WIP Update!

I broke 60K here in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and I finally got my MC and her man in bed. Sheesh. I'd been trying to make that happen all week but between their chaotic lives and my limited time for writing during the week, I only just now got to that scene.

Well, it was worth it, both for plot purposes and because what's the point of having characters if you don't torture them a little by making them wait and throwing a few needless (to them, not to the plot) deaths between them and their desires?

A lot of interesting things are happening with this story-- themes I hadn't planned are emerging and characters are developing in unanticipated ways. I'm a little concerned that I may have too many characters and sub-plots, but that's a matter for the editing phase. For now I'm just enjoying being in the zone with these characters, and I hope they keep talking to me and get me to the end with a minimum of difficulties. Ideally, I'd like to be done with the draft before I go on vacation next month. At my current rate of progress, it just might happen!

Seventy Days of Sweat

It's starting TOMORROW!

My main goal is to write the draft of the last book in my series about life in a resource-poor speculative future. I've struggled a lot with this final story, but since I gave Diana her happy ending in My New-Found Land, I really want to give Will his. I intend to keep torturing him for awhile, of course, but he deserves it. Stoic alpha males are very hard to work with and he's been a total jerk ever since I let Diana leave him.

But as much as I want to get this story written, I feel like I'm getting so much out of writing short stories lately that I've cut a deal with myself. I can write a short story instead of working on my novel as long as the short story takes no more than two days from first word to final edit. Two days may sound like a lot, but my writing time is actually pretty limited-- three hours each weeknight under the best of circumstances, and a little more on weekends. In actual practice I often have no more than an hour or two each night, or even less if I'm sleepy.

I would like to eventually have enough of these stories to make a book, with everything in its proper chronological order. The stories fill part of the gap between Tin Soldier (on a private blog, since it might be publishable) and Bella Diana, in which I torture poor Diana mercilessly. I always thought it would be fun to write vignettes about Will and Diana's years together, before he asked too much of her and everything went to heck in a handbasket. Hence the "Will and Diana Adventures."

So those are my goals for Seventy Days of Sweat: write my novel and/or finish my collection of short stories. Either way, I'm going to be learning a lot.

Can't wait to get started!

Fiction, Blog Fiction, and Just Thoughts

I’ve decided to go ahead and post all of "Bella Diana." I don’t think I can sell it because it doesn’t fit a market niche, so why not? I’m enjoying posting and illustrating it, and words and images are, first and foremost, for sharing. Putting it out there is also breaking the hold that this story has had on me ever since I started it. I don’t know why it's been so hard for me to move on from this particular story, but it has been. Even the Diana’s Diary blog, which is a sequel, didn’t help. But as soon as I started posting Bella Diana, the spell was broken and I could start to entertain other writerly thoughts.

Thoughts like what to do with "Tin Soldier." Even though it takes place in the same dystopian world and contains many of the same characters as Bella Diana, I think "Tin Soldier" is marketable. It needs one more good round of cuts and tightening up (got a few more darlings to kill!) and I think I’ll be ready to jump back on the query-go-round with it.

I’m also toying with other ideas for novels, I have a couple of short stories I’d like to tweak and pitch to the e-zines, and I’m thinking of creating a blog fiction clearinghouse site. The ones that are out there aren’t very good. What’s needed is a site that not only has links, but brief descriptions, viewer ratings and info about frequency of posting, last posting date, and status: in progress, lapsed, complete, in hiatus, etc.

So I’ve got lots of ideas milling around in my head right now!

As for Bella Diana, I’m doing daily postings, and will probably continue to do so until it’s all up. I know I said “never again” in my Lessons Learned post after finishing the “first diary” portion of Diana’s Diary, but this is a little different. With Diana’s Diary, I had no idea most nights what I was going to write, and I really burned the midnight (ahem- 3AM) oil on that one! But "Bella Diana" is complete, and I’ve got a lot of posts waiting in the queue.

So just like with Diana’s Diary, I won’t be leaving any readers in the lurch!

New Writing Blog

I’ve created yet another blog!

I’ve decided to post one of my novels as an online serial novel It’s the novel that precedes Diana’s Diary, and I’m illustrating it, just like I did the diary.

So here it is: Bella Diana. Take a look and let me know what you think. I’ll start posting next chapters in another day or two. The novel is complete, so unless I change my mind about putting it out there for free, there will be regular installments every couple of days or so.

Note: This post is cross-posted on my main blog.