I’ve been kind of quiet this first week of Nano. It’s been crazy in my neck of the woods. Lots of people without power, electrical lines down all over the place. Halloween was even canceled in some areas. The horror!!!

I lost power for a few hours, which disrupted my Nanowrimo prep, but other than that I was fine. However I was without internet or good cell service for most of the week that made it harder to communicate and check in than I’m used to. But now everything’s back on line, most of the area has power again, and I’m moving forward on the nano front.

I didn’t get all my prep done that I wanted, but I got a good percentage of it. I got the cats to the vet (they received a clean bill of healthy, and the doctor said their weight was perfect, not typical for cats, especially my spoiled ones). I did a lot of cleaning and finished revising wandering. I plan to send it off after another quick look over, which I’ll do in the next day or so.

Nano has been going well so far. I narrowed the projects I wanted to do down to my untitled shifter story, about Madison and Hunter, and my fantasy novel. But so far my attentions have been completely focused on Madison and Hunter. I don’t know if it’s all the pent up non-writing time, the fact that I ignored them for a month (Hunter hates to be ignored, the second I turn my back on him he starts screaming at me, but Mady and Hunter aren’t letting me even think about anyone else. They want all my time. And for nano, I’m happy to give it to them. I may end up finishing this work during Nano, which I hadn’t anticipated. We’ll have to see how long they keep my focus, and how long there story ends up being.

As of this morning, I have 9,304 words towards Madison and Hunter’s story. 8,056 of those nano words. A little under count, but I have a few days off the EDJ coming up and I plan to push through and skyrocket that word count.

I’ll see if I can find a snippet for you guys in the next few days. It’s hard with nano works, since they tend to be fast and rough, but I’ll see if I can find a paragraph or two.     

This October I’ve spent revising an old work from before Naughty List, Wandering Off the Path. When I was submitting it last year I thought it was fantastic and I was convinced it would be my first published work, but all I received was rejections.  I was devastated, especially as my first try, but it was necessary. I was lucky enough to get a lot of great comments, loving my voice, and what concerns the editors had.

Last September I was all ready to do another revision when I got the idea for Naughty List and was taken far off the path of this story.  First I was bogged down with edits and revisions, and then promo and an urge to write the rest of the Naughty Holiday List series (I had intended them to come out by each holiday at first, Midnight Mirage a month after Naughty List, Heart’s Ultimatum a month after that, but I realized now that is too quick a pace for me to write quality work).

Now with two of the books out, Naughty List and Midnight Mirage, Heart’s Ultimatum in the pipeline and Amy’s story brewing, I thought this was a perfect time to revisit Wandering.

Immersed in the edits, I’ve realized two things. One, I love this story. It’s a historical and I love historicals. Historicals were the first romance novels I read and tried to write. I hope to get back to those roots some more in the future (ideas are brewing ;D). And Two, I’ve learned a lot over the last year. All the comments the editors wrote in their rejections now all make sense, and I agree.

As I read through it I see all the areas I made mistakes, newbie mistakes. Like the line of head-hopping, or Wolf’s back story, which now I realize doesn’t fit his character. It’s a classic story of a new writer trying to steer the character in a certain direction. As I read it now it sounds so false. It’s why all the editors said they couldn’t get a grip on Wolf’s motivations.

But all these things are nuances I would never have picked up before. It’s only come with time and experience. I still have much to learn, but it’s nice to see how much I’ve learned in a year.

I’m hoping to finish revisions on Wandering by the weekend. And then on to Nanowrimo…I can’t wait.

Nanowrimo starts in almost exactly two weeks and I’m already excited. My muse is just as thrilled, and she’s been torturing me all month long. New ideas are coming fast and crazy. But before the nanowrimo craziness starts I need to do a bunch of nanowrimo prep.

For most people Nanowrimo prep includes character charts, outlines, research and plotting, I have even more prep I need to do before this crazy event kicks off and takes over the next month.

Eliminate projects. Right now I have about six projects screaming in my head wanting some attention. But to get the most out of Nano and to get a few completed works I need to limit the number of projects.  Since I write mainly shorter works, I don’t expect to only work on one project for 50k words, but I do want to work on completing works, not just hacking away at ideas. So I want to limit my choices to three or less projects to consider part of the Nano craziness.

Finish world building and write character profiles. Since more than likely my new fantasy idea and my expanded femdom short are two of the projects I want to work on, I need to finish my character profiles and world building for those two works.

Finish revising Wandering. I'm almost half way done revising Wandering, and I'd love to finish it by the end of the month and have it sent off to a publisher. It will certainly make the wait easier during Nano wrim

Get blogs ready and posted. I have a few blogging a promo obligations in November, but to not split my focus during Nano, I’m going to try and get those put together and scheduled in October so I wouldn’t have to worry about it, come next month.

Finish cleaning up my office. For the last year plus my office has been a mess because I’ve been using that room to house everything not kitten approved. But now that the kittens are older, and it’s just damn time, I want to clean out my office so I can use it to focus during nano. I dropped off two large bags at good will last week, did some organizing and threw out a bunch of stuff. It’s not completely done, but it’s come a long way.

Clean up my inbox (as much as possible). My email inbox is kind of a monster, stealing time like a thief in the night. While I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to get my inbox down to nothing, I’m going to try and clean it up as much as possible, so I can ignore it and not think about it in November, besides essential business emails. Amazingly, every year, it seems like the amount emails I get decreases during November. Wonder why that is :D

Do a deep clean of my home. I’m not going to want to clean the house during nano (though I never really want to clean the house, hence how long the office above as been a problem). While little areas of cleaning will have to be done (like laundry and dishes) a good thorough cleaning now will mean less work during November.

Go shopping. Since I’ll want to spend time writing instead of shopping, I want to make sure and refresh all the essentials now, such as cat food, pastas, frozen foods and canned soups. Unlike other Nanos I’m in the heart of the Romance Biggest Winner weight loss competition this year, so I’ll still have to go to the store regularly for produce, but if I stock up on the other stuff now it should make those trips faster.

Clean up the most I can at the EDJ. Last year nano was really spoiled by all my commitments at my evil day job (combined with edits for my December release for Naughty List). Last year I’d just gotten the job in October, and didn’t have the chance to clean up all the problems lurking for the end of the year. But this year that’s not true. While my job does have a lot of commitments towards the end of the year, there’s nothing to say that I can’t star t cleaning up some of that now. I have meetings scheduled for the last week of October to clear up a few things, and I’m making progress. Will I fix every issue, of course not, but everyone I do will make it that much easier for me to leave on time and write during my lunch breaks uninterrupted.

Get the cats a vet appointment. Something that needs to be done before the end of November for the rabies shots to be good, might as well do it in October to have more Nanowrimo time.

Spackle my walls. I want to get someone in to paint my hallway (I’m hoping during November when I’m taking time off to write) so I want to  make sure everything is spackled and ready to go for them, so as soon as they are ready to come in I can have them show up. I definitely don’t want to spackle during Nano. I’ll be too busy writing.

Get some sleep. After nano comes, sleep will be at a premium, especially if something big happens at the EDJ or my edits come in for Heart’s Ultimatum. Now’s the time to get caught up on sleep, because who knows how much I’ll be getting in November.

So that’s my list of things I have to do before Nano. What’s on your Nanowrimo prep list?

I’ve made some progress revising Wandering. It took a little while to bite the bullet and really start revising it. I think I was a little scared it would be really bad, and I love this story so much, I don’t want to have to abandon it. But once I got over the hump (and the first crutch word filled page) it moved a lot smoother. I made it through the first chapter and I’m part way through the second. I know I have some serious revisions I need to make to the third, four, fifth and last, so I’ve definitely done the easier work so far, but still forward movement is so key, I’ll take any I can get.

An amazing idea came together for me this week. An idea I’ve been playing with for a while but just couldn’t get all the right components together. Until now. Just like Naughty List, where the idea had bounced around in my head for years before they found the right fit. Only problem it’s a fantasy romance.

Don’t get me wrong, I love fantasies. Good fantasies are amazing. But they take so much work and so much planning, which are not my forte.  But these characters are great, and I’ve always dreamed of writing something so big, and impressive as this, so I’m going to go for it.

I’ve started a world encyclopedia, and have a creation myth for my world all put together. The pieces are coming together, slowly. And that’s what I need to remember about this particular WIP. This one is not a race. I can write contemporaries fast (very minimal world building, once the idea comes I can just write) but I can’t create a whole world fast. It took billions of years to create the earth. I can’t expect to do it in a week.  

So I’ll be working on my fantasy, here and there, and see how it goes. But I’ll continue on my same path with my other stories. And I’ll probably ignore it during November.  Less than four weeks to Nanowrimo. I can hardly wait.

I don’t have much to report this week. After a few revisions, and one writer like breakdown that thankfully was much improved by my awesome critique partner, I got my short, Dinner with the In-Laws, into the editor for an anthology request. No word yet as to if it will get picked up, but either way I have future plans for it that will need to stew for a little while.

I’ve been working on Wandering this week, but rather sporadically. By that, I don’t mean I’m not putting in the time, but that I haven’t started working on page one and moved forwards. I’ve been shifting through, taking care of some of the low hanging editing-fruit. I will get to the page by page revision, but every time I find something I can improve, I’m improving it, no matter what page it’s on.

 My muse, however, has been off in her own world, torturing me with ideas for all kinds of stories. When she’s not trying to push me to expand my short, DWTIL, she’s giving me revelations about WIPS I haven’t been working on for months. Including two ménages, a MMF that is temporarily titled All for My Baby and another contemporary MFM ménage that’s my version of Bonnie and Clyde…and Clyde :D. I don’t want to get into writing either of these works this month (since I have Nano next month, and there is no way they could be done on time. Both ideas are novel long. I don’t want to take the risk that I’d lose momentum by taking a break for a month) but my muse is really torturing me, so I might have to break down and write some, at least quick notes, on some of these works.

This may change my priorities for Nano. Madison and Hunter might be shelved a little longer. But I’m going to try and get to as many of these stories as I can. I have some vacation days to burn at the EDJ and I plan to use them to take a full time writer’s vacation, and make it my job to write.

And even though having an out of control Muse may seem like a problem, I much prefer it over the alternative. No ideas at all.

Sorry I’m a little late with this post, but I’ve been having some mysterious internet issues at home. Not sure where they’re coming from, but they seem to be fixed now (hopefully).

This week I got distracted again (seeing a theme yet, I certainly am :D). This week was what I call a good distraction. A quick story that just needed to be told. Last Thursday I received notification that an anthology deadline was lengthened due to not receiving the types of stories they were looking for. Once I received the email I immediately knew I wanted to write a story for this anthology, and I only had until the new deadline to do it. This is pretty typical of my muse. She usually gets an idea when there’s just enough time left to write it, but the same was true for Naughty List, and that worked out all right, so I can’t fight her.

This inspiration was a quick short story, so it won’t distract me for very long (which is why it’s a good distraction) but allowed me to stick a toe in a pool I’d been interested in for some time. Femdoms.

Here’s a little snippet to let you know what I mean.

Her breasts tightened in her bra. Her stiff nipples abraded against the lace. She was on fire, turned on and ready to blow, just with the look of Andrew tied up and waiting for her dominance. Nothing was sexier than a round tight bottom waiting for her punishment.

I have some ideas of how to expand this short story into a longer tale, so I’ll be working on that soon. And the fun of this story, is that I can be dark with the domination, spanking, and bondage (which I love to do) but I also get to be funny in a way my muse doesn’t usually let me.  To give you a hint at this comedy all I have to do is tell you the title of the story (which may change), Dinner with the In-Laws. Let your imagination run wild, mine definitely did.

Now this does mean that Wandering revisions have been pushed back slightly, to make room for this short, so they will stretch into October.  That’s okay, because it will allow for a light October month, leading into Nanowrimo (November is my favorite month :D) which as of right now I plan to use to write my shifter story. Yes, Madison and Hunter are still prowling in the back of my mind. Don’t worry their coming back soon.

That is if I don’t get distracted by something else…

WIP Wednesday

This week hasn’t been as productive as some, because I’m waiting to hear about my submission of Heart’s Ultimatum. Whenever I have a submission out I have a horrible time concentrating on anything besides refreshing my inbox.

I know, as a professional writer, I should be better at ignoring the submission out and moving on to the next thing. I hope I’m getting better but I’m still not very good at it. If you’re a writer, and you can ignore waiting to hear about a submission, you’re a rock star in my mind. I can’t do it. It doesn’t help, that I love Heart’s Ultimatum so much, and really hope that someone else will too.

However I have made some progress on my two writing fronts at the moment. As soon as I wrote, on WIP last Wednesday, that I was going to give my shifter story time to simmer and focus on something else, my hero Hunter opened right up and started talking. I think it was in part because I’d been so focused on finding out his secrets that I couldn’t really think, and a little because I was scared of how dark Hunter is. But the majority of it was Hunter. The more I learn about him, the more I understand, that it’s only when I’m ready to walk away he’ll reveal the truth. Poor Madison is going to have her hands full with this guy.

I’m still a little fuzzy on the story, and I feel like something might be missing, but I’ve started to write a little. Usually writing is how I discover the truth of the story. Knowing the characters, and how they will react in every situation is very important, but it isn’t until I get them reacting that I can figure out what happens next. Here’s my favorite piece from what I’ve written so far. This part talks about Madison’s connection to her human foster family, and the connection, or lack thereof, she had to the pack before she left.

*Remember this is very rough and subject to edits and possible deletion.

“Mady,” Sharron called from the doorway, walking quickly over to her and embracing mother and child in a large hug. Sharron showed affection so easily, hugging, kissing, patting, holding. After seven years Madison still found it amazing. Her own mother had never been so affectionate. Compassion was never praised in the pack, over deadly instinct or fighting prowess. There’s a reason wolves aren’t known for their cuddly qualities

I’ve also made some progress on Wandering, which I still plan to have done and submitted by the end of the month no matter how much Madison and Hunter try to distract me. I’ve cleaned up all the sheets (I had some pages hand written on with changes, due to a failed zip drive that Naughty List was the only work to survive, thankfully). I’ve compiled everything, and I’m finishing up the character profiles on my two main characters. Even though I wrote this work almost two years ago, I didn’t do character profiles back then, and given that I’m looking at this work with new eyes I thought they might be helpful.

 I plan to get started on in depth revisions today. Hopefully they’ll go quick, since this work has been revised many times, but I’m feeling the need to add a little more, for character depth, so we’ll see where ends up. It’s amazing to me, as I read it how much I’ve grown and changed as a writer in the last two years. Yet I still love these characters, and still love this story. I want to see if find the home and audience it deserves. Hopefully, with a little elbow grease, I’ll be able to do that now.

Sorry I didn’t check in last week for WIP Wednesday. I had a bit of a personal emergency. I hit a pot hole on a main highway and ended up bending the front passage rim. Not only did I end up with a flat tire, and thankfully was able to relay on the kindness of a coworker to come help me, but I had the whole upheaval of fixing the rim and trying to find another car to use until that was complete. It wasn’t a life or death situation, but took a lot of time and stress to deal with.

The big news this week, Heart’s Ultimatum is officially submitted. After very thorough read through, I sent it off to the publisher Saturday afternoon. WhooHoo!

But with any submission, this now leaves me with a gaping hole of what to do next. I always have a million ideas running around in my head. I just have to capture one and hold it down long enough to get all the specifics. An idea is far from a story, or even a book. A lot more needs to be determined before that can happen.

Right now the idea most on my mind is a shifter idea I’ve been contemplating that’s a twist on a secret baby storyline. I’ve got my heroine, Madison, fleshed out, and even her daughter Brianna is pretty three dimensional, but I’m having trouble capturing the hero, Hunter. As much as I roll him around in my mind I can’t seem to get a firm grasp on him. I feel more like I’ve grabbed the edge of his jacket, or maybe just an ass cheek :D

Until I have a better idea how he’ll react in the situations my heroine and her secret baby will throw at him, I can’t start writing. It’s an extremely frustrating part of the process for me, feeling the flickers in the back of my mind, but not able to grab onto them. It’s kind of like trying to remember a dream from the night before. I know I need a break to let it settle, once I stop thinking about it, the idea will probably just come to me.

Until everything is cleared up on my shifter story, I’m going to take another pass at Wandering off the Path and see if I can get that submitted to a few more publishers. I really love this story, but after completing and submitting four other works, I’m afraid it might need a lot of work. I was a much less experienced author then, and I’ve learned a lot since those days. But I love this story so much and had many critique partners really enjoy it too.  I think the story deserves another round of edits. If I can’t get it picked up this time, I might have to reevaluate if the work is salvageable.  So my goal for September is to do one more complete revision, taking into account an editors notes, and see if I can get this one set up for the 2012 schedule. While still stewing my shifter idea.

Should be a action packed month :D

Welcome to my new segment WIP Wednesday.  I’m going to start letting you all know what’s going on with my Works in Progress. What’s working, what’s not, and my favorite lines. And please feel free to let me know what you think.

This week I’ve been working on Valentine’s Ultimatum (which may be renamed as Heart’s Ultimatum) the third book in the Naughty Holiday List Series.

For the last few weeks I’ve been having trouble focusing (hence the lack of blog posts) and the pressure of a looming deadline for Ultimatum is only making it more difficult. I never work well on a deadline, something I really need to improve if I’m going to be a professional write and quite my day job (which lately I would really love to do).

Some of my lack of focus might be due to evil day job, since our company was bought out by another about three weeks ago, the EDJ has been very stressful. Not knowing what was happening, who they’d keep, what changes would occur with benefits. I believe that might all be worked out now (though it will be a few months before I feel completely comfortable).

Maybe it was also due to my new diet. I’ve been in the process of dieting and losing weight for a month and a half now as part of the Romance Biggest Winners. On top of promoting my new release, Whatever You Want, Sir and trying to write it’s been really hard. The limit of fatty foods, probably means I need to get more sleep to refuel, but that’s not really how my life works. I’ll sleep when I’m dead (hopefully that won’t be too soon).

I’ve been trying to finish this one scene in Ultimatum for almost a week (a very long time for me) and though I tried all weekend I just never made any progress. I couldn’t focus. On Monday when I woke up I felt awful, my head ached and my stomach was upset. So I decided to call in sick to the EDJ. I’d been playing with the idea for a while and it just never seemed to work out. Now I was honestly sick and had no big meetings scheduled, so I finally pulled out the trigger.

It was the best thing I could have ever done. After a decent sized nap and some cuddling with the cats, I sat down and looked at my WIP and the words started to flow. I didn’t get as much done on Monday as I wanted but at the time any progress was feeling good. But then yesterday was even better. Not only did I finish that scene, but completed another further along for a total of 1800 words written and I revised another chapter and sent it off to my critique partner.  I’m feeling confident that the rock is finally rolling the right way. I am going to get this WIP done by Labor Day as planned.

One of the great things about this book is I’m still learning about the characters. They’re still with me, even through edits, (where we all know I would ditch if I could).  Even though Krista has appeared in every naught holiday list book, and she may be the only character to appear in all five, we’ll see, I’m still learning about her. Yesterday Amy revealed to me an important aspect of her family life that I didn’t know before but makes so much sense for forming Krista into the woman she is today. My only wish is that I could go back to previous version and add in a few more details hinting at it. But such is the plight of a series author.

My favorite line from what I’ve written this week (unedited):

“I could never want anyone the way I want you.” His [James] voice was low, primal, demanding and her body surged with life from his rough words. If only he could say words of love instead of lust, they could do this until they both were too old and gray to care who saw them.

It shows so beautifully the conflict and lust between Krista and James. I hope soon you’ll all get to read so much more about their future.

I often talk about how important it is to push through the pain, to keep going, to force yourself to work when you’d rather take a nap or watch American Idol. I do believe that’s a gigantic part of being a writer, and especially for being a successful writer, but there also comes a time when you have to quit as well.  There has to be a balance between pushing past the pain and driving yourself so crazy you don’t have time to sleep or think of anything beyond your work.

This week I decided I had to quit a project, not the project entirely, but the original conception of it. I had planned to finish my WIP I’ve been calling Post-Apocalyptic NYC and submitting it by the first for an anthology call. I realized it wasn’t a goal I could complete to the level I wanted to submit. I decided regardless of my goal of submitting something every month, I only want to submit works that are ready for publication, regardless of this resolution. Getting rejections is hard enough, no one wants to set themselves up for it, and submitting something you don’t like or doing think is ready is only asking for such a rebuff.

For right now I’m still able to accomplish my goal. I have a few more works in the shoot ready to be submitted, so I’ll just be calling another one up to action sooner. But it may mean I can’t make my goal later in the year. But I’ll get there when I get there.

As a side note, my work on Post-Apocalyptic NYC will continue, and I hope it will be ready for submission quickly. The work is a dramatic departure from some of the other things I’ve done, but a really interesting and stimulating turn. I’ll keep you all posted on its progress.