How New Zealand Will Impact The Objects of Inwit

Well, NaNoWriMo has officially come to an end.

Thank God.

I failed at recording a video every third day…well, not as much failed, as just failed to publish…I get nervous when people can actually see me, which was something I was trying to overcome, but I drown in self doubt.

Anyway.

The current Tides cover, though there will be changes made 🙂

Now that the first draft of Tides of Darkness is FINALLY done, I’m working my way into the editing stage. In April, I’m planning a travel period/potential move to New Zealand, because I really think that country is going to influence me more than I could ever imagine. A lot of people ask me why, and apart from “It’s beautiful” and “It’s the least corrupt country in the world,” it’s sometimes hard for me to fully explain why it is I think this country is going to be the source for all of my dreams to come true.

Halfway Through NaNo, And…

Somehow, someway, by the writing gods who look down on all of us wary contestants, I have hit 50,000 words.

My mind is blown. I don’t know how I did it.

I still have so much left to do in this draft, but I can’t wait until it’s done and I can share this with everyone!

Happy NaNo!

Connecting to Your Characters (NaNoWriMo Day 9)

I cannot believe NaNoWriMo has only been going on for ten days.

I am very ready for this month to be over.

I’m 33,000 words in, so I’m only 50,000 away from my personally 83,000 goal. So I suppose now NaNo can actually start for me?

On Horses and Proper Grammar

NaNo is still in full swing, and I’ve somehow managed to hit 24,000 words within this last week. It’s been a crazy one, but here were some things I’ve learned.

Enjoy, and happy NaNo! I’m going to be looking for beta readers once I get done with this draft, then re-read it for a revise. If you’re interested, let me know, and if you still need my first book it’ll be on sale at Amazon all month for only $0.99, and it’s free on Goodreads all month, too. At some point it will also be on iBooks.

On The Third Day of NaNo, My Fingers Said to Me…

Please, stop the typing, please let us rest, and for GOD’S SAKE STOP THE SINGIIIING.

Am I too excited for Christmas?

In light of keeping my fingers reserved for typing out my NaNo manuscript for this month, I have uploaded another podcast for your viewing pleasure. I’m shooting for 84,000 words this month, but I also don’t want to just forget about the blog. So, if you’re participating in NaNo, take a few minutes to get some extra advice and inspiration, and keeping plugging along!

Good luck to those of you doing NaNo this year, and seriously — try that root beer trick.

Immortality Awaits On Sale Now!

Hello all!

With NaNo just around the corner, and my sequel hot in the works (and hopefully finished by the end of next month — we’ll see how that goes), I’m going to be looking for some beta readers pretty soon.

With that in mind, I can’t have beta readers if you haven’t read the first book!

It’s on sale in the Kindle store for $0.99 — I wanted to set it to free, but I didn’t want to submit exclusively for the Kindle. Because of that, it’s available for a free download in Goodreads. I’m going to run this all through November, so if you’d like to grab yourself a copy, now’s your chance! And if you’d like to beta read (because you liked the first book), then feel free to contact me directly.

Happy NaNo!

The Outline

We are only 8 short days away from NaNoWriMo.

Some of you may be scared. Some of you may be wondering what you’re going to do, still. Some of you (hopefully most of you) are excited, ready to embark on this adventure. A lot of you are first timers, and a lot of you are seasoned professionals.

If you’re stuck in the scared boat, especially if you don’t know what you’re going to do, don’t stress. You can get a lot done in 8 days…if this was NaNo, you’d have already (theoretically) produced 13,336 words.

One of the most important and essential things you can do for yourself is to create an outline. That seems like a relatively “duh” kind of idea, but I know a lot of people who ignore it. When I wrote my first book, and when I went through my first round of NaNo, I did. I just wrote from my head, let the story flow through me, and only wrote whenever the inspiration hit.

That was before I took writing seriously.

15 Minutes a Day Keeps the NaNo Monsters Away

NaNoWriMo is just around the corner. The time when writers —  professional, amateur, novice, and the whole of everyone in between — come together to pump out a 50,000 word manuscript (or 50,000 words of a manuscript) in a mere thirty days. It’s a nightmare. But a nightmare that, somehow, year after year attracts all of us writers and really pushes us to our limits, as well as teaches us what exactly we’re capable of doing in thirty days.

This is on a real thermos in the NaNo shop. Get yours at https://store.nanowrimo.org/merchandise/nanowrimo-nutritional-facts-travel-cup

I will be entering my second round of NaNo this year, and as it creeps closer, I’m starting to question what I was thinking doing it again in the first place.

If you’ve never done NaNo, or heard about NaNo, or anything of the like, don’t let the 50,000 mark fool you. It may (or may not) sound easy, but if broken down, it comes out to 1,667 words a day. For some of you, you’re lucky if you can produce 300.

When to Call Yourself A “Professional”

When you’re just starting out as an author, and you look through Amazon at the 25,887,169 paperback books, 8,996,868 hardback books, and 1,594,571 Kindle books (at the time of this post’s publication), it can be quite daunting to encourage yourself to get out there. That’s a lot of other voices to compete with, and that’s a large crowd to stand out from.

But what is a number? Broken down further, if you’re a fantasy writer like me, you’re only competing against 310,288 books. If you’re a romance writer, you’ve only got 486,074. If you’re a young adult novelist, you’re only up against 318,631 others. Still quite the competition, but much easier to make yourself heard.

Regardless of the numbers you’re up against, most of what it takes to become a “successful” author/writer comes down to your mentality. Do you consider yourself #310,288/310,288, or #1?

The Shadow Self

This post contains spoilers for the ending of my novel, Immortality Awaits. If you have not read my novel, this will either ruin everything for you, or, I’d hope, get you interested. If you haven’t got a copy yet and would like to, it is available here.

The first image I ever had in my mind that made me want to write Immortality Awaits was that of a shadow, which eventually made its way into two shadows known as Varnio and Xandio. I saw Xandio floating above a group of people, sticking to the ceiling with his long, tattered black robe swaying in a gentle breeze as various lightning flashes illuminated him. I saw the image as though it was in a film, and the camera was on the ground pointed up. I thought it was truly horrific, really, and it caught my attention enough that I had to write toward it. Where did it come from? Why was it chasing them? What was it besides a shadow?

We all have a side to us that we never want anyone to see. The side that houses all of our bitter thoughts. All of our negative emotions. The “dark side” we oftentimes even deny of ourselves. According to psychologist C.G. Jung, the shadow self mostly consists of the “primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envy, anger or rage, and due to its unenlightened nature, completely obscured from consciousness.”

This, in its essence, represents Varnio and Xandio, who represent Donovan and Druin’s shadow selves in physical manifestation, posed as a challenge to each other. (Trust me, I know that sounds complicated.)