Thursday, October 18, 2012

Getting more out of NaNo

I'm getting a lot more out of my NaNo experience this year.  I've figured out basically how Scrivener works (awesome writing program, btw), I know what I'll be working on and have some plot points already sketched out, and I'm even more active on the messageboard this year.

There are two swaps that I'm involved in, a Tea Swap with a woman in the US, and a Goodie Swap with a woman in Australia!  Fun!  I'd love to participate in the local write-ins, but my laptop is in the boneyard, so maybe next year.  I would like to take the train and attend the Night of Writing Dangerously in San Francisco sometime.  I hear a lot of craziness goes on during that event.


Avienne (Spirit of the Clans, Book 1)

Back when I began this novel during June's NaNo camp, I pictured it as a trilogy, with Aliyah growing up and returning to the Felisene in the first book.  But I got 50k words into the story, and she's still 4-years-old, and then I got stuck and couldn't decide whether to advance her to her teenage years, then advance her again to adulthood.  So I wrote something else for August's camp.  Now that NaNo is here again, I'm going to continue the fantasy, beginning when she's an adult and including a few flashbacks to her teenage years, and this phase of her story will be told in one volume.  I'll have her story continue in the 2nd book where she will resolve the issues in her own clan.  Subsequent volumes will revolve around other stories related in time and space but still separate.  

I'm looking forward to continuing her story and getting back into mad-writing mode with all the craziness that NaNoWriMo evokes.  I have some awesome writing buddies this year and look forward to sharing and caring with them.

In the meantime, I'm trying to, at least, finish reading "The Story of Norway" before the end of the month, although I also need to read "The Scarlet Letter" ick.  That's the one book from high school I could not get through, and yes, when it came time for me to write the report on it, I read the first 50 pages and the last 20 pages and wrote the darn report...the only time I cheated in school.  I still feel guilty, but it still doesn't make me want to read that book!  And to compound my feeling of guilt about it, when my grandmother learned that I was supposed to read it in school, she gave me a 2nd printing copy of "The Scarlet Letter" that had belong to her mother, Rosie Belle Tinsley, who had traveled with it across the plains in a covered wagon.  It's a family heirloom, and I will always treasure it because of that.


Friday, October 12, 2012

19 days and counting!

NaNo's coming up again, and I think I'll be ready on time.  I'm continuing the story I began last June during NaNo Camp.  It's a fantasy about a young orphan who is being raised by an enemy clan.  I originally planned this as a series, but 50k words into the story, my character was still the same age.  It's time for her to grow up, which is where I'll be starting in November.  


Monday, October 1, 2012

Books Read in September 2012


Allen, Sarah Addison
- The Peach Keeper 
Fiction.  Slightly magical tale about two men, two women, and their grandmothers, and a mysterious man whose special powers has the entire town up in arms...before and after his death.

Allison, Dorothy
- Dorothy Allison: A Psychic Story 
Fiction.  VERY boring story written by the psychic about some of her cases.  (Thought it was about the author Dorothy Allison when I bought it.)

Andrews, Ilona
- Magic Bites 
Fiction.  Shapeshifters, vampires, necromancers, all sorts of beasties all fighting for a spot as the top dog.  Heroine Kate is hired to sort through all the rumors and lies to solve the murder of her mentor.

Arthur, Keri
- Darkness Unbound 
Fiction.  Risa Jones, half-werewolf and half-Aedh visits the hospital at the bequest of her mother to check on a young girl in a coma.  Upon arriving there, she knows immediately that something is very wrong.  When faced with dealing with the girl’s grieving parents, she makes a promise to herself that she will find the person responsible for the girl’s condition.  In her quest, she meets two “men”, both of whom want something from her.

Ashley, Jennifer
- Pride Mates 
Fiction.  HOT!  Kim Fraser, rising star of her law firm, takes on a case involving the murder of a woman by a shifter.  In her zeal to prove his innocence, she takes on a mysterious, dangerous feline shifter and proves herself to be his equal.

Atherton, Nancy
-Aunt Dimity’s Death 
Fiction.  Engaging tale of love and loss and true happiness as Lori and Bill delve in the mystery of Aunt Dimity’s many secrets.

Blackwell, Juliet
- In a Witch’s Wardrobe 
Fiction.  Trouble finds Lily at the Paramount Theater during an Art Deco Ball.  A young woman’s soul becomes trapped, and Lily runs around town trying to help her, while at the same time colliding with Sailor in an unplanned way, and the SFPD is trying to track down a group of anti-witches who are seeking to harm all in their path.

Childs, Laura
- Bedeviled Eggs
Fiction.  Suzanne and the girls are busy at work in their cafe and with all of the events they have planned.  In the midst of everything, a promising mayoral candidate is murdered on the steps of the Cackleberry Club, prompting Suzanne to hone her sleuthing skills to find his killer.  Suzanne is sounding an awful lot like Theodosia in the Tea Shop mysteries.

Christie, Agatha
- The Secret Adversary 
Fiction.  1st in the Tommy & Tuppence mysteries.  Tuppence runs across her childhood friend, and as they’re both out of work, she suggests they begin their own enterprise, Young Adventurers, Ltd.  Tommy readily agrees, and in less than a day, they’re off on their first adventure, one that will take them from a shipwreck to the British courts.

- Peril at End House 
Fiction.  Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings appear again in this story.  Hercule has supposedly retired from crime fighting but is tantalized by the attempted murders of a beautiful young woman into sleuthing once more.

Cornwell, Patricia
- Cruel and Unusual 
Fiction.  Kay is the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Her professional life and her personal life seem to keep getting entangled.  A convict on death row dies, but suddenly murders start happening that imitate the crime for which he was charged, and strangely enough, his fingerprints are found in one of the victims’ homes, although he’s been locked up for 10 years.  Kay, and her detective friend, Marino, need to pool their resources to solve the crime, before anyone else dies.

- The Body Farm 
Fiction.  Kay’s life becomes more complicated when her niece, Lucy, takes on an internship with the FBI.  At the same time, a murder case in North Carolina of a young girl needs solving, and the working and personal relationships between Kay, Marino and Denton get very complicated and strained.  Kay has to juggle watching out for her niece, watching her own back and trying to solve the murder.

Dams, Jeanne M.
- The Evil That Men Do
Fiction.  Dorothy Martin and her ex-copper husband, Alan Nesbitt, are on holiday in the Cotswolds in a charming town called Broadway.  As usual with Dorothy, she becomes embroiled in a mystery involving a rock star, a counselor, an abusive man, and a wonderful new companion.

Evanovich, Janet
- Wicked Business 
Fiction.  Lizzy wants nothing more than to bake her cupcakes, but trouble seems to follow her around in the form of Diesel, her sometimes protector, sometimes bedmate, and always hot guardian, along with his sidekick, the willful Carl.

Gaynor, Hazel
- The Girl Who Came Home 
Fiction.  Heartwrenching tale of travelers on Titanic, from a group of 14 Irish men and women traveling to America to start a new life, to a brave steward who provided missing links from the past, to a young contemporary girl, great-granddaughter of one of Titanic’s survivors who connects with her great-grandmother in a very personal way.

Stockett, Kathryn
- The Help 
Fiction.  Gutwrenching at times, heartwarming at times, this tale of racial differences in Mississippi homes in the early 1960’s will drag you down into the bowels of racism and lift you up into the light of hope, as it tells the tales of black maids and their white employers.