Slight irritations

I haven't been working on the sequel to The Second Anniversary because for whatever reason, it just won't flow. I was having trouble even putting a pen to paper to write even a word, and I couldn't figure out why. Was it one of my other stories wanting to be worked on? Well that wasn't right because I had a distinct lack of enthusiasm for any of those stories, even the ones that I reread in anticipation of working on them.

Then last night as I was starting to fall asleep, I realized what was wrong with the story.

I was rushing everything including the serious relationship in the story.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this was my solution. What I have written right now is that Lucien and Abel go to a soiree held by the king and queen, are introduced to someone, and that night, a mere few hours after they met this individual, decide to pursue a relationship with them. And this starts less than a year after the ending of The Second Anniversary.

Needless to say, I'm not going to get rid of the other scenes that I wrote, but there will be some rewriting of them to make them fit into the new story. This will also let me show how relationships have changed and introduce a whole new culture to my readers without it feeling like I've thrown them off the cruise ship with a cannon ball around their ankles.

Toiling Away

I'm still here and I'm still going strong.

I've started working on the second novel of my Seconds Trilogy, of which The Second Wife was the first one. The second book will start about nine months after the ending of the first one and continue with the lives of the Duke of Frostmoor and his family. It's a bit more slow going because this novel is going to be bigger than the first one due to the relationships developing in it as well as the various events to show how things have changed since the first book. New characters are introduced, old characters return, and everyone starts gaining more depth and complexity that wasn't shown in the first novel.

Also, I'm working on editing and expanding on a more action-ish romance novel that a friend and I wrote together for fun. Valerie Bruce, my co-author of the Death and the Priest series, and I started Killer Sushi when we needed to have a bit of fun together that was light hearted and different than Father Leia St. Croix, Kanada Osamu, and Saionji Kusonoki. It resulted in a ghost hunter and a merman assassin with the last name of DuPre. An innocent question on if said merman was of the vampiric DuPre Clan from Father Leia's world, and Killer Sushi was started. There are other novels planned, and perhaps some short stories, but it's a fun thing when we don't want to write murder mysteries or any other type of mysteries at the moment.

Besides, who wouldn't want to read about an assassin merman who's about as straight as a broke back snake and a ghost hunter who can actually interact and see spirits and ghosts?

This novel is a bit more on the back burner because I want to get the second Duke of Frostmoor novel out, but who knows, if everything goes right, I could be getting it out before the end of the year.

Perhaps even have both of them out before the end of the year....

Still working on it.

The good news is that I'm one chapter down and over 5k words into the story. The bad news is that I've been sick in various levels this past week (or my daughter's been feeling a bit under the weather which means she's extra cuddly) so I haven't had a chance to get as much transcribing done as I wanted.

But I'm making it up for it today.

Of course, having a three ring binder between me and the computer while I'm typing is rather annoying, so I decided to take the story out of the binder and used twistie ties (yes those things that hold garbage bags closed) to hold the pages together. It works rather well and turns the loose leaf pages into a sort of spiral ring binder, letting me fold everything in half for an easier way to type around it.

*laughs* Necessity is the innovation of creativity right?

Of course, I also have a photo box to set up for any and all covers I'm planning on taking in the future, but that will be about an hour's worth of work (at the most) and then I have to find a good place to stash it out of the reach of the princess and the cats. That will be more amusing than anything else, I think. Of course, any pictures will have to be taken either at night when I have full control over the lighting or during the day when the princess is at school. I think at night would work better.

I do have the next cover planned for my current novel, but I have a few props I need to buy and/or borrow from various people to make up the cover I have in mind. I just hope it turns out as wonderful in reality as it is in my head.

First Round, Done!

That's right, the first draft of my novel is done!

Final supply count for it is:

1 ream of loose leaf notebook paper
8 gel ink cartridges for my pen
1 Write Out correction tape spool
and 3 discarded but previously written scenes.

I've discovered that the stories seem to come together more easily if I write them out by hand and then transcribe them to the computer, which is the next draft. That also lets me remove repetitive information while fleshing out more details. Such as the fact that this was originally going to be a sort of strange Victorian setting before it decided it wanted to be a fantasy setting with little bits of magic here and there. So yeah, gotta go back and change things around in the first chapters to reflect that new setting.

The ironic thing is, this is a sort of romance story in that it deals with the feelings and relationships between three spouse, but there isn't any physical relations between them which is why part of me is reluctant to classify this as a romance. Mainly because so many romance stories involve and revolve around the physical relationships between the characters. Yet I can't think of anywhere it fits better.

Well, we'll see what happens when I actually put it up on Amazon, which if everything goes right could be May at the latest and April at the earliest.

Where Did That Month Go?

Between PTO stuff for my daughter's preschool, the crazy weather that either coaxed us outside or ran us back indoors, and the general run of the mill day to day things, February up and vanished on me!

But good news is that I haven't stopped writing and I may even be a bit into the home stretch of this book. Or at least the last 1/4 of it. I'm coming up on Climatic Moment #2 which, now that I think about it, could be the actual climax of  the story. I mean, the other information that is found out could be told through a conversation between two people, and if that's the case, I don't really need to be writing out a huge chapter when a few paragraphs will do, right?

In other good news, I have a new computer. Of course, this means some of my writing time gets eaten up by World of Warcraft. *laughs* I'm having fun with the latest expansion and enjoying the chance to actually play in the new expansion instead of having a slide show because my video card can't keep up with it.

I'll try to be better at posting, but with the nicer months starting to creep up on us, I might be even worse at posting *laughs*

Don't worry, though, you'll be the first to know about new books that I put out.

Solving the Plot Hole Problem

One of the minor problems that every author usually comes across is the Plot Hole. Everyone has seen them even if the weren't quite aware of what they are. It's the 9 year old Pod Racing boy who JUST HAPPENS to be able to fly the space ship and take out the shield generator. It's the traps meant to keep an adult wizard out yet three first year students were able to bypass them. It's the One Thing that statistics, science, and probability saying shouldn't happen, but for the sake of the plot it happens.

While working on my latest story, I ran into not one but four of these little delights. To be rather vague, a crime happens and someone important is injured enough to require medical care. My plot holes became the following:

1. Why weren't the police notified?
2. Why wasn't a doctor summoned?
3. Why weren't the family notified?
4. Why didn't anyone show up for X amount of days?

I took those questions, wrote them down on a piece of paper, and then stared at them for a while this morning, pen in hand ready to answer those questions. Oh, I could keep writing the story as it was going, but those four questions would keep poking me. I could even wave them off as not necessary due to plot, but that just felt lazy and wouldn't give the story I want to give my readers.

Besides, answering those stories would make it challenging and force me to actually think about what's going on in this world instead of just shrugging and answering those questions with "Because reasons".

It took about a quarter of an hour of weighing pros and cons before I came up with answers that were acceptable to continuing the plot instead of disrupting it. Are the answers perfect? No, there's still a bit of a plot hole in them but not nearly as large as they had been. It's quite likely that in the editing phase I'll be able to close them even more, but for now, that small bit of a gap is going to have to do.

I will probably use this technique for all of my plot holes in the future as it seemed to work out rather well this time. Having the problems right in front of me like this allows me to realize just where the issue is and now it needs to be fixed, perhaps it will take creating a whole new plot point or something in the story to seal up that plot hole, or perhaps I won't be able to successfully seal up a plot hole. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

Best Laid Plans

So, this past weekend, I was writing, determined to get my Beauty and the Beast short story done and published before the month was out, and on Sunday, I thought it was completely done at 25 pages and around 15k words. Then I sent it to my beta reader.

"Are you trying to do a novel in a short story?" was the kindest thing she said (which I actually appreciate instead of someone squealing and stating it's the best thing ever!!) She went on to explain that I pretty much had done next to nothing in the story and there was quite a bit that needed to be done in it. Also, the ending didn't make any sense.

I admit I was a bit aghast at that, but I realized she was right. I had been trying to write a novel in a short story, and there were so many holes, the story was practically the crib notes version of what it could be. There was so much more that needed to be done in this story to get a good tale out of this. So, I'll be taking that "crib notes" and expanding on everything that is there, and turning it into a novel.

Of course, this means that my plan for publishing a fairy tale short this month, then next month, and finally the anthology in March has been completely derailed. See, Beauty and the Beast is one of those that is included in the anthology, and also, if this story needs something of a novel rewrite, then I'm gonna have to rethink the other story I have planned plus the anthology only special story.

What does that mean for my writing? Well one of my goals for 2017 is tho have a novel written, edited, have a cover on it, and published on Amazon by no later than November. I will be shelving Beauty and the Beast for the immediate future to focus on one of the novels that I actually have a great deal of it written out by hand. When I get stuck on that story, finish that story, or need something to do when I don't feel like writing pages upon pages, I'll pull Beauty and the Beast out and poke at it to see where it wants to go and how it wants to get there.

I'm not throwing the story or the idea away, but it definitely needs a lot more meat on those bones before it can be ready for anyone aside from my beta readers to read. Mainly because I hate promising my readers a steak and lobster dinner only to hand them a McDonald's Happy Meal.