Thursday, March 21, 2013

JUST A PEEK



I've been writing since I was 10, poems, short story's, little blurbs, song lyrics, etc. My imagination is vast and limitless and I find my mind making up stories constantly, it's never silent: driving in the car alone and I'm conversing with myself, a conversation between characters in a book in-progress, staging scenes for books I haven't even come up with yet, deciphering the lives of the people walking across the crosswalk in front of me, etc etc. For the past 15 or so years I've had various hand-written stories in varying stages of progress lying around, started but never finished, random staged scenes with nothing else written around them, etc. About a year ago I finally decided to bite the bullet and start on "Tomorrows Promise", a Romance book I've had in the works for over 10 years now, though I had lost most of the notebooks with the ideas, scenes and some chapters written in them I decided to sit my butt down and get working. I'm on chapter 6 and the book is temporarily on hiatus while I work on "Prophecy" though I hope to get back to it soon.

But back to the point, through the years I have stashed my work in various hard copy and online places, mostly poems and little teasers but thinking today I decided that there was no better place to put those things than here, in my authors blog so that those who are interested in my writing can get a tease, oops I meant taste of my writing style. ;) Without further ado here's a short romance-genre blurb I wrote about 6 years ago.

GOOD-BYE
The tears slide a slow, sad trail down her cheek to drip off her chin, her heart is breaking. She can feel it crack and bleed, can hear the echoing hollowness of each beat even as she knows this is what she has to do.
How did she get here, to this dark and hollow place? She'd had a plan. If only she'd followed the simple rules she'd set for herself; don't date, don't fall in love, don't get attached. And when she'd started to fall what had she told herself? Break it off now, break it off clean before someone gets hurt. But had she listened to herself? Oh no, she'd given it a half-assed try but she'd let him talk her out of it. Why? Because she hadn't wanted to leave him, hadn't wanted to end things, hadn't wanted to live without him.
He made her wish, made her dream, made her believe that for once it was possible for her to actually find and keep happiness. Believing that was dangerous because that was a lie. 
She couldn't keep him happy, couldn't be what he needed, she knew this. Knew it with a certainity that defied logic, and that was why she had to let him go.
He thought he knew what he was getting into, but he didn't. He thought he understood what he'd be giving up, but he couldn't. She did though, she knew, and she couldn't let him do it. What kind of a person would she be if she let him trap himself that way? Let him tie himself to her with all her baggage knowing that one day he'd regret it? 
She couldn't do it, she'd break her own heart a hundred times before letting him ruin his life over her. No. She'd let him go. She'd treasure the time they'd had together. Treasure every memory, every phone call, but there would be no new ones. Their time together was at an end. It was for the best. He'd move on, find someone he deserved who deserved him and she'd know that she'd done the right thing for him. 
Maybe one day she'd stop loving him, until then she'd just go on.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Perseverance Pays Off...

After 8 hours yesterday and 2 today I have finally finished not only my first fight scene EVER but also chapter 3 in the young adult book I am currently writing. This book is a new adventure for me, not only does it take me far from my normal short-story and in-progress genre of romance but it's also part of a 6 book series if all goes well. A bit ambitious for the first project I am truly determined to finish all the way through, don't you think?

For those interested the series will be called "Destiny's Circle" and Book one is titled: Prophecy. The series takes place between two worlds, Earth and Thaeron. Thaeron is a world of magic and the origin of all magical creatures, thousands of years ago they learned to travel through time and space and some came to earth for peace from the war between the monsters and the citizens of Thaeron. Soon enough the monsters began coming to Earth as well, then an oracle prophesied the end of the war and the death of Dramora (the mother of all monsters), A Thaeron native strong in spirit, young in age and brave of heart would lead a group of 6 talented mortals destined for this duty and greatness. Together these 7 would lead the war and only they possess the knowledge and power to end Dramora. Now Dramora hunts the group here on earth, determined to stop the prophecy before it can be fulfilled. Each book is a story of one of the 6 found and trained by Finn. Each of the 6 possess their own unique powers and talents. I hope you'll enjoy their stories and their adventure.

- Shell

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

And it goes slowly...

Spent a good 8 hours writing a measly 4 pages of my young adult novel today. 4 pages in 8 hours, that's 2 hours per page! Ridiculous! Give me a report for school and I can whip up twice that many pages in half the time but a story I'm writing for fun and it just drags. Shouldn't it be the opposite?!? Each page was painstakingly written, read, edited, read again, re-written, read twice more then the next page started and the vicious cycle continues on and on and on with reading and re-writing happening every few paragraphs. This may make for a kick-ass story in the end (hopefully) but it also makes for S L O W writing until then.

The story has been flowing fairly well up to this point but once I reached my first pivotal fight scene I choked.  Writers block kicked in and I used every excuse in the book to justify my lack of return to the keyboard and my microsoft office saved document. Today I decided that a kick to my own booty was needed and I swiftly applied said kick and sat my butt down at the computer desk to open previously mentioned saved document. I read it, read it again and then read it once more for good measure. The idea well was still dry. So I paced, I cussed, I played some really great old-skool music and I forced myself to just start writing. Even if the scene was crap and made no sense my fingers were going to keep typing.

It worked! Typing through the writers blocked forced the creative juices to flow and the fight scene was born. Of course it has proven to be the toughest scene I've ever written with a zillion re-writes, edits and improvements already and I'm not even finished with it yet. That's right, 8 hours and a zillion edits and the scene has yet to be completed. Fight scene choreography sucks, at least for this girl. I plan on sleeping on it, hopefully the rest of the scene will choreograph itself in my dreams then flow neatly through my mind, out of my fingers onto the keyboard and into the page where it belongs.

An author can only hope. :)

Inspiration

I'm a mother... of five.... Yes, you heard me correctly, no that's not a typo. So for as long as I can remember (My oldest will be 15 in a few months) I have always made up random stories off the top of my head for my children, sometimes as bedtime stories and sometimes just randomly for the heck of it. The tragedy is that although some of those stories were phenomenal from the point-of-view of a child, I never thought to write any of them down and have since forgotten them.

My youngest child was an unexpected blessing and at 3 years of age is very into mommy's made up stories about the princess with her own name. The other day as shes telling her Daddy all about the princess's adventures of that day he gives me the look, you know the one; the wry twisted half-grin with the single raised eyebrow that smug over-confident, I-know-better-than-you look that all men possess though they don't all express it in exactly the same way.

"I hope you're writing all these down" He says.
And I have a "DOH!" moment, like why didn't I think of that, do you know how many hundreds of stories are lost just floating down the soundwaves of time never to be heard again? And all because 15 years ago I wasn't smart enough to write down the stories to be read and remembered in our family for each generation. Fortunately future stories will be preserved.

And that is how the "Pink Princess Adventures" were born. I have a notebook that I am painstakingly recalling and writing all the stories in. Once complete My oldest daughter and I will begin illustrating and then I will begin the painstaking process of getting them published in both digital and book form. So for those of you with toddler girls who love princesses and the color pink keep a look out in the next year for those adventures to pop up. :) The best thing about them? I'm thinking of making them more personalized, one of the best things about them for my toddler is that the princess bares her name so I think making them name-personalized to the princess receiving them would be a great idea. What do you all think? Should I fight for personalization or should I just forget the extra time and make it a generic-named princess?