I’ve been neglecting my blog this month, so obviously I’m not working on that, lol! But I’m trying to make an effort to keep it up and going and maybe offer something kinda, sorta interesting for you guys. Anyway, my apologies for there being nothing new for a few weeks.
As many of you know, I finished the fourth or fifth round of edits on the third book in my Elemental Series, Water. You start to lose count if you edit as much as I do. My editor and proofreader, Cassie, already had her hands on it and then I attacked it again after having enough time away from it to see it through fresh eyes. And then I turned it over to my beta readers. I have two readers for this book and so far I’ve gotten it back from one of them already. She had some awesome insight into a particular part of the book (can’t give any spoilers!) that I hadn’t even thought about, but might give the story just a little more meat. But all in all she said she loved it (yes, she had some serious criticisms of things that bugged her and if she’d hated it, she’d’ve told me, trust me) so I’m very excited about that. Now I just need to get it back from my other beta reader and see what her reaction was.
Luckily my two beta readers are totally different types of people. Yes, they have things in common (obviously they have similar reading tastes), but styles, personalities, life views vary widely between these two awesome ladies. This is important because if they were totally alike in too many ways I wouldn’t have a decent range of reaction to the book. If they both enjoy the book then I’m gold after one last round of edits. So! Fingers crossed people!
Speaking of Water I am working on the cover as we speak, or rather, Stephanie Mooney is working on it. I am so excited about this cover. Stephanie already sent me the first mock ups last week and I was just blown away. When I do the cover reveal I’ll post the original picture of the model Stephanie started with just so you can see Stephanie’s magical abilities. This cover is a little darker and creepier than my last two but I think it’s going to be amazing. I am just so freaking excited!
Outside of the Elemental Series I am brainstorming ideas for my next, brand new project. I am going to try my hand at an Adult Urban Fantasy series. If you’ve been following my blog and read any of my flash fiction pieces posted here then you already have some idea of what I’m going to be working on. I’m excited to start this project after working on the Elemental Series for the last four years. Yes, there is one more book in the Elemental Series I need to complete, but I really needed a break after finishing the first draft of Fire. In this new world all of the Supernatural Creatures and Races are out in the open, living in quasi-harmony with the human community. It’ll be a nice change of pace not having my characters always worrying about keeping their abilities secret and hidden. I don’t want to give anymore away than that, but I hope you guys will forgive me for taking a break from YA for a little bit.
And of course I’m always thinking of a dozen other ideas of stories I want to write. Being a writer means never having a quiet moment in your mind. There’s a corner of my brain that wants to write a dystopian story, no, not zombies, just dystopian. Another part of my brain wants to write something set in a different time, maybe WWII era, or Elizabethan England. There are just so many stories out there and if I could write them all at the same time, I would, but I might go mad with so many voices in my head.
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Ten Things You Don't Know About Me Part 2!
It’s been a long time since we did a “get to know me” post so I thought I would do a new one. I have no idea if you guys like these but I think they’re fun so we’re doing it!
Ten Things You Don’t Know About Me:
1. The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my all-time favorite movies. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it. I have both soundtracks and listen to them all year long. I have a ton of the merchandise, including two sets of fingerless gloves, a desk calendar, a messenger bag and the book written by Tim Burton.
2. My favorite classic book is Jane Eyre. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. People talk about Withering Heights and Little Women, but I’m all about Jane Eyre. I actually red it when I was 14 for the first time by accident; I had been working on a history report about Lady Jane Eyre, the Nine Days Queen and couldn’t get my hands on enough stuff about her and didn’t realize the book was about a different Jane Eyre and ended up loving it. My favorite movie version is the one with Orson Wells, it rocks. I haven’t seen the latest one with the girl from Alice in Wonderland, but we may read it for book club and then rent the movie. Sounds awesome to me!
3. The only fake accent I can pull off is an American Southern one. I have tried to do an Irish accent, an English one, an Australian one, nope, can’t do it. But I have to say, if I could do a British Isle accent, I would totally go around talking like that all the time like a crazy person.
4. I have seen every episode of Friends about a dozen times each. My friends and I know it so well we can sneak in Friends jokes and references in our daily conversation. It drives my husband crazy.
5. I can kick over a 250 pound wave bag (a sort of standing punching bag). It’s a pretty cool feeling.
6. I hate shoes but I own a few dozen pairs. I love looking at shoes and buying cute, sexy, fun, gorgeous shoes of all shapes and sizes, but if I could walk around barefoot everywhere I went, I totally would.
7. I currently have six cartoon/comic book characters on my desk, one is in the form of a daily calendar, three are dolls, one is a bobble head and one is a picture holder.
8. I have read each of the Harry Potter books at least ten times and when I found out my husband’s last name was Granger I was very excited to have the same last name as one of the main characters. Oh and by the way, billions of copies sold and people still don’t know how to pronounce Granger. People always try to pronounce it “Grang-ger”. I have no idea why.
9. When I write I listen to music and have the TV on full volume.
10. My favorite nut is walnuts. It seemed important to end on the most important and interesting fact. Seriously though, walnuts rock! Next time you make pesto, omit the stupid pine nuts and try walnuts, ah-maz-ing!
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Ten Things You Don’t Know About Me:
1. The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my all-time favorite movies. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it. I have both soundtracks and listen to them all year long. I have a ton of the merchandise, including two sets of fingerless gloves, a desk calendar, a messenger bag and the book written by Tim Burton.
2. My favorite classic book is Jane Eyre. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. People talk about Withering Heights and Little Women, but I’m all about Jane Eyre. I actually red it when I was 14 for the first time by accident; I had been working on a history report about Lady Jane Eyre, the Nine Days Queen and couldn’t get my hands on enough stuff about her and didn’t realize the book was about a different Jane Eyre and ended up loving it. My favorite movie version is the one with Orson Wells, it rocks. I haven’t seen the latest one with the girl from Alice in Wonderland, but we may read it for book club and then rent the movie. Sounds awesome to me!
3. The only fake accent I can pull off is an American Southern one. I have tried to do an Irish accent, an English one, an Australian one, nope, can’t do it. But I have to say, if I could do a British Isle accent, I would totally go around talking like that all the time like a crazy person.
4. I have seen every episode of Friends about a dozen times each. My friends and I know it so well we can sneak in Friends jokes and references in our daily conversation. It drives my husband crazy.
5. I can kick over a 250 pound wave bag (a sort of standing punching bag). It’s a pretty cool feeling.
6. I hate shoes but I own a few dozen pairs. I love looking at shoes and buying cute, sexy, fun, gorgeous shoes of all shapes and sizes, but if I could walk around barefoot everywhere I went, I totally would.
7. I currently have six cartoon/comic book characters on my desk, one is in the form of a daily calendar, three are dolls, one is a bobble head and one is a picture holder.
8. I have read each of the Harry Potter books at least ten times and when I found out my husband’s last name was Granger I was very excited to have the same last name as one of the main characters. Oh and by the way, billions of copies sold and people still don’t know how to pronounce Granger. People always try to pronounce it “Grang-ger”. I have no idea why.
9. When I write I listen to music and have the TV on full volume.
10. My favorite nut is walnuts. It seemed important to end on the most important and interesting fact. Seriously though, walnuts rock! Next time you make pesto, omit the stupid pine nuts and try walnuts, ah-maz-ing!
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Tuesday, January 3, 2012
My New Year's Resolution
So I am not one for resolutions – just like everyone else, I tend to fail at them – but this year my husband and I are doing one together. Luckily it’s not a yearlong one; we’ve set ourselves a 90 day goal to eat clean and try to lose some of the pesky body fat we haven’t been able to shed. Many of you know, my husband is a personal trainer, so this sort of thing is pretty easy for him. Really, it’s more of a challenge for me.
I like to say in another life I was an Italian grandmother because of how much and what I like to cook. I love to have people over and pile their plates high with the food I made – I get that from my Southern family. But my favorite things to make are pastas with homemade sauce, garlic bread, and all kinds of things with meat and cheese. Yep, super healthy.
So what does this crazy resolution entail? No sodas, at all, no cheese, at all, no fast food, at all, minimal bread (whole wheat if any and only in the morning), carb depletion through the day, so at dinner we’ll mostly only get fibrous carbs. This also means the only complex carbs I’m allowed will be oatmeal in the morning, that occasional wheat bread, red potatoes (and not often), sweet potatoes and brown rice (which I hate). Yeah, no pastas, no garlic breads, no red meats. Sounds like so much fun, right?
But I keep telling myself it’s only until the end of March and maybe not even that long if we hit our goals early. My husband tells me the first 30 days are the hardest but luckily my husband’s birthday is at the end of January and he’s agreed to some leniency while we celebrate so I’m able to set shorter goals so it isn’t as daunting. And I’ve always wanted to throw a Saint Patrick’s Day party and this year it’s on a Saturday so after his birthday I just have to make it to St. Patrick’s day and then it’s only a couple of weeks after that. Not bad, right?
I know, it’s gonna be hard, but that’s also why I’m blogging about it – telling everyone in the world about it will hold me accountable. Its only day 2 and people are already asking us how it’s going and I don’t want to be that person who says they’ve already caved. Now you all know so if I cave or cheat there are a lot of people who will know and that’s embarrassing. And since I’m doing it with my husband, if I cave, I’m letting him down. It’s a little easier knowing someone else is depending on me to help them reach their goal and I don’t want to let him down.
We’ve done really well building muscle and stamina but we haven’t done what we should have to shed excess body fat so now we’re doing it. A little backwards but at least we’re doing it.
I’ll let you know how we do and how well our marriage survives, lol!
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I like to say in another life I was an Italian grandmother because of how much and what I like to cook. I love to have people over and pile their plates high with the food I made – I get that from my Southern family. But my favorite things to make are pastas with homemade sauce, garlic bread, and all kinds of things with meat and cheese. Yep, super healthy.
So what does this crazy resolution entail? No sodas, at all, no cheese, at all, no fast food, at all, minimal bread (whole wheat if any and only in the morning), carb depletion through the day, so at dinner we’ll mostly only get fibrous carbs. This also means the only complex carbs I’m allowed will be oatmeal in the morning, that occasional wheat bread, red potatoes (and not often), sweet potatoes and brown rice (which I hate). Yeah, no pastas, no garlic breads, no red meats. Sounds like so much fun, right?
But I keep telling myself it’s only until the end of March and maybe not even that long if we hit our goals early. My husband tells me the first 30 days are the hardest but luckily my husband’s birthday is at the end of January and he’s agreed to some leniency while we celebrate so I’m able to set shorter goals so it isn’t as daunting. And I’ve always wanted to throw a Saint Patrick’s Day party and this year it’s on a Saturday so after his birthday I just have to make it to St. Patrick’s day and then it’s only a couple of weeks after that. Not bad, right?
I know, it’s gonna be hard, but that’s also why I’m blogging about it – telling everyone in the world about it will hold me accountable. Its only day 2 and people are already asking us how it’s going and I don’t want to be that person who says they’ve already caved. Now you all know so if I cave or cheat there are a lot of people who will know and that’s embarrassing. And since I’m doing it with my husband, if I cave, I’m letting him down. It’s a little easier knowing someone else is depending on me to help them reach their goal and I don’t want to let him down.
We’ve done really well building muscle and stamina but we haven’t done what we should have to shed excess body fat so now we’re doing it. A little backwards but at least we’re doing it.
I’ll let you know how we do and how well our marriage survives, lol!
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