Coming out of hibernation
So, uh… it’s been quite a while, I’m sure some of you are aware.
Long story short, my life changed a lot, I moved across the country, and some personal things cropped up that required my attention. But that’s life, isn’t it? You never know what it’s going to throw at you, and unfortunately for me, it knocked me out of the writing game for a good, uh… 3-ish years.
However, I feel like I’m finally in a place I can pick back up writing. It’s been my dream, and still is, and while you should never give up on your dreams, I had to set mine aside for a bit to focus on, ah, other things.
But I’m ready to pick it back up.
Expect some changes and updates soon. It’s on my to-do list to comb through this wordpress to update and fix anything. (Like that book #2 was coming out in 2013. Oops. )
Anyway, yes, I’m alive, and I should be considerably more active here in the new future.
Book #2 is actually done, but requires a lot of rewriting and editing, so that’s going to be my main focus for a while. I might also start up an erotica venture under a pen name, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.
Anyway, stay tuned!
-V
This Latest Publishing Disaster
Unfortunately, sometimes, small time publishers can be the worst kind of people.
Don’t miss out! Rafflecopter Giveaway!
In anticipation of the October release of Tricia Drammeh’s young adult paranormal novel, The Seance, we’ve got a fun giveaway in store for you. It’s easy to enter and completely free. Entry is as simple as liking a few Facebook Pages. For 10 extra entries, visit the Honeyshadow Premade Cover website and select the cover you think Tricia chose for her book. On August 10th, we’ll reveal the cover and the winners of the giveaway.
What’s The Seance about? Here’s a hint:
Ninth grade can be a nightmare when you don’t fit in at school, your crush chooses someone else, and your parents tell you they’re having a new baby. Abby was prepared for normal high school problems. She wasn’t prepared for a demon.
Abby has always been fascinated by the paranormal, but after an ill-fated séance, she discovers not all Spirits are benign. A dark entity unleashed during the summoning sets out to destroy Abby, and within days, she loses her best friend, incurs the wrath of her parents, and becomes a prisoner in her own home. With time quickly running out, she assembles an unlikely group of helpers: the most hated guy in school, a retired psychic, and the cute clerk from her favorite bookstore. Unless the demon is defeated, Abby and her new baby brother won’t stand a chance.
I’m not dead.
I swear. I’m only dead-ish.
I know I haven’t updated in about 40 berjillion years, but life sorta smacked me upside the head and I had a crisis with book 2. I’ve essentially scrapped the entire thing, and am going with an entirely new plot, once I get around to writing it. Taking a break from Redhaven to work on little side projects whenever I feel like it. I know I’ve only written one book, but I’ve spent months and months trying to figure out book fucking 2, and it’s pissing me off, so I’m letting it sit. It’ll come out eventually, just… not right now.
Come October I’ll be going to school full time, 5 days a week, so that’s going to hamper writing time even more.
I hate my job, also. (Hence the “fuck it! i’m going to school” change.)
Fuck you, money! Blurgh.
Other than being poor and writerly-frustrated, I’m actually okay. Just doing other things. (Not that anyone particularly cares all that much, but just thought I’d make an update.)
Rawr.
The Importance of Connections and Networking… (kinda)
I know, I know. It’s been about a billion years since I last updated. Book 2 is a menace on my free time. I am writer-ly-constipated. /sigh
Anyhoo! An interesting thing happened the other day – I had jury duty for the first time. Uh, ever. Not that most thrilling of adventures, but it’s not the actual duty that was interesting (although it was mildly amusing). In all of the places of the world, on all of the days of the year, in all of the panels of jurors ever, I found another writer.
Freaky right! We’re just like, crawling out of the woodwork here. (Maybe not -that- unbelievable, but I was pleasantly surprised to find someone to ‘talk shop with’, as he put it.)
My allotted lunch hour turned into “hey, let’s talk about books and writing and cover art and stuff.” I felt all fuzzy and professional. There was even an exchange of business cards. (Which reminded me how crappy mine are. I still have 127 to give out. Dammit.) All in all it was just really neat to talk to someone who knew what I meant when I said ‘kdp’ and ‘amazon’s algorithms are totally random and shitty’.
It got me thinking – if I could find one cool dude randomly in the middle of jury duty, and learn a bunch of things from him in one afternoon, what kind of enlightenment might I find if I went to a CONVENTION of equally minded, nerdy writer types? Think of the collection of business cards alone!
My main point is this – talk to people! You never know what you’ll find out. It might even lead to an hour long discussions about the ins and outs of erotica pen names. (No pun intended… sort of.)
How it feels when you meet somebody new who gets the ‘writer’ thing.
Your book usually tells you what’s wrong with it.
A light at the end of the tunnel. Okay, it’s more like a soft glowing thing in the middle of the tunnel, but its pointing in the right direction!
It’s been forever since I’ve updated my blog, and I feel bad about that, but I’ve been so busy! Book #2 is humming along nicely (finally), and I’ve put a self imposed publishing deadline of July 31st on myself. If I keep up with my writing schedule, I should be able to make that. I’ve got a different editor now, and book 2’s cover is done – I just have to pay for it. (Sorry Skylar! I promise I didn’t drop off the face of the earth!)
But yeah, I was able to finally hammer out the plot (thanks Maegan!) and I think… -think-… that Ghostwolf is in an okayish good place. Mostly.
I’ve discovered a curious thing – my book tells me what’s wrong with it.
…What?
Yeah, it’s true. As I’m writing it, I know exactly, in that moment whats bad and whats good. Like, I’ll write a scene, and be like, “Meh, I don’t like it. It’s too…” and then I’ll know exactly what it is. So then I make a little note and move on. As I clickity-clack along, I slowly figure out what’s good for the book and what isn’t. I’m terrible at explaining it, but that’s what happens. At the end of all this, I’ll have a bunch of notes to reshape the book. I really hope it ends up decent.
Admittedly, though, I’ve been kind of neglecting my ‘author platform’ as it were. I haven’t been on twitter in ages, and my facebook page hasn’t really had anything new in a while. Maybe this is just normal writing downtime? I mean, writers need down time to, you know… write and stuff. I hoping I’ll push through the rest of this book and clean it up in time to head it off to the editor.
Ghostwolf! You’re coming out no later than August! This I have thusly promised myself!
Ghostwolf – Book #2 of the Redhaven Saga – COMING JULY 31st… EVEN IF IT KILLS ME.
Hello, again. I’m cheating on my book.
Well, kind of.
As some of you may (or may not) know, I’ve been fighting with book 2 like crazy. It sucks. I don’t like writing it. It doesn’t want to let me write it. Everything in it is poo. Etcetera, etcetera…
Well, I ended up re-writing pretty much the whole plot, and it seems to be jiving much better now. Should be on track to get it published by August at the latest. (Two months past my original target of May, but… late is better than never.)
You might think, hey! That’s great, Tori! You finally punched that book in the balls and got it to behave! Yeah, I guess I did. It feels better now, but my brain is trying to screw me over.
I don’t know how to tell you this, Book 2, but… I’ve been cheating on you. With Khimaera. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. It’s okay, we can have joint custody of the chapters… You can visit alternate weekends, and hey! We’ll have christmas together, right?
In all serious, my brain has been floating away to other projects. I keep getting these little sparks of ideas here and there, and I ended up kind of resurrecting an old project of mine a few nights ago.
I know I really should be pushing through book 2, but there’s this thing writer’s get, and I don’t have a name for it, but if you’ve ever written something long term, you probably know what I mean. It’s like this: Yeah, your current project is wonderful, and sparkly, and you can write it more or less painlessly, but then you get an idea, that -one- idea that makes your brain go “holy crap, write this right now”, and before you know it, it’s 2 am and you’ve got a series plot and some characters fleshed out, and half of a chapter fell out of thin air.
I feel bad for taking my attention away from Redhaven #2, buuuut… sometimes you need to step back, I guess. Give your brain a different flavor to chew on.
Plus, you know… zombies are cool. Khimaera will be fun if you like zompoc scenarios, but what drives me even more nuts than fighting with a book is totally dropping a series to write another. Khimaera won’t be for a couple of years, most likely, but at least it let me breathe.
Moral of the story, writerly-wise: Sometimes it’s good to work on other things.
Just thought I’d pass that along. And sorry for the lack of blog stuff. A zombie ate my router. :(
Frustrating.
I wish book #2 would cooperate with me and let me write it. I’m tired of fighting with it.
That’s all.
/sigh.
Results of my KDP free promo weekend~
Well, that was fun! It started off painfully slow, and then exploded in the last 12 hours before the promo was over. Wish I knew why, but… ah well. Numbers are fun!
I woke up this morning with 10 fresh sales, so that’s also cool. Hopefully I’ll get some reviews in. I know there’s a few things I need to work on for the next books (and there were some issues with the first, for that matter), but the more I can learn, the better the next ones’ll be. I’m getting a good checklist going for “things to watch out for”.
Anyway, that was a bit side-tracky. Here’s my end rankings for the promo and total units given away.
Pretty neat!
Total units given away: 5,457
Me this morning. <(^_^<) (>^_^)> ^(^_^)^ d(^_^)z
A brief victory, but a victory nonetheless. Ranking reverted to my old paid ranking this morning, so that was sad. But still! Awesome! Thank you, readery-type-peoples! :)
Author Victoria Barrow 