Adventures in Crafting with Words

As I sit here typing I wonder why I willingly took on the task of two blogs - the etsy shop blog and the author blog.  Because I love to write. School and subbing has started back. No more writing until midnight. Not of I want to function at 6 in the morning when my alarm goes off.  The rough draft of Half-Moon Manor is almost finished. I'm procrastinating on my final writing day because I'll know the bulk of my writing is finished. While this story hasn't taken 8-10 years to write, it has still been on my computer for a long while. I already know that I'll have to go back in an fill in some of the gaps: psychological, emotional, depth gaps.  I have characters to fully flesh out. I have plot holes and probably continuity errors to fix.  Then I'll send it off to Laura, my new editor, beta, and confusing sentence fixer. It'll go to the betas. Book cover. Back cover blurb. Kindle set up. Physical book/createspace set up. Promotion and marketing. Goodreads. ...

Coming to a kindle nearst you, hopefully - the still untitled Prequel Short Story about Brady and Gloria. It just needs a beta read a title...that's the tricky part. I received my first goodreads review the other day.  Not an actual review, just the stars, but I'm good with that.   3 stars. Not great, but not bad for showing something started 8 years ago.  I can honestly say my writing style has changed since then.  I can see it from what I'm writing on now.  But it got me thinking, as a reader how would I rate my own story?  I submitted it knowing there were issues that I would not be able to fix without whole rewrites of sections that had already been rewritten so many times.  My characters, I believe, were spot on. Each had a psychological reason for acting the way they acted. Behaviors met personalities. Personalities met character traits and circumstances. If I had added the material in the shorts into the story it would have been chunk...

Last night I crafted several steampunk inspired necklaces for the untitled steampunk/fantasy project. Did I get a single word written?  Yes, only about fifty words.  But I made pretty necklaces that are available in my (unrelated) Etsy shop. So, what do you think oh silent readers?  Steampunk?  More Steampunk Inspired? The Swarovski crystals are wrapped on gears.  My favorite is the utmost right necklace. Anyway, I was sitting there staring at my document the other day, doing Steampunk research on Pinterest and stumbled on the wrapping technique.  Ending up doing a few that I already had the supplies for and ended up going and buying more supplies yesterday.  I'm on Pinterest now btw www.pinterest.com/ajdarcywrites So...then I decided I need book boards.  Why not show what I imaged my characters as, or what they would wear (the untitled Steampunk project for example. I may have spent an hour looking at pictures. Sometimes...

I'm working on a few projects and it is making my head spin.  Either I'm stretching myself too far or my brain is staying, 'You worked so hard on completing The Bookworm Next Door. Take a break.' I still find myself going through all of my writing folders looking to see what items of potential I have already scribbled down. I have MANY writing folders. Some empty (yes, I clean them out). Some jumbled together. Some pieces are just so bad that I feel like I should just delete them, even as I can remember where and why I wrote them.  How can you just delete a part of your history like that?  I can't.  So I'm focusing on 3 things. 1. The Girl Next Door Prequel Shorts. Gloria and Brady are next in line and while I know where I'm going, getting there might be the issue.  This one is slightly more complicated than The Bookworm's Make Over; I can't just write it out in two days and send it to a beta. Brady has a complex back story thanks to Kelly. 2....