I'm in Love! Plus, a Redonkulous Development

Hi, writer friends! I've been in the glorious raptures of writing the first draft of an awesome shiny new idea after a month trying to figure out what project I wanted to work on. After playing with several of the ideas in my idea folder, I had sudden inspiration one day for a totally new idea, and it stole me away from the others.

The project is new adult fantasy, and it's a really fun, unique idea that I think is pretty rad! I'm already about a third of the way through my first draft, and I've challenged myself to write 2k words a day so I can finish the draft by 11/1. I usually aim for 1k a day, since I work full time, but I wanted to challenge myself a bit. We'll see how it goes :) Since I then would have done the equivalent of NaNoWriMo, I think I might try to do an intense editing version of NaNo in November while everyone else is drafting.

Anyways, in other news, I have a new ass. A mini ass!

 

 

I am pleased to welcome Islington the mini donkey to the family! He will keep my horse Max company. He's super cute and sweet. I named him after the angel in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

 

So, that's what I've been up to lately. How about you? Are you doing any form of NaNo?

Passions

Last weekend I got to go to an international equestrian event that is held in my city each year. It's pretty exciting, because my city is not that big, so it's cool we have it here. I've loved horses since I was born practically, and been riding since I was nine (though I'm so busy I haven't done much riding in recent years). Anyways, here are some pics I took.

Sometimes I get to combine my passions and sneak equine things into my books (or in the case of my last book, have the entire thing involve horses). What are your other passions besides writing? Do you ever get to combine them?

Hope you're having an awesome week :)

My Ubiquitous - but Sparkly and Awesome - New Year's Post

I love sitting down on New Year’s Eve or Day and thinking about the year retrospectively, as well as the year ahead. Why do we do this? I don’t know. Maybe because it’s kind of cathartic to look at two big chunks of time simultaneously – the faded past, the hopeful future – and reflect. I’m the queen of reflecting and analyzing and planning, so a NYE post is perfect for that.

And blogging is actually perfect for looking back on your year because you’ve written down all the important stuff.  So that’s what I did before I started writing this. I looked back and read through many of my 47 blog posts from 2012 and had fun letting the year unravel before me. The first few months of 2012 were occupied with editing Martinis with the Devil, and then me and hubs went to Italy in March (click here for lots of pretty pics). After that I started querying, and got zero agent responses – vamps really are a tough sell now. I think it’s a terrific book, but I was able to let it go, because in May (May 7^th to be exact) I started Everdream, which has an incredibly unique premise. With hopes that it could be “the one” I was willing to let Martinis go on the back burner while I worked on Everdream. In July I got a big promotion at my day job, so that was very exciting (Oh, and I turned 30. Not quite as fun). And this fall has been filled with writing contests and editing Everdream. I made it into GUTGAA with Everdream, made it into the semi-finals of Write Club with Martinis, and got chosen by the mentor I wanted for Pitch Wars (with Everdream). That last one is still unfolding – I got awesome feedback from my mentor on the whole manuscript, and just finished those edits. The agent round is at the end of January.  So, all in all a very exciting year. I didn’t get to my last writing goal, which is to completely rewrite Countless, my first book, from third to first person. I started playing around with it, but Pitch Wars took precedent. Oh, and random aside, this is probably my fave post that I wrote in 2012.

So, looking ahead to 2013. I find myself in an odd place for writing goals this upcoming year, because they all depend on factors that are somewhat beyond my control at the moment. So, I’ll just talk about what I would like to happen, and what could subsequently happen after that. I’d like to find the perfect agent for my writing career early in 2013. I need someone who represents and loves both my middle grade work and my adult urban fantasy stuff. They are kind of night and day, so this person will need to be as ying-yang/multi-faceted as me to enjoy both. If I find this agent and this agent finds a publisher for both Everdream and Martinis, my main goal for 2013 is probably going to be writing the second book for both of those series. I have the second books for both loosely plotted in my head. I would also like to work on revamping Countless when I have time. I’ll be optimistic and not write about Plan B (not finding an agent). I already wrote about that in this post, so no need to repeat myself. Other goals: read more and develop better timelines for editing (blog posts to come on that topic). Learn to live in the present moment. Focus on gratitude. Train my horse. Travel somewhere awesome. Keep exercising regularly and even more. Dance. Sing. Enjoy the beauty of life.

Wow, so I’ve written a pretty long blog post. I usually try not to do those, since we all have lots of stuff to read and do. But anyways, let me know in the comments if you’ve written a New Year’s post and I’ll totally come read your long introspective retelling of 2012 J Happy New Year everyone!! I love this writing community, and I’m super thankful for you all as we head into 2013. Let me know what your plans are! 

A Saturday of Sunshine and Starbucks

I've been trying to stick to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday blog post schedule, but alas, my internet quit working Thursday night.  I had to spend 45 minutes on the phone last night with the internet provider trying to get them to fix it.  It would appear for the moment they have.

It's been a lovely day so far.  I woke up early and went to a 5k run with my sister, and the morning was chilly and sunshiney gorgeous.  Then we went to Starbucks and I got a grande pumpkin latte, which led to an amazing caffeine high, which led to being productive with some yard work.  Now I'm ready to take a luscious afternoon nap.  So, here is your teaser for the week, from Chapter Two.  Have a great weekend!

She was abruptly aware of her senses as they came into sharp, diamond focus: images flashing into her peripheral vision, her ears picking up hundreds of distinct sounds, her skin tingling all over. Her heart quickened almost painfully and her throat went dry. All of this happened in a fraction of a second, her body reacting to some unknown threat.

Adding to her panic was the fact that she’d never experienced anything like it before. She had no idea why her body was reacting as it was, but she abruptly felt an uncontrollable urge to look behind her and see if anyone was following her. It was a completely irrational instinct since of course many people were behind her on the crowded street.

She turned her head, very slowly, to look behind her. Not knowing what she was looking for, her eyes scanned the crowd, skipping over each figure in less than a second. Her logical mind was absent as some sort of foreign intuition took over. Then her eyes rested on what she knew without a doubt was the source of her instinctual fear: about twenty feet back, a tall figure in a dark cloak strode swiftly in her direction.