I'm Seriously Drawing a Blank for a Post Title, So You Get This One

Happy Monday, all!

I'm sitting here drinking tea and perusing the interwebs whilst anxiously patiently waiting for September 3rd and the announcement of the Pitch Wars picks!

What have I been doing writing-wise in the meantime? Well, last week I started outlining a brand new novel! It's the idea I attempted to write as a short story last year that was simply too big to keep under 10,000 words. I've got the whole plot outlined and most of the characters sorted out, and have already begun (though barely) my scene outline.

I'm super excited about it! I've been floundering deep in revision purgatory with two different manuscripts for nearly two years, and it's awesome to be back at the anything-could-happen and everything-is-wonderful-and-new-and-shiny brainstorming phase!

I don't really like to discuss projects in much detail when they're still delicate fledglings, but I will say it's a fairy-tale combo retelling that's making me squee.

In the meantime, I threw my hat into the writeoncon ring last week. It's an online writing convention that gives you the opportunity to give and receive critiques on other writers' queries and novel excerpts. There's also some ninja agents popping in this week, which could get interesting! Free to participate, but you do have to register to view the forums. Here's my query (which is also my Pitch Wars entry).

I also finished Ruin and Rising over the weekend, and it gave me ALL THE FEELS. You should have heard the whimpering noises I was making towards the end there. It got pretty serious.

And that's about it, folks!

Pitch Wars Mentee Bio!

Welcome, one and all, to my Pitch Wars Mentee Bio! If you don't know what Pitch Wars is, head here for all the deets. And go here for the bios of all the other awesome mentee hopefuls!

And now on to the aforementioned bio:

Hi, I'm Joanna, and I'm overly fond of semi-colons and em-dashes, as well as a staunch defender of the Oxford comma (Oxford commas save lives you guys).

I've been writing since I was about seven years old. For proof, here's my first ever story, complete with amazing illustrations like this one:

You can clearly see why I decided not to pursue a career in art.

At 13, I was published in the children's magazine Stone Soup. I submitted tons of stuff before getting this story accepted—I didn't give up until they said yes!

That's me in the top photo. My bangs are pretty sweet, I know.

Since 2005, I've written six full novels and parts of three others, and revised (and revised and reVISED) several of them. I think I'm getting pretty good at this whole revising thing. Death to unnecessary words! Long live proper pacing and character development!

My six completed drafts plus one unfinished one.

My Pitch Wars novel was first drafted during NaNoWriMo 2006, and was inspired by the myths in Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, the British India time period in M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions and Shadow of the Moon, Tolkien's Silmarilion, the mood of Keane's album Under the Iron Sea, and a single frame from the first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie.

Incidentally, the name of my blog also comes from this album!

Interesting novel fact: I invented nearly all of the names for this book, and realized I'd accidentally given brothers (same father, different mothers) two different last names. Instead of making them the same, I decided that in my society children take their mother's surname, not their father's. (Okay I thought it was interesting.)

I'm a musician, specifically a pianist, and the cadence and flow of words and sentences and paragraphs are extremely important to me. I love the lyrical, flowing writing styles of Ursula K. LeGuin, Robin McKinley, Tanith Lee, and Erin Bow.

My favorite book of all time is probably The Return of the King. But I'm also madly in love with the aforementioned Queen's Thief series (seriously, I need the next book NOW), George Eliot's Middlemarch, Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, pretty much anything Jane Austen ever wrote (but especially Emma and Persuasion), and Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel.

Possibly my favorite wedding pic.

Bert likes revising, too.

I daylight as a piano teacher, and have been happily married to the love of my life for almost two years now (seriously my hubs is the best!!!). We live in Gilbert, AZ, where we share an apartment with our stripey feline Bertie and an enormous grand piano. I'm obsessed with looseleaf tea, ice cream, the color green, and Doctor Who.

Once Upon a December

Happy December, all and sundry!

I'm wearing a SWEATER today, which makes me happy. It's in the fifties and cloudy and looks like rain, which equals winter in Phoenix. Might be going up north this weekend to catch some potential snow, which would make me happy. :-)

In update-ish news, I DID complete my 50K for NaNoWriMo. I finished on the 20th in time to enjoy a visit from my sister and her husband and to eat lots of turkey without writing-related guilt. I did not, however, reach the end of the book. There's probably 15-20K left to go, and my outline is reaaaaaalllllly sketchy at this point. Not sure where it stands in Writing Project Priority currently. I'll probably put off finishing it for a while, at least until I figure out the outline. I have reread parts of it already, and there's some glimmers of good scenes in there, so that's encouraging.

Also, as per my author bio in the last post, I'm participating in Pitch Wars, which is an awesome writing contest hosted by Brenda Drake, which you can read about here. I think I'm giving myself an ulcer by obsessing over the #PitchWars feed on Twitter…

Oh, and the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special was FANTASTIC, as was Catching Fire. Frozen is next on my to-watch list, I keep hearing good things.

So I guess I need to get back to the novel revision I put aside for NaNoWriMo… And after that, I'm thinking about turning my short story idea from earlier into the year into a novel. I think it could be really, really cool.

And that, as they say, is that!

Pitch Wars Author Bio!

I am SO excited to have thrown my hat into the ring for Pitch Wars this year! Jumping on the #PimpMyBio bandwagon as well, so here goes:

I've been writing since I was six years old. I entered lots of writing contests as a kid and submitted to the (small) pool of magazines that accepted children's stories back in the day. I got published in Stone Soup when I was thirteen, and won fourth place and an honorable mention, respectively, in the Written and Illustrated By… competition when I was fourteen and fifteen.

Since 2005, I've written almost six full novels and parts of three others.

My Pitch War submission is a novel I first drafted in January of 2010, and it took about six weeks to write. I creeped myself out in several parts whilst writing it, which I took to be a good sign.

I have a lot of favorite books, but if pressed I'd say my favorite is Return of the King. I adore Jane Austen, I love George Eliot's Middlemarch, and I'm completely obsessed with Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series (I need the next book NOW!!). A few years ago, I got to (briefly) meet Gail Carson Levine at a book talk, and she signed my copy of Ella Enchanted, which made my not-really-all-that-inner-twelve-year-old VERY happy.

I've been teaching piano lessons for almost fifteen years, and have a 6' 1" Yamaha grand named Prince Imrahil in the living room of the apartment I share with my awesome husband. It's not as crowded as you might think. :-)

I love seasons, rain, and trees, and I live in Gilbert, Arizona, which unfortunately has none of those things. Bring me to a rainy green forest and I'll be your friend for life. Fill that forest with black currant tea and Oreo cookies and books and cats, and we'll be BEST friends for life.

Also, I have an adorable kitty named Bertram:

Oh, and once I went to Edinburgh and found the TARDIS:

I think that about sums it up. :-)

Onward to the Pitch Wars!!!