Wednesday, December 13, 2017

I'm back...sort of...soonish!

So..... *Awkward silence*
.....Pregnancy sucked all of the motivation and energy from me and gave it to the growing human.

Also, caring for said infant once topside is not like strolling through a field of daisies.
UNLESS that field is on fire, and your body feels like it's on fire, and the baby is babbling and cooing at 2 am for the sixth night in a row and you've slept a total of 12 hours in three days...

Just kidding.

But really.

Literally all of my creative energy came to a screeching halt within two months of carrying my son. And I am just now, at 7 months postpartum, getting back into the groove of writing almost everyday and staying on top of the house stuff and the care that goes into keeping a tiny human happy and healthy.

*cue cheers*
But I'm getting back on that horse! I've had the itch to blog again, now it will just be the task of finding the time and motivation to do so during my busy days.
My optimistic goals for this blog include:

Blog posts about writing, self publishing, and all things bookish on "Writerly Wednesdays".
A monthly review of a small press/self published book.
Possible guest posts, and author interviews.
Giveaways!

So in order to accomplish this I am going to spend the rest of the month of December setting things up, pre-writing and planning blog posts, reaching out to other authors for possible inclusion in the blog and giveaways, and continuing work on my own writing. Oh, and of course, keeping the tiny human alive and well.

Lots coming your way in January, so stay tuned!

PS If any other authors or writers are interested in being interviewed, guest posting, or doing giveaways please let me know! My email, and social media links, are all under the "Contact Tab" at the top of the page.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

How I survived NaNoWriMo 2017

It is December, which means NaNoWriMo has once again come and gone. I once again took up the challenge. And a challenge it was! Last year being pregnant sucked all of the energy and brain power I had, making the year a "come from behind" win. This year I had a 6 month old bouncing baby boy that fills my days.

Nevertheless, I took up the challenge!




The month started out well. I decided to further two stories during the month. So the first to be worked on was book one in the Aarken Chronicles, no official title yet, the second was An Irish Christmas, the second in my Emerald Isle Trilogy.

Neither one had been plotted out, and I should know by now that for me that makes the writing process much more difficult. I am firmly in the "plotter" category as far as pre-writing goes.
Aarken ended up with a new total of 23,450 words. Before NaNoWriMo it sat at just about 8k. So I got a good chunk written and much more of the world building done. Somewhere in the middle of NaNo I was writing along when I realized I had done almost ZERO world building for Aarken. Sitting down with my notebook and some inspiring music, I did the leg work and now have much more of the plot for book one solidified, as well as more of the series overall figured out.

An Irish Christmas was sitting at roughly 5k before, and after NaNo is now at 11,761. So about double. Again, this was like pulling teeth for some of it. I'd be inspired, get through a scene or two, and then boom. Lost momentum since I didn't have the story better plotted out. About 3/4 of the way through NaNo I had to sit down and like Aarken, I had to plot out more of the story. With that done, I am hoping to finish the story by the end of January and be sending it off to Beta readers. I want to release An Irish Christmas either in late October, or early Novemeber next year. I better get a move on!

Now, as most of you know NaNoWriMo is all about hitting that glorious 50k, and if you can do math, you'll have noticed that those numbers listed above do not meet that 50k goal. In between writing in those two WIP's I also worked on editing. The story I chose was Wolf's Bite, the second in the Athruithe Trilogy. I had finished the initial first draft a few months prior and it needs some major rewrites/added scenes.

Though I didn't complete a full bright and shiny 50k first draft, I am still pleased with how much I accomplished. Especially since my entire family came down with a pretty nasty flu the week before Thanksgiving and we are still recovering!

How did NaNoWriMo go for those of you who took up the challenge?
You're a winner in my book if you wrote anything during November!
You can't edit a blank page, so any progress is worth celebrating.   :)

Saturday, November 11, 2017

It's ALIVE!

The feeling in the pit of my stomach, the oh so happy, oh so anxious feeling that despite now hitting that "publish" button 6 times, has never gone away!



But I am so happy that The Irish Baker is finally finished and ready to be shared with the masses. This story took quite a while to write from it's conception all the way back in spring of 2013.

My mother and I were crossing from Ireland to Scotland on the ferry and I had the sudden urge to write down my story idea. Until that point I had never dreamed I'd write anything ever that wasn't fantasy. But here I am working on book two and three in the Emerald Isle trilogy and even roughly planning a romantic trilogy set in Scotland!

Of course my first love will always be fantasy, and I am in the middle of writing a YA Christian Fantasy, but stories are stories and if they demand to be written, I will write them! 

Link to The Irish Baker: http://amzn.to/2ytTyra

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Valentines Day- BONUS

In honor of Valentines Day, I have decided to share a bit of writing that I've been working on.
Recently I finished final edits on The Irish Baker. All that remains is a synopsis, blurb, and to start querying agents!
The other project that has its fangs in me is my Urban Fantasy story, which has a very strong love theme.
So without further ado, I give you the moment the two main characters meet in my current Urban Fantasy WIP.
Enjoy! :) 



           Ethan had never been one for clubs. Even when he was in the age demographic where clubbing was essentially mandatory, he was the outlier. Sure he had gone to a few; well, more what he would consider bars. The woods of Montana, where he grew up,  hadn’t been a hub of city life.
            The thumping of music felt like an intrusion to his thoughts. But his sister insisted. His parents, they suggested he go and enjoy spring break with his sister. More like watch his baby sister’s back while she drank and danced with complete strangers in Miami for a week.
            Thankfully it was their last night before she headed back home to Montana, and he to his small office at work, nestled in the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky. Work was his passion. It never felt like work, except when he had to grade the term papers. Those made his eyes cross and his stomach clench. The college wouldn’t appreciate it if he just passed everyone. Might raise a red flag on his teaching.
            Ethan Donnelly, professor of Occult Anthropology had officially started his sabbatical.
            At least the club had some good whiskey. Not many places his sister wanted to go to carried the good brands. They mostly served vodka and rum mixed drinks. But daiquiris and “Slippery Nipples” weren’t his drinks of choice.
            The music intruded again as the DJ switched songs and tempos. Spinning on his stool, his back now to the bar, Ethan could lean back and keep an eye on his sister. Where he was dark in color, she was light. His dark hair was easy to miss in the club, but her naturally bleach blonde locks were hard to miss.
            He spotted her quickly dancing with her friends in the middle of the floor.
            That’s when he saw her.
            She swayed and moved with the music—her rhythm was perfect. It looked like the music flowed through her. Not too skinny, her curves filled out the dress she was wearing leaving her long, muscular arms and legs bare.
            Heels increased her already impressive height. Without them he estimated her height to be around five-foot-ten inches, tall for a woman. With the four-inch heels strapped to her feet, she still came up four inches short of his six-foot-five inch frame.  Red hair, curled loosely, fell to just above the middle of her back.
            She danced, like all women do, in a group of others. But something about her caught and held his attention.
            “Enjoying yourself?” Ethan was startled from his inappropriate staring by the words of his sister.
            He met her bright blue eyes, her eyebrow arching at his startled expression.
            “Huh, wouldn’t have thought you’d go for a woman in a club.” Reaching past him, she picked up another drink in a hurricane glass complete with an umbrella in the top. “Well, whoever she is, have fun!” Her tinkling laugh echoed in his ears before being drowned out by the music once more.
            Picking up his glass, he tried to be more casual about scanning the crowd for the red-haired woman. His heart dropped when he didn’t see her. Slowly he started to spin around to face the bar again when a voice made him stop.
            “Are you looking for me?”
            He finished the rotation of the stool to find the blue-eyed stare of the red-haired woman he had been watching. 


He was cute, she had to give him that. Cocking her head, she extended a hand to him. He met it, and shook it woodenly. He had dark hair—a bit shaggier than she was used to, but not too long as to lay in his eyes. His eyes matched his hair, and in the whirling lights of the club looked almost black.
Something in her stomach clenched, but in a pleasant way, and she coaxed the wolf that rose up at the sight of him, back down. That would be dangerous for more than just him if she gave her full rein.
“Ah, well, yes.” He stuttered to her. She smiled. It wasn’t that he was drunk, oh no, she had watched him as well. He sipped the whiskey, instead of downing it like any inexperienced frat boy.
“Good.” She sat on the stool next to him, and tapped the bar with three fingers. The bartender knew what she wanted, and quickly a bottle and glass were provided before the bartender moved away on silent feet. She poured herself a drink, and offered to top off his glass.
“How’d you get him to give you the bottle?”
She met his eyes, and smiled. “Oh, he knows me.”
“You come here often?”
“Well, now there’s a line if I’ve ever heard one.” She had to stifle a chuckle with a sip of the whiskey. It was deep, but with a hint of oak that she liked. Not as good as the stuff she got at home, but it was better than fruity drinks and vodka.
“I didn’t—I wasn’t—.” He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. Taking a deep breath he tried again. “I wasn’t saying a line. Just an observation.”
She waited a beat before smiling and saying, “I thought so. Just teasing you a bit.”
He smiled in relief and took another drink before turning to survey the crowd. “You don’t strike me as a club hopper.” She watched him watch her out of the corner of his eye.
“No, not usually.” She turned as well; two could play that game. “My cousin owns the bar, asked if I would come down for some extra help during spring break.” She paused taking a long pull from the nearly empty glass.  “This is my last night, thankfully.”
“It looked like you were having fun.”
“I never said I wasn’t having fun.” Carefully, she set her drink on the counter before turning to him, holding out a hand. Something inside of her told her to—she didn’t understand it. She wanted to dance with him. Well, if she was honest, the wolf inside wanted to do much more than dance. But dancing in the middle of a club should be harmless enough.
Surprisingly he took her hand, and she led him out onto the dance floor. Most of the clubbers had left, leaving a little bit of room near the DJ’s setup. She liked being near it. The speakers were to their left and right, and when the beat came through them, she could feel it in her heart.
It must have spoken to the primitive part of her that would have marched to the beat of a drum in her grandfather’s time. But this was no war, at least not that type. The only thing she had to overcome was the wolf inside.
 He had natural rhythm. Though not quite as fluid as she was, he could keep up with her. The wolf inside hummed in pleasure at having his arms around her, or his hands on her hips. Her head buzzed like she had been drinking too many coffees, but she couldn’t get enough of him. She thought about taking him back to her hotel room, but suddenly a hand on her arm pulled her away from his embrace, breaking whatever feeling she had.
She growled, and then realized it was her cousin Cyrina who had pulled her away to whisper in her ear.
“Are you mad? He’s not one of us. You could kill him!” Cyrina’s amber eyes bored into her.
“I know what I’m doing!” She hissed back.
“Right, and the last human you mated with was when, exactly?” Cyrina accused with her hands on her hips. Despite being only five-foot-nothing, and blonde, Cyrina could be intimidating in her own right. She had an inkling it had to do with her being mated to the Alpha of the pack in Miami.
Her wolf didn’t want to give him up, and she could feel him standing there, waiting to see what had happened. Taking a few breaths, she turned back to him being careful not to touch him again.
“I have to go. Something’s happened in the ladies room, and they need my help.”
He looked so heartbroken and sad that she almost couldn’t take it. Her heart ached, and she felt a howl crawling up the back of her throat as her wolf started to panic.
He swallowed twice before speaking. “Okay, I understand.” He glanced around. “It’s almost closing time anyway I should grab Abby before it’s chaos.”
Her wolf cocked its head as jealously started to gripped her heart. It didn’t matter who Abby was. She would never see this man again once she returned home to Chicago tomorrow.
She made to turn away, but electricity ran up from where he touched her arm. She felt her body shiver as she turned toward him.
“I never got your name?” He leaned in and asked where no one would overhear. A quiver ran up and down her spine when he did so, but not an unpleasant one.
“It’s Bryna.”