Tag Archives: wip

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.

See The Sky Again, Shadows, Twixt

Writing Retreat

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My critique group is holding our first (of many, we hope) writing retreat next weekend. I’m very excited about it, but I have a problem. I don’ t know what to write on it.

My first pick would be the re-write of Shadows, but I won a critique of the first 100 pages of Shadows by Deena Fisher from Drollerie Press and she hasn’t finished the critique yet. I don’t want to start the rewrite based on the critique of the first chaper I got from Jim C. Hines and then have to re-rewrite it once I get the one from Ms. Fisher. If that makes any sense. So Shadows is still on hold. *sigh*

There is a paranormal drama/mystery novel bouncing about in my head, but I’m going to be taking a novel writing course this fall (mostly to have deadlines. I NEED deadlines in order to have focus. More about this later) and I was going to use that plot as the novel I’d work on for the course. I got the impression the course was going to have a specific novel writing system it wanted to teach, so if I’m going to give it a fair try, starting the novel ahead of time seems like a bad idea.

The collaborative project I’m working on will take up some of my time on the retreat, but because of the nature of the project, it won’t fill the weekend. Not even close.

That leaves ‘See The Sky Again’ which is a fantasy novel set in Aphanasia that I am looking forward to writing. I was going to do it for my NaNo novel last year but decided against it because I hadn’t sorted out enough of the details yet. I think I know enough to write it now…my only hesitation is that I’ll be starting this novel on my retreat, then starting the other one for my course in October. Think I can get the first draft of See The Sky Again done before then?

I guess we’ll find out…

In other, picture-related news, I think I’m going to put the bulk of the rest of my vacation photos up on My Facebook Page rather than taking this blog over with them.

Except for this picture I took at Alcatraz that I love.

And maybe a few more inserted one at a time into blog posts.

🙂

Alcatraz
Deadmonton, NaNoWriMo

Deadmonton Excerpt

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So, I’m NaNoing, as usual, except that this year I had zero enthusiasm for it and writing my story was like pulling teeth. I was working on ‘See the Sky Again’ which is an Aphanasian novel. Writing the Aphanasian piece I felt like I was pulling teeth. It really, really hurt. The problem, I think, was that the setting (an underground city) wasn’t fully formed in my mind yet. It’s still not. Once it is I’ll go back to it, but in the meantime I’ve switched and I’m now working on my WIP zombie novel, Deadmonton.

The words are coming much easier now and I’m really very fond of this novel. I can’t wait to get it done so I can share it with people (my brain won’t let me send out WIPs for critique).

And here is a short excerpt — warning, this is a pretty violent and profane passage, it is, after all, a zombie novel 🙂

Continue reading Deadmonton Excerpt →

Deadmonton

First Page of Deadmonton

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Carrie Jones had an entry on her blog recently which encouraged people to post the first page of their current work in progress. I thought that was a very good idea — so I’m going to share the first page of my Edmonton-based zombie novel, Deadmonton. I hope you enjoy it…or at least are intrigued.

This contains a fair bit of foul language, so read at your own risk.

Continue reading First Page of Deadmonton →