Life rarely goes as we plan it to.  Four years ago, I wanted to release a prequel to the Chronicles of Seven that would blow the reader's mind.  Thankfully that didn't happen because I remember the book I had written back then and it wasn't what this book is now.  Legacy in 2008 was scattered and forced and not true to the plot that I have established through Awakening and Resurrection.  I think of the first draft of Legacy as a shotgun blast with pellets everywhere.

My new computer has finally arrived!  My super sweet editing partner (personified by my darling husband) is copying all my files over and making sure it's in complete working order.  I should be able to start writing again tomorrow.  Then work begins on the beginning of the Chronicles again...

This post is much later than I intended it to be, but I'm hoping that you'll forgive me after you read what happened.

Resurrection is gone!  It's been sent to the publisher.  Now we just wait to make sure the formatting is right.  Once I know that everything is good to go, I'll let you see the cover.  It's awesome!  I'm so very excited!

Now on to National Novel Writing Month prep...

After having to take some personal time to take care of my husband post surgery, I'm finally getting my revisions on Resurrection done.  It helped that while I was taking some time off, my cold readers finished Resurrection and had some very creative and constructive criticisms for me.

There are a few scenes that need to be added to or completely rewritten.  I saw it coming before I passed the book on to the cold readers, but to hear them reaffirm that for me was a big help.  Some of the scenes that I was thinking of revising were great according to them, so I'm going to leave them alone for now.  I'm excited for this novel to get out for everyone else to read it and the cover art is fantastic!

After I finish the revisions for Resurrection, I'm going to start the background notes for Scandal as well as prepare for this year's Nanowrimo novel.  I'm very excited about this year's book and I think I just might end up liking it so much that I'll revise it and put it out there for the public to read.  There will be more on that novel as we get closer to November.

Now it's time to get back to the revisions.  Hopefully I'll have a revised novel ready in the next week.

I finished my fourth novel at the beginning of June.  Yes it's finally done!  My cold readers have it right now (one is already done with it and apparently she loved it!), then it's time to edit, edit, edit before it's released to the masses.  I'm so happy to be done with it since the story arc started in Prophecy is done with Resurrection and I get to expand my writing skills by starting the next, much darker story arc that will finish with the end of the series.

While finishing Resurrection, I decided I would do something crazy and rewrite Prophecy for Camp Nanowrimo this month.  This has been an epic fail.

I still have half of the month left to work on it and I'm planning on jumping back on the horse next week.  There's been entirely too much personal stuff going on in this house lately to get as much done on it as I wanted to.

The other thing making it harder for me to finish this task is the post-novel wrap up hangover I always find myself in.

I finish a novel and I can't make myself write anything for weeks afterward.  It's like I've tapped out my muse and I have to wait until it regenerates.  It's not writer's block.  I can deal with writer's block.  I have music, books, and movies especially set aside to break through writer's block.  This is simply a lack of motivation.

I thought it was a lack of discipline.  It's not.  I simply sit at my computer, look at the blank page, know what I want to put there, but just can't seem to get it on the page.  I think it's partially distraction.

So next week, I've told myself that I'm going to get back on schedule and get things going.  I'm going to work on Prophecy, take notes for my August and November novels, and start the planning for Scandal (the fifth novel in the Chronicles) before I start editing Resurrection.

Hopefully I'll be able to get out of this hangover.

The plan had been that I would query Prophecy to agents in February.  I was prepared for this goal and fully intended to achieve it.  As I prepared to send the first three chapters of Prophecy to the first prospective agent, I realized I had a problem.

The book is good.  It's just not quite good enough.

When Prophecy was originally written, it was to be a stand alone novel.  I packed it full of information that wasn't really important to the actual story line, but necessary to understand the world it was taking place in.  Characters weren't developed as well as they should have been because...well they were only hanging around for one novel.  If they were two dimensional it was okay.

Then I wrote Forbidden, a much better book all the way around, and I wrote Awakening.  Suddenly that one stand alone book had become a series of books.  All the information in Prophecy that wasn't relevant to the story line suddenly didn't need to be there.  Those two dimensional characters need to be filled out so they jump off the page.

So now I have a new goal.  After Resurrection is written (because to delay the release of Resurrection would, I think, lead to someone jumping me in a parking lot somewhere :)), I'm going to rewrite Prophecy.

I'm throwing out the original book (well I'm keeping it on the computer) and starting anew.  The story line will be the same, but it will be so much better.

I'm actually looking forward to the new book.  I'm looking forward to making it better and digging into that first novel again.  After I'm done, Prophecy will be so much more of what it should be.  When it's done, I think you'll like it.

The first round of Camp Nanowrimo is set to start June 1.  I'm very excited by that because I need all the help I can get when it comes to improving my writing.  If you think you've hit the top of your game when it comes to writing and expressing yourself creatively then you're probably kidding yourself.  I know I'm not at the top of my game yet.

Script Frenzy is in April and for those of you who write screenplays, more power to you.  I tried and failed with an epic greatness all my own.  Novels I can do.  Screenplays I leave to the experts.  If you're participating in Script Frenzy, my hat is off to you.  Obviously you'll focus on that before Camp starts in June.

For me, I'm planning my next Nano novel and trying furiously to finish Resurrection on time as well as getting query letters written for Prophecy.  The Nano novel is the easy part.

I've had an idea floating around in my head dealing with Norse mythology and a teenage romance that turns deadly and it all being a game in the end.  I've been playing with it for years now.  I think I just might write it out this summer.

What ideas have you been kicking around that you haven't written yet?

It's been a VERY long time since I posted anything here at Fang Marked.  I'm sorry for the lapse in posts.

Awakening was released last summer to very good reviews.  Prophecy has been re-edited and right now is only available on the Kindle.  The new edits are going to the publisher sometime in the next few weeks so the new version of the book will be available on paperback as well.  It has a new cover too.

Resurrection is going well.  Slowly, but well.  I don't want to rush this book into publication, but at the same time I know that I need to stick to my deadline at the end of June.  Right now I'm about a fourth of the way through it.  The wait is going to be worth it.

All three novels are available on the Kindle for $.99 and as of today, there have been over two thousand copies sold when the sales for all three books are added together.  That is amazing to me!  Thank you to all the new readers who are enjoying these stories for the first time and I hope to hear back from you all!

More updates to come!

I had a post written for Nanowrimo Week #1, but alas my computer ate it.  So I'm just going to start over.

Welcome to Tuesday, Week #2.  If you're on track, you should have at least 10K words right now.  If you don't, it's not over yet.  It's never over until December 1 comes around.  In 2009, I wrote over 20K in one eight hour time frame to finish at goal.  So, it's completely not over yet.

What distractions are you working with?

Mine are a little 8 month old boy who is starting to get his first cold, a husband working 12 hour days, and a growing irritation with my surroundings.  Those are minor.  Well, 2.0 doesn't think his cold is minor but it means longer naps and more writing time when I should be washing dishes.  The dishes can wait.

This year, I didn't map my plot.  I hardly researched.  I didn't even name my characters until I was actually writing them.  I've never done this before.  I always have a plan, a plot map, a character map, thorough research done ahead of time.  Last year that didn't work out so well for me and I hardly made it to 10k, giving up by my birthday on the 14th.

So I'm just going with the flow.  I know this novel will require LOTS of editing later on and I'm not committing to anything.  If I think one character needs to be in a scene, I write that scene.  I make myself finish the scene I'm on and only then do I stop (unless 2.0 is crying and then all bets are off).

We can get through this together!  It's only once a year after all.  Bring on week #2!

It only took me another year, but I finally finished Awakening!  It's ready to be proofed and I'm ordering that copy of the book tomorrow.  I can't believe it!

So what's happened since the last post?

My son was born on February 23, 2011.  Bringing a newborn home requires schedule adjustments and it took me and 2.0 a few months to get into a groove together.  Add to that a new work schedule for both my husband and myself and some...shall we say complications?  With all that, you have the perfect recipe for book delays.

But it's done now!  I can finally move on and work on Resurrection.  Now that's exciting!

Do you know how many times I've written Awakening?  Three times.  That's a lot for anyone.  I can finally move on with life and take the next step in the Chronicles Of Seven.

Fingers crossed for Resurrection by the end of the year!

Have you ever picked up a book by an author you have never heard of before and read the cover flap, gotten excited about the heroine of the story, only to find that the heroine was completely different in the actual story than you were led to believe?  Yeah, it's happened to me too.  Or you read a series and the heroine, who started out as a strong character who is completely necessary to the story, becomes a deflated wimpy version of herself.  It drives me insane.

In an effort to get rid of these kinds of stories, I want to let you in on the heroine.  Whether she's an ancient queen in a faraway land or a high school sophomore thrown into the middle of teenage angst, she's vital to your story and you need to make sure you treat her with the respect and delicacy she deserves.

I've worked with three heroines so far and I had to make sure that my notes on each were detailed and concise. I had to think past my feminist roots and look at each situation my heroine would have to face as if I'd never encountered the obstacle before.  With Rhoswen, my heroine from Prophecy, I had to seriously stop and think before I made her pregnant in Forbidden.  Would Rhoswen be excited about a coming baby or would she be terrified by the change in her life?  I weighed all the options before deciding what she would and wouldn't be.

But Rhoswen was easy.  I created her out of my life, twisting certain elements to give her more life and believability.  I knew her inside and out because she is me.  Working with Guin and Breanna proved to be infinitely harder.

Guin is someone that could not really exist, and yet she does exist in every single teenage girl on the face of the planet.  She wants her own life, to be able to make her own decisions and mistakes, she wants freedom.  I remember being in that stage of my life, but it was a long time ago.  I had to watch a lot of television and read a lot of *gulp* magazines to be able to figure out how to create Guin to be who she is.  But had I not done that, she would have been a flat, unbelievable caricature of herself.

Breanna is even harder to figure out than Guin is.  Breanna lives in the 1780s.  Sure, she's a teenager, but being a teenager in that day and age meant something completely different than it does now.  There's no one alive from that time frame to help me figure out what kind of person she is.  So I had to turn to books again and dig through history to find out what life was like for a girl her age in that day and time and try to adapt that information to the aspects of Breanna's character that wouldn't change with time.  Breanna is strong and independent, yet she knows when to listen to the guidance of others and when to fall back to protect herself and those she loves.  She is still under development, but she no longer confounds me.

If you want to create a heroine, you need to be sure that you know who she is and will become as the story continues.  Anticipate her actions and decisions, think through her responses.  Don't radically change her from one story to the next.  Instead, make the progression natural as she moves from one stage of life to the next.  Rhoswen was tough in Prophecy, hard and standoffish.  But by the end, she's a strong woman who finally understands what it means to love someone so much that you'd be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for him.  Then she moves from that stage of her life to a wife and mother.  I hope I made it flawless, but I'm sure I didn't.

Try not to make your heroine the opposite of herself from one story to the next, or even one chapter to the next, unless you're working with a character that has multiple personalities or is clinically insane.  It's always hard to read a heroine that you love turn into a coward when she wouldn't be or a bad guy when she's not being manipulated by the forces of darkness.

Finally, be prepared to edit like crazy when you're done writing the first draft.  We all create circumstances that make our heroine into something she shouldn't be.  Find those pages and fix them.  Comb through your heroine's life on those pages and make sure she is who she is instead of someone she isn't.  And take great care with her.  Remember, she may not be written as delicate, but she truly is.

In an effort to get more writing in my life (because it's just sad when your spouse writes more than you do and you're supposed to be the writer in the family), I decided to focus on my characters and start picking on a few of them (read: ALL of them).  So for the next few posts, I think I'll share what I've discovered with you.

I've talked about plotkillers and villains.  Now I want to focus on the sidekick.

Sidekicks aren't just for superhero comic books or really bad spinoff movies.  A sidekick doesn't have to wear a stupidly garish costume and rush in to save the hero's life in the nick of time.  Sidekicks can be cool and will end up being very important in your story as you develop it.

What kind of story would Lord of The Rings be without Sam, Legolas, Gimli, and the rest of the gang?  What kind of story would you have if you took Isabelle and Alec out of the Mortal Instruments?  The In Death series wouldn't be very good without Peabody, McNab, Mavis, and Summerset either.

So last night, while stuffing my face with Taco Bell, I thought about what my story would be like without Ulrich, Lincoln, and Chocon.  It would be pretty darned boring and I'm sure Seven would be dead right about now.

The sidekick is important because your hero has to have other people in his life besides himself.  Do you have people in your life besides yourself and/or significant other?  Of course you do.  In real life, they are our friends (and family, but family doesn't always count), but for fictional purposes, we'll call them sidekicks.

Without the sidekick, your hero stands alone against everything, good or bad.  There is no wingman watching his six, there is no warrior with a sword standing at his back.  There's probably no comic relief or deep, revealing conversations.  Your hero is in black and white.  Sidekicks bring the color (not gaudy latex color all the time either).

But if your sidekick is hokey, campy, or bland, you'll probably have a hokey, campy, or bland story (and if that's what you're going for, kudos to you).  Sidekicks have their own stories as well.  Dick Greyson has his own story line in Batman.  Stevie Rae has her own story line in the House of Night series.  Ulrich has his own story in Awakening and Lincoln had his in Forbidden.  Chocon is getting a turn later on.  It gives you the chance to make the sidekick real for the reader instead of a wallflower at the big dance.

My husband said to me last night that just because you call them a sidekick doesn't make them dorky.  I finally agree with him.  I had a hard time picturing Ulrich or Chocon as anyone's sidekick.  But now I see it.  Without them, my hero isn't the character I created him to be.  Remember that when you create a sidekick.  Your hero will thank you later on.

I'm getting a late start at this (I blame the recent dramatic dashes to labor and delivery for part of this), but here's my plan for 2011:

-Finish and release Awakening.
-Edit Prophecy to begin querying agents (my vernacular is off here, of this I'm sure, but it's been awhile for me)
-Get first draft of Resurrection completed.
-Hopefully finish first draft of OWR novel #1
-Successfully complete Nanowrimo this November!
-Complete notes for Scandal

I know I have a lot packed into this year and that I will probably not succeed in completing all these goals, but I'm going to try anyway.

I wanted to take a moment to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  It's so hard to believe I didn't release a novel this year.  But life gets in the way sometimes.  Hopefully next year will be a year of new words and new novels and new opportunities.

Have fun, be safe, don't count your calories, and I'll see you next year.

My husband and I decided to talk book for the first time in so long that I wasn't even sure how to do it productively. It was a great three hour conversation that made me want to get back into my novels so bad, but I'm holding off for a little bit longer as I finish my second trimester and my training at my new job and settle into an actual schedule.

I'm having a really hard time with Nano this year. After realizing that I'm doing a horrible job this year and getting over the frustration, I realized that some good had come from this experiment in disastrous failure.

Guess what next month is? You got it! National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known by me as Nanowrimo or the month where no one talks to me.

I don't know what happened to the month of July, but it's over and I did absolutely nothing. Nothing. No writing at all. I didn't mean for that to happen, but there it is. There's nothing I can do about it.

Currently, the Fang Marked Writing office is in the middle of a transition. Hopefully we'll have the move finished this weekend. Please be patient as we change locations. Thanks!