Off She Goes,Into the Wild Blue Yonder

The book is now flying around New York cyberspace, hunting for an agent. I have many more places to send Rocky to find some one who will love her. I want to re-polish the synopsis and then off she goes to even more agencies next week.
I'm having fun with the new story, this is the one set at the end of the American Civil War. I'm starting to find the voices of the characters. I read my writing lesson for the week, and went in and re-wrote the four pages of dialogue that I had written this morning. It was improved, and I know the female characters much better. The ladies are getting four, possibly five men as playmates in the story. I'm still deciding who is getting the girl, I have not introduced any of them yet, I hoping that the characters will let fly with some sparks when they meet. The old guy may get the woman that he has known since she was a little girl, but he has already shown a fondness for the older woman, Emeralda. I think that is a cool name. It was my grandmothers middle name. She had a twin sister and I think that her middle name was Pearl. I don't have a first name for the female heroine yet, she will probably come up with something in the next few days. I have the children named, those just fell from my fingers when I started writing about them. We have Tilly and Peter. The ship Captain is named after my children's Great Grand Father Capt. Nason. Hey, I didn't know I was writing a family saga. No, it is not going to be a generational novel.I don't have that type of attention span.LOL.

I Love My Mondays, No, Really.

My goals for this week are: write synopsis and query letters. Oh, how I wish that were as easy as it sounds.
2. Discover why the refrigerator is spitting water on the floor. Much more interesting than writing that synopsis.
3. Continue on the romance novel, I did five pages over the weekend. I have another 4 to 5 pages of story waiting in my fingers.
4. Explore creating a webpage and all the e-publicity items suggested for writers. This is on the level of things I think are fun to do with writing the synopsis and having my wisdom teeth pulled.
5. Making my soap entry for the SoapNuts soap swap. This is fun thing I have to do this week.
6. Create a working title for the current story. This is the third fun thing for this week.
That is it: my chores.
Write On.

A Romance Novel in My Future

I write action, I write sad stuff, I write murderous things, I admit I have never written a happy ending. I really, really want to write a happy ending, heck, even an almost working toward being a happy ending. Oozing with love all around.
Yesterday an idea came to me. Something I haven't read or heard about in a romance novel. I want to write this, I want to address this "what if". I will set aside the other stories I'm working on, except His and Miss and start on the unnamed romance with the happy ending.
The best part about this is I have so few preconceptions about romance novels that it could turn out to be something really strange or wonderful. The only thing I know about romance novels is that I like the historicals and I like them to be hundred of pages. Think of Diana Gabaldon type, if she can even be considered a romance writer. I hate labels on people, so I think what I want to write is a long, happy ending story set in the past. With lots of people. A question in my mind is can I keep them all straight and in action. Like War and Peace...holy pete sake. How long did it take you to read that tome? Okay, I'll go with 150,000 words.
Wait till the writing partner hears what I have up my sleeve. LOL...

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

Brian starts every writing session with "It was a Dark and Stormy Night". Goober me, every session types in "It was a Dark and Stormy Night." He laughs and we move on to work.
Seriously, after a dozen times of this I am considering how abundantly the sense of humor abounds in his bod, because I've stopped deleting the phrase. It will be he who must edit them out. I don't think he knows the "find" feature in Word. When I am bored with that phrase I will revert to my personal favorite, the "midnight dreary" lines.
If we stopped screwing around, we could have had this book in print already.

The Morning After

Here is a web site for one of the places in the book. http://www.oldtownauburnca.com
Thought you might like a peek at gold country.
What do you do after finishing books you have been working on a year?
1. You get to immediately move on to the next book. I'm writing the action chapter in the spy story today, I get to write the fun-nest stuff. I have to get this awful man off a mountain with a bunch of stolen missles. I get to move him from outside Las Vegas into Arizona. The goal is Tucson but I may not get him all that way today. I promised that I would not hurt him or kill him off, since he is a despicable rotter he deserves it but he is not "my" character so I can't. However, he is holding one of "my" characters hostage so I can't hurt him but I can make his life a miserble hell for the trip. I will, I will.
2. Find an apartment. We decided to move as soon as the third book was finished..it is, we are.
3. Figure out what is for dinner.
4. Put new guts in the broken toilet in my bathroom. Ah, the glamourous life of an author.
5. Begin printing Ms. Got Rocks so Brian can read it, he doesn't do reading entire manuscripts from a monitor. He has never read this book . He had read short parts and listened to me yammer about it, but this is the first reading for him, red pencil in hand.
6. Arrrgh, start writing the synopsis, outline and whatever those two paragraph blurbs are that go into the query letter. This is harder for me than writing a 90,000 word adventure story.
7. Cross my heart, next ms. I start from scratch, I'm going to write the synopsis as I write daily, there must be some way to organize this porton of the process to make it less onerous.
8. Buy a little present for moi, for finishing it. This is the third full length book, plus one screenplay that I have completed.
9. This may be the impossible dream, but I would like a photo of Holly and Byein, the models for the dogs Lovie and Phoebe in the book. Holly will sit for a photo, but Bye never sits,ever. So this a new goal.

Done,Done,Done

I finished the novel Ms. Got Rocks a few minutes ago. 89779 words.
Done..yay!

Pages are Passing Through

One hundred twenty pages edited, rewritten, or kissed goodbye in the past two days. Rocky the heroine is Rocking On, and I think I will have the rewrite and edit done by Monday. Writing partner Brian and I worked for a short time last night on Hit and Miss the spy adventure story that has just been sitting on the top of the mountains between Las Vegas and somewhere for about a year, sitting in a bookish way on the computer. We are determined to get this book back on track. Brian wants to write and he can write, but the kind of 60 hour a week outside job he has wears him out and he has no energy to sit at the computer after work. We now have a deal he tells the story, I type the story. I get to jump in with ideas if I want but my function is my ability to take diction on the fly. We did two pages last night, doesn't seem like a lot, but two pages is better than no pages. I'm glad to be doing some new writing. My cyclopian eye was crossing yesterday from all the editing. Back to it, just do it.

The Fish are Jumpin' and the Weather is Fine

I suppose I need to pay royalties to "Porgy and Bess", I'll send them some of this 85F weather that started yesterday. Dude, no kidding.
I have no idea what the fish are doing at Lake Mead, but this fishie is working up a storm and writing as much as I can. As I can considering that 85F with all the windows open is perfect,poifect reading weather. I kicked back all afternoon yesterday and read a memoir by Carol Drinkwater about growing olives in the south of France. I really enjoyed it, not just for the French aspects and that she played Helen in All Creatures Great and Small TV series. I enjoyed the parts about restoring an old house and rejuvenating an old olive grove and how olive oil is crushed. I was amazed that olive oil soap is made from the fourth or fifth crushing of the olive mash in that particuliar Cote d' Azur area. In the USA among handmade soapmakers (of which I am one)usually exta virgin and virgin oil is the way to go. Very interesting I read the whole book in one sitting. Thank you Ms. Drinkwater, I enjoyed it. I grew up with olive trees, we only had 20-25 and they were just coming into prime being around 80-100 years old, a company used to come and harvest them for my mother. They were cured for black olives.
Anyway, enough olive culture, my book will be finished this week. My older sister got married yesterday in Maui..best wishes to Mary and Richard Sites.
Write on

New Words.

Finally, I'm getting to write new words. I have reached the point in the re-invented manuscript that the jigsaw puzzle is taking shape. One minor exception I discovered last night. This is funny enough to be just plain stupid. I have 75 pages of the heroine doing all kinds of stuff and I have never described her. Slight error, repairable but I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO LOOK AT THOSE PAGES AGAIN. Rocky could be a tiny weensy green and purple person eating aquatic plant for all the description she has written about her.
I will take care of that this morning and then off and running again on new stuff.
Today is will be 78F in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have the windows open and the birds are cooing and chirping, and even the morning commute smog is tolerable.

More of Yesterday, Less of Tomorrow

I added back over 4000 words to the beginning, also wrote some new. Oh me, oh my is that better or what? At least, it is better until writing partner reads it and gives me another big eyed look. He was more than a bit astonished when I told him I transfered 19000 words to the leftovers file.
The beginning is much better, I promise. I will have this baby born by next Monday.

That was Scary

I just deleted 19154 words from the Got Rocks story. Deliberately. Right from the front of the story. I think I need smelling salts, a hot bath and a long rest.
Scary.

Doing the Splitzies

Remember months ago that writing partner Brian suggested that I should combine the Rocky books into one bigger and better. I didn't want to do it then, I wasn't finished writing the second one. He could see that I was going nowhere with the second story. I'm now doing the splits taking from Load of Rocks, adding to Got Rocks and new writing, shorter more intense beginning and I'm seeing that he was right.
I'm also writing the fantasy story. Writing partner Brian is into that fantasy stuff ,I am mystery/techo thriller. We cannot always write what I want to write and so I am writing fantasy. The story line is nice, it is clever and will be romantic. It is a lot easier for me to write something that rolls the heroine down the backside of a river and attempts murderlizeing her then write about the fairies who live in sentient trees. And if the damn fairies and trees don't do something soon, I will scream. Thank the sentient tree god that this thing is only goaled out at 25000 words. Brian has promised me mean fairies, somewhere.
Could be why I'm doing the splitzies to get some relief.
I have a new keyboard that is very stiff and full of spring. I writeaparagraph and discover the space bar stike is not firm enough. I'm trying not to whine or at least whine to self. Brian bought a basic keyboard, that is what he wanted, I want my bells and whistles back, I love my calculator button and my internet access button and volumne control and the cut,paste and copy keys are my favorites. I'm putting the bells and whistles back on this morning. Dang the splits takes too long doing the control this and control that keys. So I'm a diva, I'm from a long line of divas, so kill me, at least that would be some action to write.

I Just Have to Love It.

I woke up with two really, funny ideas for the book. Don't know how they are going to be worked into the stories but they will appear somewhere.
Yeah, I wrote them down. Today I'm probably not going to be writing much, because I'm planning on the Romance Divas Valentine's Day Read-Fest and the Running with Quills Blog Romance authors are having a Valentines party tonight so I want to be there after I run to the pharmacy to get meds for both of us. Crass me, I hope to win a prize!
I'm going to watch "The Devil Wears Prada" this afternoon. So much is written about the book and the movie that I have to see it. Meryl Streep is an amazing woman. If I ever get another chance to write a screenplay I would want her and Judi Dench in it. What a fest of acting that would be. Note: Judi Dench is "M or X" or whatever in the recent James Bond movies.
Happy Valentines Day. Write hearts and flowers today. I promise not to dispose of any of my heroines today. Everybody gets a pass in the mystery.

Ten Odd Things About Me.

M G Braden tagged me for this meme. Ten odd things about myself..everything is odd about me, so ten of the oddest.
1. I'm the only person in my family who is left handed and has curly hair.
2. I can remember the first story I wrote, I was about eleven. It would be classed as chick lit today. Even I thought it was awful. It did make me feel good inside while writing it ,though.
3. I can knit throwing the yarn with either hand. Bless being left handed.
4. I like getting up between 4 and 5 AM.
5. I don't think it is odd, but some might: I make handmade soap.
6. Chocolate is not my sweet of choice. Tho' York Peppermint Patties and Cadbury Eggs had better run for their lives.
7. I read my first ever Harlequin book and my first ever vampire story yesterday. I enjoyed it.
8. I'm related to Sir Isaac Newton. Not directly 'cause he didn't have any children. My ancestor was his assistant and biographer who married old Uncle Newts niece Caroline. Wish old Uncle Newton had peeled some apples and not invented algebra. Blast him.
9. My goal is to write screenplays with great parts for women. Women who do things and are funny, who don't scream.
10. I hate telephones.

If You Ask Me

This truth I hold to be self-evident.
Mashed boiled cauliflower with artifical butter is not mashed potatoes.
The two options for tomorrow are clean house or write, nothing else may be substituted. Especially cauliflower.

Jumping Forward

I found a title for the romance novel. The working title is going to be "Freeze Out". Doesn't sound like any hot steamy romance novel. Jheeez, but the novel is set in Antarctica. I think but not positive yet, the title is referring to the freezing out of the unwanted attention of the gicky type when the Yummy Dude is standing around with his tongue flapping like a winded Labrador retriever. I can not see Yummy Dude yet, so he is just YD1 in the notes for the meanwhile.
I decided that there is no reason that I cannot re-write Load of Rocks, write Liberty and also Freeze Out at the same time. Load and Liberty should come in around 75000 and Freeze Out may be around 35-50000. Whatever am I thinking? I would be editing three books at the same time..that is as nutty as squirrel guts. Bad idea, you did not read it here.

I'm Jumping Backward.

It is driving me sleepless that I have shelved Load of Rocks as an unfinishable dud. It has been bugging me, serious cosmic annoyance that I did not finish what I started. Everytime I write something on Liberty I find that my mind wanders off to fixing Load. I knew this morning what I am going to do with it. I feel better, even though I'm not sure that this is the problem. I know that I bored the readers that I sent copies. I'm hoping that this will be the beginning of a good solid story.I decided to move the opening to the "to be saved file" and move the middle scene to the opening and just basically rewrite the entire 65489 words.
The really funny part of my mother insinuateing herself into my thought pattern, she will shortly begin screaming at me that I was supposed to be working on Liberty and the e-publishing romance. I do not have a conscience, I have a mother in my head. The writing partner and I are working on the Liberty project this weekend, and I still haven't found anything on the Presidential Palace in Argentina. I think that sounds like a wonderful reason to go to Argentina and look for the palace in person.

It Is Monday Again.

I love Monday, I really do. I feel like the pet that gets the house back to herself when everyone goes back to school and work on Monday. Yay, the place is mine to do as I wish.
This morning I get to continue on writing the plot highlights for Liberty, the next book. I get to work on the time frame for finishing this new one. The date in my head to Jan 2008, all duded up and ready to go. I'm going to try a short story in between pages of the novel. I want to experiment with e-publishing, but I don't want to invest the time that a novel takes into doing it. Oops, I got sidetracked again...the house is almost mine again, so do I care?
I wanted to say that spring is sprung in Las Vegas, it was above 70F yesterday and when I got up at 4AM, it was 47F. Today is predicted to be in the 70's again. Yay, the pressure gradients smoothed themselves into whatever configuration my sinus likes again, so I should be racking up the outline this week. I also have to find out everything I can on the Presidential palace in Argentina. Don't even ask, it is for what the writing partner is about to write and I just have to do the research, at this point I don't know what it is for. I wish he would write a comic book.
So this is the week, stew in the crock-pot,pie in the oven, book outline and synopsis into the computer,Argentina to make my brain smarter,bean soup tomorrow in the crockpot. Continuing through the week, I'm reading a book that even though I'm finding it interesting as it jumps from Isaac Newton's cohorts to a nanny in the court of Charles II, and I'm not sure when this author is going to connect the two stories, I will finish it this week and let you know.
Have a wonderful day. Write lots of words.

New Title, New Book

I changed it to Liberty Tree Deja Vu, or Liberty Tree Redux. Sooo sorry that took me all day yesterday. I think I can write this without a title that knocks me socks off, but it seems to help when I pick up the file in the morning and it sounds like a book-y title. Could be "Bookies #4", or "Sex and the Sr. Center". Oh, geeshy.
Right as of this moment it is Liberty Tree...though I think there is already a book wih that title. Works for me for today.
Have a wonderful Saturday and write lots, because tomorrow is FOOTBALL.

The New Story

Another action adventure story is in the works. Around the sinus meds yesterday I wrote five single spaced pages of plot and people. I must have been a tiny bit spacey because the story now has one of those big draft horses. A dappled grey Percheron like my Grandparents had, except they had a set of two for plowing and Dolly the horse is out wandering on her own. Not sure where this is going in the story, funny what I write when I'm "under the weather" or "three sheets to the wind or just plain miserable. Yesterday was the miserable part.
So the story is going to be a hybrid action/adventure cyberpunk possibly romantic but maybe more likely erotic romantic. I have accepted the challenge from my writing partner to write a romance with hot love scenes. He, being in his thirties, seems to think the old broad can't do that. I wonder if he ever considered how he got here, hatched out by the sun? Not even.
Anyway, where was I? I have one male character described, one horse described, okay so she is dappled grey with big feet, white mane and tail (big stretch there), there is a dog sled team of 10 dogs, and no invaders from other planets. It is set in 2027,the working title is now The Longest Trek, but that will probably change soon as the brain clears. The heroine is going to be fairly ordinary looking, but of course she will do things, I haven't described her other than 5'4" brown hair and brown eyes. In my mind is she nice looking but she wouldn't get a job modeling for Versace. The main hero, who I think I'm going to have to kill off around mid story, is just the funniest man. Have you ever noticed how truely sexy funny men are. Not the Jim Carrey kind of funny, but men who are infused with the sense of play, joy, I guess. I'm hoping that I can write that into this guy. I'm going to be upset with myself if he comes off as a dimwitted doofus.
I'll tell you some more about this when I get it out of the head and onto the 'puter.