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First in Series
Category Archives: vampire romance
Writing progress and taking a hiatus
My writing is going to be taking a bit of a back seat over summer as I need to study some new skills for my career and this means dedicating time to it, and taking that time from my writing. I’ll continue to blog and post competitions and things. I’m sure that I’ll be doing something writing related and I do have a few releases to put out over summer.
There’s just a lot to do at work and I feel as though I need to split my time more effectively in order to keep progressing in my career. Unfortunately, writing does suck up a lot of my spare time, so it’s that which has to give on this occasion. I have been so focused on learning new things since coming back from holiday that I couldn’t really keep my attention fixed on completing the second draft of Heart of Darkness. I wasn’t giving it the attention it deserved and my editing was turning more into a lazy reading session. That’s not good! So I’ve decided to put it on hold for now, complete a massive list of learning tasks for my job, and then approach the edit with fresh eyes (after a good read of some of my editing books) and I’m sure everything will be much better for it.
I sometimes take breaks like this and it always refreshes me and gives me the energy to start writing again. Of course, I’m stuck in edit-Hell at the moment as I have so many stories to edit (and so many waiting to be written) that it just seems as though that’s all I’ll be doing forever!
I think reading a bit of Love Immortal the other day really hit it home that I was doing lazy editing on Heart of Darkness. With Love Immortal, I went all out, pulled out those stops and really got stuck in on the editing. Approached and defeated a lot of passives, he/she sentences, and weak constructions. I haven’t really been doing that with Heart of Darkness and some of my other stories as I was a bit disheartened by the number of rejections that Love Immortal received from agents (but I do think that was a result of the 155,000 word count!). I need to recapture that dedication to editing and really polish up my stories to give them the best chance they have, and I can’t do that when I have a head full of programming languages and other things. Lol.
Heavens… this is beginning to sound like a quit post. Don’t worry! I’m not hanging up my pad and pen just yet. I’ll be back on that editing wagon soon enough (hopefully the writing one too).
I have the release of Her Dark Angel coming at the end of August. That should be exciting. With my focus firmly fixed on gunning for print and an agent, I haven’t released a paid-for story in a long time. I’ve completely forgotten the whole review submission nightmare and promotion insanity! That should be a lovely way of getting back on the writing saddle… if a little manic.
Once that’s out there in the big wide world, it’ll be time to decide whether I’m going to do the final polish on Ascension first and send it out to agents, or whether I’m going to do the second draft of Heart of Darkness.
Decisions… decisions…
Posted in Ascension, Heart of Darkness, Her Angel Series, Her Dark Angel, Love Immortal, paranormal romance, vampire romance
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Heart of Darkness – Second draft phase
It’s been a while since I had a chance to update my blog. Things have been very busy recently both at work and at home / writing. I didn’t have the time last weekend to update my blog, but I did manage to post a chapter of my free vampire romance novel, Of Blood and Snow. This week the opposite is true. I have time to update my blog, but I don’t have time to post a chapter of OBAS. Sorry to everyone who’s waiting on a chapter. I’ll try to get a couple up next weekend to make up for it!
I’ve been working my backside off recently. I have finished the second draft on Ascension and I’ve printed out a copy of it via Lulu to take with my on my impending holiday (ash clouds and BA strikes willing), along with my copy of Forbidden Blood. I have a lot of flights coming up on this holiday so there’ll be plenty of time for me to get bored of the in-flight entertainment and read instead.
I’m currently going through the second draft of Heart of Darkness. I’ve done my on-paper read through of it last weekend and have just finished adding in all the notes and changes into the word document. I was editing it during the week though, as I managed to get the first 80 pages of notes and things into the word document fairly early in the week, so I could start on the major edit in the word doc. I finished getting the notes and things in today whilst watching the BBC adaptation of North & South (Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, which I adore). It’s left me smiling ear-to-ear. I don’t mind too much that they changed the ending. It irked me at first but now I can accept it. It’s the sort of thing that has to happen when a book makes the transition to screen. There’s always cuts and changes.
I think I can probably get the second draft of Heart of Darkness finished in the next two weeks. It’ll be a push when I’m so busy at work too, but I’ll give it my best.
I’m off out soon so I’d better dash. Will do a better update next weekend and post a chapter of Of Blood & Snow.
Posted in Ascension, forbidden blood, Heart of Darkness, Of Blood and Snow, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, vampire romance, vampires
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Ascension, ears and busy schedules
Well, I’ve cajoled the muse into editing Ascension because I felt the writing wasn’t top quality, and then when I went back to it, it was actually far better than I’d remembered. I suppose that’s a good thing. I’m reading over it again now though, although Friday was a complete wash out because I ended up reading parts of Heart of Darkness instead. Not sure what I’m doing after I’ve finished this light edit/read of Ascension. I should probably do the polish on Her Dark Angel before I go away on holiday at the end of the month. I could also do with getting the second draft of Her Fallen Angel done too.
Of course, first I need to get this read through of Ascension done. It’s a miserable day here today and that’s not exactly making me want to do anything. I just want to sit around nursing my poor ear, eating chocolate, and watching anime, or perhaps playing a game.
I went to see my ENT consultant last week and I have yet another ear infection. We talked about what’s involved in an operation to fix the problems with my ear and while I’m more comfortable with the thought now, it still frightens me. I don’t really want to be knocked out but I guess it can’t be helped and it’s better to get the problem fixed now while I’m still (fairly) young and (fairly) healthy. The other downside to it is that I have to take 2 weeks off work. I doubt I’ll be up to much in those two weeks either, not even writing stuff, and that’ll hit my schedule pretty hard.
My schedule is all over the place. I’d love to get some things done and marked off the list but I can’t see it happening yet. It’s a shame really. I want some stuff out of the way with before I go away at the end of the month. I don’t want this bleak future full of editing. It doesn’t do the muse any good. He’s throwing a fit about it right now because he wants to write, and so do I, but we’ve written so much that now there’s a lot of editing between us and starting a new story!
When I get back from my holiday, I’ll be writing Her Warrior Angel. I need to plan it but that shouldn’t take too long as I have the rough idea for it already down, and the characters are already in my head. I just need the frame of the story, the skeleton as it were, and some character notes, and away we go!
At the moment, I’m focused on reading through Ascension and applying any necessary fixes before getting it sent off to a printer so I can get a paperback version of the complete second draft to take with me on holiday. I’m taking Forbidden Blood too. I’ll read them both on the plane or times when there’s nothing else to do and I’m a captive audience.
I’m also programming a Kindle HTML file maker for myself and my fellow authors at Alinar Publishing to use. It’s going well and I’ve done about 60% of it. I just need to finish another part of it and then test and tweak. I’ll get that done now hopefully and then get on with editing Ascension, and perhaps I’ll address my writing schedule issues.
Posted in Amazon Kindle, Ascension, forbidden blood, Heart of Darkness, Her Angel Series, Her Dark Angel, Her Fallen Angel, Her Warrior Angel, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, vampire romance, vampires
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