I forgot to remind Christy that it's her turn to blog this week... ;)
Soooo... from my Inbox, because I forgot to post them before, here are some reviews of the newly re-released Bad-A$$ Faeries series from Mundania Press:
BAF
http://www.nightowlromance.com/nightowlromance/reviews/Review.aspx?daoid=5128
This book got a 4.25 so use the "My Book has been Reviewed by Night Owl Reviews" icon.
Review Blurb for use on your sites:
"I found it delightful...each story made me think more and more about the possibilities of faeries being real." 4 1/4 Stars Night Owl Reviews
BAF 2
http://www.nightowlromance.com/nightowlromance/reviews/Review.aspx?daoid=5129
This book got a 4.75 so use the "Night Owl Reviews Top Pick" icon.
Review Blurb for use on your sites:
"[Bad-Ass Faeries 2] was as much if not more as enjoyable a read as its predecessor, and I will enjoy reading any other books that come across from these authors." 4.75 Stars - Top Pick, Night Owl Reviews
In the Night Owl Review, Christy's & my story, "Party Crashers" actually highlighted:
Roy, Cameron and Monica and their crew are out to capture a sidhe faerie. He’s been stealing artifacts and committing crimes all over the place and they think they may have him right where they want him. Victor Caradoc is the sidhe they are after and he is getting rich people to give him money from all over the world. He doesn’t need the money; it’s just for the sport of it.
Wheeeeeee!!!
Now... back to work on some noveling - or at least fixing our chapter synopsis! :)
Happy 2010 from Trish & Chris's Blog!
We've got a resolution/business plan to update this more regularly… so I'm starting with a similar New Year's post to what I do for myself on my own blog.
Basically, Saturday night, Chris and I had our first… what I'd call… "official" business meeting. We've been friends for years, so we just have been going with the flow, but I thought we needed to really get down to the business side of our partnership and discuss how we wanted to grow - and set ourselves some deadlines.
We have two of our own projects in the works now, and we'll be embarking on a new novel with this year's NaNoWriMo - and we want to write another short piece together, and try out a joint poem. With that, I've got several of my own projects that I need to balance… and though we didn't talk about it, I know Chris has a lot of great story ideas on her own to work on. (Like that YA Fae romance, Chris??? J Want to see it!)
Writing wise, we want to get our 2009 NaNoWriMo (secret-ish) project ready for beta readers by the end of March. Then, we want to get Yesterday's Shadows re-edited and re-ready for another round of submissions perhaps (unless we're submitting our NaNoWriMo project… see, "Business" for more on that!) We also want to finish a short piece we were playing with earlier this year, and that deadline is set for the end of September - leaving us clear for NaNoWriMo 2010.
Business wise, well, updating this blog more frequently. J We have an every-other-week schedule planned so far, and I think we will take turns with marketing updates and info on the Bad-Ass Faeries anthologies, and any other NEWS we may get. (You know, like manuscript requests and all that.) In July we need to have a talk on our query plan. I'll have seen how my own novel has done in the scary submission waters - and we'll have to decide which (if we can't do both) of our projects we should be querying. Oh - preemptive to that, January is us researching more query protocol/manners. We also have a business meeting to discuss marketing/platform for our 2009 NaNoWriMo project this Tuesday.
I look forward to this being our most productive year together! Great things will happen.
Happy 2010 to you!
Check out the spiffy new cover over on Amazon and Mundania Press! Whoo-hoo!!
http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Ass-Faeries-Just-Plain-Bad/dp/1606592068/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257338371&sr=8-3
Enjoy!!
I got another critique on my writing back from my live writers group. I wrote a flash piece that borders on erotica and has to do with Death and a borderline personality chick… I have had the widest range of feedback on this. A few people hate it, but none for the same reason, and quite a few people really like it or love it… none for the same reason.
I suppose I'm addicted to writing feedback. I've gotten to the point where I can sift through what is useful relatively well and take my punches… but I'm equally fascinated on how a story and its meaning changes based on the reader. I wrote in my own blog about considering demographics as a writer… but I want to add that writers should also listen to what different demographics think of a particular piece. One of the people who really hated "Manipulation," didn't get it at all… but she made some comments on sentence-level things that absolutely made sense.
The only truly useless critiques are those who say they love something and don't know why. Yeah, it's a great ego-boost… but its like a empty carbs. Sure you get a rush, but there's no nutritional gain.
When you write with another person, it also brings a different flavor - and a broader demographic on the composing in.
Chris and I were brought up with and follow different religions - so she noticed when I was overly Catholic-heavy in our novel planning. (On the other hand, I brought up a few things she didn't know as a non-Catholic.)
She also has family from a different ethnic background than I do, so she can draw on the Hawaiian/Japanese influences much better.
We also read different books and watch different movies, so our shared reading experience also makes for a richer background in storytelling.
Chris has kids; I work with horses. I grew up in New England, in a state where you can drive a few hours in any cardinal compass direction and be in another state (or the ocean); Chris lives in the west and grew up on the west coast… in huge states, with a different ocean, desert, and different mountains.
On the other hand, we're both Caucasian women of about the same age, in monogamous heterosexual relationships, working primarily in education, in approximately the same gross household income bracket, geeky sf/f/h/etc. lovers, cynics, with twisted senses of horror and beauty.
There are certain things we can be each other's critics for, and others we'll share the same blindness to… so, back to the critique/writing groups. J Our Shadow Guard/Fae Sithein world has had an overall strong response - and even fans! - but our writing has done an awful lot of growing - and continues to do so.
I'm curious at how far our shared experience and differences will get us in the overall quality of our latest endeavor. I look forward to it!
Our book had a face-lift :)
Our anthology was bought by a new publisher and is being prepped for resale. More info can be found at:
http://www.mundania.com/book.php?title=Bad-Ass+Faeries+2:+Just+Plain+Bad
Anthology #1 in the series was also bought by the same publisher and will be re-launched as well.
Although outlining is never fun, if you want a good story it needs to be mapped out first. Laurell K Hamilton recently said, "Outlining is a necessary evil, and a thinking tool, but never a joy for me." Most writers just want to get to the writing while the story is vivid in their mind. When an idea hits, most authors can see how the story starts, maybe some middle scenes, and how it should end. But if they end up jumping head long into the writing, they can face a lot of obstacles.
Trish and I talked a lot about our first book before we started writing it. We chatted often through the Internet (IM and email) and the occasional phone call, but we didn't really put together any outline. I guess we figured that since we knew what direction everything should go, that we didn't need to outline it out. As we wrote, and since we didn't have a real solid plan, the hours we spent on many scenes ended up being a waste of time because they ultimately were cut from the final manuscript. We could have saved ourselves from the headache (of tossing out material and adding new) if we had simply took the time to lay the road.
So, in order to avoid the roadblock, we decided to take on our next project differently. Instead of writing the synopsis AFTER we wrote the story, we wrote the synopsis beforehand. Our next step was a Chapter Breakdown. In the breakdown, we wrote a three-five sentence synopsis of what will happen in each chapter. The next step is to begin the writing!!
Our plan this year is to try out the NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng) or National Novel Writing Month. Having deadlines is good for any writer to have. If you don't set limitations, goals, etc, the book will never be finished. If the goal is to write 10 pages a day or 28 hours a week, then things are bound to get done rather than saying to yourself, "Oh, I'll get to it eventually." If you use the later excuse, you are setting your book up for failure. NaNoWriMo is more like a commitment. You are to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of one month- November. This is great because it has a due date. And as I said, a writer DOES need a due date.
So- ask us Dec 1st if we're finished :). My hope is to give an affirmative yes!
It HAS been a while since either of us posted here. My!
I've been off conventioning… Christy has had a lot of family needs - both good and not-so-good.
We have been writing though. Life has not entirely beaten us down!
Christy sent me a working synopsis of our new novel - outside of the Shadow Guard/Fae Sithein realm. She sent it… almost a week ago. Maybe more than a week ago.
I started reading it daily. I know the first page by heart, mostly. (It's really poetic, too! Especially for a working synopsis!) I finally finished reading it today - but did not get to add any edits or comments.
Please don't kill me, Christy? J
I get off my tutoring hours at 9PM tomorrow. Christy, if you are online, you have permission - nay - I order/beg you to get out that whip!
Yay co-author motivation!
P.S. You can post here, too, Chris ;)
(Vampyre, Vampir, Upiór, Upir', Upyr)
In the wake of Twilight and its ongoing mania topped with True Blood as well as the push to re-vamp (pun intended) Anne Rice's vampire chronicles and Johnny Depp cast as the popular vampire, Barnabas, in Dark Shadows, the blood-sucking franchise is moving forward full steam ahead. People seem to lurk in the shadows, like the famous fanged ones, waiting to take a bite out of whatever form of media produces the next vampire story. But the question remains- why do people flock to see these leeches in action? Maybe it's their animal chemistry or maybe they've glamoured us with their magic. But the fact remains- people would bare their necks to anything vampire.
Vampires have been in the media for centuries. The first documented use of the word vampire was in 1047 AD when a Russian church priest cited his name as "Upir' Likhyi " or "the wicked vampire". In European countries around 1718, official city documents recorded the local practice of digging up bodies and "killing the vampires." But looking even deeper into history, we find vampirism as far back as Greek and Roman times where they documented creatures that had a lot of vampiric qualities, oft times depicted on pottery. Yet they did not bare the name "vampire" back then. The only term they could identify with such a creature was demon or devil. In
Presently, vampires still steal the spotlight (or moonlight) though are treated in a much different way. Unlike in centuries past where the vampire was to be exterminated and feared, they seem to captivate and titillate the human psyche of today. Why the change? Perhaps it is what the vampire has come to represent in today's media: forbidden temptations. And, as we learned from Eve, something that is forbidden is very alluring. The bad boy/girl image has always fascinated people. We are drawn to them because these "rebels without a cause" represent the high stakes (no pun intended) danger, chaos, and darkness that we yearn to acknowledge yet keep shackled deep inside us. In an ethical, upright society, displaying anything that goes against the structure's mores or represents vice is considered uncouth and immoral. Yet vampires live their lives free of human structure and unreservedly tap into their darker side. We all harbor this darkness, but do not dare touch it or encourage it. The vampire encompasses forbidden pleasure, unfettered living, control, immortality, desirability, and usually extensive wealth. These are all things that we yearn to possess. So when they are all embodied in one being, that one being is ultimately attractive.
Christy was going to come visit and join me at Worldcon… but things happen out of anyone's controls.
We both traveled during this time; we both still had to pack and unpack.
My journey was much different. I shared a room with someone who has become a good friend, and a stranger who I'd like to become a good friend.
I met and hugged one of my heroes. He wished me luck in an endeavor that had me mentally and emotionally packing and unpacking a lot of baggage. Luck listened to one or both of us. Perhaps I can keep a few unwanted fears packed for longer now - because they never actually go away. You always need to change those suitcase locks, and the airport never loses those bags.
I packed and unpacked for the BIGGEST party I ever threw - or helped throw - bigger than my own wedding (but missing the most important part). People came looking for us; they talked about us in the halls and sought us out. Inanna packed most of those remnants, but a few tagged along home with me - along with a glow that went beyond the packs of Jell-o shots. And too many Styrofoam glasses.
When I packed to leave, I forgot and missed important things: My camera (I had to buy a disposable one to capture pictures, although grainy). My memory stick that had my academic paper and presentation on it. And my friend who packed for her own journey.
I packed and unpacked freedom and equality and support for women writers.
I packed and unpacked potential new friends' and colleagues' sacred names and calling cards.
I packed and unpacked enshrined memories to my Dad, to and from my family to wherever he is now. Like the pictures in my brain, the photos are fuzzy and not entirely clear and not an exact representation of the place or event - but still imprinted. And still beautiful.
The story draft I packed to leave is not the same one that I brought home. What I learned has changed the words and meaning forever. And they may change many times more.
The Hope I packed to leave was different than the Hope I unpacked upon my return.
Have you ever noticed that you what you pack and unpack at the beginning of your journey is never the same as what you pack and unpack at the end? What changed?
My husband and son went to Hawaii to be with family in order to take part in his grandpa's funeral. I took the opportunity to go visit my sister, mom, and grandparents as well as other extended family in the meantime, which proved to be a good get-a-way on my part. I haven't seen some of them in nearly 15-20 years.
Taking a trip somewhere, no matter how long you are gone, is always great. People need that break away from their day-to-day lives in order to function coherently. That's why weekends are so crucial in the working world. Without breaks away from it all, redundancy would be coupled with buckets of drool. But the strangest thing too, after being away from normalcy too long, you actually crave to get back to that very world you fought to get away from. We're all gluttons for punishment, yes.
Yet, when I returned from a trip to Washington, I think I had the worst nostalgia.
As I unpacked my bags and put things away, memories of the trip haunted me. Even though I was glad to be home and get back into my routine, I longed to be with those I left behind. I suppose that's what makes visiting people you haven't seen in a while so worthwhile.... and making it so hard to let go.
So, as I washed the last bit of Washington off the car and vacuumed away the last cheesy fish cracker from the floor, I packed away my precious memories.... in order to move on... and look forward to the next time I get to go.
