FTDB - Day 8

So the home improvement yesterday went a little differently than originally planned. See, we *thought* we’d be taking a quick class in the morning and then putting our brand new knowledge to use in the afternoon, refinishing the bathroom in a house one of my family members wants to fix up and rent. Well… the half-hour class started a half-hour late and turned into a two hour odyssey after which the very helpful demonstrator took us around the store and showed us what to buy.

So three hours, no breakfast, aching feet and one hundred and fifty dollars later, we still hadn’t done any home improvement, but we knew a lot more about what we needed to do. And we had the right equipment. So those were two good things. We had to eat, so instead of going out to the rental property, we went home and chowed down. Our original intentions of stopping along the way and making a picnic of it out at the property disolved in favor of the goodies we knew were waiting in my fridge. LOL

Now, aside from all the day-laborer stuff, I did still manage to write yesterday as well. I came up with a semi-new idea (for me) involving cat shifters and ways to make them purrrrrrrrrr. (Yes, I was writing a love scene. LOL) I adjusted the word count goal upward and decided to add a scene which I think rounds out the story nicely and will give readers a good feeling on which to end the story. I like my Happily Ever Afters, and this will just give it a little extra oomph. I managed to write over 3,000 words — a nice amount for a day when I was really devoting most of my time and energy to other endeavors.

And the best news is, all that’s left is a little cleanup and “The Damn Book” is “Finished!” Yay!!! I want to give it a thorough read-through and polish it up a bit, but the major structural work is done. Thank goodness. I always feel really great when I finish a task, and finishing a book feels even better. Time for a little celebration! Woo-hoo!

FTDB - Day 7

New Cover! Wings of Change & FTDB - Day 6

Here’s the sparkling new cover for the ebook version of my next Dragon Knights story, Wings of Change. This story will eventually be part of the print anthology titled I Dream of Dragons, due out next Spring from Samhain Publishing, but each of the stories will be released first as ebooks this coming September.

This is the story of how an in jured dragon brings two knights together with the woman meant just for them. There’s lots of magic, new magical creatures and a whole lotta love in this story.

I’m just thrilled with the new cover! I got a little sidetracked ordering promo items again yesterday, so my Finish The Damn Book quest got a little stalled.

I also started the day yesterday, by having an IM chat with my friend Serena (Hi, Serena!) and she gave me a good, stern talking to. (Thanks, Serena!) See, I’ve been meaning to find a home for a futuristic trilogy I’ve been working on for some time now. I’d hoped to try one of the bigger publishers, but I really need to get off my butt and polish it up to send. Submitting to a traditional NY publisher is a little more annoying than sub’ing to an epublisher. You have to print everything out and do SASE’s and jump through hoops with miniature poodles. Well, not the last bit, but you get the idea.

So yesterday, I finally got the first three chapters (what we call a “partial” in the industry) of the book together and started working on it. I know I really should have been finishing up my WIP or working on those edits, but this is also a pretty high priority for me and after that chat with Serena, I was energized to work on this yesterday.

What I learned is that the partial needs a bit more polishing, but I got the cover letter done as well as the synopsis. Yay! Both are printed and just waiting for the first three chapters to get pretty enough to print. So I’m not too upset with myself. I still wrote - or worked on writing - all day and got a lot done.

I started off this morning with a new scene I want to add to the WIP, so it’s all good. I’m going to work on that a bit more now. I took a break and had lunch at the beach because I had to do an errand down that way, but I didn’t stick around ’cause it’s the Summer and all the city people crowd the beaches on Long Island during the Summer - not to mention all the teenage hoodlums on Summer vacation from school. I prefer the beach (a 15-20 minute drive for me) in the Spring and Fall and also near sunrise or sunset. I don’t tan, so the heat of the day means SPF 1 million and a hat. Not fun. Still, I love the ocean and the sound of the waves. I might even try to wake up super early tomorrow and go take a long walk down there… It would be fun, but Saturdays are rough becuase the place gets descended on by the hordes. LOL.

Anyway, I’m back home now and set to work more on the WIP, so it’s all good.

New Stickers! & FTDB - Day 5

FTDB - Day 4

FTDB - Day 3

Success! Even with all the traveling I did yesterday, I managed to write just over 3,000 words. Pretty good for a day when I was running from state to state, cleaning house and packing and unpacking my car.  

I used a little trick I’ve found helpful in the past… I skipped ahead in the manuscript to a new scene that was clear in my mind and left the one that was giving me trouble hanging. I’ve been agonizing over a climactic fight scene for weeks now and it’s like pulling teeth. I get maybe a few paragraphs written before I have to stop and think it through again. It’s really horrible. I’m hoping that when I have the rest of the book written, the choreography of that fight scene will be clearer for me and I’ll be able to fill it in relatively easily.

Sometimes I find that when I’m stuck on a scene or spinning my wheels, it’s because in the grand scheme of things, that scene really needed to end and pick up fresh someplace else. That only comes clear to me when I see how the next part of the book plays out, so skipping ahead can really help.

I don’t mean to imply that I don’t have a plan for the book before I start. I do. I know just how I want it to end and how I want - generally - to get there, but often the path changes from the loose outline I start with. I like that. It keeps me on my toes and keeps things fresh and interesting for me as I write. I know other writers are stricter with the way they outline, then write, but that method just doesn’t offer me any freedom or fun, and bottom line, if it’s not fun for me to write, I seriously doubt it’ll be fun for you to read! lol.

My plan for today — write more!

a demain,
B.

PS - I posted a teeny tiny snippet from the book on the Daughters of Circe Yahoo group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/daughters_of_circe/ I’ll be posting more there each day or two, just to let you know what I’ve been up to.

FTDB - Day 2

I decided it would be easier to report on each day’s progress the following day, so this is what happened yesterday on the writing front… not much.

Actually, it wasn’t so bad because yesterday was one of those up and down days. I got a peek at the covers for the upcoming I Dream of Dragons anthology - each of the 5 stories that will be in the 2 installments of the anthology has a different cover and they all have a similar feel to them. They are absolutely GORGEOUS!!! I love the cover for my story, Wings of Change. It’s one of those headless torso covers, but different… the very rugged, almost scarred texture of the torso has a very cool blue dragon peeping over his shoulder. LOL. I think it fits the story very well and still fits with the other covers nicely.

So that inspired me to do a whirlwind ordering frenzy for promotional items. I’ve been meaning to design and order some things for my newer books since RT, but just hadn’t done it. This is important to do in advance of my September trip to Lora Leigh’s RAW (Reader Appreciation Weekend), where I plan to give out little goodie bags to all the attendees. The thing is, many of the items I’ll be giving away will require a little work on my part - attaching cards or stickers with my bookcovers and what have you. This takes a while - both to get the printing done (designing, ordering, printing, shipping) and to do all the attaching. So it’s imperitive that I start now to get everything ready in time.

Yesterday, I ordered bookmarks for Sons of Amber: Michael, which is scheduled for August 20 release from Phaze. I also designed and ordered stickers, cards, tags, notecards, and cover flats for Hara’s Legacy. Aside from the printed things, I also put in orders for a few hundred small, lilac organza bags and the yummy stuff I’m going to fill them with (I’m not tellin’ what ’til it’s done!), and 500 novelty items for Hara’s Legacy I’ll be giving away both at RAW, the NJ RWA conference in October, and next year’s RT if it goes over well (I’d have to order more). I got some other novelty items as well for Sons of Amber: Michael and my other upcoming book, Sweeter Than Wine. The inspiration actually came to me while I was trying to FTDB. I was writing a scene where the hero treats his lady to a sensual experience using something I can buy and give out as a promo item, so a-shopping I went!

Today though, it’s back to writing. I did manage to break the 60,000 word mark yesterday, so it wasn’t all fun and games and shopping. Today I hope to up that word count a little bit more. Not too much, because I’m traveling back home after a weekend away, so about 5 hours will be spent packing, driving and unpacking, but I do want to write a couple thousand words at least. We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck!

FTDB - Day 1

Hebras or Zorses?

These things are adorable! Zebra/horse hybrids. I had no idea such a thing could even exist, but a little research proved to me it wasn’t as unusual as I would have thought. For example, there was a Shetland Zorse born in the UK in 2001. According to the BBC, “The owners of the pony, called Tilly, had no idea she was pregnant when they bought her from a wildlife park, where she had been kept in a field with a male zebra.” 

The BBC story from 2001 has it wrong though, when they claim only “zorses” can be born - that would be a zebra father and horse momma. There also appears to be “hebras” - zebra momma and horse daddy, which is what caught my attention in a BBC video today. Just from what I’ve seen searching for pics on the internet, it seems the zorses have the base color of their mothers with stripes from their sires. The hebra seems to have patches of zebra and horse skin in odd locations.

There’s also an interesting website devoted solely to posting pics of these animals. They also have zonkeys - zebras crossed with donkeys. Weird stuff. The German zoo claims they want to try to breed the hebra mare that is now one of the main attractions at their zoo. I’d always heard horse/donkey hybrids - mules - were infertile. I wonder if the horse/zebra hybrid will prove to be the same. It would be interesting to see if the striped patterns pass down to subsequent generations, and just how much the resulting animal takes after one or the other of its ancestors.

Contests & Burnout

I think the Summer doldrums have hit me in a big way. I haven’t written anything new in a few days, which is a major bummer for me, though I did manage to get 2 entries off to the Romance Junkies Contest this year. Wish me luck! And thanks to Megan for kicking my butt and telling me to enter.

Oh, and the entries are under an assumed name so you can’t tell it’s me. That’s part of the rules and I think it’s a good thing so the results are fair. So I can’t tell you much about my entries. I just sent them in, so they’re not up yet, but other than that, good luck finding which two are mine! I might even send them a third (you’re allowed 3) if I can get another of my manuscripts polished enough to enter. I’ve sent 2 different categories already… maybe I could send something in a third category as well? I’ve got a lot of old manuscripts lying around on my hard drive waiting for me to get the energy up to pay them attention. (They’re so demanding! LOL)

Actually, I find it easier to just write new stuff than to go back to a manuscript I wrote YEARS ago and edit it to my current standards. It’s just so hard being objective about my own mistakes. I mean, I know my writing has improved by leaps and bounds just over the past year or two, so it’s kind of painful to go back to something I wrote almost a decade ago and see how pitiful I was back then. But I really like some of those old stories. The heroines were kick-ass and the situations full of daring-do. When I can work up the energy, I may just have to dust some of those off and bring them up to date - no matter how difficult it is.