comfort in chaos

Lately, Nathan has been sending me to the coffee shop for an hour or two every couple of days so I can write.

I've been going to a Biggby's just down the street from us, getting a regular coffee with mint flavor and half and half, and setting upstairs at a little table with my back against the wall. I plop my pink notebook down on the table in front of me, pull my pen out, and write.

It took me a while to find a spot to write. I kept searching out someplace quiet, a place where I could set in peace with nothing to interrupt my thoughts. I would get there, get settled in, and then--
--get incredibly distracted.

Everything would be quiet, 
then somebody would cough 
or answer a phone 
or drop something 
or slurp their coffee
and I would totally lose my train of thought.

The first time I sat down in what is now my favorite writing place, I almost didn't. It was loud! People meet there for everything from business to studying to friends just getting together to Bible study...so it is anything but a quiet place. There's even a radio playing all the time, often with songs I know. I'm a huge music person (I was always a choir nerd in school), so I just knew I would be way too distracted by all the chaos to get anything written.

Then, I wrote 2 pages without even really noticing it.

Huh. That's interesting.

I went back a couple of times that week, and the same thing happened: people talked and laughed and slurped coffee and dropped things and made lots of noise, and I wrote 2 or 3 pages in my hour long lunch break.

Life has always been busy for me.There's always been noise and chaos and just plain stuff all the time. I had this idea that I needed to lock myself away somewhere to write, to find a quiet place with no distractions.

Apparently, I was wrong. I'm a person who has always done multiple things at once. I listened to the radio while I did my homework, I always had 2 or 3 books on my nightstand because I couldn't read just one thing at a time (unless it's a Dean Koontz novel), and then when I was teaching I sat in the living room with the t.v. on while I graded papers. We even had the radio on in my classroom quite often.

Maybe I'm odd. Maybe most people need quiet and peace and solitude to write. I've always dreamed of spending a week by myself in a cabin somewhere, just me and the quiet and my writing. Maybe I need to change that dream to a week spent in the middle of Times Square or something!

Until then, I'll be at the coffee shop. I'll be that girl setting in the corner, a cup of coffee in one hand and a pen in the other, somehow comforted and spurred on by the chaos and noise around me.

something brand new...

First of all, thank you for even reading this--it has been forever since I posted anything, but apparently some of you are still hanging in there with me!

I'm thinking it's time for an update, followed by a pretty big announcement. 

First, the update:
So far, I haven't had any luck with the query letters I've sent out. To be honest, all the responses I've gotten have been form letter rejections (which has definitely hurt a bit). The biggest thing that has happened, though, was the form letter rejection I got from my submission to DAW. I was guardedly hopeful about that one, because they were actually going to have my manuscript in their hands instead of just a query letter. Apparently that didn't matter too much, though, because I got the standard letter on Saturday: "Thanks for submitting...the economy...not a commercial success...everybody gets rejections...keep writing."

I'm not going to go into too many details about my exact reaction because I've already written all that stuff out of my system over here and really don't want to revisit that place. However, something has come out of that raw post I wrote on Sunday.

I have some amazing friends and family, and a few of them took the time to comment on my facebook posting for that other post I linked to above. Those friends don't know just how amazing it was to read their words, and how much they helped pull me out of a pretty dark spot. One of those friends mentioned something, and it made me think. There is a whole world of ebooks out there, and some people have actually gotten to see their stories read by huge groups of people they would never have reached otherwise.

So, now for the announcement:
SONS OF TUNDYEL: THE PROPHECY will be hitting the virtual shelves before long, and by before long I mean hopefully within a month or less!

I have a bit of work to do (some final editing and figuring out how to get a good cover design), but I've decided to take the step and just go ahead and put the whole story out there. It will be available through Amazon, definitely as an ebook. Right now we are trying to decide if we should set it up for people to be able to purchase a physical copy, but that part is still being debated.

I'm in the middle of a second story right now, though it isn't in the world of Tundyel, Syndria, and Paodin. It is a fantasy, though, and I have to admit my writing has matured since I started writing SoT about 8 years ago (wow, that was a lifetime ago!) which makes me more excited about this second story.

Here's a brief glimpse into the world I'm diving into these days...
 *****
Paideia: home to the Darkur, Men, Ula Ros, and Ula Eos

The Feron: a dead army created by the Forgotten One, wraiths sweeping the land and killing everything they encounter

Sharrukin: the Voros who showed up with a tale of a half Voros, half Ula Eos who would be Paideia's only chance against the Forgotten One who shared that strange bloodline

Roedel: a clumsy, young Ula Ros who has been told he is actually the half-blood hero

Caedfel & Beryl: a Darkur male and a female from the Men, companions for Roedel and Sharrukin as they travel to the Vale to find a Ula Eos who will train Roedel

The Stone: a smooth blue stone given to Roedel by his older brother, with only the warning that he must keep it safe because it in Roedel's hand is somehow the hope of Paideia in their fight against the Feron
*****

So, I'll keep you posted on how the ebook is coming along. I've got an outline for the next SoT story, THE DARKNESS, so once Roedel's story is finished I'll be moving on to the next installment of Paodin and Syndria.

Thank you to everyone for the encouragement you've given me. Hopefully you'll be able to have the whole story in your hands by this time next month (and here's hoping the next couple of stories don't take me quite as long to write)!
 :0)

a quick update...

I know I said I was taking a break from this blog, but since apparently there are still a few people stopping by I just wanted to let you know what's going on in my writing world...

First, I had started writing SoT:The Darkness.
There has been a bit of a snag, though--I gave in to the world of technology and I was typing it on my new notebook computer I got for school. Well, the computer died (completely) and I have now lost everything I just wrote. Granted it wasn't all that much, and it probably needed to be rewritten anyway, but it still hurt! I am definitely going to go back to the old fashioned method of putting everything down in ink on notebook paper. It may take me quite a while to type it up at the end if I do that, but that's okay. It will just be editing time that way!

Second, I've started sending out query letters for SoT:The Prophecy. I sent one a long time ago that I never got a response from, but looking back now that was probably a good thing since my story was nowhere near ready to be sent out. This time, though, I've got a list of agents to pester....I've also gotten my first rejection note. That part isn't so much fun, but I guess it welcomes me to the ranks of those who are trying to get published! I'm just going to stick to the idea that I'm in the company of writers like Stephen King and Dr. Seuss and Dean Koontz and probably just about every other author in the history of publishing. And I'm going to keep sending out query letters until I catch somebody's attention!
 

an apology...

So, I haven't written anything here since April...meaning I owe anybody who is interested in my crazy writing life an apology.

I am so so sorry!

Things are crazy in my life right now and have been for a few months. I wrapped up my short but very informative (to me, not necessarily my students) teaching career in May, then I spent the next couple of months getting ready for my sister's wedding and a move from Arkansas to Ohio for grad school. I've just finished (well, sort of--I still have a couple of classes this afternoon) my first week of grad school, so life definitely hasn't slowed down any lately.

My writing life is going to, sadly, be on hold for a little while. I may get a few words in here and there, but I don't expect to be making any real progress on my story until I get a break from school...which won't really happen until the end of the semester in December.

So, with that in mind, I'm taking a bit of a hiatus from this blog. I know, I know--I just came off of one since I haven't posted anything here since April. This one will be different, though, because it will actually be planned.

I can't get away from writing, though, as anybody who knows me or who understands this crazy drive to write can attest to, so I will still be updating my other blog and you are more than welcome to stop by over there. That blog is a bit different from this one (okay, maybe a lot different), but it's still me, so maybe you'll find something you would like to read there, too!

Mostly, this decision comes because I want to spend any spare minute I get to write actually writing...I want to dive into my story any chance I get, giving myself a minute or two here and there to escape this crazy world of physics I'm fighting my way through mathematically right now in grad school.

To those of you who have kept up with my writing here, thank you. Your comments on my story are greatly appreciated.

Hopefully I can come back here in a few months with the announcement that either 1) I've submitted SoT:The Prophecy or 2) SoT:The Darkness is well underway!

oops!

So, I just realized that I haven't written a post on here since February 28th...wow.

I've gotten really wrapped up in my new blog, so all of my writing lately has been aimed at that. And when I say all, that's really what I mean--I couldn't tell you the last time I did any "novel-ing."

In all honesty, that makes me a little sad. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the writing I've been doing. I'm overwhelmed with the response I've been getting from those posts. What I'm sad about is the fact that I've let my story fade away again. It has once again made its way to a back burner, and I'm afraid that it's going to stay back there too long and become just a pipe dream again.

I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I am definitely going to try and get back into the habit of my creative, fiction writing. I'll try and keep this blog a bit more up to date...

Thanks for hanging in there with me!

big decisions

So, I'm in the middle of trying to make a couple of big decisions about SoT.

First, do I try and submit it as a fantasy for adults or do I change the ages of my main characters and submit it as Young Adult? You would think that I would have already made this decision, seeing as how I submitted to the Amazon contest in the general fiction category instead of YA. I've gotten some recent feedback, though, that has me wondering again.

The second decision is one that kind of depends on the result of the first--who do I submit it to?

I've decided that I'm only going to try for an agent. I don't want to submit to any publishers right now for a couple of reasons: if I do manage to get an agent, I don't want to have made things hard for him/her because certain publishers already saw my pitch and turned it down. More importantly, though, I really think I need some fresh eyes to look at my writing before I even attempt to get it published--I don't think it's polished up enough to be published right now.

In the meanwhile, I'm doing some editing and reworking now that it's been a while since I worked on the story. I'm also working on the new story, but that's a long way from being put into the public eye! ;0)

ABNA results are in...

So, my pitch didn't make the cut this year for the Amazon contest. Really, though, I'm not all that disappointed. When I looked back at my pitch (probably for the 20th time), I noticed a couple of glaring mistakes I had somehow let slip by me in what I submitted. There were also a few places that I saw needed to be cleaned up (the meanings were pretty muddy). In all honesty, that pitch, as is, shouldn't have made it through to the next round.


I would have really liked to move on to the next round so I could get some feedback on the actual story, but that didn't work out this time. I can't say that I'm upset, though. The way I'm looking at it is like this: at this stage, people weren't judging my story. They were judging my ability to summarize that story and put it into 300 words or less, something I know I'm not very good at anyways.


Now, it's time to work on my query letter and figure out how to write a good pitch. Hopefully I've learned from this and I'll be able to fix the mistakes. The good thing about queries? Most agents want a section of your writing along with the summary. Maybe I'll catch somebody's attention!


So, even though I'm not all that disappointed, maybe I can convince Nathan that I need a consolation dinner tonight...