NanoWriMo 2015 (Funny is the New Sad): Chapter 11: Welcome to LA

Scene One: The future screenwriter drives into LA in her grey 1982 VW Rabbit hatchback. It’s loaded to the gills with her meager possessions. Among them: the Times Literary Supplement Dictionary that she’s talked her parents into buying her. It’s a twin pack over-sized dictionary in micro-print with a small reading glass tucked into the top of the gold embossed navy blue carrying box. Somewhere…

On the Road with Nirvana

This originally appeared on my group blog The GirlfriendsBookclub.org I hate research. It is the liver and lima bean of writing. When I invent a fictional world I am the benevolent dictator where everyone does what I say and nobody gets hurt. (Alright, they will get hurt, possibly even mauled but I don’t worry about it; it’s fiction.) If I don’t know how something works, I wing it and whip in…

 Okay so calling myself a girl is pretty funny because I have teenagers who make me feel about 150 when they crawl downstairs with their dewy skin and lithe figures complaining about how horrid they look. But gimme a break, I have a new book that’s getting a  lot of cool buzz. Writers I market and group blog with are even jumping up and down with excitement on this one. Apparently no one told…

This past week, in the middle of facing down the deadline that didn’t seem like such a big deal — final edits, fix some comments from an editor, wham bam, good-bye, I found myself in the middle of a family crisis. Also, since I’d made the amateur mistake of mixing verb tenses (sometimes in the same sentence *blush*) it was a much more detailed and painstaking vetting.

What happened was a…

 When I was writing this book (available April 27 and pre-sale soon. Here’s a SNEAK PEEK) I thought a lot about being kind to other people and started my own Fifty Acts of Kindness. Here’s MY TENTH ACT OF KINDNESS. #50ActsofKindness sort of took off and I saw people tweeting about it. Now I’m ramping up again and started an Instagram Challenge. (It’s on Facebooktoo.) I challenged 10 people to do…

Go Ahead, Judge this Book Cover

 Okay, so imagine you have worked with other publishers and they change your title (which has a deleterious effect on sales) and then they bam, present you with a cover (which is still pretty nice) and then you work with a lovely lady named Gemma Halliday who is an author herself and genious marketer and self publisher who has opened up a boutique publishing house with 30 odd writers (and I do…

Ok, so, as it seems, this is going to be bigger than I thought. Or maybe I am just getting more into each it than I though. Anyways, I can get about four scenes out in a day (I procrastinate) if I write about 3-4 hours. I could probably double that if I focused more. But, I am me. Anyways, it looks like I will probably be getting out, at this rate, a story every 5-7 days. Maybe less. I still have a few hours before bed, so I can definitely write more, but I don't want to burn out early, especially on an exercise. I'm thinking I may post up a story a week (assuming the basic structure I used with this one. Four scenes per character (4) with a setup beforehand and an Aftermath montage at the end.) and on the other days I'm not writing this put in some dedicated work on another project or two. I may change up the process after I finish the first one, to possible stream-line the process, but I want to get the first one out as I have said I would and see how it works. *shrug* So, yeah, the first half of the first Act is up. Comments and feedback are welcome and encouraged, let me know what you all think.