Adventures in Crafting with Words

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...

Publishing scares me. Am I going to be judged on my first work? Are medicore reviews going to keep me from getting better hits and better sales later because of my first work? Should I go back and work on it some more? I wish I knew what people liked and disliked. The premise of Bookworm must be good considering the number of free downloads.  Now I have to wait and see what happens. What if I'm not as good at writing as my friends say?

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...

Sometimes it is really difficult to write about what I'm doing.  I have been subbing mostly and working on my Etsy shop.  There is a craft show in a few weeks and I'm working on getting my inventory organized and updated.  It sounds easier than I really is.  I've been working on social media.  Again, easier said than done.  I recently "finished" Half-Moon Manor.  By that I mean that it is in the editing stages and should be up and running in the Kindle and CreateSpace stores shortly.  It is not as long as The Bookworm Next Door, but I'm a firm believer that writing words to add to word counts does not always make for a better book.  I would rather put together short stories to share about other events in that story's universe and put them together into a collection piece than randomly insert them into a story where they may or may not fit.  The Steampunk/Fantasy piece is in the works.  More of the flesh out the plot stages t...