Photo Friday: Beginnings

October 10, 20147 Comments

This picture actually features a beginning as well as a middle and an end:

IMG_20141010_120259

The top notebook (as well as the draft beneath it) contains my revisions for The Price of Mercy. I’m just over halfway through the rewrite/revision process, judging by total page count. Of course, I still have a lot of work ahead, but I hope I’ll be able to start querying in January. It’s definitely a stronger story now than when I initially queried it a couple of years ago (I still don’t know what I was thinking then).

But the bottom notebook holds a brand new short story that I started working on late yesterday afternoon. It’s not as fluffy as my usual work, but I hope it’s good.

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and check out her beginnings!

Run away!

September 26, 20142 Comments

Wait! No, please don’t run away! That was supposed to be funny…You know, and make you think of this…

Or even this:

Or, better yet, this:

It’s release day for Running Away, the second book in Julie Hutchings Shinigami series, and I’m super excited to help her celebrate! But what’s behind this pretty cover?

Photo Friday: Stories!

September 19, 20145 Comments

So today’s prompt is about stories. Quite convenient, really, as I just posted an interview with the main character from The Price of Mercy.

story

Revision work continues. I got absolutely nothing done on it yesterday, but I managed to eke out a few paragraphs this noon while on my lunch break. I wish either a.) that lunch breaks were longer so I could get more done, or b.) that someone would pay me to stay home and write all day.

Since neither of those things are likely to happen anytime soon, I guess I’ll just have to keep plugging away a few minutes at a time. Don’t forget to check out Charnele’s blog and see what stories she’s into. Happy Friday, everybody!

A belated stop on the Main Character Blog Hop!

September 19, 20143 Comments

I was tagged in this bit o’ fun by the awesome Justine Manzano, a fellow legal secretary/writer/geek/mom to whom Twitter was kind enough to introduce me. (I seriously love making new friends.) It was supposed to have gone up on Monday (the 15th). Yeah, that didn’t happen.

Whoops.

Anyway, better late than never, right?

J Manzano Bio Picture Justine Manzano is a multi-genre writer living in Bronx, NY with her husband, son, and a cacophony of cats. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthology Things You Can Create, Sliver of Stone Magazine, and The Greenwich Village Literary Review. She maintains a semi-monthly blog at JustineManzano.com and a twitter account where she discusses her adventures in juggling aspects of her life such as motherhood, writing, and the very serious businesses of fangirling and multiple forms of geekery. She works as a fiction reader for Sucker Literary Magazine and is currently searching for a publishing home for her YA Urban Fantasy series, Keys and Guardians.

The first book in Justine’s series is called The Order of the Key. What’s it about? So glad you asked! Here’s the blurb:

Jacklyn Madison has a thing for heroes. She reads about them, watches them on TV, and would very much like to become one. When a monster makes an attempt on her life she discovers she is one – the long lost member of The Order of the Key, a group that protects humanity from creatures that come through interdimensional rifts. It’s all fun and games until training for her duties reveals the Order’s out of touch views – Keys, like Jacklyn, are protected while Guardians, like the rest of her family, are expendable. As she rails against their value system, she finds herself in the center of a power struggle between the group’s leader, Lavinia, and her idealistic son, Kyp – the boy Jacklyn likes. Worse, Kyp’s attempts to protect her only entangle her in a mire of deceit. Viewed as a target on one side and a weapon on the other, Jacklyn must find a way to protect the people she loves and decide what kind of hero she’s willing to become. Filled with action, romance, and paranoia, The Order of the Key is an edgy Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy novel that is currently searching for a home with an agent.

I love the name Lavinia. It’s so pretty and old-fashioned. 🙂

And now it’s my turn! Here to answer a few questions about himself is…

Photo 365 #32

September 8, 20143 Comments

If there’s one thing I love, it’s writing. Of course, I also love music. Put the two together and I’m a happy girl. 🙂

notes

What’s that? That’s my pretty new necklace from our trip to Northeast Iowa over the long weekend and a brand new short story, inspired by today’s prompt on The Daily Post. I’ll post it just as soon as it’s finished.

But for now? Back to work. While the thunder lasts. 🙂

Tuesday Daydreams now on Smashwords!

September 6, 20145 Comments

TDSW At long last (seriously, it’s taken a while), I’ve made Tuesday Daydreams: A Journal in Verse available on Smashwords. You can now read all my silly little poems in a variety of formats!

I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to this – I intended to do it shortly after initial publication two and a half years ago, but I never did. It was pretty simple, for the most part. And now I know what I need to do to get the follow-up volume ready to go!

With the Smashwords edition comes a new cover. I’m not sure I like it yet, but it’ll do for now, I suppose. I’ve added the new cover to the Kindle version as well, but it may not be live till tomorrow. As for the paperback…it’s sticking with the old cover for now.

So! If you’d like to get your hands on a copy, check out Amazon and Smashwords!

Photo 365 #20

August 27, 2014January 12, 20159 Comments

Today’s photo post is accompanied by a little piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the humid heat of an Iowa summer combined with the indescribable heat of a hot flash. It’s more an experiment in painting with words than anything else, and I hope I’ve achieved what I set out to do (which is to attempt to convey the misery of having a hot flash in high summer). Comment away and let me know how I’ve done!

Impressive, no?

I stepped out of my perfectly climate-controlled office…

I got a review!

August 14, 2014August 13, 201411 Comments

tdproof I don’t talk much about my little poetry book, Tuesday Daydreams: A Journal in Verse. You may not have even known it existed till now, though there’s a link to it in my blog’s header. I haven’t done a lot of promotion for it, but it’s sold a few copies, which is pretty awesome for something that started out as a Christmas gift for a friend.

So when I got my very first review of it on Tuesday, I was pretty excited. Pretty darn excited, actually. So if you like poetry, maybe check it out? And if you do, leave a review! Reviews can really make someone’s day. 🙂

Well, I’ve done it…

August 10, 2014August 9, 20148 Comments

I went and uploaded a portion of The Price of Mercy on Authonomy again. I’m still revising, but it would be nice to get a little feedback on the revisions I’ve made so far. If you’re so inclined, you can check it out here. If you’re a member of the site, please feel free to leave me all the constructive criticism you’ve got – I’ve decided that when I finish this round of revisions, I’m going to query again and if I don’t get anywhere with it, then I’ll self-publish, so I need all the eyes on it I can get.

Also, I spent a fair chunk of time yesterday afternoon working on a cover because I didn’t like any of the generic ones they had. I’m not sure how well it works for this book yet – I still think it might be better-suited to the second book in the series – but what do you think? What do you like/dislike about it?

Hope you’re having a marvelous weekend!

Photo Friday: Lunch

August 8, 2014August 22, 20147 Comments

Today’s theme is lunch. I had leftover pizza from Pizza Hut, and failed to take a picture of it, but I didn’t figure anyone really wanted to see two soggy slices of pepperoni pizza, anyway.

Instead, here’s a pretty picture of what I spent the rest of my lunch break doing:

Revisions. *sigh*

I relish my lunch breaks at work because I get a whole hour to myself, uninterrupted, to write or read or sleep. Because I tend to lose myself in whatever story I find myself occupied with (whether it’s mine or someone else’s), I have an alarm set on my phone so that I’m not late getting back to the daily grind. It’s not a fool-proof system – my alarm fails on occasion – but it generally works.

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and see what she did for lunch today! Have a great weekend, everybody! 🙂