Adventures in Crafting with Words

One of my friends was gifted this awesome 400 writing prompts book for Christmas.  Naturally, I needed it. So his wife told me where I got it and I went to my local branch and looked all over the story for that book of 400 writing prompts.  I'd even settle for the book of 300 writing prompts. But nope.  I had to settle for this one... Whatever.  *shrugs shoulder* 'But,' the little voice in the back of my head challenged me, 'what if you use this book to help you with the plethora of stories you are struggling with?' 'And,' another voice agreed, 'you use them for your writing prompt blog posts... The catch with these prompts:  there is only one page to write and there are a handful of words that must be added into the scene.   For this scene I brought in Winnie from Half-Moon Manor.  I've been pondering her story for a while now, and she volunteered for the prompt.  And now... Magic in Everyday Occurrences Winnie closed...

In all three books I drew inspiration from my local area. From the high schools I'd been in. The high school layout for The Bookworm Next Door was the high school I attended.  It had - counts - 5 parking lots. One for the theatre/football stadium, football locker room/weightroom, administration, North Campus/baseball field, and the front Student/Staff parking.  Six if you count the softball field.   So while Mr. Wallace's (a math teacher I actually knew, who once taught at my alma mater, but not when I attended) car would be parked near the North Campus/Baseball field in staff parking hidden by the Foreign Language portables, David's car could easily be overlooked in the crowded Front parking lot.   By the way, my high school also had 5 buildings. Are all,  they say "write what you know" and using actual locations helps. Half-Moon Manor and Keeping Secrets are both in the same county.  This county in fact has 4 school districts.  3 city/...

At some point I going to need to learn how to work photo editing to make these better.  But it's something and I think it looks pretty good.

That is the question... Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous word count expectations Or to take my pen against a sea of manuscript pages And by opposing NaNoWriMo edit them. Okay, seriously.  I have one manuscript that is in the second draft/revisions/editing stage.  It doesn’t even have 50,000 words at the moment.  Not even 48,000 words.  It is, however, the longest manuscript that I have written and it took combining a planned trilogy to get it that long.  Book one was about 30,000 words and books 2 and 3 a combined 17,000+.  I started Keeping Secrets in 2009... What does this mean? I'm not a 40,000+ writer.  I hate adding in additional action just to further a plot and add fluff just to pad a word count. Not everyone can be novel writers.  I'm not. I'm a short story and novella writer.  That also means very few of my books will be more that $4.99 an ebook.  (Print versions via c...

So...after so many hurdles...Half-MoonManor is finally available for purchase.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01736N14A/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_awdm_wsdlwb18MC547

So...here's a teaser from Half-Moon Manor. My editor is about a 4th done. Prologue Two Months Ago     The day that Victoria Whitmore brought George Bell home still stood out in Olivia’s mind months later.  He was tall, muscular, and easy-going.  It did not change the fact that Olivia had an odd feeling about him or that she felt as if he needed to be in their lives for some inexplicable reason.  This feeling of where people, or the things attached to the people, belonged followed her around; it was her birthright, an inheritance of sorts from her grandmother’s family.  At least she could counter her odd talent with the ability to cook. Everybody knew that her mother could not and that they would both starve if Olivia had not learned how to when she was young.  Oh, and George could cook – that was his main appeal.      Whenever he smiled at her she felt creepy, as if he was not smiling at her because he wa...

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. ...

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....