A Couple Fun Things

Hello all! I've been a little MIA blog-wise, but for good reason. First, it was my birthday/hubby's birthday/anniversary all in one week, so I took a break. Second, my entry was picked as an alternate for The Writer's Voice contest and we've been busy with critiques! But I am happy to be back and to announce two fun things:

1. The judges are awesome, and they decided to include the alternate's in the contest as well! WOOT! My entry is here. Go Team Cupid!! *high fives* Their entries are amazing, and they were seriously SO much help in getting my query and opening spiffed and polished. Love you guys!

2. My friend and CP Liz interviewed me on her blog today, so go check it out!! The interview is here.

Sorry to have been missing out on the awesomeness of your blogs, lately, but I promise to catch up! Peace out! :D

Dust It Off Winners!!

First off, I missed the Oh, Those High School Dances bloghop because I was computerless, but I'm hoping to catch up on all the great posts. I heard they were fantastic!

Huge thanks to everyone who participated in our super fun bloghop! You guys have the best ideas, your writing was so fun to read. But I think my favorite part was reading what you all learned. Theresa and I kept emailing back and forth--we had such a hard time picking our winners!

But winners we did pick, lol! And I'm so excited! Theresa and I decided to post them separately, so her picks are on her blog here.

I had runners up, guys. It was SUPER hard to pick just one! So I'll start with those, from day 1:

Kate Larkindale--From your short pitch I was already invested in your characters. Nice work!
Rachel Schieffelbein--What a cute fairy story. Dust it off for reals, I'd so read it!
E. Arroyo @ Chandara Writes--I loved the catchy twist at the end!

The winner for day 1 is Tracey J!! Your pitch was such an awesome concept, I instantly wanted to know about those little blue pills. Congrats Tracey! Please email me your address so I can send you your prize! (A copy of Robin Mellom's Ditched.)

Day 2 was even harder. Your excerpts were so fabulous and fun to read. Liz, I can't pick yours because I already critique your stuff, lol, but writing from the perspective of a fluffy dog was so cute and original! My other runners up for day 2 were:

Christine, Carrie-Anne, Kelley, and Colleen. Yay runners up! Such great excerpts!

Theresa and I are cheating and picking two winners because we just had a hard time picking one. So my winners for day 2 are Ilima Todd, and McKenzie McCann!! Ilima, the shark thing was so original, and McKenzie, yours was so clever and made me laugh out loud! Hooray! Email your queries, ladies. I'd love to critique them and help any way I can!

Day 3, hardest of all. Can I just say you guys are all AMAZING?!! The runners up for day 3 were Kyra, Rachel, and Ilima.
And the winner of a full manuscript critique is Avery Marsh! Avery, I just resonated with what you wrote, it struck a chord with me. I loved your story, how writing sort of sprung up on your because of your artwork, and how it became a more prominent part of your life. I can't wait to read your material! And though I'm no expert, it's always good to get another pair of eyes on your work. :D

My email is cor2neyp@yahoo.com. Send me your stuff!! :D

So congratulations, everyone!! *tosses confetti* And remember, these critiques do NOT have to be from your shelved ms. It can be from any project you want.

Thanks again to everyone!! So many great manuscripts gathering dust, lol. We hope you resurrect them someday and bring them back out to the light of day, they were truly great!

Dust It Off Bloghop, Day 3

Just in case, my Writer's Voice entry is here. (#54)

Here we are, the last day of this fantabulous blog hop. You guys are so awesome; Theresa and I will have a hard time picking the winners!!

Btw--if either of us haven't made it to any of your posts, please let us know! We don't want to miss anyone's posts!!

Sad that we shelved these awesome projects, isn't it? But even though nothing ever progressed with these projects, we've all learned so much from writing them. And that's today's prompt:

Post what you learned from writing this WIP.

I learned so much! I learned that not everyone is like Stephenie Meyer and can have a dream, write a book in three months and automatically have someone just fall in love with it. Writing a novel takes A LOT!! We have to be so conscious of so many things all at once, it seems. And The Mind Writers helped me learn the discipline it takes to write something--and rewrite it---and REWRITE it until you get it the best you possibly can. To go to conferences and read how-to books.

Another huge thing for me was beta readers. I heard from somewhere (had no clue about the writing bloggy world at this point in time) that it was good to pick about three readers to read your stuff and get their feedback. So I picked a few friends who are awesome, beautiful people, but knew NOTHING about what needed to be in a novel to make it successful! They were like, "Um, I think you need more description here?" And I was like, well I described that airplane perfectly! But what she probably meant was I needed interiority or something. If you have beta readers, give them big in-person or virtual hugs. I can't even tell you how valuable my CP pals are to me! (My friends who read for me are valuable too, and I'll never be able to thank them enough for sludging through this first embarrassing project, lol!)

Mainly what I learned is to never give up. Sounds cheesy, I know. But I knew what my dream was--to write a book people would enjoy reading, and to see it on a shelf in a store someday. So I kept writing, kept trying, and my writing now is so much better for it. Not to say I'm *there* yet, but if I keep progressing maybe someday I will be.

Thanks so much for hanging out with us this week. It was a blast to read your entries! We'll post the winners soon!!

Dust It Off Bloghop: Day 2

If you're looking for my Writer's Voice Blogfest entry (#54) click here.

You guys! Seriously, so many great pitches. What fabulous ideas! Theresa and I are going to have a tough time choosing!

For today, the prompt is: Post your favorite excerpt from Ol' Shelvy. 300-350 word limit.

Here's mine from The Mind Writers. For background, Soleil (the MC) is dating Rowen but she has budding feelings for Cooper that she's trying to fight. They've just escaped from Soleil's soul being harbored for the demon and they're all crashing at Rowen's for the night.

          “You’re still awake?”

            Cooper strode into the room. I immediately forced my attention to the previously ignored book in my lap.

            “I’m trying to read.”

            “Huh,” he said.

            “What.” I lifted my eyes, prepared to be annoyed. And I was, but not in the way I’d planned. I looked up just in time to see him lift his brown shirt off and toss it to the side of the couch.

            What was he doing? I had to swallow several times because my tongue tingled at seeing his tan, washboard abs. I cleared my throat and forced my eyes back to the page. The words suddenly morphed into one of those optical illusions that trick with your mind.

            “Didn’t picture you as a book nerd.”

            I made the mistake of looking up at him again. I had to lift my book higher. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat and checked my voice. It was too high-pitched. “Well, there’s a lot of things about me you’ve been wrong about, isn’t there?”

            “Not about this, no,” Cooper said with amusement, and I knew he wasn’t talking about my reading habits anymore.

            I’d never noticed how fast you can start to breathe when you’re bothered, but at this point in time I was running a 5K. I was being unfair and part of me knew it, but the other part was still stewing in irritation.

Unable to help myself, I peered over the top of the book. The muscles in his back swelled as he plucked off the majority of decorative pillows and laid a sheet over the couch. Then he settled in, pulling a blanket over himself.

            “You’re sleeping out here?” I asked with clear disbelief.

            “Yes. Or am I not allowed?”

            I exhaled. “It’s fine—I’m done, anyway.”

Confession: Part of me is still in love with Cooper. Sigh. :-p Is that legal, to be in love with your own characters, lol?


On Monday, get ready to post what you learned from writing this WIP. With each project we take on we become more rounded, better writers, and we want to know what you learned from writing Ol' Shelvy!

Okay, going to check your awesome excerpts out now!!!

"The Writer's Voice" Blogfest Entry (#54)

(For those of you doing the Dust It Off Bloghop, click here to go to my post!!)

Huge thanks to Cupid, Brenda, Krista, and Monica for hosting such a fun contest! For the details, click here on Cupid's blog. 

PHOBIC, a YA Horror

Query:

Fifteen year old Piper Crenshaw knows her house is strange. It’s never needed any repairs since it was built in the 1800’s, it has a staircase that leads to the ceiling and the lights flicker in response to things she says. The kids at school torment her because of her creepy house, but it’s a good thing they don’t know Piper’s real secret:  Her mother is in prison for murder.

Sick of being pestered, Piper opens a forbidden door in her house to prove she’s not afraid of where she lives. Soon she begins having flashbacks of the original residents from 1875, including a love affair between two young servants. Each vision pulls Piper deeper in, not only to their story, but into her house. She doesn’t realize how far the connection goes until her house gets axed by a bully during a prank, and the damage injures Piper instead.

Piper realizes her house isn’t haunted—it’s alive. To sever her link to it, she must unravel the clues in the flashbacks and uncover the truth about her mother’s crime, before she becomes part of her house for good.

First 250:

When I was six years old I found the man my mother murdered stuffed in a trap door under our kitchen. The smell gave him away.

Police swarmed the house, which—uncharacteristically—made no creaking groans of protest at having that many outsiders in it. It was almost like the house knew Mom’s secret and wanted her to get caught.

Now, nine years later, I hold my clarinet in my hands and stare past the music on my stand. I should practice, but I can’t concentrate. My scholarship audition—my chance to get out of this house next summer—is tomorrow, and I wish my mom could be there.

I didn’t mind that she wasn’t at district solo competition last year, when as a freshman I beat a senior. Or that Mom isn’t around to show me the kind of mom-stuff other girls learn. I’ve got my older brother, Joel, but he knows as much about putting makeup on as I do. And when I got my period I wasn’t about to ask him how to put in a tampon.

I still see traces of my mother everywhere I look. If I didn’t know she was in prison, I’d think she was the one haunting my house, offering hollow wails in the early hours of morning, that stretch when day is breaking but dark things still have time to creep.

It’s why I like to practice in her and Daddy’s bedroom. I like to think that even from prison, my mom can hear me play. 

Wecome to the Dust It Off Bloghop!!

Huge thanks to Theresa for letting me join her on hosting this! It's been fun collaborating, and we're excited it's finally here!

Ready to pay homage to those early attempts at writing that we've since set aside?

Today's prompt:  Post a 1-2 sentence pitch as to what your shelved ms was about.

Mine was a YA paranormal romance called The Mind Writers, about a boy who sold his soul to a demon for the ability to control minds by touching people. But when the demon takes his soul prematurely, the heroine has to find a way to save his soul without losing hers in the process.

Even though this story never *went* anywhere, I still love it. I pitched it to agents at a conference once several years ago, and their jaws nearly detached when I told them it was 106,000 words, lol! I had a lot to learn back then!! (Okay, I still have a lot to learn, ha ha. I'm just further along now than I was then. But we'll get to that on Monday!)

So there it is!! Remember to get your favorite excerpt from the shelved ms ready to post on Saturday! 300-350 word limit.

Thanks to everyone participating today. I can't wait to see what your early projects were about! And thanks to peeps who aren't participating, too--feel free to bebop around the other blogs on the list!

Research and Reminders

I have been heavily revising and editing my YA horror Phobic, about a girl who finds out the truth about the murder her mother committed and also has a haunted house, and I just want to give a shout out to my awesome CP's:  Morgan Shamy, Elizabeth Briggs, Anne Pfeffer, and Juliana Brandt. You guys--there are no words. What would I do without you?

Most of the research I do for my writing is online. Thank you, Google! I've never really done any in person, aside from asking my brother who works in the ER and my other brother who is an ex-cop, and my other brother who is in the military. 

Anyway, there is a scene in my book where the fire department is on hand and Liz was like---are you sure? Cuz that does NOT seem like it would happen. (Don't want to give away too much, since it's kinda the FINAL scene.)

I had the thought as I was writing it too, whether it was believable or not. SO NOT BELIEVABLE. So then I had to do something a little scary. I called the fire department!!! Aaah! Okay, so it wasn't that scary. The fire chief was a little surprised when I told him I was writing a book and needed to check a fact, but he was more than willing to go along with it. And I felt so proud afterward! I'm an OFFICIAL FACT CHECKER FOR MY WRITING!!!

Have you guys ever done any in-person research? Was it scary at all or fun?

Also, a reminder!!! The bloghop I'm co-hosting with Theresa Paolo starts on Thursday! If you haven't already, sign up below! We hope you'll join in on the fun!!! Here's the link to the original post, it's going to be a blast! Get your shelved WIP's ready, guys!! :D