Category Archives: Lost and Found

Lost and Found

Brains are Funny Things…

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Despite the fact I’ve started sharing Lost and Found on this blog, it isn’t quite finished. I’ve been going over it chapter by chapter and cleaning it up, polishing it and making it as good as I can. Midway through the novel I ran into some problems that necessitated extensive changes. That slowed down my progress and resulted in the situation I’m in now; serializing a novella that isn’t quite finished. However, at this precise moment I am, quite literally, fifteen minutes away from having Lost and Found polished and done. Ready to get sent out for reviews. So why am I blogging?

Why haven’t I finished it up?

Beats me.

As a psych student I could come up with several valid theories. Things about endings, letting go, perfectionism… but truthfully I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know why I’ve spent the last hour or so mindlessly surfing instead of finishing up these last few paragraphs, I just have.

Enough of that. Time to get this finished and start collecting reviews. Really. As soon as I post this blog.

Honest.

Any minute now…

Lost and Found

Lost and Found Page

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It has been a pretty long day, and I’m exhausted. In fact, I’m just about to go and enjoy some well-earned video game time, but before I do I have something I’m pretty pleased with I’d like to share. LOST AND FOUND has it’s own page on my blog now. I didn’t know where to put it so it’s under ‘Publications’. That feels a bit weird because it’s not actually published (and when I put it on the blog if you want to call that ‘publishing’ it, it’s self-publication at best), but I didn’t know where else to put it. So there you go. Anyway, it’s right here:

Lost and Found

I’m really pleased with it. Take a look, it’s nothing fancy but I think it’s pretty cool. I’ll be linking all the chapters from there when I post them on the blog to make it easier to find and read them, and adding some reviews once I get them. What do you think? Not too shabby, eh?

Lost and Found

Swamped

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I wasn’t feeling well yesterday so I spent most of it sleeping to try and head off whatever I was coming down with. It worked, I feel much better today, but I really couldn’t afford the time off. I was already falling behind on schoolwork and a metric craptonne of misc. tasks, and the day not doing them has resulted in my being even more swamped than usual.

One of those misc. tasks on my to-do list is a newsletter for this month. I don’t have time to think or be creative or anything like that, so my solution is to share chapter one of Lost and Found in the newsletter. I think it’s a win-win situation. It rewards my subscribers with an early peek (everyone else gets to see the first chapter on October 4th) and formatting that for the newsletter will take far less time than it usually takes me to put together. Yay!

The newsletter will be going out tonight, when I get back from my critiquing meeting 🙂

Lost and Found

Sekkrit Projekt

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So that’s it. That is the secret I’ve been very nearly bouncing in my seat about for the past little while. Lost and Found. First take a moment to admire that freaking awesome cover. Isn’t that fantastic? I commissioned that image from a very talented and super nice artist, Darek Zabrocki and I just love it. <3

So, yes. In case you’ve not guessed already, my plan is to share my novella, Lost and Found, chapter by chapter right here on my blog. Starting in September I will be posting a chapter every other week, then if there’s enough interest once we’ve posted the whole story  I’ll make a .pdf for people to download and read all at once. Know what else is super, super cool?

Bill Ratner.

Okay, so he’s a who, not a what, but Bill Ratner in all his super coolness offered to narrate the story so in addition to the text version, I can also offer an audio version — all completely free. How amazing is that? Um. Very.

This is a huge group effort. I’m providing the story, Darek the art, Jo added the text to the cover and Bill is lending us his voice and audio editing skills. I think it’s going to be fantastic.

I’ll post a blurb and all that good stuff later, for now I’m just going to be excited 🙂

*bounce bounce*

Aphanasia Stuff, Aphanasian Stories, Lost and Found

This Poor Story…

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This poor story has gone through so much and so many names. The very first scene I wrote for it, the one that inspired the rest, was a meant to be a stand-alone story (it failed) called “What Makes a Man”. Then I expanded on the story and it was called “On a Mission”, then that story became a section of the novel-in-stories called “Swamp Story”, which was then renamed “Blood and Stone”. I eventually decided it didn’t work as a novel-in-stories and ripped it apart. This story got the title “There” with its sequel (which is now part of the same story) being called “And Back Again”. Interestingly, another part of that novel-in-stories was recently published as “Shades of Green”. But I digress.

I”ve got a new title. A good title. This tale’s forever title. For better or worse, till death…you get the idea.

The title is

Continue reading This Poor Story… →

Aphanasia Stuff, Aphanasian Stories, Lost and Found

…

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Just came from a wonderful meeting with my critique group…where we pretty much decided that the story currently known as ‘There’ can not really stand on its own and it needs the sequel in order to work.

All this time I’ve been struggling with the question ‘What is this story about, really?’ and the question I should have been asking is ‘Whose story is this? Colby’s or Xavier’s?’ The thing is, my critique partners (one in particular) has been asking me that for ages now but it never clicked in my brain until tonight. The short spoiler-free version of the answer is, this is not Colby’s story it is Xavier’s story. Colby’s mission is the sub-plot, Xavier’s escape and the man who held him are the real plot.

That changes things. A lot of things.

I’m happy to have come to this realisation now as I’m beginning another round (hopefully the last) of revisions and not once I was done them again, but at the same time, that means I need to come up with a title in very little time, and the wonderful suggested ones may not work.

I know that flexibility and change are pivotal to writing and revision and I know this is the right thing to do, but I feel a little bit flakey…and not a bit silly for not figuring this out sooner and for wasting everyone’s time and creativity today. Thank you for the suggestions, I am keeping them all in mind as I frantically brainstorm for the right title for my now, much longer, story.

Muddied Waters
Heart
Heart of the Swamp
Lost and Found

Those are the ones I still think might work…or they might not.

I’m going to go take a bath, they help me think and right now my brain could really use to stop spinning quite so quickly.

Aphanasia Stuff, Lost and Found

Help?

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I need a title for the novella/novelette/story I’m working on, and I need it soon. Like, by the end of the day. *sigh* Titles are irksome, sometimes they come really easily and other times they make me fight tooth and nail and even once I have one I’m not sure it’s the one I want.

In this case, the working title is “There”. The reason it is called ‘There’ is because its sequel was called ‘And Back Again’ and I thought that was quite clever, he he ho ho. However, the first story kinda gets screwed name-wise in the absence of its sequel, and that’s not cool.

I don’t have a polished blurb (or even an unpolished one for that matter) for the story, so let me just tell you a little bit about it. This is an Aphanasian story (like Shades of Green or Sister Margaret) about a sixteen year old girl named Colby and a tentacled man named Xavier. Colby goes to the Aphanasian swamp to find the reptar’s magic stone, Z’thandra’s Heart, which she thinks might cure her brother’s illness. In the swamp she runs into Xavier who has just escaped from the man who held him captive and performed expiriements on him for years. Together they struggle to find their way to the Reptar and the stone Colby so desperately needs, while simultaneously running away from the mercenarys sent to recapture Xavier.

Yeah. That description needs work LOL I hope, however, there’s enough there for you to help me out here. Some title ideas I’ve had included the following:

Heart
A Bit of Heart
In the Swamp
Morass

… Yeah, see how I’m drawing blanks? So far my favorite is ‘Heart’ because it refers to several things including the name of the magic stone and the relationship that grows between Colby and Xavier, but… I can’t decide.

Do you have any ideas? Suggestions from not in my list will be greedily accepted. I know ultimately I have to make my own decision, but I’ve been struggling with this for a good, long while now and I thought it would be good to look for some outside help. And did I mention I have to title it by the end of the day?

*sigh* Yeah.

Help?

ETA: “Heart of the Swamp” and “Lost and Found” are two titles that were suggested which I think have potential.

Aphanasia Stuff, Lost and Found

Dwarf Stars Nominations

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I -finally- sent in my nominations for the Dwarf Stars Award. Thank goodness they extended the deadline to August 31st or I’d have been pooched. The email reminding me to do it has been sitting in my inbox, marked red for important with a big star beside it for a couple weeks now. That is how badly I fail at email.

So, that’s done now which means the top of my to-do list for tomorrow is my newsletter. Yay! It will only be a couple days late LOL

The writing retreat went okay. I finished a final revision of THERE as well as “…Oh My!” and I submitted the latter to a publisher. Love how vague I am there? It’s that superstitious thing again. I don’t think, however, I was any more productive than I would have been if I’d stayed home…which kinda defeats the purpose of paying for a hotel room, meals out and the like. I’m not giving up on this retreat idea, but I think next time it needs more structure, and possibly more people. I’m going to give it some thought and see what I come up with…