Post Tagged with: "writing"

The neglectful blogger

The neglectful blogger

Oh, have I been awful about this blog lately. Really, there is no excuse. Well, there is kind of.

In September I was informed by boss (who lives in Florida) that something happened with the company and he was getting rid of everyone, and I’d be “on contract” until he could afford to hire me back. His “heads up” was one whole pay period. Not helpful. So I’ve literally not been buying books, which is ridiculously, but true. My GoodReads to-read list is piling up like WHOA and I can’t even afford freaking $10 for an ebook.

“Go to a library,” you say. I KNOW that, but the library closest to me SUCKS and to “go” anywhere in L.A. is such a hassel. That, and there are waiting lists MILES long for the good book — even their ebook list, which I’ve been on FOREVA.

So the past months have been me scraping by with my job at the barn. I ALMOST got the Sickest. Job. In. The. World. but they “froze” hiring. I DO have another awesome job opportunity, but it won’t start until January and it won’t be full pay right away.

In writing news, I’m back to editing. Again. This will be the last round, I SWEAR. What happened to NaNoWriMo you ask? Well, I was sick for two weeks and if I wasn’t wanting to die at work I was curled up in my bed in complete darkness. Then I was away at a horse show and you tell me if you could write sharing a room with four people after working 12 hour days. No? Didn’t think so.

In reading news, I was asked by UK based Silverwood Books to be on their book review team, which is AWESOME. Silverwood is an alternative to self-publishing and everyone really needs to check out their website. I can promise you I will be buying (and reading) Boundless the DAY it comes out even if I need to borrow the money from my Dad.  My first review for Silverwood (it’s a PIRATE book!) comes out at the end of February!

All right, its 2:30am and I need to work in a few hours.

-A

December 8, 2012 0 comments
NaNoWriMo 2012

NaNoWriMo 2012

I’m partaking in National Novel Writing Month for the first time.  The deal is you begin a completely new manuscript on November first and have 30 days to write 50,000 words. You can plot and character sketch until your heart’s desire, but no writing. I’m writing a little out of the box for me: a YA contemporary novel. I’ve shelved queries for STERLING until December. From all of the Q&A agents have been answering lately, it seems the YA urban fantasy genre is a tad saturated.

I am up for a new job — a kind of AMAZING job — which will impact my writing greatly, so this may be a total bust. We shall see.  My word count will be updated on the widget over on the side bar.

October 29, 2012 0 comments
Short Story: The Rainbow Rebels

Short Story: The Rainbow Rebels

So I had joined figment.com a while ago and never got around to doing anything with it. Last night, when I was burnt out from researching agents and doing edits, I went over there and saw a short story contest. It had to be under 1200 words and about “teen rebels with a cause.”  The following story was the result:

http://figment.com/books/426802-Rainbow-Rebels

Unfortunately, Figment judges the top ten chosen by “hearts” and on the site it’s pretty much just people bartering for votes. That means I have no chance of winning, but whatever. I was extremely happy with my piece!

September 11, 2012 0 comments
The Pitch

The Pitch

I haven’t been reading and reviewing, mainly because I’ve been writing. I thought I was happy with my manuscript but I went to go another “once over” and just found myself changing sentences and changing a name of a character. The one thing I have solid is the last part of my query letter. My pitch. And I’ve finally decided to share it.

Sterling throws out the halos and white wings and revisits one of the oldest rivalries in existence. Only this time, when the demons rise and the angels fall from grace, the only one left to lead the side of Good, is the girl who had all but abandoned it.

September 10, 2012 0 comments
Ta-da!

Ta-da!

The old lay out was really just…irking me.  Every time I’d go on the site I’d frown, and that’s just not cool.  I had been searching far and wide for free themes, but none had really been what I wanted…until tonight.  This is a free theme by WPZOOM who have a bunch of other stellar free themes as well as some awesome premium ones.  I didn’t do much.  Just a bit with fonts and used @font-face  for the first time (I know, where have I been, right?) to upload Sansumi onto the site (FontSquirrel rocks my socks — you all need to go check them out!).  I like it.  Well, for now at least.  Chronically Indecisive is my very long middle name.

On The Book front, the first round of editing is finished, but of course it can’t be all rainbows.  I realized after the fact that I went about it the wrong way.  I used Adobe Acrobat Pro to edit the PDF I exported so I could always go back and reference the original text was versus the edits without needing to pull up two versions side-by-side.  Sounded like a great idea, but now that I’m done with the PDF, I need to physically go in and edit the Scrivener file. I’m pretty much doing a second edit while inserting the edits for the first one.  It’s tedious, but I guess you can never edit too many times.

I’ve been putting off re-writing my query for as long as possible, but I desperately need to get that going.  I was hoping to hear back from Kat before tackling it, but I may just add her two cents in at a later date.

Until next time.

July 9, 2012 0 comments