WIP Wednesday: Long Overdue

WIP_WednesdayI haven’t done a WIP Wednesday for a while! It’s about time. I love hearing about other creatives and the projects they’re working on. I’ll share mine, and then will you share whatever art/music/writing/creative project you’re in the midst of?
Right now I’m in the midst of a short story titled “Ravenous Stars, Carnivorous Moon.” It’s a haunting thing about a woman who tries to feed herself to the stars. I’ve been going through a tough literary patch lately, actually having panic attacks when I open documents to write, but this one has been nothing but joy. It’s cut from starlight.
I’m also in the midst of a novella that’s a companion for a table top gaming series. And another novella that’s part of a very intriguing world. I’m not sure that I can announce that I’m attached to the project yet, but I can’t wait until I can! It’s a dark and magical thing, and I’m excited for it.
I had planned to have the second book of THE BONE ANGEL trilogy out by now, but I realized that Apocalyptic Montessa, Nameless, and Pretty Little Dead Girls all came out within a year, and I was exhausted. I took a little time off from the series, but I’m thinking the sequel will be out later this year. It’s titled Heartless: Carnival of Isolation, and my intention is to break Luna in this book. Do you think I can? We’ll see.
That’s what I’ve been up to. Will you share with me what you’ve been working on? I’d love to hear. 🙂

20 Comments on “WIP Wednesday: Long Overdue”

  1. I am working hard to get my fairy tale MORGRIM’S WOOD out. I think tonight’s the night! Just need to proof the final final final proof. I’m also working on chapter five of my zombie novel DEAD TOWN. This chapter is called: “Dogs Rule. Zombies Drool.” I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying this book. I’m not sure what my mom will think of it…she’s not big on character development in her horror novels. But I am in LOVE with it.

      1. Yes! Everything is “launched” and working its way through the labyrinth that is Amazon and Goodreads. It’s a great feeling to have it out in the world, but after every launch I feel a little lost. It’s bitter sweet. All that work…now what? Well, the next thing, I guess. Always the next thing.

  2. Hi! 🙂 All of your projects sound very exciting, especially the short story! But my goodness, yes, please take a breather between releases although I look forward to devouring “Heartless” when it does come out 🙂 I’ll bet you can put Luna through some very real predicaments for sure 🙂
    I am still focused on the latest iteration of my werewolf WIP with the voodoo spirits, and I reaalllly hope this current version will be the final one, at least plot and events-wise. Wheee! 🙂

  3. 1. Getting back in full swing with the band, which means dusting off songs we’ve not played in a while and rewriting web copy, bios, etc. Plus new songs in progress (one that I’ve been dying to finish since it first entered our brains a year ago…only to be set aside when people’s lives devoured all creative time, that now has lyrics and vocal melodies and a general idea of how guitar fits in) and gearing up for (writing, planning, etc) music videos and vlogs and blogs and All The Things!
    2. Writing lyrics and learning guitar parts for my beloved side project with some grand plans for the next year. Looking forward to building the site for that (love writing the web content, love handcoding the HTML).
    3. Trying to decide what to do in terms of finishing up the modern urban fairy tale book I accidentally wrote. Something is off, but I can’t put my finger on it. And trying to sort out what makes sense for a cover, how I pub, how I promote, and all the non-writing side of making a book happen.
    4a + 4b. Trying to finish two scifi books that are probably just under 1/4 written each, but have just realised that they might be two threads of the same story. (Both are in a near, darker future on Earth…Keep them separate or combine them? Considering writing both until they answer that question themselves…reminding myself that each will take however many words they need to be done, so combining might just create more work and certainly is unlikely to spare me any work…) One starts with a bang, literally, and the other starts in the toilets. (That bang start gave me good reason to mine my recent epic fall for more realistic details for my character’s injuries. I was pleased!)
    5. Two blog projects: one comprising the essays I’ve been writing to round out a list I posted of things of which I am not ashamed but have been told I ought to feel shame over….the other composed of personal essays about media I enjoy and cupcakes. Though now trying to decide if the “Not Ashamed” project ought to be made into a book instead…
    There are also supposed to be some tech writing WIPs, but funding just got cut 100%, so I guess there should be some cover letter WIPs instead :p

    1. Amber, I’m exhausted (but thrilled!) just reading about all of the things you’re doing. I read your Not Ashamed list and it really forced me to think. You touch my soul in the most beautiful of ways, darling one. <3

      1. To be fair, I don’t have 3 kids…which means I have more time to put into things and I’m getting more sleep and so forth. My only hope of ever being your peer is to just attack all this stuff. Plus, my brain won’t shut up until I do!
        Glad my Not Ashamed spoke to you. Rest assured that you’ve left your own fingerprints on my soul, beloved friend <3

  4. I wrote a little story, ‘Fun With Grammar’
    Here it is:
    Hannah and Sofia are neighbors and best friends who live in the state of Michigan. Sofia is an American while Hannah is from Germany. Hannah and her family are spending a few years here in America because her father is working here temporarily.
    ‘Hannah, are you going back to Germany this summer?’
    ‘Yes, for three weeks. We’re going to leave next Wednesday.’
    ‘Will you miss some of your German summer school?’
    ‘Only a week. It ends the week after we leave.’
    ‘How did you do in school this semester? Did you get all ‘A’s like you did last fall?’
    ‘That’s, ‘… as you did last fall.’ Don’t let Mrs Abbot hear you using ‘like’ as a conjunction. As to your question, of course I got all ‘A’s. But I did miss one question on my English final.’
    ‘Wow, that’s a first. I missed a bunch on mine. Which one did you miss?’
    ‘It was the one where we were supposed to correct the sentence, “If I would have come on time, I wouldn’t have been late for lunch.”‘
    ‘What’s wrong with that sentence?’
    ‘That’s what I said. But Mrs Abbot told me that you never put a ‘would’ in a clause with an ‘if.’ I told her I bet I could do it, and do it correctly. She said that if I could, she’d give me a pass on the ‘lunch’ question that I am ‘supposed’ to have missed.’
    ‘We’re you able to find one?’
    ‘Yeah, but I only got half credit. Mrs Abbot said that even though it was correct, nobody would ever say it that way.’
    ‘That’s not fair. She should have kept her word. Has she broken her promises before?’
    ‘Yeah, just last week she said if we got 100 on the spelling test we could stay out 15 minutes longer for recess. I was the only one who did, and then she said I couldn’t be out alone, that it was too dangerous. I said that if she had told us that before the test, I wouldn’t have studied so hard the night before. I told her she has been breaking promises to us all year, but she said, no, this one was the only one she had broken.’
    ‘What exactly did she say?’
    ‘She said, “Hannah, you’re wrong, this is the only promise I’ve broken this year.” What can you do. The teacher is always right, right?’
    ‘If she would have put in writing, you could’ve proved her wrong.’
    ‘Don’t say that to Mrs Abbot! She’ll correct you on your grammar, too, even though you’re not her student.’
    ‘What? Oh, yeah, I get it, that was the mistake you made on your final, I remember now. I guess it’s supposed to be, “If she had put it in writing, you could have proved her wrong,” right?’
    That’s it. But I did make a sentence with both ‘if’ and ‘would’ in the same clause, hah!’
    ‘What was it?’
    ‘You have to imagine a Shakespeare play where a prince wants to be king or like Prince Charles wanting to be king right now, but can’t because his mother, the queen, is alive. So, here it is: “If I would be King, I must kill my father.”‘
    ‘Wow! And that’s right for the grammar thing?’
    ‘Sure is. Because it’s different from most ‘if-would’ sentences. It means something like, if I want to be king, if that is ever to happen, then I must make it happen.’
    ‘So, why didn’t you get credit back on the test question you missed?’
    ‘She said it was right grammatically, but in the poetical sense Shakespeare would have written, “Would I be king, the king must die,” leaving out the “If” and changing the rest to be more ‘poetic.’ What a cheat.’
    ‘Yeah, but I think what she said really is more poetic. But that shouldn’t matter – you did meet her challenge.’
    ‘That’s what I thought. But I did get half a credit, so I only missed half of a question on the whole test.’
    ‘That’s the first question you’ve missed all year, isn’t it?’
    ‘No, that’s what I thought, too. But when I asked Mrs Abbot about that later, she said that, no, I had missed a word on a spelling test last fall. I told her that’s preposterous, and she said, yes, that was the word I had missed. And, besides that, she said I had been making errors in penmanship, too.’
    ‘What? What’s an ‘error’ in penmanship? I’ve never heard of that.’
    ‘I hadn’t either, but she said it was ink smudges.’
    ‘She sounds as bad as my father’s boss. He says she is such a perfectionist that people are getting discouraged about working there, and that no one has gotten a ‘good’ on any work review since he’s been working there.’
    ‘Is that true? What an awful boss!’
    ‘It is and she is. Just last night he said it again, that no one had gotten a good work review from her, ever, as far as he knew.’
    ‘Bummer.’
    ‘Is your dad going to look for a new job back in Germany when you’re on home leave?’
    ‘Maybe. He’s thinking it over, anyway. Maybe he’ll look.’
    ‘I hope he decides not to. I would miss you a lot, Hannah.’
    ‘Me, too, Sofia. Or, as Mrs Abbot would say, “I would miss you, too, Sofia.” She gets red in the face when we use ‘me’ as the subject of a sentence.’
    ‘What a grammar geek. When we’re grown up, nobody’s going to be talking like that anymore.’
    ‘I hope not. But our kids will probably make fun of us for something else.’
    ‘You mean, they’ll treat us like we’re clueless?’
    ‘You mean, ‘as if’ we’re clueless, right? Hey, maybe we can just pretend we are. We’ll have to do something to pull their chains!’
    …….
    This conversation was recorded by the National Security Agency, and forwarded to Mrs. Abbot for analysis. She confirmed that Hannah and Sofia were making excellent progress in their use of grammar, and that they would not have to be sent to a labor camp this year. And she was quite pleased that she had struck fear in their hearts, so that, at last, they were having serious conversations about her beloved grammar.

      1. I wrote it to help a German author who writes in English. Non-native speakers/writers often have a great deal of difficulty with verb tenses, so that is the main thrust of the story, to give examples others can use to get their tenses right. Thanks for responding. I really enjoy your writing!

  5. It’s been a long time since I did a WIP Wednesday post too! Right now I’m working on 3 ghostwriting projects. I’m also getting ready to edit my sci-fi/urban fantasy novel as well as finish writing a suspense thriller about mummies! Fun things 🙂

  6. I can relate to the anxiety, though thankfully I don’t have anxiety attacks. My sin has been cranky so that it stresses me out or too adorable to leave, which has left me with late nights as the only chance to write. “Only” that’s not true, but having my doc in scrivener means I can only write with my laptop open and ready (it just blue screened on me, so I have a minute to reply).
    Blah, blah. Anyway. I’m so glad to hear about the next bone angel book! I released my book end of march, and while I’m getting over, I think, the burnout of that, I’m struggling with starting the sequel. Mixture of research fatigue and still not sure I understand nanotech monsters in my book well enough to move forward.
    You are always an encouragement, with what you do for your family and that you still get projects done. I hope you had a blessed Memorial Day.

    1. Thank you, Tim. It was a good Memorial Day. It’s always a bit difficult.
      You have EARNED your burnout. Don’t feel badly about taking a little break now and then, too! People will push ou to pump books out, but stand up to them if you need to. If I had done that earlier, I don’t think I’d be struggling quite as badly as I am. Not only are we not superhuman (surprise!) but we’re not expected to be. <3

  7. Wait, did I read this right? You have three kids and three projects on the go? That puts my efforts to publish my one novel to shame…I blame it on a year- long struggle with traditional publishing. Now that I’m going the self-published route, it should be on Kindle by the end of August.
    Thanks for sharing. Any tips on time management would also be greatly appreciated…

    1. Ana, I’m working with smaller presses and that makes SUCH a huge difference. We spent easily a year or maybe two trying to publish Pretty Little Dead Girls with the bigger traditional publishers until I realized that I was stuck on that one book. It was holding everything else up in my psyche. So I went smaller press with it and it really freed me. 🙂
      Time management. That’s a good one. My computer is always on, for one thing. I don’t have big blocks of time to sit and write. I literally run and write a sentence or two sometimes, because that’s all I have the time for. But my biggest tip is doing Word Ward. That’s where you start your time and write as fast as you can for a set period of time. Five minutes. 30 minutes. 15 is ideal for me. No editing, no erasing, just writing. I can get about 450 words on average in 15 minutes this way, and that’s huge when you’re building a novel line by line like I’m forced to do.
      Tell me about your book, would you? I’d love to hear!

  8. Thank you for the tips, Mercedes! How true, the “getting stuck” part. If I add up all the agent and publisher submissions, I would have had a second novel done by now…
    Mine is a chicklit (oops, what are they called now? Women’s fiction?) novel. It’s full of action, including a limo chase and a kidnapping, but it’s mostly about one naive girl’s quest to be discovered. She doesn’t even care what she would be discovered for, as long as it means enough money to pay off her student loans and credit card bills, and at least fifteen minutes of fame. Through a series of very fortunate events, she becomes a protege of the seventh richest man in the southeastern US, who promotes her like a new Hollywood darling. She gets dumped, but seems to have a lot of new love interests, from a stalking Cop, to a hot neighbour with a questionable basement dungeon, to her best girl. Things escalate quickly until…well, you will have to wait till August to download it on Kindle for just $3.99, muahaha!
    Thank you for asking the question, it reminded me that I need to write promo copy for Amazon. Better get started on my procrastinating…

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