In Transition, slathered with hope

You may not remember because I've been absent from the blogging world for so long, that I was going to retire and relocate back to the Northwest to the home we bought way back last December. Wow, has it been nearly nine months? I could have had a baby by now. It's physically immpossible, however. Slowly, we are dismantling from one location and re-establishing in another. We're moved into our new home, but still need to put the other on the market. But, there's work to be done. We've been in the new house for a month and,sadly, will be leaving here next week to get busy and get the old house on the market. Pray that we get a quick and fruitful sale.

I haven't had a lot of quality writing time. I seem to get bogged down and my natural state of procrastination sets in and I get lazy. I prefer to think of it as getting busy. What keeps us from our love of writing? I know I'm not alone. Has anyone been able to figured out how we can love to write, yet sabotage what we love to do with excuses and avoidance? For me it usually happens when I'm in a difficult place in the story and doubt rears its ugly head. Mentally I know it only takes a day or so to work my way out of it, but I get this dread feeling and have to psych myself back to the keyboard.

Soon, I'll be able to get my priorities in line. Please don't give up on me.

Bum's Rush, The Novel, (An Excerpt)

This is the time I've been looking forward to for years--being able to continue my blogging and promoting my books, not to mention writing them. It will be easier since I no longer have a job to take up most of my time with.

I'm going to post segments of Bum's Rush for your inspection in hopes of wetting your appetite to pop over to Amazon.com and check out the "Look Inside" option to read more excerpts.

I'll also be talking about my new novel, That Girl. I'll occasionally post some excerpts from that right here.

Here's the first excerpt from Bum's Rush. I hope you enjoy it.

Something slammed into Jack with the force of a jousting pole. He grunted and staggered as a million watts of electricity passed through his body. The phone skittered on the sidewalk, and he clutched his shoulder. Someone screamed, then someone else. He looked around at the commotion, but his vision had gone fuzzy; he felt lightheaded, and a shrill ringing in his ears deafened him.

Jack looked at his hand and saw blood. That’s strange. His heart spiked in his chest. He’d been shot, damn it; he was going to die.

Happy Mom's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. I didn't realize it was mom's day until my husband wished me a happy Mother's Day. I'll hear from my kids today, but we don't exchange gifts. This is the second year I won't be making a call to my mom. Still, I'll always think of her every year on this day.

I just opened a new file for my WIP. I call it Draft 3000. It seems like I've written that many revisions. This will be the fourth. Listening to that inner voice that nags me, you all probably have one like it. It always knows when something just isn't right. I think I've figured it out this time. At this point in the game, I may have to shut that voice off or I'll never finish this book. I'm at the point where I need to stop doubting myself.

I know the mistakes I made with my first book and I'm trying to avoid making the same blunders in this book. My problem is becoming word count. I'm in danger of cutting too much. My original goal was 60K. I made that goal, but find I've cut around 5K out. It's still okay, but I can't afford anymore cuts.

I need to find a beta reader, I think. There's still a lot of work to do before I get to the point where anyone else can read it. If there's any volunteers, I'd love to hear from you.

The reason I've been so lax about my blog is we're getting ready to move. When I say move, I mean move cross country, back to Washington state. We bought a house out there already and plan to move most everything out in late June. I'm so excited. Lots of things going on right now. They say, the more new stuff you have to look forward to, time will slow a bit for you. What do they know. I'll try and stay with you a little more. I'd say by August or September, I'll be blogging so much, you all will get sick of me. Take care.

Is every word important?

Not only that, every sentence and every paragraph. The first few draft of a project, we write like we talk. For some, that might suffice, some people's talk is meaningful and compact. One of the joys of writing is tightening what you've already written. It amazes me how many different ways a sentence can be phrased. The challenge is keeping it real. Every paragraph has a sentence, and every sentence has words, so how important is every word you write? I suspect, pretty important. If three words change to one without sacrificing ambiguity or continuity, your story sounds polished. That's what is meant by tightening a paragraph. How to do that? Find an amazing thesaurus. You might want to check my favorite one here

Short but sweet. God bless. Until next time.

On the Home Stretch

Good news, I'm almost done with my second draft of "That Girl." I've had a little time off work and I've worked hard to get so much done. So it's proud of myself, I am. The third draft will be the one where I work on the presentation, so to speak. For that, I'm going to do a lot of reading.

Does anyone else get stuck when trying to describe what actions and mannerisms a person uses while talking? Some authors seem able to divers away from the norm. I find when I read a lot, I get a better sense of people's idiosyncrasies. You can only scratch your head, purse your lips, furrow your brows so many times before it becomes obvious to readers that you have no imagination. Hands on hips, clenched fists, lame humor can become boring in time. Tears, really how often does a person tear up. In real life people's feelings get hurt and their reactions are internal. Their hearts harden, their pulse quickens, they even feel the sting of tears behind their eyes. It becomes a dilemma for authors. It's easy to get in a rut. I don't think I'm alone in this. If you read the same author over and over again, it becomes obvious. I guess you could call it that author's style of writing and I think that would be true, but we know a lot of times there are no words. So you have to go and find them, whether through observing or experimenting.

These are just my thoughts on things. I'm by no means an expert, if I were, I'd be a best selling author. I just know what I know.

To all who read, God bless and happy reading.

Reading not on the best seller's list and censoring

I've come to enjoy free ebooks. What did we do without them. Free is always good and made better because it's, well, free. Something about a free book just makes it a good read, no matter how labor intensive it is to get through. I wish I could read all the free ebook, but I've already got bunches I haven't gotten to yet.

Hey, what about Pay Pal censoring what they deem to be immoral books? They are a private company and I guess it's okay if they censor, though it seems un-American to me. We have to be very careful about censoring. It starts out small and grows like a malignancy. Pretty soon they are censoring books with questionable language, then religious themes, then violence, and next love. Seems like it's possible they might try and censor emotions as well.

That's all the wisdom I have today. Maybe tomorrow I'll be bestowed with more. God bless.

More complaining about second drafts

I feel like I've written four or five books, instead of three, though only one of them is published. Consider first drafts, for instance. I'm sure there are a lot of people who write first drafts and then don't turn around and totally rewrite the second. For me, the first draft is one to just get down on paper as quick as possible so as to get 'er done, as Larry the Cable Guy would say. The second draft is where I start the weeding process. I prune it and prune it until there's hardly anything left except a few of the strongest scenes, then I watch them flower. This is where I start getting really excited, but this, of course, is not the end of the rewrite, even when I'm done with the second draft. What do you think, another draft? Well, yes. This one will undergo more tightening and weeding, but it's also the start of some serious proofing. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but a stitch in time, saves nine. Let me tell you something about proofing. It's never done. Even the proofers of the best writers of the best novels don't get all the mistakes. It seems to me that errors seem to stand out more in ebooks, doesn't it? A lot of that, I think, is due to ebook glitches, but I still more proofing errors in my Kindle that when I'm just reading a paperback.

So, until next time, take care and God bless.