ZOMG, Done! Sort of.

I finished the zero draft of my first book. Later than I wanted to thanks to the fire, the moving thing, and all the other crap that's happened already this year, but I did it. I DID IT!!! I still have to tear the thing to shreds and make it good. But I built my Frankenstein's monster. There's lots of plastic surgery coming to make it all nice and pretty, but I can't get over how great it feels to have something complete. This story has gone through a couple of iterations in the last year and half. I stopped halfway and changed a lot, trying to find the right direction because I was sure I'd lost course, but I've finally made it to port. *Peanuts dance*

I will stop with the bad metaphors now (they're all my brain can give since I put it through the wringer trying to finish) and go to sleep. But seriously, this feeling of having finished a book, I'm addicted. Must have more.

Hope and Dreams

The last two months have seemed like a dream. A nice dream, but a dream. I had trouble believing something could happen to make me hopeful, for the first time in my adult life, not just for my future, but for the future of my country. Today it has been solidly cemented as reality. I can stop pinching myself. I do not have to wake up from this dream. And my tears say more today than my words ever could.

Writing Projects

YA Urban Fantasy:
Queen of Freaks
Walk In

Adult Urban Fantasy:
Heartache
Fallen

Fallen

Born with an immunity to the powers of angels and demons, Perrin Caras has made a career for herself as a bounty hunter for both heaven and hell. Whether the target left of their own accord or someone else's, an armed to the teeth Rin will find them and drag them back. For a fee.

Just like the cartoons she watched as a kid, Rin has a demon and an angel to tell her what to do. Though, based on their advice, if they were her conscience they'd both have horns pointed tails. While neither her liaison to heaven or hell would fit on her shoulder, they do fit quite nicely in her bed. But choosing between men is the least of her problems.

When Rin gets dragged into a millenia old dispute between heaven and hell she learns there's a lot more going on than ever mentioned in the dusty Bible in her nightstand drawer. Fearing she's in over her head, Rin tries to get out, but the machinations of heaven and hell are like quicksand, the harder you fight to extract yourself the deeper and faster they pull you in.

Walk In

Renee Lewis had the life she wanted; good grades, awesome friends, an amazing boyfriend. Until Stacia Carter clobbered Renee's Yaris with her ginormous pickup truck and Renee woke up in the hospital with Stacia's life. Stacia's body, Stacia's dorky boyfriend, and Stacia's crazy witch mothers; Renee's got it all. And doesn't want any of it. Renee Lewis is officially dead, and so is any hope she had of a normal life.

Determined to figure out what happened and how she walked into Stacia's life, Renee does a séance, hoping Stacia has some answers. What Renee gets instead is a dead girl haunting her and warning that there's a warlock soul stealer out there. And he's after both of theirs.

Renee can't ever go back to her old life, but if she's not careful Stacia's will be taken from her too. But adjusting to a new life and new friends has Renee a little distracted. Not to mention she's not ready to give up Garrett, her old boyfriend; even though she's falling for Stacia's boyfriend, Clark, a little more every day—something Stacia's not exactly happy about. In the end, Renee's going to have to fight for the life she's walked into or she might be torn back out.

Heartache

The Verhey Detective Agency specializes in the weird. Have a crazy problem you can't go to the cops about? Finnegan Verhey and Alexandra Whitaker can help. They've solved hundreds of paranormal cases in the greater Seattle area. There's no supernatural problem they can't handle. At least not one they've come across, yet...

Alex and Finn have been working together since Alex won the the down-and-out Finn's detective agency in a poker game. Alex has promised to sign it all back over to Finn as soon as he helps her find out who, or what, murdered her little sister six years ago. But Finn might not have time to find the killer any time soon because dozens of people are going missing in Seattle, leaving no trace. And the police chief wants Alex and Finn's paranormal expertise.

When corpses of missing people start showing up, covered in strange marks and missing their hearts, the search for those responsible becomes frantic. Whispers in the paranormal community point to a cult trying to summon Quetzalcoatl to save the world from his twin in 2012. Alex and Finn can't seem to get an real leads on the cult, though.

After a group of children go missing, they think it can't get any worse. Until Alex goes missing. Terrified for his partner, Finn is prepared to scour every inch of the city to find Alex. But will he find her before she's returned as a heartless corpse?

Queen of Freaks

People think Lily Gardner is a freak because of her dyed hair and combat boots, but what really makes her freaky are the super powers she's hiding. When she loses control of them during a breakdown at the mall, it's the people of the Great Lakes School for Exceptional Young People who come calling. Maybe Lily isn't as freaky as she thought. GLS is secretly a haven for the supernatural. What Lily finds there is very little acceptance and a whole lot of rivalry. Her life has never been normal, but now it's complicated by super-powered cat fights; Vincent, her best friend who has complete access to her mind; and a crush on her classmate Reid, the hottest werewolf in school. In a place where everybody else is striving to stand out, Lily just wants to fit in.

Just when Lily thinks she's on the verge of fitting in, things fall apart. A dead body, linked to a string of murdered teens in nearby towns, is found on campus. Now the authorities and the press are skulking around. Plus, there’s talk of closing the school before someone discovers the students for what they really are. Unwilling to give up her new home, Lily bands together with her classmates to catch the killer. What use are their superpowers if they can't catch one bad guy? But the killer's identity leaves Lily reeling and everyone else in denial. She knows she must act fast or another kid will get killed, but in her haste she makes a grave mistake. Has Lily learned enough about her powers to keep herself from becoming the next dead body?

Writing Schedule

Novels:
January 1-March 31: PDA1
April 1-June 30: King of Wolves
July 1-September 30: PDA2
October 1-December 31: Jack of Memories

Short Stories:
January: Courting Death
February: The Wolf Moon
March: PDA origin story

2009

Only two days left until Oliver starts the new job and our lives get back to normal. I'm glad that we'll have that source of income, but after spending 3 months of being with the one I love all day long every day, I'm going to miss him. On the other hand, I'm the type of person that needs space/alone time, so maybe it will be good for us. :)

I spent the last few weeks of 2008 playing around with some tentative writing schedules for 2009, as well as my resolutions for the new year. I think with some touch-ups yesterday I got things more or less figured out.

In an effort to treat my writing more like a job and less like a hobby I've created a set up to treat it more like a 9-5.
My plan is:

* Write 2,500 words/weekday.
* Weekends and holidays (New Year's, February 2, March 20, Oliver's birthday, Easter, May 1, Memorial Day, June 21, July 4, our anniversary, August 2, Labor Day, September 22, my birthday, October 31, Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving, December 21, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year's Eve) off.
* For every 5,000 words I write I accumulate 1 vacation hour and 1 sick hour to be used as I like. 8 sick or 8 vacation hours may be redeemed for a day off in which I am not obliged to write, edit, or do anything involving my writing.

I know it seems like an awfully complicated system for something I should just do, but I figured if I treated it like this, gave it a concrete system, it would be easier to keep myself accountable to my writing. Making myself accountable for what I do or do not do is a large part of what I'm trying to work on this year.

2009 Goals:
write 12 short stories
write 4 novels
program my placeholder website
submit short stories at least 20 times
send out at least 150 queries
blog at least 3 times/week
type all the longhand writing in storage
write a short synopsis for each idea
keep notebook on me at all times
develop an idea for a comic
read at least 100 books
walk 1000 miles
drink less than 3 glasses of soda/week
drink 64 oz. water/day
stop using plastic bags
stop using plastic water jugs
stop using incandescent lightbulbs in my home
start recycling once I have a car
get an oil change every 3,000 miles
check tire inflation at least once/month
say at least one nice thing/day
stop and think about the thing I'm about to say before I let myself say it
put 5 cents in a jar for each time I swear

I have a few things to finish up on Queen of Freaks, then I'm going to do a round of edits for the things I already know need to be fixed. After that it will be all set to finally go out to the betas. I'm thinking that will be about the 16th or so. When I get it back from then I'll do a round of edits to fix any problems they catch, then it's going in a drawer for a month before I do my final edits. When the final edits are done I'll send out my queries.

In the interim I'll be working on PDA1, which really needs a title, but I can't think of anything. Maybe while I'm working on the zero draft I'll think of something. I think the zero draft will go quite quickly, since I've taken the time to plot the whole book in advance, unlike Queen of Freaks. It's also had time to simmer and develop. The last three months have been very unproductive as far as word count, only about 10,000 words, but PDA1 has developed nicely. Now I just have to ship Oliver off to work and get back to work myself.

2008

Last day of the year. I have little to say about 2008. It was a harder year than I've had in awhile, escpecially the last three or four months. Lots of stress, friends feuding, family issues, job loss, etc. Fun fun. Anywho, books read from 2008 under the cut. Made a list of goals for 2009, let's hope life is a little less hectic this year and I complete some of them.

1.Urban Shaman - CE Murphy
2.Thunderbird Falls - CE Murphy
3.Coyote Dreams - CE Murphy
4.Heart of Stone - CE Murphy
5.House of Cards - CE Murphy
6.Hand of Flames - CE Murphy
7.The Queen's Bastard - CE Murphy
8.City of Bones - Cassandra Clare
9.Greywalker - Kat Richardson
10.Midnight Alley -Rachel Caine
11.Feast of Fools -Rachel Caine
12.Dead Witch Walking - Kim Harrison
13.The Good, The Bad, and The Undead - Kim Harrison
14.Every Which Way But Dead - Kim Harrison
15.A Fistful of Charms - Kim Harrison
16.For a Few Demons More - Kim Harrison
17.The Outlaw Demon Wails - Kim Harrison
18.Night Life -Caitlin Kittredge
19.Pure Blood -Caitlin Kittrdge
20.One Foot in the Grave -Jeaniene Frost
21.Ink Exchange -Melissa Marr
22.Marked - PC&Kristin Cast
23.Betrayed - PC&Kristin Cast
24.Chosen - PC&Kristin Cast
25.Untamed - PC&Kristin Cast
26.Magic Burns - Ilona Andrews
27.Rogue - Rachel Vincent
28.The Touch of Twilight - Vicki Pettersson
29.Rites of Spring Break - Diana Peterfreund
30.Cry Wolf - Patricia Briggs
31.Iron Kissed - Patricia Briggs
32.Devil You Know -Jenna Black
33.The Devil's Due -Jenna Black
34.Frostbite -Richelle Mead
35.Shadow Kiss -Richelle Mead
36.Storm Born -Richelle Mead
37.Succubus Dreams -Richelle Mead
38.Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
39.Nightwalker - Jocelynn Drake
40.To Hell and Back - Lilith Saitcrow
41.Kitty Takes A Holiday - Carrie Vaughn
42.Kitty and the Silver Bullet - Carrie Vaughn
43.The Sweet Far Thing - Libba Bray
44.Prom Dates From Hell - Rosemary Clement Moore
45.Hell Week - Rosemary Clement Moore

It is entirely possible that I have mispelled author names or possibly even gotten the name of the book wrong. I put this list together pretty quickly and off the top of my head. I slacked off this year and didn't keep track of the books I read properly. I'm certain I missed a few.