NaNoWriMo Day 8

The Words: 2666 words total for the day.

Half of this was written alongside my 10-year-old daughter, doing word sprints. She really spurs me on! The other half was written in a couple of solo sprints earlier in the day.

The Story: Today’s writing was mostly a long conversation between this storyline’s two major characters, in an attempt to avoid cliched miscommunications. A friendship deepened as they were able to celebrate a big event in one of their lives. Then, just as I was about to go on to bring in the one Main Event all of the storylines revolve around, I realized I needed to stop to explain how one of the characters left things with her dad. It will probably be ordered a little differently when I revise this draft, because it’s a bit awkward right now, on the cusp of a big intrigue, but then wait, let’s get domestic first.

Total word count: 20,262

If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 8, 2010!

Outcast Release Date

Big news!! Outcast, the second book in the Pithea series, is going to be released on December 1st as both paperback and e-book. I will share a link on that date (or soon after, because Amazon doesn’t always work on a self-published author’s timetable). See the synopsis below, or check out the book on Goodreads.

Deep in the desert of Pithea lives an order of mercenaries. Assassins, thieves—they’ll do anything for a price. They are known in whispers and rumors as the Class of Morano. To this unconventional family belongs one Natos Morano, a member since birth. When a woman he’s never met kidnaps him in order to convince him to leave the order, he will be forced to choose between the only family he’s ever known and his true family that is long gone.

Remiel Azrael thinks his choice is easy when he discovers a woman in desperate need. But sometimes the noblest intentions result in the most unfavorable repercussions. And when the woman’s situation turns out to be more dangerous than he realized, Remiel comes face to face with a demon he thought he’d buried.

NaNoWriMo Day 7

The Words: 2635 words total for the day. I’m now caught back up to where I should be with my personal goal of 2500 words per day.

All of my words today were written alongside my 10-year-old daughter, dong word sprints. We did a few with the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter, and a few of our own when the timing didn’t work out with the feed. We prefer 10-minute sprints, because her hands start to hurt if we go much longer than that without a break. 

The Story: The plot took a big step forward today as the main character in this storyline made a huge decision and executed it. I’d just gotten to the beginning of the fallout from that decision, and will continue with that tomorrow.

Total word count: 17,596

If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 7, 2010!

NaNoWriMo Day 6

The Words: 3531 words total for the day. Because of how I’ve been pushing to get words in last-minute recently, I made sure to do some writing this afternoon, getting about 800 words.

My 10-year-old daughter has been saying she wants to write when I write, but hadn’t up to today. She started a story about a birthday party last year, got about a page done, and stopped. Today, she insisted that she wanted to do some sprints with me. So after supper, we both joined in on a couple of sprints with the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter. Then right before she went to bed, we did a few more sprints.

She loves doing them and wants to keep writing with me this month. She even said that she’s glad she realized how much she loves it now, when there’s still so much time left. And I read her story so far. It’s got some really funny moments in it!

The Story: I feel like I kind of rambled a bit as I tried to get the story back on track after the characters had some conversations that can’t be in the story yesterday. Then suddenly, I had an idea about how to insert some drama, which will make the person who’s basically been the MC so far seem a lot more interesting. Though I may have to make some tweaks to her personality earlier in the story to make this work. This wasn’t in my outline, which is fine, but I am a little worried it will derail things in a way I do not want. We’ll see where it goes, though.

Total word count: 14,961

If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 6, 2010!
And in case you need some extra inspiration, check out the 2nd episode of the NaNoMusical!

Book Review: A New Leaf

A New Leaf
Cape Light
#4
by Thomas Kinkade & Katherine Spencer

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Christian drama

It’s near the end of winter in Cape Light and a time for new beginnings for many of its residents. This includes the newest resident, Dr. Matthew Harding, who has just moved to town with his teenage daughter, hoping to start a new life three years after his wife’s death. Molly Willoughby is toying with the idea of starting a new business, Sophie Potter has to figure out how to move on after her ailing husband is gone, and a controversy from many years past shakes things up for Tucker Tulley.

One of the best things about this book is that the story moved away from the Warwick family, after 3 books about them in some capacity. They were in the background, which was fine, but the main storyline in this book involved Dr. Harding and Molly Willoughby. Overall, it was a decent read. Parts of it were better than others, and some characters were better than others.

The romance thread in this story didn’t draw me in like it probably should have. I liked how both grew as individuals and how they had a hand in helping each other see what they needed to work on. But even by the end, I didn’t feel much chemistry between them. They seemed more like really good friends. And there was an obstacle in there that seemed completely pointless.

On another story front, I was appalled by Fran Tulley’s actions in the book, even if she did feel bad about it later. And Tucker began to wear on me after a while too, since most of his own thoughts were about how uncertain he was of his feelings and actions at pretty much every step of the way.

In the end, the book was decent, but I didn’t love it enough to continue this series that has been mostly just okay so far. It feels like a good stopping point anyway, though, because all of the books after this are Christmas-themed, and the final page of this book provided a nice wrap-up to the first 4 books. I don’t know if that was intentional or not–maybe the series wasn’t originally meant to continue? However, I do have a copy of book #9, and with Christmas coming up and feeling like I have a good enough introduction to the series and the town, I do still plan to read that book, most likely my final go at the Cape Light series.

Find out more about A New Leaf

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

NaNoWriMo Day 5

The Words: 2810 words total for the day. I planned to write another 500 words over my personal daily goal of 2500 again today, to make up for day 3’s dismal word count, but I almost didn’t even write 2500.

I wrote about 500 in the early evening, before my normal evening rituals kicked in. That all went a little later than normal tonight, because my husband got home from work a little later. And before I knew it, once everything was settled down, it was 11 pm, and I still only had 500 words! So I sat down and just got going and managed to get 2200 words in a little under an hour.

The Story: The two major characters who have been conversing through letters finally met in person. Then they took the conversation in a way that I didn’t like, because it kinda throws a wrench in their motivations for the next scene or two. We’ll see how that all shakes out later. Because I was trying to write a lot of words in a small amount of time, most of what I wrote today was dialog without much action amongst it. But to be fair, I often leave that stuff to add in later, so it will be about like normal for a first draft.

Total word count: 11,430

If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 5, 2010!

NaNoWriMo Day 4

The Words: 3066 words total for the day. I had to make up a little for yesterday’s dismal word count, so I wrote 500 more than my personal daily goal of 2500. I did not stay up all night, but still spent a good amount of today recovering from the small amount of sleep. I didn’t start writing until around 7:30, and then did a chunk here, a chunk there, finally finishing at around 11 pm.

The Story: There were a few letters written between a couple of major characters today, and now we’re going to an engagement party at a very large, fancy house. I may have bitten off more than I can chew with that, but I’ll be vague or completely skip descriptions for now, to avoid being slowed down during NaNo. I stopped writing right before the two major characters who have been writing letters back and forth are about to meet in person for the very first time.

Total word count: 8620

If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 4, 2010!

NaNoWriMo Day 3

The Words: 385 words total for the day, and I’m calling it at 11 pm. A combination of having a lot of things to get done at home today (mostly in the kitchen) and election-night distractions made it a difficult day to write.

I also have to go to bed, like, an hour ago, because I have to be up at 5 am to take some family members to the airport. So…I’m either going to go to bed right now, or I’m going to stay up until 5 am and get some extra writing in then. It remains to be seen which of these things happens.

But at least I did some and kept my streak. And I’m still on par for the normal NaNoWriMo word count, because I wrote extra the last 2 days.

The Story: I made sure to figure out where I was supposed to be in the storyline that I started on Monday, and wrote a little more of that today. I began the first letter of many that a major character will write to one of the main characters, though it didn’t go the way I’d planned.

Total word count: 5554

If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 3, 2010!

NaNoWriMo Day 2

The Words: 2591 words total for the day. I wrote a little after midnight last night, as I often do, to get a jump start on the next day’s writing. Because our neighbors are having the roof and siding replaced, we’re consistently being woken up earlier than I normally have to (no job outside the home, daughter is homeschooled, and I’m a night owl), so I wrote for 25 minutes, tapping away on my Neo while my husband slept, then read a little, and went to bed much earlier than normal.

The rest of the words came in sporadic bursts here and there throughout the day today, some on my Neo in my bedroom, some on my PC.

The Story: When I went upstairs to write for a while before bed, I failed to make sure I knew where I’d last left off. I had no clue where I was in the story and didn’t want to go back downstairs to look at the saved file on my computer. So I just started into another character’s storyline. I had specifically planned to stick to one storyline until it was done, or until I got bored, this year, since last year I went back and forth between two storylines just about every day. But alas, the only thing I could do with no idea of where I’d left off was to start at the beginning of a new storyline.

And then I went totally off outline, which I thought was fine at first, but realized that it was also quite out-of-character for this person. And I didn’t want that, so I flagged a chunk for deletion and went back to where I was still with the outline to keep writing.

Total word count: 5168

If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 2, 2010!

October in Review

I read 14 books last month, which did break my previous record for books in one month by 1, but the page per book average was lower than normal for me (a lot of short books). Still, considering the reading slump I went through over the summer, I’d say I’m back in full swing. (Though NaNoWriMo being this month, I’m sure I’ll read a lot less this month, but at least it’ll be for a good reason.)

Here are the books I read in October:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (4 / 5)
The Sky Above Us by Sarah Sundin (5 / 5)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (5 / 5)
The Scorch Trials by James Dashner (2.5 / 5)
The Lost Lieutenant by
(2 / 5)
(2 / 5)

(3.5 / 5)

Redshirts by John Scalzi
Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery (5 / 5)
The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson

This list includes 3 ARCs and 1 re-read. My favorite book from October was Anne’s House of Dreams. I finished 1 series, continued 2 series, and started 2 series. My ever-changing short list of to-be-reads, as well as a flag for the book I’m currently reading and an ongoing list of those I’ve read and posted about can be found here.

I’m also keeping my Goodreads page updated with a more extensive list of to-be-reads. Despite my almost too-long TBR list, I’m always looking for more to add. Feel free to offer suggestions of your favorites or just recent reads you enjoyed.