IWSG: December

It's that time of month again for the IWSG monthly blog hop. Our fearless and tireless leader, Alex J. Cavanaugh started this supportive group more than three years ago. The group is a safe place where writers can share concerns, offer advice and expertise while growing a group of online friends and support. Find the entire list on the IWSG website or join the IWSG Facebook page.

This month is special for IWSG group as it marks the release of the book on writing containing advice and expertise from more than 100 members of our awesome group. The IWSG Guide to Publishing and Beyond is now available for free at most online book retailers. There really is something for everyone.

Hopefully, those of you doing NaNo have recovered. A few bloggers I follow rocked and made their 50,000 words goal with time to spare. Congrats to you all on your accomplishment and thank you for inspiring me.

I didn't participate in NaNo and probably never will but I did do tons of writing during the month of November. My romance publisher gave me a nudge to finish the next book in my Warriors of Gaviron Series so they could get it officially on the schedule. Frantic writing ensued but I learned that when I shut out all distractions like family, TV and even music, I could write thousands of words per day. After the terrific success of The Warrior and the Biologist, my romance publisher now has The Warrior and the Governor up for pre-order on their site and on Amazon. And they did a great job on the cover.

What has inspired you lately? Have you checked out the IWSG Guide to Publishing and Beyond? Have you learned something from its pages? Did you win NaNo?

Series Bible

I write my books in series and I love reading books in series. My fantasy series are one story arc carried out over three or four books. My romance series are each complete stories on their own but occur in the same world and always with connections between characters. For example, in my Recon Marine romance series, all the heroes were connected by being part of the same disbanded regiment of genetically engineered soldiers. My latest series, Warriors of Gaviron, deals with the three warrior survivors of an alien race who come to the rescue of distant Earthling colonies.

One of the ways I keep track of the fantasy and futuristic worlds I create is by starting what I call a bible for each one. I use small writing journals where I write things that are not the plot, but other details of these fictional places and characters. Each main character has their own page where their age, physical traits and a short note about their fears and goals. On the page after theirs are related characters like family or work colleagues, etc.

Other pages will have special vocabulary or descriptions of the magic or science in that series. There will be climate facts and geographical notes and even a map. In my science fiction novels that often take place on other planets, I need to know how long each day is, are there moons and how close the next human colony is.

As those of you who are published know, you might have to write something promotional about a book long after you've moved onto the next book. Looking over the facts in the bible always helps me get back into the heads of my characters. I like to use durable little journals for my bibles. This picture shows just a few of them. I pick them up for one to two dollars at stores like Michael's craft store, BAM clearance table and even Walmart during their back to school sales.

Like most of you who live north of Florida, yesterday was a brutal day temperature wise. Here's a picture of the cozy spot where I prepared this blog post and answered some emails. Only problem was that I had to sit on the floor.

Don't forget to visit Alex J. Cavanaugh and add his upcoming release, Dragon of the Stars, to your Goodreads list and enter a contest to win a copy.

Have you heard the term, 'bible,' used in reference to the writing process for series? How do you keep everything in your fictional world straight? Were you chilly yesterday? Some wisdom for The Old Farmer's Almanac: According to scientists, Wednesday if usually the warmest day of the week. Agree?

Past and Future

Yesterday was Veterans Day here in the states. I always feel a sad mixture of pride in those who and are now serving, worry about those in harm's way currently, and loss at those who are gone. I miss my father more on Veterans Day than any other day of the year. Like many WWII vets, he seldom spoke of the war, but he lost friends there. And those that came home built something great. Hope you thought about those vets for at least a little while yesterday.

My daughter has been getting more blogging experience and wrote an interesting post about her trip into the Sahara. They were fortunate to be out on the sands when the first rain storm in seven years rolled through. I'm counting the days until she comes home. Skype isn't the same as sharing my desk with her while we keep each other from getting work done. Skype isn't finishing each other's sentences and laughing until we cry. Oops, there I go again.

Today, Pat Hatt is guesting on the IWSG Blog. I don't know what his topic is but I know it will be interesting and informative. Stop by and meet Pat if you don't know him already.

Did you know that the A to Z Challenge hosts run a blog all year long. On Thursday, they'll be introducing the new hosts for next year's challenge. Stop in tomorrow and meet them.

Some good news from my publisher. My latest science fiction romance, The Warrior and the Biologist, sold lights out on Amazon last month. She urged me to finish that next book so they could get into edits. Pressure.... but of the good kind. And in the way those things happen, all my other books had excellent months on Amazon as Warrior pulled them upward with it. Warrior has spent most of the past six weeks in the top 20 of science fiction romance. I would do a happy dance if I weren't so tired from raking leaves.

Did you do anything special for Veterans Day? Do you know Pat Hatt? Do you follow the A to Z blog throughout the year? Have any 'good' writing pressure lately?

Not In Kansas Anymore

By the time this post goes live, I hope I'm almost done driving through Kansas. After flying to Colorado on Tuesday, I helped my son pack up his apartment and stuff it all into his little car. His golf job is still seasonal this year so he's moving home to PA for a few months until the snow melts. Hopefully, he'll get a promotion and be year round next year.

Many people complain about the sameness of driving through Kansas, but I love the wide open road. I hope it's not raining like it was when we drove west last spring. My point in sharing this is that I'll be late visiting blogs. Hopefully, our hotel on the east side of St. Louis will have good Wifi.

My current WIP is the second book in my Warriors of Gaviron series. I've had to spend some time away from it because of other commitments but I'm really excited about my characters as I enter the midway point in the novel. The first book in the series, The Warrior and the Biologist, has been sitting in the top 100 in a couple of science fiction categories on Amazon for a few weeks now. Wish I could write a little faster.

One of the commitments I've been distracted by is IWSG Guide to Publishing and Beyond. I can only say, Wow! The book is going to be super. By being an 'assistant' editor ( I made that position up) I cheated and jotted down all kinds of interesting ideas during the most recent read-through. Of course, if you visited around to the different blogs on the first Wednesday of October you already garnered all that information. And visit the IWSG blog today for a special guest.

I hope to read some of the books I have on my Kindle on my road trip. More than three hours of flight and a two hour layover should give me some time to read and even do some reviews.

I'm getting very excited about the movie, Interstellar. Once I move James back home, I'll have someone to go see it with. My husband doesn't care for science fiction movies and my lovely sons like going to the movies with me. (Probably because I always pay though I'd like to think it's more than that.)

A forwarded letter to my daughter from Boston arrived on Monday, addressed to her last semester's residence. It was a demand that she appear for jury duty in December. Apparently, Massachusetts is so desperate for jurors that they make college students miss class to serve even though the kids are from out of state. Now you know my daughter is currently in Morocco and won't be back in the states until after the date she's supposed to serve. It was a crazy 'out of the blue' kind of thing and accompanied by two pages of threats if she didn't comply to their demands to serve. How can a city the size of Boston not be able to fill a jury pool and need to take advantage of the kids attending college there?

Did you find some writing goodies during the last IWSG Wednesday? Looking forward to Interstellar? Do you take your eReader when you travel or physical books? Ever been called to serve jury duty out of state?

Finding the Zen

Today is my turn at IWSG. I hope you'll stop over for a visit. I'm discussing some ways to keep your word count up. You can add your own thoughts on how you do it.

As I look over my schedule for the next six months I feel a little, maybe a lot, overwhelmed. Lots of things going on. I would bore you with the list but it seems to get longer every day. On one hand I'm thrilled by all the good things happening. Flip side is concern that I won't be able to keep up. So I'm giving myself a pep talk.

As I work on my current WIP, I'm worried it's not of the quality I expect. I keep telling myself that self-doubt is only my inner editor at work. I need to that person to quiet down.

I've been getting a little anxious about one project that I haven't heard back on from one of my publishers. Patience, I remind myself. When I first started writing, all submissions to publishers went by snail mail. Multiple trips to the post office and lots of money involved in getting a double-spaced manuscript to an editor. So I only had to send an email and try to quell my impatience.

I've been working slowly on building my following on my author's page on Facebook. Facebook can really be a time suck and a place where you see some really irritating posts. Some people use social media to rant on and on about their political views and give the impression that if you don't agree with them you must be an idiot. I calmly un-follow them. Little bit of zen-ish behavior for me.

I'm happy to announce my latest science fiction romance, The Warrior and The Biologist is now available at all major digital book stores. As usual my publisher keeps new releases exclusive to their site for the first month. A good idea that earns more money for them and for me. In the book's first weekend out in the wide world its sales surprised me in a pleasant, zen way.

I also had the pleasure of attending a unique book signing yesterday at a local independent book store for my friend, Heather Heyford. A Taste of Chardonnay is the first book in her Napa Wine series from Kensington. Heather had an ice sculpture of a bottle of chardonnay, real wine, cheese and fruit. It was lovely.

Any thing interfering with your zen this week? What are your reasons for un-following someone on social media? Do you remember having to send submissions to editors and agents by snail mail? Have you attended a unique book signing? Do you have some wisdom on word count to share on IWSG?

New Moon and New Book

Today is the new moon and I also have a new book released by my romance publisher. The Warrior and the Biologist is the first in my new series of science fiction romance novels. Mankind must trust their continued existence to a mysterious alien warrior when a predator impervious to all known weapons descends on their space colonies.

 The series is called the Warriors of Gaviron and the next two books are in development. That means I'm writing some really bad first drafts and hoping to have the second book ready by the end of the year.

As per my other books, my publisher sells new releases exclusively from their website for the first few weeks after their release. This practice makes more money for them and for me. It also takes advantage of their regular customers who are quite numerous. Small publishers come and go. New Concepts Publishing, though not the largest small publisher, has been around longer than most of them. Some of you may have heard of the latest small publisher struggling with revenue. Ellora's Cave has been around for quite a while also but they've cut staff and their authors are worried. Here's more detail in an article on Publishers Weekly.

The last book in my Recon Marine Series, The Marine's Doctor, is now available at all major ebook retailers and is enjoying good sales on Amazon and has garnished some nice reviews here and there. It wraps up that series and answers all the threads of that futuristic world.

I'm looking forward this week to the release of Brent Weeks newest book, The Broken Eye. It's the third book in his Lightbringer series. Can you tell I love to read and write series. I'm also looking forward the DVD release of season one of The Musketeers, the latest remake of that story by BBC America. It's very entertaining if you haven't checked it out yet.

Have you heard about Ellora's Cave and their troubles? Any new books or movies coming out that you're looking forward to? Should I be worried that the warrior on my book might look like a terrorist instead of an alien using a mask to protect himself from Earthling germs?

Plan Your Work

I may have mentioned one of my husband's favorite sayings before. 'Plan your work and work your plan.' It's used a lot around here and all six of our children use now in their adult life. One of his other favorites that they quote a lot is 'this country is built on hard work.' Usually they use those quotes where they have so much work to do they can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I might have mumbled those quotes to myself over the last week though colored with a bit of desperation.

I put in some long hours and reached all my deadlines. I wrote a post for IWSG on high concept fiction and prepared a post for this blog. I finished the edits on my upcoming release of The Warrior and the Biologist. These were the most extensive edits I've done for one of my romances and thanks to my editor's suggestion, it is a much better book now. And I made the deadline by about 24 hours to write an article for the newsletter of my local writers' group. Long hours but then again, this country is built on hard work.

When I asked my daughter, a junior at Boston University, to read over the article I wrote, she went all elitist on me about my lack of an Oxford comma where I could have used one. What followed was a delightful and spirited debate about using the serial comma. If you don't have a side in the Oxford Comma debate, here's a link with some pros and cons. Incidentally, since my daughter attends Boston University, rivals of Harvard, she would never call it the Harvard Comma like some people do. But by attending a university in the northeast, our professors are very pro-Oxford Comma.

Do you like our family sayings? Did you meet your deadlines this week? Do you have a side on the Oxford Comma debate? Do you call it by that name or another? Don't forget to visit IWSG for a special guest today.

Friday Wisdom

This busy week is ending with a lot of work still on my plate. I have a final read through of my next science fiction romance, The Warrior and the Biologist, to get back to my editor by next Wednesday. I have an outline for an article I want to write for my local RWA chapter's newsletter due by Tuesday. And I have to get a blog post ready for the IWSG blog on Monday.

That is just my writers' work. For the second summer in a row, it manages to rain, a lot, a few times per week which means to the lawn and the weeds grow and grow and grow. I have a sizable property which means two hours of mowing and lots more than that of landscaping care. Add to that celebrating my husband's birthday, attending a celebration of our friends' anniversary and doing some shopping with my daughter for her semester abroad, and I'm pretty busy this weekend.

I can't let you enter the weekend without some shared wisdom from the trusty Old Farmer's Almanac. If there is a most common food that kids don't care for it might be peas, but did you know that 'Peas were a bedtime snack for royalty in 17th century France?' If you've ever eaten peas fresh from the garden, you would find them very tasty.

I don't know if any of my readers live in Vermont, but the painted turtle is the state republic of Vermont? And for good luck, you should put a coin in your home's foundation as it is being built. My father did that when we built an addition to our barn for the young stock. If my dad did it, it must be true.

What is keeping you busy this weekend? Ever have peas fresh from the garden? Would you have guessed they were a royal snack? Is there a coin in the foundation of your home? Any odd luck charms that you can think of? Want to mow my grass for me?