Category: Nanowrimo 2015

Thursday is apologies?

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

I know I missed my Wednesday Writer’s cafe the last two weeks. I’ve been running the blog on autopilot. But I think I am out of the fog now.

So I’m just gonna run it down quick and easy for you.

-Got my first pass critique back. It was bad. I won’t lie. Started rewriting my disaster of a book. I suspect it will take several passes on this one. Publication may or may not happen this fall as planned. I’ll keep you updated.

-February Nano to Publish class went well. The follow along summary will be up this weekend.

-I got sick twice in the last 3 weeks, throwing off my yoga schedule but I’m back on track.

-We reorg’d the coop and now I will be the VP of Education. Fun role, I hope.

-Somehow I am now teaching three classes at the coop next year, LOL. Assuming I get kids who want the classes I am offering, but one is a lock for sure. The other two, we’ll see.

Most everything else is ticking over. I could talk about getting a water restoration company out to look at the wall or taking my son in for a dyslexia eval but that would just be more words you have to read. LOL

Go outside, enjoy the sun if you have some.

Friday Special Surprise

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 5 Comments

Since I had Fiendish Friday on Tuesday this week I thought I would give a little bonus post. A bonus post with a bonus. Does that make this a double bonus? Bonus, Bonus.

I got the brilliant idea from a fellow author blogger to do a free give away with a twist. So here’s the deal, if you review Scripting the Truth and send me the link to your review (contact page is just fine) I will give you a free e copy of my next book (coming Fall 2016). And I’ll do it in perpetuity. Review my next book, a murder mystery, and gain a free copy of my spy novel when I publish that next year (2017). But this will only be open to those of you who start with Scripting the Truth and I think the time will be limited.

So what are you waiting for, more than 300 of you have it already.

As a side bar, Wednesday’s writer cafe was my 250th blog post. Congratulations to me.

2016 Goals

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 7 Comments

With the new year in front of me and my first free giveaway just behind me, it seemed like a good time to consider where I want my writing to go next year.

A quick recap of the free giveaway. On one hand, 282 people downloaded Scripting the Truth while it was free and I already got a new review, here’s hoping for 281 more, LOL. But in the grand scheme of things I am bummed. Reddit never allowed my posts, which means my advertising was minimal, only word of mouth and Facebook friends. Which means my positional gains on the best seller list were minimal. But I can do another free run in three months, which leads me to item number one on my goals list.

  1. Research marketing locations for the next free giveaway for Scripting the Truth. Figure out the Reddit problem. Fine tune my categorization on amazon.
  2. Write 2500 plus words per week on my 2015 Nano novel til completion. (Only another 5-6 weeks to go on that, I think.)
  3. Participate in one flash fiction challenge per month.
  4. Prepare and teach “Nano to Publish”.
  5. Edit my 2015 Nano Novel for 2016 publication.
  6. Any time I am not actively working on my 2015 Nano Novel, write 2500 words per week on my spy novel until it is done. (After four years, it’s time to put this mess to bed.)

Other non writing goals?

  1. Prepare and teach two classes at the coop for the 2016-2017 school year.
  2. Take better care of my body, ie. stop compulsively painting, crocheting, and writing until my back or shoulder is so tore I can barely use either. Which leads me to …
  3. yoga daily.

I’ve made it a point to keep my goals things that are within my control, more or less. I would love to make have 10,000 followers my goal or sell 5000 copies as a goal but those are dependent on other people. And with my mind control abilities on the fritz these days, shrug, gotta focus on what I can directly do. Which brings me to my last … thought? I hesitate to say goal.  I need to reconsider my twitter ban. I just don’t know if I can go there. sigh.

So tell what are your goals for the 2016 year? Or even one goal? or even what you think of my goals? What do you think of Twitter?

 

Fiendish Friday – 5AM

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

So a couple of weeks ago I started getting up at FIVE AM.

I am not a morning person, in fact I rarely come alive until after dinner, so what prompted this insanity?

I realized I am not unhappy with my life. In fact, my life is pretty much fabulous. Hate me if you like. LOL. But I did realize I was the only person in my house not getting their needs met.

My dog is pretty simple: 2 meals a day, belly rubs, ball throwing, an hour walk, and once a week massive hike. √

The hamster: clean it’s cage weekly. feed it about weekly.√

My hubby: good food, clean clothes to wear to work, a happy wife, and a healthy amount of mumble mumble (move along folks, nothing to see here). √

My kiddo: home school, good food, coop, specialty classes, play dates, cuddles with Mommy, and Legos. (Never underestimate a six year old boy’s need for Legos.) √

Me: yoga, writing time, reading time, crafty/TV watching time.

Yeah – I guess I ask lot given I am a stay at home mom. LOL. For those of you not in the know, stay at home mom means no time alone.

So I started getting up at five, oh god, I’ll say it again, five. So I could write, yoga, then walk the dog and start my day. I am still not a morning person. But what it comes down to is this, I can be either “not a morning person writer” or I can sleep in. Because you have to actually write to call yourself a writer and not much of that was happening post Nano, pre five AM.

So now I am writing. 500-1000 words each day on my nano novel. It’s progressing really well. I think it helps I ended Nano with my novel at the all down hill from here point. But still, words are accumulating. Some days, when I don’t have anything planned for the morning, I actually take two whole hours to write and then yoga after I walk the dog. (kiddo likes his morning TV, don’t judge.) It’s kind of nice to have the time to be flexible and to prioritize my writing. I used to just shoehorn it in where ever I could fit it. Now it has it’s own space.

How do you give your writing (or substitute other passion) it’s own space? Do you go to extreme lengths? Or lengths that feel extreme to you anyway? LOL

And Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. Happy Friday to those who don’t. My book, Scripting the Truth, is still available for free download until the 27th.

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 12 Comments

It snowed this week. I love it when it snows at my house. My son got out his sled and started sliding in the back yard in two inches of snow. It’s fun for us because we don’t get nineteen blizzards each winter. But it’s already mostly melted away. sigh.

The stockings are hung by not quite by the chimney, the TV is there, so we put the stocking in a huge window by fireplace. The tree has been up and decorated so long we don’t even bother to turn the lights on every day now. LOL The presents are wrapped and waiting for Friday. I’ve been to the grocery store. I’ve baked multiple times this month. Christmas is ready and we are waiting….

And now it’s time for me to do a little something for you….

So what am I doing for you for Christmas? Thanks for asking. My book Scripting the Truth is a free kindle download for the next five days. Go get it. Read it. Tell me how much it diverted you when you wanted to strangle your Aunt Bet for getting ratty on spiked Egg Nog.

Be safe this Christmas. Enjoy your family, even if they drive you crazy. I hope you still believe in the idea of Santa and practice all that he stands for.

Wednesday Writer’s Cafe

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Good evening my friends. First off I have to say thank you for all your support yesterday. It’s nice to hear I am just a standard insecure writer basket case as opposed to a special blend of crazy.

And what a difference a day can make. I wrote more than 2000 words today on my Nano Novel. At that rate I’ll finish this puppy by Christmas. Because we all know it works just like that. LOL. Snort. LOL.

On the way to write in tonight I saw a motorcycle with a fully lit Christmas tree in the side car. How freaking awesome.

Speaking of awesome things, if you’ve been waiting, the time is neigh. The kindle version of my novel, Scripting the Truth, will be a free download from December 23rd to December 27th. I’ll post a link when it’s available. But save the date now.

In the mean time, I think I need to go home to bed. My explanation of why I need to stop writing for the night was so convoluted someone wrote it down to add to their work in progress.  Um, glad to know I can be so amusing when I make no sense.

 

 

 

Tuesday Tremors

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 9 Comments

Yesterday, talking with a friend, she mentioned how my book has a similar feel and pacing to the TV show Nero Wolfe. That started rolling around in my head. Imagine a gentler pin ball, bouncing off all my insecurities and issues.

And then I saw how hard I was getting flamed on another blog I participate in. And I started to think, wow, I can’t even make myself understood here.

And then this morning I read a post about how sad it is when writers think they are great, that they have awesome talent, and really it’s so bad you can barely follow their line of thought in the blog ranting about how great they are.

I am a copy cat, with no talent, and no ability to form logical trains of thought.

All of this, has led to a triple word score of I suck today. I sit here looking at my nanonovel from 2015 wanting to add more words to it. Needing to add more words to it, hello I have a class to teach in a little over a month and I need a nano novel to demonstrate on. But I can’t write a word.

I have suckitis. And who am I to think I have anything worth saying to a class full of Nano publishing hopefuls.

What do you do when a case of suckitis rears up and takes over your creative brain? Surely, this happens to others? Help me out here.

Or maybe I just suck and should quit while I am ahead.

Wednesday Writers Cafe

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Good evening my friends. It has been such an interesting week and in some ways a seriously frustrating one. Monday I rushed home from a play date because the Reindeer Firetruck was coming through our neighborhood and kiddo didn’t want to miss it. Yeah, we needn’t have rushed. It drove by our house at 915PM. Seriously? My kid has been in bed and asleep for over an hour. By the time he’s old enough to stay up late enough to see Santa on the Reindeer Firetruck he isn’t going to care. sigh

If you follow the news at all you might know that the PacNW is flooding right now. Never been so happy my house is on a ridge. I often complain about it because there is no taking the dog for a quick flat walk. Any direction you go from my house involves hills. Loving my hills right now.

Tuesday: stayed home as it rained cats, dogs, elephants, and porpoises. My son refused to leave the house which was possibly wise but that meant that I couldn’t get the ingredients I needed to bake cookies and bacon cheesy bread for family. So Tuesday night after the board meeting, I got elected to the board FYI, of the country club on my mountain neighborhood, (this should be ringing some bells), I drove down into town. Yep, it was flooded. And there was the usual selection of idiots who drove off the road into a gully. sigh. But despite all that, it was still more pleasant than taking my son when he doesn’t want to gIMG_20151209_100940o shopping.

Wednesday I baked. Here I am in all my glory of stripped apron, hair every which way, and yesterday’s make up still smeared about my eyes. Photo by my ever so cute son, so I apologize for the composition. LOL. Eventually we drove 20 miles away to a Scholastic Book Faire, where I was reminded it could always be worse than having sold only 25 copies of my book. And no this isn’t a wind up to having sold only 24 copies. I bought a number of full, 50K plus word novels, for 50 cents at this book faire. FIFTY CENTS. Think about that. You sweated out a novel, edited it, had it beta’d, edited some more, finally got an agent who got your book in front of an editor who liked it enough to offer on it. You were traditionally published. Bells and whistles, kudos to you. And your book did so bad it ended up at a Scholastic Book Faire for fifty cents a copy.

Tonight I am at Wednesday Writers Cafe, yeah babysitter! I have actually been adding words to my NanoNovel. Yeah me! Last year I didn’t even touch my NanoNovel til mid January. But this year I am ready to continue spinning my tale of intrigue. And it’s not even mid December. LOL.

They got their hands on the video. They are watching. They will find the murderer picking up a delivery of roofies. And that will give them probable cause to bring her in for questioning. Can’t wait, so I’ll get back to that now. TTFN

 

I’m getting too old for this sh…

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

Today is definitely a day to curl up on the couch and watch Lethal Weapon.

But I won’t be doing that. I still have a house full of family tIMG_20151204_182405631hat want to go hiking at the summit.

Let’s back up a little. Friday night was the TGIO (Thank God It’s Over) Party for Nanowrimo. I baked two cakes and a myriad of cupcakes for the event. What can I say, I’m a little compulsive. But it is always reassuring when people rave over the homemade carrot spice cake with cream cheese frosting ( I like those ego strokes.) The party was fun, but I was really too tired to enjoy it fully and feeling a bit guilty. I sent the family, including the out of towners off to see Christmas lights without me.

Then Saturday…cook, bake, and cook some more because starting at 3 was our annual Sinterklaas party. I had 41 rsvp yes, and roughly 33 show up. That’s about average I find. But the party was seriously insane in that, we’re all too old to be frat party obnoxious, but we can still be so loud you almost have to shout to be heard. The kids were quiet in comparison.

So now all the family has been taken back to the airport. I’ve convinced the hubby that the house does not need to be cleaned before we relax. LOL.

Although at some point, I really need to figure out what …huh…it took me all day to write this post with all the interruptions and now I don’t know what I needed to figure out. LOL  – probably something about Christmas cards. wrinkles nose. Or maybe something about finding writing time so I can finish my nano novel from this year. I left our favorite detectives right at the good part, right when they got the set up to bring down the bad guy. Now they’re cooling their heels waiting for me to get off my butt and type some more.

This weekend I am going to my first author Q&A session where I am the author. Is that flipping cool or what? But my son is dying for me to come play a board game with him. How can I say no when he knows “for your taste, I think you’ll be yellow.” Smart kid. TTFN

Er….I forgot how to title things…

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 6 Comments

This whole radio silence thing feels WEIRD. Like Nano ended and my life picked up at full speed and I just lost my blog by the side of the road. LOL.

So since Nano I have cleaned my house. Like the kind of cleaning you do when your son has a cat and you have cat allergic family members coming to stay with you…cause he does and I do. In fact my Father in Law arrived yesterday and my Sister in Law and family arrive today.

Why are they coming now? Because Saturday is Sinterklaas. It’s a Dutch Christmas time holiday where a jolly fat man leaves candy in your klompen. Grown ups move about from house to house eating and drinking special treats all evening long.

So that’s it, cleaning and preparing for a party. And in the moments I wasn’t doing that I was earning coins in the subway surfers game because my son fell in love with this little Japanese anime girl but you had to get 95K by last night midnight and my kiddo couldn’t do it. So he asked me to help. My husband thought I was crazy to do it. I probably was but…this morning when I gave my son my kindle and told him to load up subway surfers he started to cry. He was so overwhelmed. He didn’t think I would do it. Pretty damn cool to be a mom some days.

So what’s on the horizon?

Well, Family, Friends, big ass party (40 odd guests I think.)

Next weekend I am giving an author chat to a book club which read my book. Thank god it’s at a Tavern, I think much alcohol will be required so I don’t die on the spot.

Then I need to finish this year’s Nano novel because….drum roll….

Sheri J Kennedy and I are teaching a ten month long seminar at the North Bend library, third Saturday of each month, from 1030-noon, entitled Nano to Publish. The idea is to help people take their raw Nano novel and cook it up into something to be served to the reading public. So I need to have  a raw Nano novel to demonstrate my cooking on. LOL

What about the blog? um…huh…Well I missed my writers cafe update last night, cause I didn’t go…FIL here and all. And I think Friday’s writers cafe will be pretty not happening for me for a while. I enrolled the kiddo in a Leonardo DaVinci’s inventions class on Friday mornings through February. I think I’m going to have to wing it a little. I feel like the weekend workshops were not all that well received. But I plan to still blog about what I uncover while researching how to help people publish their stuff. And book reviews, book reviews will continue. What do you think about a movie or tv show review each week too?

How about we just agree you’ll show up to read and I’ll show up to write and we’ll see where it takes us….