When September Ends

Well yikes, last day of September and I haven't posted in a while!

Things are pretty slow on the writing front, I fear. Kind of dragging my feet finishing up that sequel, most likely because I really don't know what happens at the end and I'm at the point where I kind of NEED to know so I can write it! Ack. This, friends, Romans, countrymen, is why I'm such an advocate for outlines…

I'm also angsting about what to write for NaNoWriMo. I'd pretty much settled on the vaguely Russian fairytale-mashup, but now I'm kind of pondering this other idea and I just don't KNOW which to do. HALLLP.

We're also moving down the street coming up in a couple of weeks, and I've been packing up the office (and the books. oh so many books) and it's just going to get seriously chaotic before it settles down again. I'm sure I'll feel much better when we're all settled into our new place—just got to survive the actual moving!

Also—and I want to do an actual review sometime soon—last week I finished the PHENOMENAL book The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski, and you guys I seriously loved it SO MUCH. It hit me right in the Queen's Thief series feels and I kinda felt like it was written just for me, and there's two more books in the series but they're not out yet, and the second one doesn't get published until MARCH, and I just want it right now because SERIOUSLY IT WAS SO AMAZING.

Anyway. Quite possibly my favorite read of 2014!

Hope you all have a fantastic last day of September!

POV Experiments

First off, a brief update!

Alas, I did not get picked for Pitch Wars **cue buckets of tears** but I DID receive some pretty sweet feedback. So… to the traditional querying wagon I go, Batman! I will also be participating in PitMad next Tuesday, and have all my pitches scheduled and ready to go on Tweet Deck. Hoorah! Basically I'll be tweeting (well, Tweet Deck will!) twice an hour all day with variations of my 140-character pitch. So beware, Twitter followers!

In writing news, I've decided to keep my fairy tale retelling/mashup for NaNoWriMo, so in the meantime I'm going to finish the novel I was working on last November (which I started way back in 2009). I already wrote over a thousand words on it today! Feels good. And it'll be interesting, too, as I'm not ENTIRELY sure how this thing is going to end…

Which leads me to today's ramblings about writing.

I like to try a little something different with each new book that I write, because 1) I get bored easily and 2) I like the challenge! Mostly, the "something different" has to do with POV.

Once upon a time in 2005, I finished my very first actually novel-length novel. I wrote it in close third person from a couple of different POVs.

Later that year I wrote a novel during NaNoWriMo, and chose first-person-past. It was my first heavy-fantasy-elements book, and I pulled a shocker POV change at the end to try something drastic.

My next novel I went back to close third with a couple more POV characters, and occasional sections of myths from an omniscient POV which gradually wound into the main storyline (if that sounds like the novel I'm currently querying, that's because IT IS! :-))

Next I tried out a dual first-person POV, partially in present tense, partially in past tense. It was a MONSTER of a novel and still remains an absolute mess, but it was super fun to write.

Next I went back into my myth-universe and returned to close third, with intermingled omniscient sections following an at-first-seemingly-random woman in an enchanted dream world.

Which I think brings me to 2009 and the novel I'm currently working on finishing. Back to close third again, but somehow I wound up with SEVEN viewpoint characters. Balancing all their arcs is a huge challenge, but it's really fun to be able to hop around to the different storylines.

After that I did a dual first-person POV in past tense—and one of the POV characters was blind. That was a SUPER interesting challenge, focusing on textures, sounds, etc. instead of sights.

So anyway. A little random look into my experiments with various POVs/tenses. I can't decide which one I like to write best—I think different things work for different stories, and I try to be true to the voice I hear in my head when I'm first brainstorming/outlining (I hear voices in my head, guys—run away!!).

I think my fairytale retelling/mashup novel will be first person, partially present tense, partially past. As a side-note, I generally dislike reading present tense, because often the writing sticks out to me and feels kind of awkward. There are some books I've read, however, that pull off present-tense so well I'm not even aware that it's happening. That takes some major writing chops, people! We'll see how I do. :-)

Happy weekend, and happy writing!

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!

That's a Wrap!

You guys.

You guys.

SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS, guess what?

I finished my revision!!!!!!!!!!!!!

**cue confetti**

I'm so very, very excited at where this manuscript has ended up. Such a long haul, but it's been worth it!! With a few breaks (for revising a different book and drafting part of another) I've been at this rewrite since April 2013. 0_o But I'm finally finished and it feels GREAT.

And you know what else I'm excited about? My word count is down to 95,000!!!! That's 10K shorter than Draft 4, and, I'm embarrassed to say it, 23K shorter than Draft 3. :-D

So there you have it. I FINISHED AND I'M SO EXCITED!!! Off to dream about future projects, and stalk the #PitchWars feed on Twitter. :-)

All printed out and shiny!!

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.

Book Review: Shadow and Bone

Pardon me for a moment, but I need to gush about Shadow and Bone.

I finished it last night at midnight and I'm still experiencing a book hangover. I'm giddy with ALL the feelings!!!!!!

This is not a very coherent review so far.

I knew practically nothing about this book going into it besides I was in love with cover, it was vaguely set in Russia, and that a lot of people raved over it. It's kind of cool reading a book and having zero idea what it's about!

Anyway, so the story follows Alina, who finds out she is a Grisha (somebody who has magical powers) and gets taken to the palace to be trained. The Darlking, a powerful Grisha who's second-in-command to the king, thinks Alina has the power to take down the Shadowfold, which is basically this band of darkness filled with ravenous dragon-like creatures called the Volcra that enjoy feasting on human flesh. The Shadowfold divides the kingdom, and the Darkling hopes Alina can destroy it and rejoin the land. The Darkling is dangerous and intoxicating and fascinating. There's also Mal, the boy Alina grew up with. He serves as a tracker in the army, and their friendship is the force that drives the novel. And that's all the plot summary I can give for fear of spoilers!

The characterization, plot and pacing (I am in awe of the pacing, for serious) are phenomenal, the writing is lovely, the setting vivid. It's a fantastic, smart story, executed to perfection. I can't wait to read the rest of the series!

ETA: My synopsis of this novel makes it sound kind of cliché. It's not. The story goes to dark, twisty places, and Alina is a fascinating, well-drawn character. She's flawed. She makes mistakes. She's not perfect. But I empathized with her in a very real way. Also, parts of this book strongly reminded me of an old favorite, Crown Duel, which made me love it even more.

Nook Love

You guys! LOOK WHAT MY AMAZING HUSBAND GOT ME FOR MY HALF-BIRTHDAY!!!

That's right! A Nook GlowLight!!

So excited!!

I'm already completely head over heels! First book I downloaded was Pride & Prejudice (because you always need Jane Austen at your fingertips), second was Shadow and Bone (which I've been wanting to read for a while. Love it so far!). I'll be trying hard to control my downloads so I don't accidentally bankrupt us. :-D

Anyways, I LOVE this thing. It is just the best! Thank you, awesomest of all awesome husbands!!

YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!!!!!!!