I’ve been hard at work on Remnants again lately for Camp Nano. I have a small word count goal – just 5,000 words, give or take – and I have no idea how close I am to hitting it. But I inadvertantly skipped over a major portion of the story during a writing spree a few months ago, and now I have to go back and fix it, so if I can at least get that accomplished, then I’ll consider camp a success.
Meanwhile, here’s a little taste of what all that fixing has wrought…
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.
Today, I’m interviewing Andrea Baker, a fabulous friend whose book, Worlds Apart – Leah, is well worth checking out. So grab a nice cup of tea, get comfy, and settle in to learn more about this wonderful author!
AB: Hi, Kay, and thank you for inviting me onto your blog – I love the title of this blog; it always makes me smile.
KK: You’re most welcome! I’m always tickled when people tell me how much they like my blog’s title – titles are really hard for me, so it’s nice to know I picked a good one for my blog. So, tell us a little about yourself.
AB: I’m pretty ordinary really – daughter, sister, wife and mother to a gorgeous and cheeky little nine-year-old girl.
I work full-time as an Interim Manager. This means that I tend to have short term (usually at least 3 months) contracts with different clients, covering projects, service transformation and that sort of thing.
I’ve always loved the paranormal genre – I’ve always referred to my favourites as being the “edge of reality” stories, where they are based in the real world, but unreal happens. Because it is my favourite genre to both read and watch, it was natural for me to write it too.
KK: Write what you know, eh? Have you always written, or is it a recently discovered passion?
Mars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Today’s post is brought to you by Thursday’s Children, a weekly blog hop about the things that inspire people to write. I meant to get a post up for last week’s hop, but that didn’t happen. Must…be…better…blogger…
If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen my brain explode the other day. This happens on a fairly regular basis, but not always in a public forum. I was working away on my short story, the one that I’ve been trying to get posted for close to a month (I think – too lazy to go look), and it suddenly decided that it needed to become a full-fledged novel instead of a simple short story. Does this sound familiar to anyone out there? I think I might have had one slice too many of the Dark Lord’s cake…
So 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.
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.
Having a good idea is only half the battle. Executing that idea into a book takes time, patience, and plenty of caffeine. -Brian Klems
(c) 2013. All rights reserved.
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:
Hey #QueryKombat tweeps. I’m writing today but I’m in the mood to make friends. Anyone want me to read their queries? #QueryKombatSlush
— Stacey Trombley (@Trombolii) May 21, 2013
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…
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.
Suddenly they all died. The end. 