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Weekly Check-In
I don’t even know what to say about this week. It was both productive and lazy. I worked on things every day, but not tons and tons. This update is going to be brief and a little anorexic because I forgot to do it….
Blogging.
The writing sex blogging series Suzan and I have been doing is going well. We’re pantsing some of it and other parts are really planned out. Any other blogging I’ve been doing has been light and well, not that impressive I know.
Revising.
My effort really has been here. I’ve been revising my zombie project and it’s been going well. I need to rewrite the ending of it so that it’s stronger but I’m hopeful about it!
Plotting.
Nothing to say here. Missed WWBC again this week and I’m more focused on wrapping up projects than starting new ones. I’ve jotted down some ideas but that’s about it.
Writing.
[talk about the weeks focus on writing]
Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: paranormal romance
Type: novel
Progress: This project has informed me that at 35K, it’s going to be a novel. I expect to wrap this draft up in 5-10K and then add to it. It’s not the best process for how to proceed, but I think that it’s the right decision to make.
What I read.
- Deadline by Mira Grant
Pictures
Books I bought this week…
This was a huge release week. There are three books in established series that I’ve been anxiously waiting.
Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh – This is the tenth installment of the Psy/Changeling series, and Oh My God it’s so amazing! I couldn’t have asked for a more exciting book. The romance was sizzling, there was tons of tension and action. Things have been building in the previous books and a lot of things really come to a head in this book. You get the romance of the wolf changeling alpha with a rogue psy-x. It’s incredible, I can’t gush about this enough.- Deadline by Mira Grant – Feed, the first book in this series, was my favorite book of 2010. The book blew me out of the water. It’s a political thriller, plus post-zombie apocalypse. I went in expecting a chilling zombie book and got way more than I bargained for. Things happened in that book that many authors would shy away from doing –
and it worked. I can’t wait to curl up with this book over the weekend, granted I’ll probably be sleeping with the lights on. Hello, zombies! - Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews – The fifth book in the Kate Daniel’s book, this is going into uncharted water. It is an urban fantasy series with a lot of magic and a dystopian element. In the previous book there was a romance arc climax that’s been building through the previous four books and I’m excited to see how that plays out and how the series arc progresses. You know from the previous book that Kate is going to get herself into loads of trouble. Then there’s the novella that’s set right before this book that comes out on Tuesday of this coming week, and the big subplot bomb that happened in the previous book. There’s a lot of questions rolling around in my head that boil down to: What happens next?!?
So what are you reading this weekend?
#ToBeReMo Kick Off!
I forgot to mention this, but today kicks off another edition of #ToBeReMo organized by my friend Suzan. For the official sign up blog go here. Unlike December, I’m going for Moderate, reading 4-6 books. My brain is too fried from the Savvy Boot Camp to do too much this month.
I need to read young adult books and research material so I won’t be that interesting. However, Mira Grant’s Deadline and Ilona Andrews Magic Slays are on their way to my apartment right now so there will be some awesome reads in store.
So what are you reading?
Weekly Check-In
This week was devoted to my mom’s cycling adventure, which means it kicked my ass and I wrote very, very little. I knew this going into the event, I mean, most people get a few hours sleep over the course of four days of cycling and crewing. I’m lucky I wrote what I did! Still, I always think I could do more, be better, etc.
Blogging.
This last week I only really wrote two blogs about what I learned from America’s Next Top Model. Super deep stuff, I know but lets face it: writing is most important this month, and blogging falls somewhere in the optional category.
Revising.
I did a pass on Decoy. I can’t really remember what day I did that, but I did it. It was mostly a spelling/grammar quick check to brush over it and see what I had and to eyeball my known plotting issues.
Plotting.
I’m rolling around ideas in my head but until today I haven’t worked on actual plotting this week. I want to do some work tonight for what I will hand in for Warrior Writer Boot Camp this week, but that’s something that can honestly wait a few days.
Writing.
Like I said above, writing time was little and precious. I wrote a lot on Monday and whatever night we stopped over in Sealy, Texas but other than that I wrote very, very little. Partly because the battery on my laptop is dead and I can’t stay unplugged for more than 30 minutes or else the laptop dies. If I had two hours of battery life there were several stretches of sitting around in the car waiting for cyclists to pedal by that I could have used.
Project: Decoy
Genre: zombie hunter romance
Type: novella
Progress: It’s done!! I finished it Monday, I believe. Wrote the ending, made myself tear up a little, and called it a night. There are a few plot holes I’ve noted but nothing major that can’t be worked out in revisions with a little whittling. Very happy with it, and really wanting to write the next installment. Better do my submission package for this quick!
Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: This project is really shaping out to be a lot of fun. I didn’t really go into it with anything more than the idea of, “I really want to use this lore I created, and I want to write about secret spies.” The plot is going to be fun and very action packed in the next few thousand words so here’s hoping I can create something that’s loads of fun! Which means that this is my current ‘Project’. The one I’ll focus all my effort on in the coming days to write and churn out lots o’ words. Also, it’s not really going to be called Booty-Call Bust, but I have no idea what to call it. My Boyfriend is a Super Spy and I Didn’t Know is a little long.
Project: Superhero
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I wanted to write this for the Samhain anthology call for later this year. I started trying to write this Tuesday while camped out in the hotel room but I couldn’t get into the head of the alpha male hero and everything just flopped. I have a story, but I think the characters are too weak to actually write. Since I was out and about without my usual books to use as research I didn’t try to write it. I put it aside to come back to this week and try to figure out what’s wrong and what isn’t working.
What I read.
- Apocalypse Scenario by Mira Grant
- Why I Let My Hair Grow Out by Maryrose Wood
- Eat Slay Love by Jesse Petersen (still reading it. amazing!)
Books I Bought This Week
I haven’t read as much as I wanted to, but that doesn’t keep me from buying books, lol! In these high stress times I run to novellas because they’re short, I can get through them and still do things with my day, and feel productive.
- Sanctuary by Sherri L. King – I searched ‘zombie’ at Ellora’s Cave and this came up. It wasn’t m/m, f/f, or manage, so I grabbed it. It is faeries and zombies.
- Rowdy by Amarinda Jones – Again, I searched ‘zombies’ at Ellora’s Cave, it fit my parameters so I grabbed it too.
- Enemy Games by Marcella Bernard – this is the second book in a series. Great science fiction romance.
- Feed by Mira Grant was on sale for like $3 in ebook stores so of course I grabbed a copy.
Apocalypse Scenario by Mira Grant – Short story put out by Orbit.- SEALed with a Kiss by Mary Margret Daughtridge – This is a series featuring Navy SEALs, it’s also up in stores for free right now which is a super smart marketing move to capitalize on the current popularity of that branch of the military. I got it because it was free, and…. yeah.
- Friendly Fire by Megan Hart – Novella from Carina Press about agents recovering from losing one of their own to friendly fire.
- The Sevenfold Spell by Tia Nevitt - Novella from Carina Press. This looks at the other characters in a fairy tale. Like, what happens to all of the people who made a living when all the spinning wheels were destroyed because of Sleeping Beauty? Haven’t gottent to it yet, but I’m looking forward to it!
- Journeyman’s Ride by Marie Harte - Novella from Carina Press. This is a steampunk story. I don’t know any more than that about it, lol.
Writing in a Zombie World & Drawing on Pop Culture Sources
So it’s Day 3 of the Boot Camp, second month of ROW 80, and I’m writing this blog way in advance so it’s kind of confusing for me.
Also, May is National Zombie Awareness Month. So be aware of zombies.
My first project for the boot camp is a novella called Decoy. I started it during last year’s Story a Day in May. I wanted to do something with zombies that embraced that lifestyle, daring danger and being reckless. I picked it up a few weeks ago and decided to go for a real plot this time. I always like writing zombie stuff, and I’m all for using other sources of inspiration. With zombies it’s getting harder and harder to twist the story to make it new and exciting, which is why this idea drew me back after almost a year. It’s the characters and their motivation that’s really special.
Since Friday I’ve been rewatching the tv show, The Walking Dead. I started watching it in the fall, but thanks to NaNo I never really watched it. As a side note, season 2 has been set for October of this year – yahoo!
The story I have planned is nothing like the show, but drawing on something from the genre I’m writing in is handy. I can see how society is translated into that situation. I’m not writing a zombie breakout story like The Walking Dead, I’m writing a post-rising story more in line of how Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series.
Because I’m embracing the whole, write what you know, my zombie story is done Texas style. If you’re not from Texas, heck, even if you aren’t American you’re still probably aware of the distinct Texas pride. It’s like they inject it into us at birth.
Since Texas was its own country prior to joining the US, there is still a certain juvenile glee in the idea that we could theoretically survive as our own country. There is an entire sect of people who believe that Texas was never even legally admitted into the USA. People in Texas believe strongly in owning guns, protecting our property, and independence.
In the event of a zombie infested world, there’s no other place in the country I would rather live. So my little zombie story is set in an independent Texas. Castle Laws are key. Overall it’s not a bad place to live as far as zombie infestations go.
But what about the zombies? Reading books like Warm Bodies, or the Newsflesh books, or Married With Zombies show you the history of how the zombies came to be. The zombies in Warm Bodies are created thanks to our culture. In both the Newsflesh and Married With Zombie trilogies the zombies are the product of a virus. Still yet in the Half-Past Dead anthology, Zoe Archer’s zombies were spiritual. In Night of the Living Trekkies they’re aliens. Movies run the gauntlet of zombies too. From the Resident Evil kind to the 28 Days/Weeks Later, Zombieland or any other series.
The overall accepted source of a zombie outbreak is medical these days. I think that of the above examples Zombieland is the only one that doesn’t explain how or why the zombies happened. If the movie wasn’t so funny it might be the most frightening one on the list for exactly that reason. Not knowing makes us see shadows where there aren’t any, monsters out of nothing.
There’s nothing wrong with knowing the established norms of a genre. I know that if I write my zombies as being the product of a plague, virus, aliens, or a spiritual something I’m in good company.
Different zombie cultures have abilities others do not. The Night of the Living Trekkies zombies have a hive mind. 28 Days/Weeks Later zombies are stronger, faster, and frightening. Resident Evil zombies evolve, become new things the longer they’re infected and consume. Some zombies can open doors, communicate, and perform some basic functions while others can only move forward. In Bianca D’Arc’s zombie paranormal romances the zombies develop claws because after death hair and nails continue to grow.
Don’t ask me why zombies fascinate me, they just do. It’s probably sick and twisted how much I enjoy creating a new zombie infested world, but I do. I think I enjoy the research the most.
