Tag: Literature

Wow more word count than I’d thought!

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Winner-120x90-2Just finished typing the bits of Ready or Not I’d written during NaNoWriMo and discovered that the actual final tally is 56,598 words!

That’s very inspiring.   I’m still not sure how much the experiment can be dubbed a success — I feel rather strongly that this story is going to wind up needing far more intensive editorial work than Love or Lust did, but we’ll see.  With luck I’m just being too hard on myself.  I did, after all, think rather poorly of Book 1 until I’d given it two or three read throughs, my editor had seen it and made her comments, and a few friends had taken a look at it.

Well, wish me luck.  I now embark on the grand adventure of figuring out what happens in Chapter 20 and how far it is to the end of this one.

Status of Love or Lust, by the by, is that my editor is about to do her final proofread on it.  Depending how fast that goes (read just how terrible my spelling and grammar wound up being) I could, conceivably, publish it by Valentine’s day (a rather lovely date to start since that would be approximately the 1yr anniversary of me starting to write it, though I think that actual date was 8 February), otherwise we’re looking around Early march barring any major catastrophes.

Nearly there!

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Here I am on the eve of the 27th of November and I’m less than 2000 words away from the 50K target!  This means, theoretically, if the word count I’ve managed the past few days continues, I could finish tomorrow.

Ready or Not itself isn’t quite ready to be called done though.  Completing NaNoWriMo will put me at right around 92k – 100k words, but like with Love or Lust the final tally will probably be closer to 135k – 140k.  This story is heavier on the slice of life element and so the chapters and scenes feel a bit more glimpse in time, or anecdotal.  It’s sweet, it’s romantic, but it also has tragedy and eroticism.

I’m quite curious to see where this goes.  Especially since once I’ve found out I’ll actually know how their junior year is going to go.  Pity it’s not likely to include a week in Paris again — that was fun.  Maybe Rome or Naples next year, hmmm.

Good night all

Love

Jaye

Lessons and discoveries

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It’s rather amazing to be an author. You really get to discover a lot about life, the world, Humanity, and so forth by seeing it through various different eyes, and by living so many different lives.

Take Christmas. America exports its “traditions” all over the world, corrupting things that really are old traditions. Bringing commercialism into it and all that. Here’s a fun thing though: ever thought about what Christmas might be like through the eyes of someone who only sees the commercial Hallowthangivimas trappings, but always heads across the Atlantic before mid December has come to a close?

I’ve really been learning how strange our Christmases must look to one whose frame of reference for the holiday is Italian, German, Austrian, and French (mostly Italian). In Ready or Not Salencia is staying in America for the Christmas holiday for the first time in her whole life. It’s the first time she’s seeing the things that she only actually knows from movies, television, and whatever gear up her friends’ families might engage in on the last stretch from Thanksgiving to New Year. Another first, ringing in a new year in the states, but one that’s pretty much universal for western society.

It’s a really great thing fiction. Reading it as well as writing; either way we find ourselves experiencing things, thinking things, discovering, learning, growing all because a little voice in our own or someone else started whispering little things, and then before long it has a name, and a story, and a following. Stories really are remarkably like the gods one meets delving into the fantastic Small Gods by Pratchett.

Anyhow, I wish you all bon nuit!
Love

Jaye

Prolificness transpires

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So, I’ve been trying to decide on a series for when Now & Forever is over (it’s to be four books, by the way).

I knew I wanted to do a teen, high school super heroes thing. Hadn’t been able to work it out beyond that, though. Tonight the inspiration fairy paid me a visit and gave me a lovely idea in exchange for just a little more of my sanity (standard market rates, of course, she does have sales goals to meet after all).

I introduce you, therefore, to Færie Patrol, a working title for the series. It might stick around, I’m not sure. It has something of a ring to it, and conveys the fact that this series is anything but serious.

All I know for certain is the cast list, and some quirks to reality, and the gist of what they do.

There’s a page up there under Series for it.

To sum up what you’ll find there is a vampress dhampir stuck forever at a little over fifteen for the past three hundred years, and will be so for the rest of her unlife – not that she much minds. Then there’s the half-nymph who’d rather have a normal life, except for the whole easy access to fairy thing, since that’s where the best parties tend to be. A chivalrous ghost who hasn’t entirely caught up with the sixteenth century (and this is set in the twenty-first century). A mentalist teen male gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide (thank you Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett for that turn of phrase). The sex crazed, wine guzzling, swashbuckling sprite. And the Romani witch (or Æthyrial Engineer according to the business cards she got made up recently).

This is meant to be a completely irreverent romp through fighting monsters, finding romance, and remembering to do math homework. Legends and myths will be used, abused, twisted, and played with, but mostly used as is (fairytales are mostly fun enough as they are). Magic will abound. Irreverence to many things, and a three inch tall horny drunken sot with a penchant for the silver screen.

I can’t wait to see what happens, I hope you’ll think so too; though, admittedly, I do rather hope you can wait. I’ve kind of got enough in front of me and haven’t done more than jot down thoughts and character snapshots.

The Big Idea: Seanan McGuire

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Does making a post to link folks to another blog to read an article about another author’s work count as still more posting?

Meh, whatever.

Read this. It’s good for you.

The Big Idea: Seanan McGuire.

P.S. Read the book it talks about. It will induce laughter, laughter is good for the soul. Therefore the book it talks about is good for your soul, QED.

Getting started

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What can I say?  I’m trying to set this up as a blog about the progress of my fiction, but it’s a little slow going.

Current projects:

Now & Forever – a four book series following the lives and love at first sight romance of a pair of high school girls.  (more detailed blurb when this gets an official page, probably)

This blog – I need to work out how I mean to organise it and start putting content here.  Mostly involves really wanting to use a computer (not really my cuppa, the electronic little demonic things)