Hey, everybody! It’s a beautiful Thursday afternoon and I woke up to some amazing news this morning, so I’ve decided to put my books on sale. From now until April 1, 2015, you can pick up Tuesday Daydreams and A Song for All Seasons for just $1.99! Find them on Smashwords and enter coupon code WN73K for Tuesday Daydreams or coupon code JR38E for A Song for All Seasons.
Enjoy, and have a great day! 🙂
(c) 2015. All rights reserved.
After months of only creeping, inching progress on my rewrite, I’ve finally managed to stitch together two parts of my book with all-new material. Writing the all-new stuff was like pulling teeth; the words often flat-out refused to come.
I hate when writing is like that.
Nevertheless, I pushed through it. I’m fairly certain that most of what I wrote is rubbish, but that’s what revising is for, right? Polishing up the parts you don’t like?
At long last, I’m back to the polishing part. The writing is going much more smoothly now that I’m in full-on polishing mode. Still, part of me can’t believe how bad some of what I’d written is. There are parts that are positively purple; they remind me of the steady diet of soap operas I consumed as a teenager. There are parts that just don’t read quite right, for some reason; they have me in agony as I can’t quite figure out what’s wrong, never mind how to fix them.
And then there are the parts that just make me cringe, like whole-body, might-possibly-be-mistaken-for-a-seizure-type cringing. People’s Exhibit A: the two-paragraph section where I started four consecutive sentences with the word he. Talk about an epic facepalm moment.
*cringe*
*groans*
*cries*
For the most part, I love writing. I love the act of writing, the sheer physical quality of my pencil scratching out worlds across the paper; I love rewriting and making things shine. But at the moment, I seem mired in the depths of suck, where everything is hard and it’s not looking to improve any time soon. Maybe it’s because I’m exhausted and stressed about things other than writing; maybe it’s because I’ve been working on this story for ten years and I don’t feel any closer to finishing it now than I did when I started it.
Whatever the reason, I’m ready to be overwhelmed by the joy of writing again. It’s been a long while since I’ve experienced the euphoria of having written something that you know in the marrow of your bones is good. It’s addicting, that feeling.
I know I’ll find it again, but when everything else is so gray, too, it’s hard to bear that in mind. In the meantime, thank goodness for things like this:
If you’re worried about not being good enough? Hey, let’s remember, I wasn’t good enough for 17 years. (If you read some of my negative reviews, then ha ha ha, oops, I’m still not good enough.) … Keep at it. Eventually you’ll knock over that brick wall if you commit to the vigorous act of endless headbutting. -Chuck Wendig
Check out the whole article here. It’s well worth the read.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the vigorous act of endless headbutting.
*grabs economy-size bottle of ibuprofen*
*scampers off to writing cave*
(c) 2015. All rights reserved.
Yesterday was a great day. I hung out with family, I ate great food, I watched Buffy, I wrote. A lot. Well, more than I have been lately, at any rate.
And then last night, after suffering through the UNI defeat vicariously through Seymour, I was rudely awakened about 2:30 a.m. by the crash of thunder. Jagged streaks of lightning ripped apart the sky outside my window as the wind howled in agony. Something clicked and clacked against the window, and I groaned.
When I awoke this morning, these pretty little pellets were all over the place. School delayed two hours to give the road crews a chance to clear the highways. But I still had to venture out on time this morning, braving the ice-slicked roads to get to work.
Luckily, the road we live on was the worst. Once I hit the east-west road that takes me the majority of the way to work, the roads were much less slick. I’m grateful that we haven’t had more ice this year, and I hope we won’t have any more storms like the one we had last night until it’s warm enough that the rain stays liquid.
(c) 2015. All rights reserved.
Yes, it’s another award post. Apparently, ’tis the season. This time, I’ve been nominated for the Liebster Award by Fantasy Angel of the Avid Reader Blog. I get to answer eleven questions about myself before asking eleven more of my nominees. Fun, huh?
I’ve been nominated for this one once before, and if you care to read my answers from a couple years ago, you can find that post here.
Now then, let’s begin:
Which fictional character are you most like?
I think I’m a lot like Hermione Granger. We’re both bookish, and I always feel like I don’t quite fit in, which Hermione definitely didn’t at the start of the series.
It’s not much, but it took me all weekend:
Of course, that’s probably because we cleaned all day Saturday in advance of my in-laws visiting, and then it was off to a neighboring town for the Army Field Band concert, and then there was volleyball practice and a trip to the doctor and general recovery from the lack of sleep inflicted by Daylight Savings Time.
I’m ready to fall back now. No need to wait till October – let’s do it tonight! Who’s with me? 😀
(c) 2015. All rights reserved.
The very kind (and very talented!) Mark Nolan has nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. This is the fourth time I’ve been nominated (the second time this year, even!), and while these sorts of things are always fun, I am fresh out of interesting things to say today.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to share one answer from each of my previous posts, which you can read in full here, here, and here:
1. I’m ready to head somewhere warm and stay till spring. Yesterday when I left for work, it was -11°F with a windchill of -27°F. This morning, it was -13°F with a windchill of -38°F. Our windows are horribly drafty and our heaters are on their last leg. I am so over this winter. (from my third award)
A Song for All Seasons, my latest poetry book, is now available for pre-order at Amazon and Smashwords!
A Song for All Seasons is my second poetry book and features poems on the beauty of the world around me, as well as a few musings on life, love, and everything in between. A print version is also in the works, and I’ve set March 13 for the release day.
I’m pretty excited, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading these poems as much as I enjoy writing them. 🙂
(c) 2015. All rights reserved.
I was reading the latest post from Miss Snark’s First Victim this afternoon and was completely inspired – it’s like Authoress was reading my mind! So I thought, hey, that would make a good post…
So many irons in the fire…
…and then I came home and fixed supper and read to the boys and sat down to work on one of my many projects and ate supper and put the boys to bed and watched Buffy with Bubbles and Seymour and suddenly, I couldn’t remember what it was I wanted to say.
Here’s the post. Check it out, leave Authoress some love, and have a great night. 🙂
(c) 2015. All rights reserved.
With me today is Callum McLaughlin, author of The Vessel, False Awakening, and Seeking Solace. He’s graciously agreed to talk poetry with me, and I hope you’ll have as much fun reading about his work as I did. 🙂
KK: So, how long have you been writing poetry?
CM: I’ve been writing in virtually every capacity since childhood. My earliest memory specifically associated with poetry is when I won a school competition aged 10 and I’ve been interested in the art form ever since. The poems included in Seeking Solace were written throughout the last couple of years, which is when I’d say I started really taking it seriously and falling more and more in love with it.
KK: We have something in common there – I wrote my first poem at age ten for a summer homework assignment. 🙂 What got you interested in poetry?
Last October, I was fortunate to host Callum McLaughlin, a wonderful writer who was publishing a new novel. Well, today he’s back, this time with a poetry book called Seeking Solace:
Seeking Solace is a collection of sixty poems that span a variety of topics and touch on universal aspects of modern life, from nature and war to friendship, love and grief, with many others in between.
From the very air we breathe to the wholly make-believe, regardless of whether inspiration has come from the world around us or the most whimsical of dreams, the one common thread that unites them all is a desire to create poetry that is both approachable and relatable.
Seeking Solace released earlier this week, and it looks fantastic. I love reading poetry as much as I love writing it, and this book makes me want to hold on and not let go. And I haven’t even read it yet! But how could you not love a book with such a beautiful cover?
Besides, I’ve got an amazing excerpt:
I could stare at this image all day (and indeed, I just might). But where can you get your copy? So glad you asked! Seeking Solace is available from Amazon and Amazon UK, and you can also find it on Goodreads. And stay tuned, because I’ll be interviewing the author himself in a future post!
Have a great weekend, and enjoy Seeking Solace! 🙂
(c) 2015. All rights reserved.
Suddenly they all died. The end. 