CE Grandma's House - John

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I shut my computer with a satisfying click and lean back, partly in relief, partly in triumph. I was done with NaNo, a day early according to the calender, by just in time based on the fact that today is my last day to access the website and validate my word count.

"I hope you intend to finish the book."

My chair leans backwards and I find myself looking up at a boy with straw-colored hair and blue eyes. I blink a few times as I process his sudden appearance. There are no blond-haired, blue-eyed boys in my family, especially none this old. And while I'm getting used to boys flirting with me on front counter at work, it isn't supposed to happen at my Grandparents' house.

"Because you see," he continued, in a distinct country drawl. "If you you don't finish the book, we'll never stop Reginald and everything will be horrible."

"Yes, John, I intend to finish the book," I say, realizing who this is. The captain of this starship I've been writing about for the last month. Or, at the moment, he's just a fifteen-(nearly sixteen)-year-old farm boy. But he's both in the book, so it works.

"Not only that," he continues, as though I hadn't said anything. "But you just left Trix with a broken leg, and that's not fun. Do you like breaking bones or something, because back in chapter eight ..."

"The next chapter is the doctor's," I say, shaking my head. "She needs some sort of medical emergency, and Trix volunteered."

"And I suppose that the still unnamed little girl also volunteered," suggests John.

"She gave you a chance to be heroic and all that," I point out. "And she doesn't need a name. Not important to the story."

"Which brings me to another point," John continues. "I'm the only character mentioned in the book description, and I've so far gotten the least screen time. My chapter and two others, and you only half-wrote the second of those."

"It involved medical terms," I said, shaking my head. "I didn't have time to mess with trying to figure out what to do with them - and I'm going to have to mess with them in the next chapter, too."

"But I'm the captain, the one character whose name you've told your readers on your blog," John continues to protest. "Captain Kirk was always the hero in every episode and movie. Me, I just sit around on the bridge while everyone else saves the ship."

"Well I can't help it that everyone who's had a chapter since you has wanted to be the hero," I tell him, shaking my head. "And since they're the ones writing, you're just going to have to live with it."

"But it's my ship!"

"Well, your character is obviously not as strong as some of the others. Don't get me wrong, you're a great guy and all, but you don't have any problems. The doctor is trying to get over her shyness and the fact that there are men on the ship. The princess is trying to get used to the fact that she'll never see anyone she knows again, and that she's about to marry a stranger. Your security chief ... well he's there for a dual reason, your second officer just found out that she has some non-human DNA, and that's just some of the other characters. Haven't even talked about the computer and his sister."

"But I'm the captain!"

I sigh. "Maybe you'll be more important in another book. For now, be the best captain you can be, stop trying to be the only hero, and let the other eleven have their day in the sun. You may find that that works out best. And next time, give your character a few problems. I don't write Stu's very well." I slide my computer into my bag. "But for now, I'm done with NaNo. Fifty thousand words. That's the longest first draft I've ever written. It's no easy feat."

An Update of Sorts

Hi folks! You may or may not have noticed that I haven't been blogging as much this month as I usually do. But I do think that ya'll deserve something of an update.

Firstly, my NaNo. It's around 44,000 words at the moment, though it will probably be higher by the time you read this, because I'm about to go write some more as soon as I'm done with this post. Plot-wise, I'm about half-way through with the book, and I'm quite happy with it. I'm not sure how motivated I'll be about continuing it once NaNo is over, because there are some other projects that rate higher on the importance list (such as Kingdom, my next short story collection, and two other books one of which I've talked about quite a bit.) I finally got over to my Grandparents house this weekend and discovered just HOW high OpenOffice was counting. I was giving it a 100 word discrepancy, but 1000 is closer to the mark.

And I've started working a real job. Same place where my sister does, a fast food (well known one, so if you want to start guessing, feel free). Though V is getting pretty fed up with the hours they've been giving her, so she's been threatening to leave them to go to someone else, and if she goes, mom says that I go to.

And since I need to go give a back massage to a turkey and pulverize some patatoes, I'm going to leave you with two snippets from my novel that mean absolutely nothing.

Okay, she somehow gets into engineering. I don't know HOW she GETS INTO engineering, I just know that she does. Maybe she uses a sonic screwdriver. And Maryanne, please do not dump a bucket of water on my computer for referencing Doctor Who. I can't afford to buy a new computer. Yes, I know I just got a job, but that doesn't mean that I want to create unnecessary expenses for myself. Yes, I know you don't like Doctor Who, and yes Peter is the best doctor in the world (and not the Peters who have played the Doctor, either – your Peter). Happy now? I was researching, and my online friends have been talking about the 50^th anniversary which was the other day, so it slipped in. Now go translate a book. I've got this NaNo to write.

On the bridge, Eric made Robin popcorn. She wasn't quite sure what popcorn was, and I'm not sure how this line got here.

Anyways…

On the bridge, John turned to the hologram there, one corner of his mouth lifted in a half-grin. “So, how are you feeling on your first mission.”

A Quiz!!!

Anyone want to Beta read the first three chapters (and the lengthy introduction) of Just Another Si-Fi Novel? Well then, today is your lucky day!

I'm looking for one, or possibly two people to read over said introduction and first three chapters, tell me what you think of them, and answer a few simple questions.

Of course, I don't want just anybody to be reading this book, it IS top secret after all. So I've set up a test, a quiz if you like, to weed out those who are not worthy. Answer the questions in the comments, and I will decide who gets it based on your answers. All answers can be found in my published books. And this INCLUDES the short stories.

"Saffron's Big Plan," by the way, is free this week! (That is, until Friday night) You don't have to have a kindle to read it, just an Amazon account. Amazon has these handy little kindle apps that you can download, or if you don't want to do any downloading, you can read it in your browser.


1. How do you chop cube roots?
2. What is the name of Mynna's mother?
3. How do you use Thyme?
4. Who are the best planners in the world?
5. What did Greenie the Lizard grow up to be?
6. What happens when you get the punchline?
7. What is the curse of beautiful daughters of kings?
8. Where do they get the saying "Love is Blind"?
9. What does the Rainbow do in Jen's imagination?
10. What does Saffron ride?

Jack's Newest Book!

I think all of you have heard me talk about Jack - Miss Jack Lewis Baillot. We are writing a book together, after all. Currently its in her court, and I'm eager to read what she writes next ... but with NaNo on, I'm going to have to wait a while. If it weren't for the fact that I'm working on my NaNo at the moment, I'd be pacing impatiently for it - she has some pretty funny characters on her side, and I'm eager to see Adrian adjusting to the big reveal.

Speaking of my NaNo, I writers block last weekend, did two thousand-days, and then wrote nothing on Monday. And since my target wordcount is 2,000 a day, that was unacceptable. So in trying to catch back up (I was now a day behind even going by the 1,667 word-goal) I completely forgot that I had agreed to particpate in Jack's cover reveal for her newest book. (No, not Worth of a King. That's still miles from needing a cover, we haven't even talked about it!) It's the sequel to her first book, and entitled Abolished Impracticality. 

I had the privilege of beta-reading this book, and I can assure you that it's better than the first (mostly because I caught most of the bad spelling errors that slipped past Jack in the first), except for the ending where Jack is pretending that she's Moffat writing Sherlock. Or at least I hope that's what she's doing.

But back to the cover reveal. I do have the cover, and I do intend to show it to you. And since it's late, I won't even beat around the bush anymore!

That's Singur on the cover. He's possibly my favorite character. Although I like Darcy too.

Oh, and I gave her three questions to answer, and here are the answers! (Something new for those of you who have already seen all of the reveals on Thursday)

 One. Why did you choose the title Abolished Impracticality?

 Aw, that question. There is a meaning behind all the titles in this series. I keep meaning to do something special when I reveal it, but I don't know when that will be or what I will do. For now, I will just say it kind of fits the book, because a lot of things are abolished in the book. (Peter's idea of who he can trust and who he can't. Isidore giving up something he really wants. And so forth.)

Two. What is your least favourite scene?

I don't think I have one. I figure if I don't like a scene then neither will the readers. I had some in, but I took them out while editing. I can't think of examples right off the top of my head, but I know one of them was a conversation scene which was really dorky and boring.

 Three. So you think this book is better or worse than the book before?

Neither I suppose. I think I learned a lot more grammar wise and it has a lot less mistakes, thanks to my wonderful beta readers. But I like it just as much as the first. I just like the story of the whole series and I'm kind of endeared to this cast of characters. 

 And once again, sorry Jack about forgetting about you! I didn't mean to! But you know how NaNo is!

Speaking of my NaNo, I am now at 26,000 words (Or at least I was when I wrote this, I haven't done my Friday writing yet). I'm mostly happy with it, though my mom doesn't like what I'm doing with one of my characters. She's supposed to be smart and mysterious - but she's coming off as a know-it-all and snob. Sigh. I'm writing her first chapter at the moment, and she's about to make a call to her twin brother (who isn't in the main cast) and hopefully that will shine light on her nice side. Because she really is nice ... Sigh. Oh, and on Monday I'll post a quiz about my writing, all questions will be answerable if search my blog or have read Sew, which I'm pretty sure all of my readers have done. (It's either been free on Kindle, or I've sent it to you in PDF as prize for something.) The prize for answering the most questions correctly (and if there's a tie, I'll pull a random name out of the hat), is getting to read the first three chapters (and the lengthy introduction) in PDF form. You will, of course, have to answer a quick survey about the chapters and characters and such, but I'm sure you'll understand.

Oh, and because I feel like it - some snippets! Again, names removed when possible, shortened when impossible. I have a reason for keeping the names under wraps, honest I do ... but I don't know when I'll tell you what the reason is.

“I was pointing out that I am not in awe of his travel history, and that I have no need to go and listen to his boastful adventures.”

“And it's not as though you sit around telling us about yours."

“I would rather not even think about them. They're terribly distracting when I'm trying to read.”

“There are days when I doubt that you ever had any."

“Same here. Sometimes I suspect that they were taken by someone else, and the memories just tricked their way into my brain. I'm far too young to have invented the computer, you know.”

Thirty minutes later, they were putting away their rapiers and borrowed gear.

“You're not bad,” he admitted.

“Not bad?” she arched an eyebrow. “I bested you twice.”

“As I said, not bad,” he repeated, nodding. “There's a good chance I let you win.”

She snorted. “And there's a good chance I don't believe you.”

(Yes, there's a rebellious princess. What can I say? I'm addicted.)

“I feel very reassured,” he said, not quite sure if he was or not. “So… uh, is it true that Catalin computers use the programs of their… deceased?”

“Affirmative.”

“Then… if I'm not prying…”

“Sugar poisoning.”

“What?”

“I died of sugar poisoning."

“Perhaps so, but I have a strange allergy.”

“And what is that?”

“Bribes. Can't stand them. They make my ears ring.”

NaNo Update!!!

My goal this NaNo has been to write at least 2,000 a day. Not necessarily because I want an amazing word count, but more because I want to reach 50,000 early. And if I get a high word count, that's fine with me.

I haven't always reached that goal, but since I hit 11,300 yesterday, I'd say it averages out. I also finished chapter 1 yesterday, coincidentally.

And no, that's not as bad as it sounds, since I didn't start chapter 1 until I was about 7,000 in. Yes, there's a very, very long introduction.

I've also been drinking a lot of tea. I know that I've said that I don't care much for the stuff, but I've learned that if its hot and strong and has enough stevia (a natural, non-sugar sweetener that's actually healthy), I can stand it. And its cheaper than hot chocolate, so I've been drinking it.

And since I'm in a good mood, and can't think of anything else to write, I'm going to share a few short snippets. And because the only character whose name I've revealed is John, and I don't want to reveal anyone else's names yet, I've abreiviated the rest. So if you see J, it's someone else.

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42 Elm Street was an abandoned house that had reached the state of disrepair to which the superstitious gave “haunted.” Of course, S L and her twin brother, S H, were not superstitious by any means, but still. There were spiders and mice, and they were enough to give one the creeps.

   “So one of us'll be the dead computer.”

   “Ah, take your seats – girls on the left, boys on the right. S L, S H, you two sit down in the center there, I'm sure you don't mind – my, how I love twins.”

   “You do have a pair in every book of yours we've read,” S L observed.

   “She only has one book without one,” offered B.

   The author looked up, peering over her glasses. “There is a twin in that book – the villain, you just haven't met the sister yet.”

   In our day and age, competition among authors has grown fierce. Either you must know just the right person, be willing to sell your soul… or settle for eternal ignominy.

  “Wait… you have cats!”

  “Yep. Ten of 'em.”

   “But… I have asthma! I'm allergic to cats!” 

   “This isn't supposed to be a very complicated mission, but this is a book after all, and that means that things won't be as they appear, and there'll be lots of danger and…”

   “Captain,” J interrupted.

   “Yes?” he said, turning to his first officer. “Have they arrived?”

   “Not quite yet,” she replied with a small smile and shake of her head. “But we're not supposed to know this is a book.”

   “The computer's her brother.”

    “I don't want to be a princess.”

    “Ah, but you're perfect for the part! You see, this isn't just any sort of princess – no she's a rebellious princess!"

And that's all the snippets I feel like sharing. Maybe I'll be back next week with more, but for now ... that's all folks.

Oh, and a heads up. Once I finish chapter three, I'll post a sort of treasure hunt here on my blog, and the winner will get to read the introduction and said three chapters. (And possibly find out what the true title is.)

Character Encounter - November 2013

And it is NaNo time! I've been busy tapping away at Just Another Sci-Fi ... but I can't let Character Encounters go forgotten.

Since I know all of you are chomping at the bits to get back to your books, I'll make this short ... but then again ... you might be hiding ... In which case, maybe I should make this longer so you can have a good excuse.

Ah ... choices, choices. Maybe I should go back to determining the answer to life, the world, and everything in it.

Grandma's House

Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go ...

November is not only home to NaNo, but Thanksgiving, and most people go go Grandma's House to carve their turkey. It is at this event that I wish you to encounter your character. However, if you don't gobble down your stuffing there, set your CE wherever you do. Have fun!

Oh, wait, before I go, I'd just like to say that there is one stipulation for your character. It can't just be any character. It has to be one in your NaNo novel.

I haven't decided which of my cast of twelve I shall use, but probably John, since I've already revealed his name and the fact that he's in this book. Jen says she's going to do one this month as well, with Mynna. I'm eager to read it!

Captives and Adversaries!

Hello there all you lovely readers of mine. Do I have a treat to show you.

Not one, but two of my author friends have decided to reveal the lovely covers of their newest books today, and I know that the books with in the covers will be positively delightful, having already read and loved all of the published books of both.

Introducing Adventures and Adversaries by Sarah Holman, and Captive of Raven Castle by Jessica Greyson.

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What, you don't think I would hand over the covers that easily, did you? Nope, I'm going string you along with such trivial things as book descriptions and exclusive interviews with the authors.

Adventures and Adversities by Sarah Holman: One day Alditha is content living with her family, the next she is taking her friends place to serve at the king’s castle.  Her father's final instructions, to keep smiling and to do what is right, will be harder to live out then she ever imagined. She will face a royal nephew who delights in making people miserable, an angry servant girl that will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and noblemen who plot murder. Will she be able to keep the promise she made to her father? Will she find the faith she longs for during all her Adventures and Adversities.

Captive of Raven Castle by Jessica Greyson: The troubled people of war-torn Chambria are on the brink of starvation, and a delicate princess with a recurring nightmare is their only hope. Alexandra knows that her value to her country consists mainly in her ability to marry well, but when she is kidnapped by the rebels and taken to meet the man claiming to be both Chambria's true king and her real father, her entire world falls apart. Will Princess Alexandra be able to untangle the web of lies and discern who is the true king and her father?

Jessica's Interview:

1. What inspired Captive of Raven Castle?

It was one of those stories, that came in a rush of inspiration. I saw this picture and suddenly I saw an opening scene to a story of captured princess, questions ran through my mind and the story built from there.

2. Why did you choose the title?

I’ve always loved the idea of having the main characters name in the title, however this main character has two names which she goes by, using one name spoiled the story, and using the other didn’t make the title fit, meanwhile Captive said exactly what I wanted to say.

3. Who was your favorite character?

Picking a favorite character is rather hard, and between Taleon and Cassandra it’s really hard to choose. However, after some really hard thinking, I believe Taleon takes the lead as favorite character in this series.

Sarah's Interview

1. What inspired Adventures and Adversaries?

After finishing my sci-fi trilogy, I wanted to write a book set in the Middle Ages. I didn't have much of a plan beyond that. the story developed as I wrote it.

 

2. Do you intend to go through the entire alphabet with this series, or will it stop at some point?

The plan is to go through the whole alphabet, but skip X and maybe Q. We shall see how that works out. The next book in the series will be coming out in fall of next year though. 

 

3. Your first three books are sci-fi. Is Historical Fiction easier or harder to write?

Easier for me. Historical fiction is my first love. my first three books that were not published were set in the Middle Ages.

And now enough of the waiting. (Unless you were impatient enough to just skip down to the bottom and peak ...)

And long story short, I am very eager to get my hands on both of these books and read them.