Anybody got time for dat? (beta-reading)

This is a quick entry to ask if anyone is in a position right now to be a beta reader for me.

I have a novella that I thought I would be fleshing out more (at least, that's what I said last year), but having just skimmed through it myself and made a few tweaks, I'm not sure if it actually needs fleshing out.

I can think of some areas that may do, however it could result in me adding words that don't need to be added. So I'd be curious to get others' thoughts on this before I do anything drastic. Here are the details:

Title:	Die Beachside (working title)
Word Count:	32,805 (Scrivener)
Blurb:	During her first year at university, Megan meets Avya, a fellow student who rather than living in student accommodation lives on the local beach in a cave. The two girls clash at first, but eventually Megan becomes a confidant for Avya, who shares a scary secret - she's being stalked. In light of a recent unsolved murder in the area, this is especially worrisome. It also reminds Megan of difficult experiences in her own past, and she starts feeling paranoid. She tries to protect Avya however she can, but campus security don't seem to want to take her seriously. Can Megan figure out who Avya's stalker is before something goes really wrong - and before she herself is put in the path of danger? P.S. There's romance with a dark, brooding character too.

Let me know if you are willing to read it. :)

BETTER THAN THE BEST ~ Amabel Daniels

I'm very happy to be sharing the book cover and blurb for

Amabel Daniels's debut novel, Better Than The Best,

which I had the privilege of beta-reading for her. I made

reference to my beta-reading experience with this novel

in these past blog posts:

November 5th, 2014

January 12th, 2015

Anyway, Amabel's book is out now, and I have my print copy ready to read again in its final, polished form! I can't wait. It's on my GoodReads "tbr" (see link below). Meanwhile, here is the cover, and the entertaining blurb:

A new beginning. Turning a leaf. All that crap.

After her divorce and the death of one of her patients, an ER nurse, Kelly Newland, searches for a fresh start in the little town of Churchston, unaware that trouble and danger has followed her. As she learns to accept her failures in life, she befriends some of the locals, except for one disgruntled man, the hero everybody loves to hate.

He could feel their stares on his back, their judgments hovering over their heads.

Will Parker suffers from PTSD, and as the black sheep of the sleepy lakeside community, he struggles to get back up on his feet. Initially, Kelly and Will mix like oil and water, but as a series of dangerous incidents strike the people closest to them, their antagonism turns from cool to hot. It is only when they realize it is impossible to resist each other that a killer closes in on them, threatening the love they've dared to find.

I really loved this book even in its rough form - it is very suspenseful, as well as romantic, and amusing. But I'll be putting up a proper review on GoodReads and so on once I've read the finished product.

Purchase links:

• Kindle US: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016J62QQE
• Kindle CA: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B016J62QQE
• Kindle AU: http://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B016J62QQE
• Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016J62QQE
• iBook: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1048802737#
• Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/better-than-the-best-2
• B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/better-than-the-best-amabel-daniels/1122910560

Add it on GoodReads

Amabel's Website

A request for beta readers ... NOT for me ;)

I am pretty sure I mentioned on this blog sometime recently that I've been beta reading a novel for someone. The writer doesn't currently have an online presence, but will be looking into that. For now, she is seeking a beta reader or two to feast their fresh eyeballs on her work in progress. :)

Her initial description of the book:

"I have either a romance with suspense elements or a thriller with romantic elements.  Kind of stuck in between."

So I wound up reading it, and became mildly addicted. She only sent me bits at a time as she edited a few steps ahead of my reading, so I was always eagerly awaiting the next installment. She is currently going through her next round of edits, and asked me if I knew anyone who might be interested in reading through the next incarnation of the book.

I thought I'd share some quotes from emails I sent her while reading, to give you an idea of whether the book might be your cup of tea or not:

"I'm reading [your chapters] now and enjoying them - already had a laugh out loud moment, and am intrigued. And also chilled by the 'bad guy' of the story!"

"I finished the chapters, and really enjoyed them! I definitely want to read more, if you're happy to send them over. :) I found myself laughing loudly at a lot of the scenes, but it's also scary and suspenseful with the <character name redacted> factor.

I also am *very* interested in the developing romance element."

"I have finished all your chapters & am really eager to read on ;)My feeling so far is you have a really great story, and the chapters can use polishing ... but otherwise the story is great."

"Hey, finished reading this as well - definitely a game changer!!"

"I got up to the bit where <character name redacted>'s being confronted by the psycho - you're killing me with the suspense!! LOL."

Soooo, all that said, if you'd be interested in reading the novel after the current round of edits, please let me know and I will get you in touch with the writer. :)

IWSG #10 ~ It's NaNoWriMo time!

November is here, and so is the first Wednesday of that month! Of course that means it's time to post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. This awesome group was founded by Alex J. Cavanaugh, and November's co-hosts are:

 LG Keltner, Donna Hole, Lisa Buie-Collard & SL Hennessy.

So what am I feeling insecure about this month? Oh, just the usual - the fact that this year has basically sucked when it comes to achieving goals. Or rather, I have sucked at my main goal of trying to get a lot of revision done.

Still, I've had fun this year, including during November so far. I've kicked off with my twelfth year of NaNoWriMo and am currently at 13,802 words. I'm writing LOST & FOUND, which I've had as an idea for a while now. I am basically jotting the bare bones story down, and will need to go back and add 'atmosphere' later. But for now, I'm just doing whatever keeps the writing flowing.

I'm pretty sure also that because of the way I've been jumping from scene to scene, I already have some inconsistencies that need fixing. And I have one chapter that doesn't really fit anywhere anymore, but I'm keeping it in there because it goes towards my word count. I will remove it, amend it, or find a new place for it, after November is done. ;)

For now: bare bones word spewage. After hitting 50k later in the month?: focusing on the flesh-out task (that sounds gross doesn't it? "flesh out"? hehe. reminds me of zombies for some reason).

In other news, I got a request maybe a month ago or so to be a CP, and I am reading the lady's novel right now, a sort of thriller/mystery/romance tale. I'm loving it. It's a pretty rough draft, with words missing here & there and so on, but polishing can come later. For now, the story itself is awesome and so very gripping.

Gotta love CPing a great story!

Presenting...

My completed paper edit transfer to Scrivener thingy! FYI, I tend to use the words 'thingy' and 'thingies' a lot. In my universe, they are words. Anyway, the edits are done and I'm ready to send the novel off to my beta-reader. Wheee, I have a beta-reader! I also have one more goal to cross off my list! Now I can turn my attention to NaNoWriMo and the two novels I'll be writing during November! There was a discussion on the NaNo forums about last-minute projects people are trying to get done before November 1st. This was mine. I do have a Chrysalis story to finish, which technically was due yesterday...or maybe even on Friday. I can't remember if it was my turn to post the Friday feature or not. Either way, I'll get that one done tonight, and then tomorrow NaNo begins!

What about you? Do you have any last-minute projects to finish before November? What about end-of-year tasks?

Craaaaaaazy

I would blame my recent lobotomy for the fact that I locked myself out of my home...again. But the last time I locked myself out, I hadn't had the lobotomy yet. So I guess there's really no good excuse for this one!! But instead of focusing on how annoyed I am right now (because my keys are still in my house...I may need to borrow a ladder), I'm going to concentrate on some good stuff.

For instance, I have (I think) two more chapters to go before I'm done with the revision thingy. Then I will send my manuscript thingy off to my beta-reader Laura! Wheeee! Then it will be time for NaNoWriMo. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

Meet Laura, my first EVARRR beta-reader!

Recently I mentioned that I found myself a beta-reader at last. That was actually one of my goals for 2011, so YAY! Anyway, my lovely beta's name is Laura and she has agreed to answer a few questions (read: be interrogated by the crazy librarian cat lady) so you (and I!) can get to know her better! Without further ado, I present...Laura!

1. What do you write, and what do you read? Do they tend to be the same?
I'll answer the second bit first. I read chick lit. Lots of chick lit. Probably far too much for one little person to handle - with the occasional snippet of sci-fi, thriller, and historical non-fiction. When it came to writing, I decided to write chick lit (naturally), and it also fits in well with the non-fiction fashion writing I do. I finished the first draft of my fist novel Welly-Booty-Goodness and shrugged. I was meant to be super-excited but it wasn't there, maybe because I've read so much of the stuff before. So now I'm considering embarking on a thriller for NaNoWriMo.

2. Do you love NaNoWriMo as much as I do? (for assistance with answering this one, I will inform you that I love NaNoWriMo THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS much)
I have a confession. I'm a NaNoWriMo virgin, *blushes*. I did BuNoWriMo in June run by Burrowers, Books and Balderdash. It's exactly the same premise but on a smaller scale, and I really enjoyed that. But I'm so excited about NaNoWriMo - I'm sooo going to a kick off event!

3. Do you have any beta readers of your own, and if so want to tell us about ‘em? If not, why not?
I don't have any dedicated Beta readers as yet, because I haven't really got anything to a stage where I want to get it checked out by anyone. A couple of fab, bloggy pals have been good enough to take a brief look over a chapter here and there for me though.

4. What kind of music do you write to? Or do you need complete silence? Or the steady beating of a bongo drum as background noise? Or something else entirely? (if the latter, what?)
So, for Welly-Booty-Goodness, I wrote the entire thing to the same playlist - Elvis, Beejees, Fink and Al Green. I'm thinking if I go the thriller route, I'm going to need some new suggestions!

5. What the HECK were you thinking, agreeing to be MY beta reader? Just kidding! The real question is...what's your favourite writing snack/drink combo?
Peanut M&Ms, a huge bowl of greasy, ready-salted crisps and a bucket of coffee.

Mmmmmm, peanut M&Ms...! No, really, that's where the interview ends. Pretty abrupt, huh? Well, I ran out of ideas for questions. So now I will just say THANKS to Laura for submitting to my interrogation, and for agreeing to be my first ever beta! Wheee!

Check out Laura's blog to enter her 200 Followers Giveaway!

Satur'dee

It is day something-or-rather of NaBloWriMo (I know I could find out what day it is by deducing the date, but I'm feeling too lazy to lift my hand to the top right-hand corner of my computer screen where the date and time lives! I can tell you it's Saturday, just by glancing at that corner, though. Gosh I'm good). Now for the meat of the entry:

• The image above is a manipulation (and, naturally, serious cropping) of an original piece of art done in really dark pencil (yes, that is the technical and Trisha-rifically correct term for the kind of pencil I'm talking about...because I say so!). It doubles as "song art". See, when I first started writing songs, I did a little picture - sometimes more than one - for each song. I've slacked off on that in recent years, mostly due to no longer having easy acesss to Photoshop, but maybe someday I'll get back into it!
  
  
• I finished reading ALEX CROSS'S TRIAL today. It was such an awful story, mostly because it was based on events of history. I have no idea how people can be so horrible, or ever could, even when it was 'the norm'. But at least not everyone in this story was horrible. I really enjoyed the fast-paced writing, short chapters, and Ben Corbett's voice. In short, it was an easily devoured, if shocking in parts, read. It doesn't have the realism of some nasty pieces of work I've read this year, which is probably a blessing - who wants to really truly be there in the awful moment with a story like this?
  
  
• As of this very second, I am up to page 63 in my paper-to-Scrivener editing, and my current word count is 99,441. Yay!! Under 100k again. But I have another 4.5k to cut before I'll be satisfied.
  
  
• I am thrilled to report that I have found my first beta reader! But I will report on that in more depth later! For now, I post this, in the hopes that everyone is having a great weekend even as I speak (or, rather, type).

In conclusion, thanks everyone for the input on the face transplant topic. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who'd prefer to walk around with a fake face (or no face at all) than to sport somebody else's dead one.

WIP update time

Well, it's been a while, so I thought I'd talk about how I've been going with my revisions. I tend to focus a lot on word count, so let's start there.

There was a lovely moment when I was pretty much into the 103k numbers (considering I've been coming down from 147k, this is a serious achievement). My current goal is to get to 95k or less. But right now I'm back up to about 105k. Well, technically it's 105,754 in Scrivener, but in Word it'll be closer to a flat 105k. I've had depressing moments as the word count again began to climb, but it's all for the greater good.

I've added a scene, and I've rewritten a whole bunch of other scenes. I'm happier and happier with the manuscript, though I'm only about a third of the way through with this round of edits. I keep getting stuck on earlier chapters, namely when I think I'm done with a chapter only to decide last minute that I want to do just one more read through, just one!! before moving onto the next chapter. Sometimes I even go back a few chapters and start from there. Still, I'm slowly but surely making progress.

There have been other things getting in the way of my editing, such as:

• Blogfests
• Work
• Social/family commitments
• Procrastination

Okay, so that last one isn't really a valid "can't do anything about it!" excuse, but it's a part of my life that I never try to deny. I procrastinate, and I am fine with the fact. I would go insane if I didn't procrastinate sometimes. But I'm not so Zen about everything else, namely the climbing word count.

On the upside, I met some new folks over at Write-Brained who are in the same boat, so we've all been there to commiserate with each other. Some of those folks are suffering from my problem. Others have the opposite problem - that of too few words. I've never had a problem with too few words. Whether I'm writing an essay or a story, I will always end up with too many words. And this realisation has led me in recent times to begin stripping my writing of all needless excess. The result has been that sometimes I've stripped too much out, so that there isn't enough information in what's left. This of course leads to reader befuddlement. So, I haven't got the balance right yet, but for now I'm still focusing on that stripping out, and I'll get to the adding back in later, when I'm confident I can do so without bloviating overly (yep, still like to use that word occasionally :D).

SO, my current plan:

1. Finish stripping extraneous crap
2. Implement edits as per advice from ElitistCritiques comrades
3. Print out the manuscript and do a paper edit
4. Find some beta readers who want to read about rock stars and romance, and send them whatever the heck's left of my story
5. Wait with sickeningly swishing stomach for return of crits from said betas.

And that about sums it up.

Revision burn-out

One of my Goals for 2011 (which I haven't really specified in my Goals list, actually...guess I should rectify that!) is to get through latest edit of SUNDOWN and chop the word count. I've been keeping track of my revisions for a while in this blog, and you can see the entries that made reference to them here. But to summarise, my first draft (as opposed to the rough draft I had at the end of NaNo' 2009) was 147k, and right now I'm at 108k. This is good, but I still have work to do.

Everything was going pretty smoothly. I removed entire chapters, which was a very good start. Then I kept finding whole chunks (or even just a paragraph or sentence here and there) to cut. I was feeling good, even though I knew I had a lot of work to do in future - there were certain scenes I wasn't satisfied with, and I knew early on I would be rewriting them eventually. But instead of keeping going with what I had been doing - the slow and steady stripping of glaringly unnecessary words/sentences/paragraphs - I decided last week sometime that I was ready to dive right into the rewriting part. Cue the slight problem I mentioned recently, and a whole lot of chaos.

Currently I feel like I'm in a revision slump, the kind where staring at the wall seems like it's going to be more productive than actually trying to revise anything. Maybe I've tried to do too many things at once? Let's list the things I've been doing, shall we?

• Working on opening chapters, which have been stripped back so far that they are now lacking a bit of necessary meat
• Removing entire chunks out of the middle of the novel, and working on filling the resultant holes
• Working new stuff into the novel either in the beginning or in the middle or somewhere else, and then having to work that new stuff in right throughout the novel, because otherwise it just suddenly appears (or disappears) with no explanation
• Throwing out all sorts of stuff with those opening/middle chapters which now has loose-end references elsewhere in the manuscript; loose ends that must be tied up again!

In short, I think what I've got here is a bit or revision burnout!

Tempting though it is to just forget this WIP for the time being and fixate on something else, I'd really rather keep going with this one and get it ready for some beta attention. It is my dream to have at least one piece of work ready for that. But this novel is the closest to it, and it's still so very far off!

P.S. I put a little Spotlight...errr, spot...in the top right-hand corner of my blog (below the page tabs), and in there right now is this entry from Anny Cook titled Potato Love. If you haven't seen it yet, you should - it is extremely cute. :)

The Chrysalis Experiment - Entrance Survey

This is an entrance survey people can fill out if they so wish, for the Chrysalis Experiment. Once filled, you post a link to your survey (in whatever blog you put it in, or on Facebook or whatever) in the Chrysalis blog. Anyway, here's mine!

1. What are your current writing habits? Do you have any larger projects in the works?

My current writing habits are I write daily, even if it's rewriting/editing. And I know I don't need to tell you gals about my current projects, but I will anyway - I've got lots of novels waiting to be edited, others waiting to be finished, and still more that are waiting to be written. Oh, and about 52 short stories to be written this year. Woo!

2. Name three things you love about your own writing and three skills that you would like to work on this year. Do you have a list of writing goals for 2011?

Three things I love about it:

-I think for the most part I manage to avoid character/plot clichés, or at least if I rely on them I twist them up a little.

-My heroines are generally pretty kick-arse, far from pathetic needy creatures.

-I write in multiple genres and don't feel restricted in any way.

Three things I want to work on this year:

-Getting more used to letting go of my little darlings. I think I'm doing pretty well on that, but the better I get the better things will be!

-Not starting as many paragraphs with the same word, and getting rid of repetitiveness in general. Can't believe it took me printing out my entire ms to notice I'd pretty much repeated an entire descriptive paragraph in two different chapters. Ha.

-Using a thesaurus more. ;)

As for goals, you can see them here if you scroll down a bit. I need to do a new post for my 2011 goals at some point soon, so they're all on their own.

3. What do you find inspiring?

I have never really written to prompts before, but in the last month of 2010 I got into writing a bit of flash fiction based on prompts. And so, I'm finding that prompts are inspirational! I also frequently find myself inspired by music. I still need to write a ghost story, based in some eerie woods somewhere, thanks to Type O Negative.

4. What sort of things do you currently do to improve your writing?

I dare to share my writing with other writers, and make sure I listen to the advice they give. Also reading my work aloud does seem to work sometimes. And printing it out!! This is new to me, as I generally try to save trees, but I finally bit the bullet and printed out one of my novels, and...yeah...it's been illuminating so far.

5. Are you currently looking for a critique partner or beta readers? If so, what qualities would you like in a critique partner or beta reader?

I think I have more than enough critiquing partners right now. Let's say I'm completely polyamorous there. :D And I may also have a beta reader for Sundown, starting in Feb 2011. This chick is also writing about rock stars on tour, so I think we're aligned in our interests. Yay!! As for what qualities, well I'd want honesty, but not cruelty. And that honesty can be brutal. I can take it, as being a member of the AW forums has shown me. But not cruelty just for cruelty's sake.