Or rather, I’ve moved 🙂 Yep, I finally got my act into gear, got myself some hosting, and now I have my blog at kimberleydane.com. I’ve exported all my posts from this blog so they are now up at the new one, and I’ll be blogging there from now on.
This will be the last post on this blog. Please change any links or subscriptions you have, and please please please follow me on Google Friend Connect because it looks completely sad right now 😉
Thank you 😀
How disheartening it is to suffer the inability to rack up the word count with NaNo so close 😉 Yep, that’s right, I sucked. But it’s okay. I had done almost no prep so my head wasn’t firmly in the story, at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. And I am much better prepared for NaNo, which is only hours away now.
I can’t wait to start writing my boys. These last few hours I’ve been killing time by cleaning the kids rooms, and I have a couple of opening lines running around in my head to start with. Always nice to have a jumping off point, yeah? Once I post this I’m going to sit down with a couple of episodes of Firefly, my knitting, and then get an early night so I’m up at the crack of dawn to start writing. It will be the first NaNo in three that I haven’t begun writing at the stroke of midnight and racked up a decent start before it even feels like November, but that’s okay, I reckon. I’m getting old and need my rest now 🙂
Over at the Book Bunnies blog, I ramble on about NaNoing in the Southern Hemisphere.
Is decidedly slow. I’m very prone to distraction, procrastination… What’s new 😉
I think I need to re-examine my writing habits (and I’m glad I’m doing it now rather than waiting for November). I’m finding I write better lately earlier in the day, where I’ve always written best at night before. That’ll take some adjusting to, some earlier nights, some getting up at dawn O.O And some time management.
So after five days I have a very modest not-quite-3000-words. Oh, that sounds terrible! Yeah, that’s pretty terrible. I am going to make it up to 3k tonight, then change my daily target to 1k, and hopefully I’ll come out at the end of it with about 10k—which should do the job, I reckon, considering at 1.5k I was where I’d planned to be at 5k.
Yeah, I seem to be bare-bonesing it, which is fine. There’ll definitely be scenes I’ll add in when I rewrite.
I had the beginning scene in my head so I kinda dived right in. Until Monday I’m just going to truck along adding a couple of paragraphs when I feel like it. I have around 1000 words so far and established a little bit of history and character. Lots needs to be fleshed out but I’m resisting the urge. Tonight I’m going to go back and add some more to the story bible. There’s a lot I’ve learned about my characters already. Plus I have a couple new characters who need profiles—and one needs a name (the bit I suck at the most).
One thing I’m going to have to keep in mind as I begin is the fact that this is a ghost story. It’s a bit of a slow build up before anything real happens, I just need to remember to place the hints consistently as I go. I’m also going to take this time to establish some stuff and lead the reader astray a bit before I get to the point.
Without boring anyone, of course.
I’m torn about whether to do any paranormal research or not. I’m a little reluctant to try to stick to any accepted ghost ‘rules’ rather than just winging it and establishing my own. I want to make up my own rules.
I do have a little medical research to do, but just a refresher as I’ve already got most of what I need from another story.
Overall, I’m feeling like I haven’t done enough preparation for the story and yet I’m itching to write. My issue might be with the slow build-up—I’m used to beginning in the middle but I can’t do that here. I’m itching to get to the juicy bits, but they are a way off yet. Hopefully that feeling will drag me through to the middle quickly.
While casually perusing some calls for submission I happened upon one looking for ghost stories. Calls usually do nothing for me, but this one made lots of little bells in my brain ring. So I’ve started pottering around compiling a story bible and a playlist for this wee baby bunny. I’m hoping it’ll come out around 15k if I can push it that far (which might be a mission considering my style).
But this also means that I have plenty of time to get it written before November and NaNoWriMo. I’m giving myself 5 days to plan it, then two weeks to write.
So far I have tragedy, angst, a little bit of a creep factor, a twist, and as long as my muse behaves, a HEA at the end. My characters have names but are still pretty faceless, so next on my list is checking out some photos 🙂
So far this story is working titled ‘Haunted’.
Happy Hour by Bella Leone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I like beer, so I could relate to these boys 🙂 And I laughed out loud at the Prince Harry crush (mine was Prince William, but I’m a wee bit older than Bodie). Happy Hour is a feel good, angst free, happy story with a well developed HEA. And some very hot sex 😉 Hot as hell, in fact. Real and raw and quite beautiful. Bella teases us at first, but it just makes it sweeter for the waiting.
I really enjoyed this story.
Image by mikeymckay via Flickr
November is coming up fast. Again. The year has simply flown by. Again. And I’m gearing up for NaNo. Again. It’s becoming like Christmas, but without the bah humbug 🙂
I’ve got a couple different stories I could write this year. Doing some low pressure, laid back planning, and I’ll see what I feel like writing come November 1st.
Or I’m toying with the idea of hitting a random plot generator at 11.59pm on the 31st of October.
Along with signing up for The Vampire Chronicles Reading Challenge, there’s a couple of other series’ I want to get through in the near future.
I read The Hunger Games yesterday (yes, I’ve been ‘reading’ Interview with the Vampire for the last three weeks, yet I started and finished The Hunger Games in a day). Rather compelling, I thought, so The Hunger Games series goes on my list.
I’ve also decided I want to read the Harry Potter series again, and I should read The Twilight Saga again (mostly out of guilt—I went a bit mad back a year or so and have more than one copy of each book languishing unread on my shelves).
I tend to read in fits and starts—mainly because I will lose myself so completely in a book that the dishes pile up and I get no writing or anything else done, and so I can be a bit reluctant to open one—so I’m a little afraid of my ambitious reading list.
I’m doing my first reading challenge!
The plan is, to read all ten books in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles during 2011. I’m excited! I had already set myself the goal of re-reading at least one this year anyway, and I’ve kept meaning to read them all in order—yes, I’ve read them all, but never in order!
Books in Series Order:
This is the perfect reading challenge for me. Now, where did I put Interview with the Vampire?
my vamp-chronicles-reading-challenge shelf:
Write Like Nobody's Reading 