Category: The Lokana Chronicles

A sneak peek…and news

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The finalists for the GUTGAA agent contest won’t officially be announced till Friday, but it’s not looking good for me so far.  As of right now, only three people have stopped by to comment on my entry (how many have actually looked at it is anyone’s guess) and none of them were judges.  I won’t lie, I’m disappointed.  I was really hoping to make it through to round two and possible see a request come my way.  But I have been having a lot of fun with the whole blogfest and I’ve made a lot of new friends and I’m really happy for everyone who is moving on.  There are a ton of talented writers out there and the ones getting through deserve all their hard-earned success.  The small press competition is coming up, but I’m not going to be competing in that.  Good luck to those of you who are!

FYI, if you want to enter the small press competition, you need to sign up here.

So back to querying I go.  Between GUTGAA and PitMad, I’ve acquired some new people to add to my query list, which is also helpful.  The GUTGAA pitch polish helped me fine-tune my query pitch and the comments I received on it in my agent contest entry were favorable.  See?  Good things, right?  Plus, PitMad was good exposure since I was throwing out pitches every half hour or so, right?  Visibility is good, right?  I’m working on the power of positive thinking here, people.

I think I need to keep working on my positivity skills.

Would you like a peek at what I’ve been working on the last couple of days?

Vote for Vegin!

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Cast your votes for Vegin Martoka today!  He’s been nominated for President of the United States of America and I think he would be a great leader for our country in this difficult time.  After all, he led Lokana through one of the most turbulent times in its history, dealing with the devastating droughts and the assassination of his parents, as well as the attempted coup by the Zealots, led by his own brother-in-law, Balil.

Vegin believes all men – and women – were created equal and will make sure that all are treated equally before the law.  He despises corruption and has ousted corrupt officials from every level of government.  A family man, Vegin strives to lead by example.  Honor, decency, and integrity are very important to him.  He is a team player, willing to compromise when needed, and believes that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

So vote for Vegin!  Click here to cast your vote.  He will lead Lokana – erm, America, sorry – back to glory! 😀

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Sunday chat

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Ah, Sundays.  Those lazy days before Mondays and work and craziness are days to be treasured.  This particular Sunday, you can find me chatting with romance author Tory Richards over at her blog, Romance with an Attitude.  We talk about writing and family and some other completely random things.  Why not check it out?

Tomorrow the fun will really begin with GUTGAA.  Actually, I’ve been having quite a lot of fun with it already, as there are quite a lot of lovely people to chat with on the Twitter hashtag #GUTGAA.  I also received some helpful advice during the pitch polish event.  Now I’ll get to see how well I implemented it…

And now I think it’s time for a nap.  Yep, this is one lazy Sunday. 🙂

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

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Pitching like crazy!

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If you follow me on Twitter, then chances are you’ll have seen me tweeting like mad today about Vegin, Anná, and the goings-on in Lokana.  If you follow me here, then chances are you know that brevity is not my strong suit, which means that a pitch session on Twitter is guaranteed to make my brain explode.  I have two reasonably decent short pitches that fit within Twitter limits and still leave room for hashtags.  Coming up with others, though, has given me one heck of a headache.

Agents a-plenty lurked about the hashtag #PitMad today, scoping out all the pitches you could handle.  Tweets were flying fast and furious and without TweetDeck, I’m afraid I’d have been lost.  Heck, even with it, I was afraid I’d be lost!  TweetDeck’s lovely columns feature kept me scrolling along in real time, so there was slightly less confusion.  I’ll take any reduction in confusion I can get these days.  Anyway, so with agents lurking, authors were pitching their books in 140 characters or less and boy, was it crazy!  Here are some of the different ways I came up with to pitch The Lokana Chronicles:

One man longs to transform his kingdom…

Gearing up to get an agent!

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So!  I’ve been a bit absent (as well as a bit absent-minded) lately, but here’s hoping that September will be an all-around better month, both for my blogging habits and my sanity.  My stress levels have dropped considerably since getting my revised version of The Lokana Chronicles sent off to its requester, and I’ve even had some time to read a few books.  Talk about relaxing!  It was really nice to read books not intended for children ages 5 and under for a change, though I must admit that the ending to one of them is still pestering me.  If it continues to do so, I may have to write up a separate post.  I may do so regardless. 😉

Anyway, you may or may not have noticed the Gearing Up to Get an Agent Blogfest button that appeared in my sidebar a few days ago.  Someone on Facebook was kind enough to point me in the direction of Ms. Deana Barnhart’s lovely blog and this blogfest in particular and once I’d had a look to see what it was all about, how could I say no?  Even if it’s a longshot at getting an agent, I’m sure to meet lots of lovely new people and have some fun doing so.

So!  The rules!  Of course, all good things must come with rules.  (Wow, can you tell the books I’ve been reading were set in the nineteenth century or what?)  The rules are simple.  Answer the following questions, include a brief bio, visit other blogs over the course of the week.  Simple enough, right?  Right.  And now, the questions… behind the cut!

The Lokana Chronicles, an excerpt

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Since I’ve finally managed to get things finished up with The Lokana Chronicles for the time being, I thought I’d share a couple of excerpts with all you lovely folks.  The first chapter is available here, but these tidbits come from a little further into the story.  Happy reading!

***

After months of siege, the royal army was exhausted; both supplies and morale were low and getting lower.  It was noon when the Zealot army broke through the city gates.

***

Anná
Artwork by Hazel Butler

Henry crouched next to the door, but all he could hear at first was the murmur of muffled voices.  He waved a hand at John to be quiet as he pressed his ear closer to the door.  Where’s a glass when you really need one? he wondered silently as he tried to make out what was being said.  Voices suddenly rose.  Henry recognized Vegin’s as the loudest.  “They’re talking about Anná,” he whispered.  It had taken both brothers a long time to acclimate their tongues to the change in pronunciation.  “Something about Ravenna…”  Henry’s breath caught in his throat as he realized what was happening.

John tapped his brother on the shoulder, worried.  “What is it?  What did you hear?”  But Henry didn’t move, didn’t respond.  He just sat there, stunned, the same way he’d done a hundred times before as a kid playing freeze tag.  Only this time, they weren’t kids.  And this was no game.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

She’s a-gone!

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That’s it!  I’ve finished!  Yes, that’s right, again, I’ve finally finished again.  But this time I mean it.  I just hit send on an email to someone who requested my full manuscript.  So now I really am done.  And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go breathe into a brown paper bag for a bit and then maybe read a book.  For fun!

I know, I’m such a party girl. 😛

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

To the writing cave!

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Once again, I’m hunkered down, making revisions.  Once again, I spy a light at the end of the tunnel.  I know I’ve said this about a dozen times, but I’ve entered the homestretch and man, does it feel good!

So forgive the sparseness of my posts of late.  I hope to be back to something approaching normal sometime soon. 🙂

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

The importance of proofreading

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So I’ve been proofreading my novel before sending it out into the wide world on a full request from a query.  It’s a good thing, too, because last night, on the verge of sleep, I found a large, economy-sized error.  This was the kind of error that made me cringe in terror, the kind of error that, had I not found it prior to sending out my manuscript, would have caused me to actually pull hair out of my head.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is the stuff of which nightmares are made.

This error was more than a little typo, more than a minor spellcheck oversight.  I had done some major rearranging of text and failed to delete the redundancies at one point, but then thought I had it all taken care of.  I happily went about printing off my final hard copy and set to reading through it, making a note of each instance where something needed to be fixed (and I’m not talking about instances where I decided that something sounded better if I wrote it differently – I’m talking about instances like where I said witting instead of sitting or considering when I meant consider).

Then I discovered that Chapter 13 needed to be deleted.

Not just a portion of it, oh, no.  The whole thing had to go.  I was falling asleep reading because I was absolutely exhausted, yet I was awake enough to realize that I had just read the opening to Chapter 13 ten minutes earlier…in Chapter 11.  I flipped quickly through Chapter 13, then back through the three preceding chapters and discovered that Chapter 13 contained parts of Chapters 10, 11, and 12.  Talk about en epic facepalm.

Prior to this discovery, I’d been considering just winging the whole proofing bit.  I knew there were a couple of places that I needed to hammer out a bit more, but I thought that once I got those straightened out, I could probably just give it a rest and then send it on in.  Boy, am I glad I talked myself out of that idea!  Part of me is really anxious to get this whole proofing project done with because I’m impatient, but fortunately the logical side of me is louder and knows that I need to take my time and do it right.  Yay logic! 🙂

And now, back to the grindstone.  I’ve got some more polishing to do.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

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Holy cannoli, Batman, I’ve finished!

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That’s right, I’ve finished the revisions!  Again!  For good (I hope)!  And now, a stats breakdown, because I’ve been staring at spreadsheets all day and decided to do one of my own because my spreadsheets are better:

  • Final word count (excluding chapter headings, title page, and header info): 101,561
  • Final page count: 356
  • Average number of words per page: 285.28

Once again, I’ve printed a hard copy to look over before I get it sent off.  Seymour has graciously offered to go over it for me, and I hope he’ll find the time to do it before next year because he is an excellent editor.  He just has even less time than me. *sigh*

I could do with a nap in one of these right now!
Photo courtesy of Jessie Harrell via WANA Commons

So tonight, now that all my hard work is done (I hope), I’m going to leave my laptop turned off, pop in a lovely Disney movie, and spend some time with my long-suffering family.  They deserve it, I deserve it, and more importantly, my brain needs a rest!  Of course, I could always amuse myself by trolling the internet for fun things to post on the ’90s Kid Facebook page.  That’s always a fun time!  Incidentally, if the nostalgia bug hasn’t bitten you yet, check it out.  You may wind up with a severe case.  I know I have! 🙂

Okay, time to go.  Must load up with good food, good tunes, good drinks, and good rest!  After all, I’ve got another vacation coming up, and as anyone who’s followed my previous vacation posts already knows, I’ll be in serious need of a vacation to recover from it, so I had better rest while I can.  Happy Tuesday, y’all! ♥

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.