July 2012

Archive for July, 2012

Setting For My WIP?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged challenges, island, location for wip, riddles, setting for wip, WIP on July 30, 2012| 22 Comments »

Many of you know I’m really struggling to find three riddles for the challenges my two main characters have to face. Now I’m struggling with the location. I’ve known all along that I was going to have to decide where they were going to have to travel to obtain the “object” they have to have. The whole time I was writing this book, I’ve been trying to decide where to have them go. Here’s my dilemma. Should I use a real place or should I make one up? I was going to “pretend” there was another little island past Bermuda, but my husband asked me “What if someone checks to see if it’s a real place?”. But why does it have to be? Authors make up places all the time. Why CAN’T there be an island past Bermuda? What do you guys think? Is it okay to make up islands?

As far as the riddles go, I’m about to go crazy. I’ve even looked on riddle sites to see if there’s something I can adapt to challenges. But most of the riddles are silly or simply won’t work. I’m to the point where I’ll offer to acknowledge someone in the front of my book if they can help me with the riddles. LOL.

My writing of this story is about to stall because I’m getting close to the point where I need the riddles/challenges. Maybe I’ll dream something tonight. 🙂

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Sunday Update 7/29/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged goals, row80 check in, sewing, word count, writing on July 29, 2012| 14 Comments »

I’m a little late with my check in today. I usually try to do it before church and then take care of my sponsor duties in the afternoon, but I just ran out of time this morning. I always make a good breakfast on Sunday mornings, and I got way behind. LOL

My goal is to write about an hour (or until my hands give out) five days a week. I was plagued by the dreaded headache on Friday, even going home from work early, and Saturday I still had the headache plus I had to help my mom with her computer that decided not to boot up properly. Grrrrr. Anyway, on the three days I did write, my word counts were good. Mon-1875, Tues-1281, Thurs-1532. I timed myself on Thursday to see how long it was actually taking me to write. I wrote during my lunch hour, and I had to eat, so I knew I wouldn’t have a whole hour to write. I always read the last chapter I wrote the time before first so I can get my head back into the story, and that took five minutes. So, basically, I wrote over 1500 words in about 40 minutes. I thought I could only write about a thousand words an hour, but it had seemed lately I had written more. Apparently, I’m getting faster. Who knows if that will continue, but I’ll take it for now. 🙂

I’m trying to get back into sewing. I was lucky to spend time with the lovely Susan Bischoff last Saturday, and she was able to help me pick out patterns and material. My plans were to write and sew (or at least cut out the pattern!) Saturday, but with my oldest son and his wife coming into town for lunch, then my mom’s computer problems, AND my headache I didn’t get to do either. I want this skirt and blouse, darn it! My biggest goal for this week is to BE MORE EFFICIENT AND GET STUFF DONE.

How is everyone else doing? Any snags last week?

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Wednesday Update 7/25/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amazon, createspace, exercise, expanded distribution, proofing, vampires curse, word count on July 25, 2012| 18 Comments »

Nothing earth shattering has happened since Sunday. LOL. Good word counts the past couple of days. No exercise…my walking partner is on vacation…I’ve been a slacker. I haven’t felt very well, either, but I suspect exercise would make me feel BETTER. Silly me for not doing it.

I’m 2/3 through proofing Vampires’ Curse for print. A word about that. If it were just for my benefit, I’m not sure I would even put anything in print, although it’s nice to hold my book in my hands. But there are still readers out there who want a print book. It’s for them that I do this. It would be free if I didn’t want expanded distribution, but I pay $25 to do that. However, I make only about 50-75 cents per book when bookstores (other than Amazon) or libraries buy it (versus about $2.75 if readers buy it from Amazon). Is it worth it? I haven’t yet decided. I hate to limit where readers can buy my books, but it will take a long time, if ever, to make up that $25. It seems I spend a lot of time and money sometimes doing things to benefit other people. But…I sort of feel like that’s one reason we’re put on this planet. What do the rest of you think? Should I stop paying for expanded distribution? What would you do? It’s free to distribute to Amazon, since Amazon owns CreateSpace. But I have almost as many sales from the expanded distribution venues. I can’t decide what to do with this latest print book.

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About My WIP

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged challenges, challenges with riddles, current wip, guardian vampire, novellas, novels, paranormal romance, riddles, WIP on July 23, 2012| 11 Comments »

I’ve been working on my current WIP since April. For the first three months, it was hit or miss in the writing department. Some weeks, I would do some writing, some weeks, not so much. It was a bad three months for writing. But since the beginning of this month, I’ve had some awesome word counts. Everything is flowing nicely, and I’m really loving this story. But will others love it as much as I do? This is a story that I’m hoping with take off on Amazon and B & N like Guardian Vampire did in Jan/Feb of 2011. It’s so frustrating to have something like that happen, and then it not ever happen again. I WANT it to happen again. 🙂

I had almost resigned myself to the fact that I’m more of a novella writer than a novel writer. Before I wrote The Gnome, I had three novels and six novellas published. And a short story. I was SURE The Gnome would be a novel. But when I finished, I didn’t quite have 40K words. You really can’t call something a novel unless it’s 50K, and I was almost 11K short. 😦 At that point, I was sure there would be no more novels for me. I was convinced I didn’t have any more novels in me. But along came my current WIP. I planned it as a novella, but I wasn’t even going to worry about how many words it would turn out to be. I was hoping it would at least be a LONG novella like The Gnome. Now here I am at almost 38K, and there are still more adventures to come. The main characters haven’t yet gone on a journey where there will be challenges and perils. In a little more than 12K, this will become a novel. I’ve been averaging 1K to over 2K in each writing sitting. So even if I only get 1K per day, I could conceivably finish this as a novel in 12-13 days. (Not necessarily consecutive.) This makes me happy. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop at 50K. I’m just saying I COULD and still call it a novel. 🙂

Here’s a problem, though. This story has flowed so well lately. But when it comes to the challenges the main characters must face, I’m afraid things will come to a screeching halt. The challenges will have riddles involved (and danger), but what if I can’t think of any good riddles? What if my riddles are lame? Eek, this riddle thing is new to me! (I know this almost makes it sound like I’m writing a fantasy book, but no, it really is a paranormal romance. It’s just a little different.) Have any of you ever faced something like this? Have you had to write something that had to be SOLVED? Any advice?

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Sunday Update 7/22/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged check in, eating habits, exercise, goals, ROW80, vampires curse, word count on July 22, 2012| 10 Comments »

Just a quick check in before I go to church. 🙂

Word count last week was: Mon-2129, Thurs-1928, Fri-911. I didn’t write as many days as I would have liked last week. Stuff just happened that got in the way, but at least it wasn’t that whiny “I don’t feel like writing” that was happening to me last round. Besides, my word counts are so much higher than they used to be, I’m still writing more per week even when I only write three days.

Exercise was so-so last week. Eating…also iffy, but not bad.

Proofing for print on Vampires’ Curse didn’t happen. There was a lot going on last week, but, hopefully, this week will be calmer. I’m also trying to use my time more wisely.

I hope everyone is having a great day!

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Irish Scones and Sewing Machines

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amazon, english scones, igourmet, irish scones, lemon curd, scones, sewing, sewing machine on July 19, 2012| 17 Comments »

Boy, I’m getting good at titles with dual topics lately. LOL Once again, these two topics are totally unrelated.

I purchased Hogan’s Irish Scone Mix and a jar of Hogan’s Lemon Curd from igourment.com. I love scones…at least the ones I’m used to. I’ve had scones from an English tea room and from Panera, among other places. They’ve always been kind of dense, almost reminding me of the consistency of shortbread or something similar. So I made my scones last night. They’re biscuits. Not exactly like my homemade biscuits I eat with gravy, but very, very biscuit-like. I was disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, they were very good, they just weren’t what I was expecting. So my question is this (Claire Farrell, you have to chime in)…are Irish scones different from English scones? Or are the English scones I’ve been getting here in the US not really scones at all? Does anyone know?

Okay, I said, when I was talking about getting my kitty playhouse from Amazon, that I would tell what else I got from Amazon. It was a sewing machine. I’ve had this sudden burning desire to SEW SOMETHING. And it’s been years since I’ve done any sewing. My old sewing machine is somewhere in the attic. I don’t know where. This new one is computerized, so you can change stitches without changing a disc. Now I’m panicking because I’m afraid I CAN’T DO IT! My machine has some bells and whistles my old one didn’t have, and until I learn how to use them, it looks like it makes things harder instead of easier. Did I just waste my money on a whim? Or will I really be able to do this? Tune in later for further updates. 🙂

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Wednesday Update 7/18/12

Posted in Uncategorized on July 18, 2012| 24 Comments »

There’s not a lot to report on Wednesdays. Exercise is going well. I wrote a lot of words on Monday. I didn’t write Tuesday because I had a jewelry party to attend (I spent too much money) and then I came home and finished putting together an awesome play tree for my cats. This was the easiest thing I have ever put together. All the parts fit just right and I put it together by myself in about 40-45 minutes. It arrived from Amazon today, and my cats are having fun playing with it. Pictures follow:

Oz was the first to play with the new fun thing.

Willow finally got brave.

Then they learned to play together.

In another post, I’ll tell you what else I got from Amazon today. 🙂

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Of Fingernails and Eyelashes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cats, eyelashes, fingernails, kittens on July 17, 2012| 10 Comments »

Isn’t that a catchy title? And the two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. LOL

Fingernails. I nearly cry every time I have to cut mine. I used to long for my fingernails to grow fast because they broke so much. I love long fingernails (not REALLY long, but a nice length). But, alas, I can’t type well on my computer with long fingernails. I make too many errors and it’s not comfortable. So I have to keep them fairly short. And now that I’m taking good vitamins, they grow so fast! Grrrrr.

Eyelashes. I could talk about how I’m experimenting with Mary Kay’s eyelash serum, but that’s not what this is about. This is about one of my cats. My tabby, Willow, was lying beside my head on the couch. She kept poking me in the eye with her nose, and I couldn’t figure out what she was doing. Then I started watching her. Every time I would blink, she would stare at me and turn her head slightly to the side. Then she would start poking around in my eye. I finally figured out she was fascinated with my eyelashes and was trying to play with them. It tickled so much and I was laughing so hard. There have been times when my kittens have been a lot of work and trouble. But it’s times like these that make me SO glad I have them. 🙂

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Sunday Update 7/15/12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eating habits, exercise, goals, proofreading, row update, word count on July 15, 2012| 14 Comments »

Good Sunday morning everyone!

1. Writing has gone well this week. I don’t know why I end up not writing on Fridays. Wednesday and Sunday are supposed to be my days off from writing, but with the word counts going so well on the four days I am writing, I’m not upset about Fridays. If my husband has rented a movie and wants to watch it, them I’m going to watch it with him. Anyway, here’s the breakdown. Mon-939, Tues-1205, Thurs-1936, Sat-2175.

2. Exercise is going pretty well. I walked at lunch three days this week. I want to bump that up a lot, but rain, and before that, hot weather, has been hindering me. I need to get on the treadmill when I can’t walk outside, but I just seem to forget that when I get home. *shrugs*

3. Eating habits are getting a little better every day. This one is going to take time to get right.

4. The proofing of Vampires’ Curse for print didn’t get done last week liked I had planned, but I hope to get that finished this week.

How’s everyone else?

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