WIP Love—Halfway Home!

Earlier in the year, I had a weird novel idea sparked by—I kid you not—watching that show Little Big Shots hosted by Steve Harvey (super great show!!).

Things sorta spiraled out of control from there, and whilst waiting on other things, I decided to plot and outline this weird (WEIRD) story. I officially started writing it on August 4th, and have been working on it off and on since then, time permitting. As of this evening, I am OFFICIALLY halfway to my projected word count of 75,000!! *confetti*

Look, I made a mini white board out of a picture-frame shaped like a whale! :-D

Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun with it, even though I'm definitely remembering why revising is SO, SO, SO necessary once you hit that final period on your rough draft…

I'm also getting to the point in the story that excites me the most, which is pretty awesome. But holy cow, I don't think I've ever juggled this many characters before, I'm writing in first-person present, and I'm doing my darnedest to keep SEKRETZ from the reader, which is a super interesting plot device I've never attempted before.

I don't know if this acrobat-turned-assassin-magical-boy-army-of-bears thing will ever see the light of day, but at least it's keeping me out of trouble (sort of) for now, right??

Happy writing, all!

Writing & Reading & Minecraft (oh my!)

Hey everyone!

Just another little quick update… Apologies for the dearth of posts lately! Sometimes it's easier to say nothing at all than to come up with random things to write that aren't what you *really* want to write about but can't yet for whatever reason. (Okay, that was cryptic!!)

But let's see, here's some of the things I've been up to lately:

• I wrote Part One of Weird New Novel and got up to 26,046 words! It's strange and not well-written yet and confusing and there is literally zero character development, and most of it is spent wandering in a cave, but I think there might be something there anyway…… maybe?? In other words, it's an UNCOMPLETED ROUGH DRAFT. Hoping to get back to it soon! :-)

• I hit my 30 books reading challenge on GoodReads and am still going strong, which is good, because I have a lot more I want to read before the year is over!! I just finished THE CROWN'S GAME, by Evelyn Skye and I loooooooooooved it.

• On a related note, my three favorite books of the year so far are:
• THE WINNER'S KISS, by Marie Rutkoski
• MY LADY JANE, by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows
• THE CROWN'S GAME, by Evelyn Skye

• I got to meet up with some lovely Arizona-based YA writers a few weeks ago, and it was a blast. I had no idea there were so many of us stranded out here in the desert! :-)

• Hubs and I have been playing a lot of Minecraft lately. It's awesome. The other night we wandered away from our base and almost got hopelessly lost forever, but made it back in the end. I tamed a couple of cows and some sheep and am gonna try for chickens next!! :-D

• Am currently obsessed with this song, and also this band in general:

And hmmm, I think that's about it! Happy reading and writing and living your life-ing. Until next time!