and choosing who will advance to the next round.

Unlike during GUTGAA when I was on the edge of my seat, I was slightly more relaxed this time around because there was no entrant cap – everyone who entered during the window got in.  But!  That hasn’t stopped me from second-guessing every bit of my submission ever since I hit send yesterday morning.

I’ve been working over my pitch and my MS quite a bit over the course of the last six months, but that hasn’t stopped me from feeling insecure about the whole big mess, especially since I have a variety of short pitches in the works now.  Do I use one of the ones I created for the #PitMad pitchfest last fall?  Do I use the one I currently have up on authonomy?   Do I use the one-sentence synopsis I spent a whole day trying to draft?