A Shot of Adrenaline...

I'm not feeling it today and I haven't been for a few days.  I've been sick and New Baby has been teething.  It's hard to sleep when you're all plugged up and you have a sad little man who demands comfort in the form of not sleeping, but rather rocking and holding and loving.  Which I don't mind.  I love being a mom.  

However, fatigue is NOT a good motivator.  5:30 AM is difficult when you've been up all night.  And skipping the afternoon nap is downright impossible.  I have gotten some work done on Zyander and another Angelic Agents story I've been working on, but it is slow going.  

Still, I have not forgotten my WOTY.  DETERMINATION.  I may be down, but I'm not out!  I still have the goal of finishing Zyander by the third week of March.  I still want to be at LEAST edited, if not proofed by April 30th.  But overall, I want this book to get finished, and kick butt!  :)  I'm excited to see what fans of the last book have to say about this one.  

Other things on the world of the web:

FREE BOOKS.  No, really.  I'm serious.

Baen, the most awesome publisher of sci-fi, is giving away their books.  Because they are AWESOME!!

GO HERE.

Also, have you heard of Lendle?  If you have a kindle and an addiction to buying indie books, then this might be the place for you.  Check it out HERE.

Remember when I did that series on Author Etiquette: HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE?

Well, not to toot my own horn or anything, but it turns out it was kinda true.  Read about that, OVER HERE.

That's about all from me.  Hoping for better news next time.  Until then, Happy Reading!

Inspiration...

Unfortunately, there is a teething baby in this house, so there will be no long, thoughtful post about my WOTY today.  Ah, well.

There is cause for celebration, however.  At just under 150,000 words, Luka's story for Aeris is now complete. There will be the inevitable edits, and I'm really not so happy with the ending line (I like a strong ending) but that's what editing is for.  I'm just so excited to have two, count them TWO, of my characters finished for this book.

I've started on Zyander, but his entries will be more editing than writing at this point, so it will be slow going.  My goal for him is the third week in March, at which point I will send out copies to my betas with a week deadline for feedback, then start my hardcore edits before sending the book onward to proofing.  *sigh*  So happy to be here, so happy to be getting my goals accomplished.

I've got lots of side projects going, but I've been making them take a back burner to Aeris.  I have a fantasy short story collection that should be out in another month or so, and a sci-fi one that will be out in another week or so.  There is also a super secret project that I am NOT working on, but making notes for to start up when Aeris is published.

Last bit of news...  I've been kind of off the internet, so I don't have many links this week, but I wanted to plug writer Elizabeth May, who has a book called The Falconer coming out sometime in 2013.  She has a GREAT entry on editing that gave me some super helpful hints on how to identify words you use too much in the course of your writing.  Have you seen Wordle, guys?  It's amazing.  Check out my rough draft of Aeris through Wordle's eyes:

I'm not worried about "like" as I tend to use a lot of similes in my writing.  "asked" and "one" are more troubling.  I don't see a lot of adverbs or -ing words, so hopeful my writing isn't too passive, either.  We'll see when we get to editing.

HERE is her blog entry on editing.  (BTW- much of what she talks about can also be found in the excellent book: Self-editing for Fiction Writers)

One other thing.  Elizabeth May also has a cool pinterest dedicated to inspiration for her book, and I thought I'd post a link to that, as well.  It inspired me to create my own board with stuff that gets my creativity flowing.

Here is her pinterest board.


Here is mine.  (Much smaller right now)


Hope all your goals are being reached and your inspiration is soaring!

Phoning it in...

I had a whole huge entry about my word of the year, DETERMINATION, to share with you, but then New Baby got the croup again and I got about... hmmm... 45 minutes of sleep last night.  Sometimes, as a mama, I DO have to tell myself, "You can get through this.  You can, and it WILL get better."  Thank goodness I have another son's experience on my belt or otherwise I might think otherwise.  New mamas out there, you have my sympathy.  I've been there and I understand your deep, everlasting fatigue.

I digress.  On to my update.  I'm so excited, guys!  I'm at 145,000 words with Aeris.  I'm >THIS< close to being finished with Luka's story and I've got my short story collection in proofing.  One of them.  The other one is in limbo because I haven't figured out the ending to one of the other stories yet.

I'm pretty sure —unless I come down with the plague— that I will, in fact, finish it by the 15th.  I'm so very very excited about where Luka's story went with this book, although I think I said that about Nikka's story, too. hahaha

So that's it from me for now.  I'm going out of town on Wed.  So I may or may not update.

Good luck to all my fellow ROW participants and Happy Reading!

Reader Love...

For some odd reason, maybe as a fallout to that craziness mentioned a few entries ago, everyone has been talking about readers on the web.  Whether its about writing more books so your readers don't forget you or keeping yourself away from reviews as a way of preserving your author health, readers seem to be on everyone's mind.

Which is how it should be.

It's hard to remember sometimes, when we're wrapped up in our wars of words, but readers are who we do this for.  Let me just say that again: READERS ARE WHO WE DO THIS FOR.  I don't care if you consider yourself an "artist" or if you HAVE TO WRITE so your heart doesn't die... that's fine, but if you put yourself out there, take the leap, try to get published in any way... it becomes all about the reader.

Sometimes I think reader love takes a wrong turn into unrequited love territory.  You know what I mean.  You have a crush, you give your heart away, then your crush basically says to you: "You suck, you're ugly, oh and by the way I'm going to make everyone hate you."  You go home, drink a bottle of wine and start drunk posting on FB (or twitter, as the case may be) about how terrible this person is, how they need to die a horrible death and how you never really liked them anyway.

True love is so great, isn't it?  In a perfect world, every reader would read your books, fall madly in love and start telling all their friends how they're so lucky to have met you.  In the real world, though, like love, there are people who will love you, like you, despise you, and not care really one way the other.  There are people in your life who will meet you once, seem to like you, but never make an effort to be your friend.  Believe me, you will find readers who are much the same.

If we could all just take the view that we need to find our TRUE reader loves, I don't think it would hurt as much.  As a person, you don't want everyone in the world to love you, do you?  Friends are great, and so are husbands, but I personally wouldn't want a hundred of each.  Granted, the reader/author relationship is a bit different, but if we could just somehow realize that it's okay when readers love us and it's okay when they don't, because despite pouring our hearts and minds out onto the "page" we understand that not everyone is going to love us.

And that's okay.  Because it's not personal.  Let me just say that again, too.  IT'S NOT PERSONAL.  Even though it feels like it.  Even though, like all the people in the world have done at one time or another, you want to scream to the skies, "Why doesn't he/she love me???"  They just don't.  They're not right for you.  It never would have worked anyway.  It wasn't meant to be.

If you take one thing away from being a writer, let it be about finding the RIGHT readers.  The ones who WILL love you, cheer you on, treat you like the special author you are.  They're out there, waiting.  All you have to do is find them.

Here are a few of the great entries I'm talking about:
Book Bloggers HELP indie authors
Write More Books for Your Readers!
Interesting Take on Genre Fiction
Why You Probably Shouldn't Read Reviews, Authors.


Happy Reading!

PS- My ROW week has been pretty productive.  Doing lots of editing and writing(though not on Aeris, though I plan to get to that next week, fingers crossed!)  Good luck to all the other participants.