Category: The Lokana Chronicles

Castle of Dreams

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Today I had the pleasure of guest posting over on my good friend Andrea Baker’s blog.  She’s been running a series called Castle of Dreams and I’m delighted to participate in it.  My contribution concerns the palace in Lokana, where my book The Lokana Chronicles and my current WIP are set.  It was a whole lot of fun to write.

I hope you’ll head on over and check it out.  While you’re there, have a look at some of the other entries in the series.  Not all are fictitious entries; there are also posts about very real castles, including Kenilworth Castle, which figures prominently in Andrea’s book, Worlds Apart – Leah, recently published by Taylor Street Publishing.

And now, I’m off to bed.  It’s been a long and busy day, full of work and good food and good friends and great family and fun and I am exhausted!  Happy Friday! 🙂

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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Lately…

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Lately I’ve been working.  A lot.  I’ve been working a lot at work (Ooh, hello, tax season!).  I’ve been working a lot at home, too (the laundry never. ends.), both on house-type stuff and writing-type stuff.  I have my work cut out for me on the last chapter I wrote; the last third of it needs some serious help.  But that will have to wait.

I’ve also been having some fun.  With what, you ask?  Well, I’ve been messing about on Pinterest quite a lot lately.  You can find boards depicting Lokana, the surrounding area, and the people who live there.  You can also find a few laughs, if you’re so inclined, and maybe a little writerly inspiration.

I’ve also rekindled my photography habit.  Or rather, my photo-editing habit.   Behold, the fruits of my labor. . .behind the cut!

The Rose and other tidbits

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rose

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. (Photo credit: alice_ling)

The rose she has gone back to Nature
Her petals on the grass by her mother tree lay
But memories of her blooming in the sunshine
With me till my own end will stay.

“The Rose,” by Francis Duggan

I hopped on the Alliance thread this morning and found the above waiting for me with a belated birthday wish from the Dreamcatcher.  It’s a lovely little poem; you can follow the link to read the rest of it.  A quick Google search revealed that Mr. Duggan is quite prolific and that a lot of his work is available online.  The site I linked to above had nearly 500 pages of his work alone, possibly more.

So what’s new?  I’ve been rubbish at posting since the new year struck.  I’ve been struggling to get into a routine – any routine – this year and I’ve had some other things weighing me down as well.  Hopefully I’ll have all that unpleasantness resolved soon and I can start making progress on the rest of my goals for the year.

Speaking of goals for the year, I’ve passed 40k on my sequel.

Greetings from somewhere in Chapter 15!

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Well, since it’s been a while since I’ve posted an update, here’s what’s new with my WIP:

  • I’m working on Chapter 15.  The holidays killed my writing schedule.
  • I’m mostly writing during my lunch breaks.  This means I’m not getting much writing done outside of that one hour a day, and I feel like I should be doing more.  It’s causing some angst.

  • This is how I look when I’m editing, when I’m thinking about editing, and occasionally when I’m writing.

    The urge to edit is rearing its ugly head again.  I’m fighting it, but wondering if my fight is in vain.

  • I’m also revising The Lokana Chronicles again with help from the wonderful Ryan Holmes, and have caught a couple bad habits popping up as I write.  It’s so much easier to just stop myself from writing them in the first place than it is to go back and fix them later.
  • I seem to have hit that point where writing becomes work.  The new has worn off; my story and I have left the honeymoon period where everything is all butterflies and rainbows and unicorns and love.  Now we’ve hit the teen years, where I find it annoying and it hates me and is all, “God!  Parents just don’t understand!” and I’m all, “Teenagers!  So irresponsible!” in my best Sebastian voice (you know, from The Little Mermaid), even though I really suck at voices.  But we’ll get through it, I know we will, and then the really hard work will begin. *sigh*

And now, the snippet!

D-Day for Pitch Wars

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Well, today was announcement day for the Pitch Wars competition.  Sadly, I was not selected by any of the awesome mentors.  But!  I did get some fantastic feedback from two of the three mentors I submitted to, which I was totally not expecting.  That kinda made my day, actually.  Of course, like any author who has sent out a query and had it rejected, I wish the feedback could have been a little more specific and/or had some suggestions for ways to improve, but I know they were all very busy and swamped and I am super grateful for what I got.  However, back to the drawing board go I.

I hadn’t really expected to be chosen.  And I’ve spent the last week or so kicking myself for submitting so early because I took some advice I received during GUTGAA and used it to hopefully fix up my first page.  Whether it would have made a difference or not, I’ll never know, of course, but I really regretted my itchy typing fingers.

If you’d like to find out what I’ll be up to next, or if you’re interested in witnessing a small mental collapse of sorts, then click on through. There might even be chocolate.

The writer speaks

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Friday morning, I visited the third graders at Reinbeck Elementary School.  The kids were all lovely and quite attentive while I prattled on about poetry and writing, punctuated by the occasional attempt at humor.  (My suspicions that I’m not funny were confirmed – not one kid cracked a single smile.)

Mrs. Fleshner introduced me by saying how surprised she was to discover an author in their midst. I imagine it was something of a surprise; I’ve known her a couple years now, as Tadpole had her for third grade last year and nothing was ever said of my writing then.  But at conferences this year, we happened to get on the subject of books and how we just don’t have the time to read as much or as often as we would like.  I said that my problem was that I wanted to both read books and write them, but I didn’t have the time to do both, and that was how we ended up discussing my writing.  She invited me to speak to the class, and I agreed, despite my intense dislike of public speaking.

I surprised her again when I arrived a bit early, laden with visual aids.

Barren Island Books

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This has been a busy week for me!  It seems I’ve had something going on every night and even when I didn’t have to be somewhere, I still had plenty to do.  Last night, for instance, I had to bake seven dozen (84) cookies for my church’s cookie walk this weekend.  I found a recipe that claimed to make approximately six dozen (72) cookies.  I thought, “Okay, I’ll make small cookies and then I’ll be able to squeeze an extra dozen out of the dough.”

I ended up with a hundred and sixteen cookies.  That’s almost ten dozen.

Tonight, I have to work on my presentation for tomorrow morning.  But this afternoon, you can find me visiting with my good friend, A.F.E. Smith, at her blog, Reflections of Reality.  She’s just started a new weekly feature called “Barren Island Books” and today’s post features me.  If you’re interested in finding out a bit more about what sort of books I enjoy reading, head on over and check it out!

And even if you couldn’t care less about what I like to read, do check out the rest of her website.  A.F.E. is a great writer and has a wonderful site, full of neat odds and ends.  You won’t regret visiting her, I promise.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

To the journey

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This was originally posted on Griffin’s Quill on November 30 as a reflection on Goal Achievement Month for Authors. I had planned to post it here as well a bit sooner than this, but, well, you know how it goes…

Hmm…

I started this, my GAMA post, on November 7.  You can see how well that went for me.

November disappeared on me this year.  I was all set to do GAMA and NaNoWriMo and have a fantabulous month.  But you know that old saying about the best laid plans of mice and men?  Well, I used to know it, too.  Then November snuck up behind me and walloped me over the head with this really cool frying pan I saw on the FAIL Blog the other night.  Now I have no memory of pretty much anything beyond the last five minutes.

I’m like Dory from Finding Nemo, only hopefully much more endearing and much less annoying.