#NaNoWriMo - Winner!

It was a rough week.

Knight Rejects is far from done, but my NaNo challenge is. Hope to have an acceptable completed draft by the end of December.

#NaNoWriMo - One Week Later

Day 22 of NaNoWriMo

Your Average Per Day

1,325

Words Written Today

0

Target Word Count

50,000

Target Average Words Per Day

1,667

Total Words Written

29,150

Words Remaining

20,850

Current Day

22

Days Remaining

9

At This Rate You Will Finish On

December 8, 2014

Words Per Day To Finish On Time

2,317 

Yes, I've been struggling this month. Health issues, mainly. Thanksgiving is on the 27th and a party for my little sister is the 29th, so I really only get 7 more days to finish on time. 

You can cheer me on at Facebook or Twitter. 

Half Way There! #NaNoWriMo 2014

National Novel Writing Month

Otherwise known as November.

The goal is to write (at least) 50,000 words in 30 days. 1667 words/day. Since this is Day 15, the word goal is 25,005.

I'm writing Knight Rejects for NaNo, and I'm currently behind. I need to write 2710 words today.

If you want to learn more about this writing challenge, visit nanowrimo.org

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Have fun, be safe, and stay dry. I've heard a lot of places are expecting rain tonight.

What was your favorite costume? I've been a hobo, a cowgirl, a Goth...I'm sure I was a princess at least once as a little girl.

Cover Reveal - A Touch of Darkness by Yelena Casale and Tina Moss

A Touch of Darkness Cover Reveal!

FIRST PLACE in the Readers' Crown Award

for urban fantasy.

FIRST PLACE in Central Florida RWA's Touch of Magic 

contest for paranormal romance.

Title: A Touch of Darkness

Author: Yelena Casale & Tina Moss

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Release Date: March 2, 2015 

A Touch of Darkness 

Key Series, Book One

 

Cassie Durrett dreams of the darkness. And lives the nightmare. She's working for a tightwad boss at a pretentious NYC diner,

dealing with paralyzing pain that doctors can’t diagnose, and trying to

hide her hands that glow purple whenever she ...well, whenever. 

So, when mystery man, Gabe, walks out of her dreams and into her life to

spout some nonsense about her being a mythical creature, she chalks it

up to one more crazy thing to add to her it’s-a-crappy-life list. Yet,

when his predictions start to come true, she'll need his help to beat back the darkness-spawned creatures invading her reality.

Pretty soon Gabe has her running half way across the country in search of answers. As a bond grows between them, Cassie worries not about losing her mind to the paranormal madness, nor her life to  hellish monsters. Rather her deepest fear is surrendering her heart to a powerful man fallen from grace.  

Pre-Order | GoodReads

Teaser

 

About the Authors

Yelena Casale is an award-winning author of urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Being very curious and inquisitive, she has been a devoted reader

and writer since childhood. As a 2nd degree black belt and instructor in

Shotokan karate, an avid traveler and history and art enthusiast, she weaves

universal themes with martial arts philosophies into her stories. She

 lives with her amazing, super supportive husband. In her spare time, she reads, paints, watches cool shows on TV and

tries to get more sleep. Like

 the samurai of the old, as well as the ultimate Renaissance man and

Yelena's favorite historical figure, Leonardo da Vinci, she believes

that nothing is greater than mastery of oneself.

Facebook | Twitter | Team Ninja | Blog | Goodreads | Newsletter

Tina Moss is an award-winning author of urban fantasy, paranormal

romance, romantic suspense, and New Adult novels.  She lives in NYC with

 a supportive husband and alpha corgi, though both males hog the bed and

 refuse to share the covers. When not writing, she enjoys reading,

watching cheesy horror flicks, traveling, and karate. As a 5'1" Shotokan

 black belt, she firmly believes that fierce things come in small

packages.

Facebook | Twitter | Team Ninja | Blog | Goodreads | Newsletter

Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I am so sore...

If you've been following my Twitter and Facebook updates, you've seen I've been working with very little sleep over the past couple weeks.

I'm.

Done. 

240,205 word original story became 175,211 total words for 3 stories. 

134,201 most recent work total. 

They're split as 41,010 words, 95,170 words, and 39,031 words right now, so I'll have to do some shifting in edits. The first story ends at a good place, so really I'll be moving some of book 2 to book 3. I started the 3rd file just to see how much I still had left to go. 

2 more long sequels to adapt. *collapses on floor*

But, this is only a small part of the overall series. I had to work on this before I can do the books before or after these 3. That's probably only makes sense to me, but trust me. Anyway, still a TON to do. I'm not releasing this series until I have the right perfect first book and several complete so there is NO lag for readers waiting for me to write more. 

God, I hope people like these characters. They're close to my heart. 

So, now I can take a little break and let my aching hands heal a bit before tackling another book.

Happy Independence Day!

On Hold.....Argh.

On Hold

Writers - don't you hate it when other responsibilities pop up and you have to drop what you're writing?

That's me right now. 

I have other things I must do before getting back to work on the fantasy series. :-(

Damn adulthood.....

Story Progress - Ups and Downs

Here's how the writing is going:

May 23 - Revised UF #2 overnight. 30,000 words. Since I generally know how UF #1 ends, I could prepare this story to line up with it and make the vampire in UF #2 the same as in UF #1. UF #3 will take a lot of rewriting since it's the first story I ever wrote, and is quite long. Lots of cutting to do.


May 28 - Stuck and struggling with UF #1. Thinking of making UF #2 the first book and using what's written of UF #1 as background. Leave UF #1 for the day I might do a prequel and actually know how to finish it. I know how it *ends* - it's the dreaded middle that's the problem! But, since I DO know how it ends, I can use that to make UF #2 a good Book 1.

Otherwise, I fear I'll still be stuck in this position this time next year, too!


June 1 - Working overnight. Book 1 (formerly UF #2) is now at 34,875 words. Revising this draft is coming along pretty well. I think - I hope - readers are going to like it. Since the book I hoped would be UF#1 wasn't working, I've been turning UF#2 into Book 1, which hasn't been hard to do (proving this is the correct choice). I have some editing of old words still to do, then fleshing out some scenes, then adding a new ending. Hoping to at least get to 40k.

I want to get ahead of myself...lol...but I shouldn't. I'd like to put UF#1 up for pre-orders....

But the manuscript isn't done, I don't have a title, there is no cover art, no blurb written, yet...

Ever get excited and skip steps? I'm not usually an impulsive person, but I can be impatient.

And by the way, I hate coming up with titles! It's awful. Makes my brain hurt.

Work progress gets posted here if you'd like to follow along.

Finally Have The First Book For My Series

Choosing Your Best Leg to Stand On

I finally have the best intro story for a series and now I have to revise and finish it. And...I'm done with pre-written content. 12 chapters, 32,125 words.

Why hasn't it been finished before now? Honestly, this isn't originally my story. K.C. Taylor is a friend of mine and announced in February she wasn't writing urban fantasy anymore. She has handed what was known as her Secrets Will Out series of short stories to me and I'll be turning them into a novel for my series. We'll share co-writing credit on this first book. So, thanks to K.C. for helping me fill out my universe.

A vampire named William will be the star of several books and I'm looking forward to eventually redeeming him and finding him a forever love.

Complete Fall 2014 TV Schedule

Fall 2014:

2014-2015 Fall TV Schedule

Upfronts were this week and the (free) networks released their fall schedules:

Still Writing...About Death

8,778 words writing out of sequence on that book I won't get to release for a long time. If it's in my head, it's in my head, so it has to come out.

Cried while writing a death scene. First one I've written that covers the dying and attempted life-saving. I've written grief scenes before, but now I'm actively killing a character. *sob* This death is a HUGE blow to my Female Main Character. Breaks her heart. I'm trying to be as real as possible with the stages of her grief.

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression

Acceptance

Everyone grieves their own way, and since my FMC is a warrior, a hero, she does her best to save this life and when she can't, she avenges it. She's in shock and pissed off. She loves this person and it isn't fair. Death rarely is. 

It's hard to talk around the specifics of the scene because of spoilers, so I can't say how she deals with it and what comes next, but I hope I'm saying enough to give you a little taste of what goes through a writer's head for these kinds of scenes.

Personally, I've experienced a lot of death, so grieving is very familiar. The most surprising thing, I think, to me is that grief differs even inside one individual. Circumstances matter. Relationship to the deceased matters. Was it sudden? Or a lingering illness. Was it a close relative? A friend? Someone you admired? A boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse? The age of the griever also matters. Children grieve differently than adults. Depending on age of the child, that denial phase can last a long time because death is still a very foreign concept. In the reverse, someone with a lot of life experience might find it almost easy to grieve because it is familiar. I could go on and on about specific circumstances, but you get the gist. 

Ever watch a show that has frequent character deaths and became numb to them after a while? If you're a Joss Whedon fan, you know he kills at least one major character in everything he produces, and it's usually a death that ends a couple. If you're a Vampire Diaries TV show fan, you know deaths are so common they're rarely shocking anymore, and frequently it's not a permanent death. As a writer, if you're going to kill a character, always make it count. Make it count to the main characters. Make it matter to the plot. Make it resonate with the audience. I think as soon as your audience says "whatever" to another death, you're going off course and you've played this card too many times. So even if "no one is safe" is your writer's motto, take the time to build the characters enough that we care about each death. 

My goal is to make you weep when the good die and cheer when villains bite the dust. If I've managed that, it's a good day.

Writing...

982 words writing out of sequence on a book I won't get to for a long time. Heh. But if it's in my head, it's in my head. At least I did something!

I struggle with drafting books at times. Words can come as feast or famine. My first year of writing stories, I put down a LOT of words. A couple hundred thousand. And my fastest, longest continuous writing binge was 27,000 words in 24 hours. I don't recommend that, though, as at least in my case, I was out of words for the next month. Like I could hardly communicate with people after that, heh. Makes one feel pretty stupid at the time - "Sorry, I broke my brain."

So, in 2014, years and books later, I sometimes fear I've run out of words, or at least ideas. I haven't had that wondrous flow of creativity for a long time, and I'm not sure how to find it again. If I had room for crafting in the house, I might tap into it in an alternate way, but that's not currently possible. So, I continue to struggle and try my best. 

And be thankful for the words when they come.

TV Shows I Watch

So, my bio says I like TV. Here are the shows I currently keep up with:


Saturdays: 1st Look, Open House, and Open House NYC

Sundays: Southern At Heart, Resurrection, Crisis

Mondays: The Voice, Beauty and the Beast, Dallas, Castle, and The Blacklist. Sleepy Hollow already finished season 1.

Tuesdays: SHIELD, The Originals, Supernatural, The Voice, About A Boy, Growing Up Fisher, and New Girl

Wednesdays: Arrow, Revolution, and Nashville

Thursdays: The Vampire Diaries, The Big Bang Theory, Reign, Parenthood, Elementary, and Vikings

Friday: Last Man Standing, Grimm, Hart of Dixie, and Sons of Guns


I'm behind on Hollywood Game Night. I also watch HGTV and Food Network when I'm bored. In summer, I watch America's Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance. I wish I could still watch Saving Hope, but as it's a Canadian show without US distribution, I have to wait for the DVDs. We're hoping Dracula gets a 2nd season. Year-round, me and the mister like UFC.

Forum

There's a fan forum on my website now.

Find it here.

While I don't have any writing to offer you, yet, I do want to get to know people, so comments are encouraged there (and here).

Thanks!

At Work

Finished a couple rounds of edits to polish a novella that'll be first in a series. We still need to pick a final title and series title, so there's no release day, yet, but I've done my part on making the story pretty.

Hi!

First post of this new blog.

I'm Vivian Lane.

If you've found your way here, you're probably looking for books to read. You've come to the right place. I'm a full-time writer looking to make 2014 a very good year.