Wicked Wenches

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Keep them doggies rolling. Or heads or anything else rolling in your story. What to write about today? Hmmm. Well, I unfortunately spent the week mourning my grandfather so no writing got done. Today though I’m back in the saddle. I’m nearing the end of the story and working my way to the final conflict. I’d love to finish this by the end of the week but I need another 17K words and I can’t see that happening. It might if I can get some people to sprint with me. It helps me focus when there are other people doing it at the same time and I have to post the results of the time spent.

I loved Nano last year because when a friend of mine got ahead of my word count I knew I needed to bust my a** to get ahead of her. Maybe this was a two way street or maybe I’m the competitive one. Either way we both won Nano. Of course, what I’d written had to be completely hacked apart and rewritten, but it helped me realize who my characters were and the way I really wanted the story to go.

Has anyone tried word sprints? Set the timer for 30 minutes and don’t allow yourself to do anything but write? It works for me.

(Argh. I’ve just lost a nice post I was writing. So I’ll try to recreate it. *sniff*.)

All authors are readers. If we didn’t read, we wouldn’t be able to write. It’s that simple.

Occasionally I will review a book, good or bad. If you want to read any of the reviews, they are here.

That said…

Have you ever read a book and then wished you hadn’t? One that gave you mixed feelings once you put it down – or even before you picked it up?
I just did. (You can read the review here. No spoilers.)
And I wish it for none of the usual reasons.
I wish I hadn’t read it, because… Reading the story was like finding out about a dirty secret you knew existed – and then not knowing what to do with the knowledge once you have all the gory details.
Acheron (Sherrilyn Kenyon) is the book I wish I’d never read, even though I desperately wanted to read it, and I truly like the book.

I fell in love with Ash the first time I ran into him in Sherri’s Dark Hunter series. He was dark. Awkward. Mysterious. Larger-than-life. Even mischievous at times. But lovable. There was a secret hanging over him and throughout the series you catch glimpses, but never anything more than that. You kind of get the gist of what he is, but you never know for sure.
Well.
Now I know.
I’ve had the book sitting here since last Monday. I kept looking at it. Wanting to read it desperately and yet… I didn’t. It’s not a book for the squeamish, it’s full of torture, pain and heartbreak. You get to see into Ash’s head and get to know him. It was a difficult book to read, for me. Not because it’s badly written, or the story is bad. It was because it took down the wall around Ash. The trouble is, knowing him destroys the mystery about him. He’s still awkward, guarded and mischievous – but the mystery is gone.
I read the book in one (almost one) long sitting (736 pages!), only put it down when my eyes started to droop at 2am, with 200 pages to go, and I was up with the chickens to read the rest. I resented needing to go to the bathroom (with the book…), hated to go eat (with my nose in it), but us mere mortals need to get some shut-eye when the lids can’t even be held open by matchsticks.

And even while I read, my thoughts were, dang… I don’t want to know all this.
I liked the heroine. And I resented the hell out of her. She took Ash away, and that’s why I resent her.
(I did mention I’m nuts, right?)
Well, you know what I mean, right?

Do you ever review books? Or do you rather keep your opinions to yourself. (I’m biased about Sherri’s books, so I don’t normally write down what I think about them.)

I’ve written some vitriolic reviews that tore books apart. Lindsay McKenna is one of the authors I refuse to read. "Unforgiven" was unforgivable to me. I hated it, I even threw the book at the wall while reading it, and let me tell you… I don’t normally do that. I have 2 more of her books on my shelf. I glanced at the first one and put it back, because it was more of the same tripe. Never even opened the third. The only reason I have it is because I wanted to collect the entire Nocturne line. Even so, I might make an exception if there is another one and not buy it.

Then there are books where I’d love to laminate every page for posterity, because I love it so much.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café (Fannie Flagg) is one of those. It’s not romance, far from it. I guess the term would be Chick Lit, but I abhor that label and it doesn’t belong on that book. If it were up to me that term would be stricken from existence.
Fried Green Tomatoes is a book about survival. It’s about life, about growth, about midlife crisis, about women. And about BBQ Sauce. It’s one of those books where you cannot help falling in love with the characters and rooting for them, and laughing with them, crying with them. Be that the 80 year old telling the story, the bee charmer, the middle aged woman trying to find herself, or anyone around them. I rooted for all of them, loved all of them and wanted to take them home with me.

So, what is your favourite book?
Did you review it?
Do you get books based on reviews?
Word of mouth?
Or just blindly pick them off the shelf because you like the cover?
Or the blurb?

I do all of the above, actually.

I try to add a new author every now and then, and I occasionally drop an old favourite. I got bored with Christine Feehan’s "Carpathian" series, but I picked up Gena Showalter’s books about some cursed guys purely from a blurb. I love Kresley Cole’s books, too, that one I picked up because of a combination of cover and blurb. I picked up Anne Bishop’s Jewel series because someone recommended it to me. I bought her Ephemera Series… because I loved the Jewels.

I dropped Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita series a long time ago, when the sexual tension turned into depraved sex, instead. Haven’t read another one since, and I’m not interested in reading any again. All it took was one book too far. Same with Stephen King. I dropped Jude Deveraux from my list of favorites because I didn’t like the books she wrote anymore. Her (and Johanna Lindsay and Judith McNaught) books are still on my keeper shelf though.

Well, that’s how I feel about what I read. J

How do you feel about it? How do you pick your books? Why do you drop authors? And if you do — do you ever go back?

I had this nice long blog about writing challenges and goals and the computer ate it. So here’s the shortened version. Goals are good. Making short term goals for writing is awesome even if it’s just I want to write 1000 words. Challenges have sprung up all over the web. NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write 50K words in the month of November. This challenge draws writers of all shapes and sizes. There’s also the 70 Days of Sweat. Write 1000 words a day for 70 days. These challenges exist as a way for the writer to be part of something larger. To get advice and encouragement from other writers.

What motivates you? What goals make your writing stronger? Have you participated in a Challenge?

I officially gave myself the month off from all writing endevors, including my blogs. However, I’m back and going to get right back on the wagon. So anyone have any ideas for what you all want to hear about? If you have a chance Paperback Writer has an amazing set of articles and links for when everyone was away at the National RWA Conference in San Francisco. So what have you done with your summer?

I’m in huff.

Actually, I’m pissed off as all blazes. And that’s putting it mildly.

When 2.5 came out, I was all gung ho and upgraded a blog to it.
Previously, every new release was a step forward, with many workflow improvements.

2.5 was a BAD move.

The admin area was a shambles. Many, MANY people hated it. Myself included.
It made no sense.

The widgets area (the bits like the RSS feeds, text, etc) went from drag and drop to…
Not drag and drop.

If I wanted to move a widget to another sidebar, I had to remove the widget from Bar 1, lost ALL the settings, had to switch to the other bar, re-add the widget, set up the widget again because it lost all the settings.
WTF? That’s an "Improvement"????

I found some blog posts by Matt Mullenberg (The wordpress honcho) who tried to pacify users on onblogging.com

Other things people have taken issue with, for example the new placement of the category and tag interface, were deliberate. Because of the feedback those assumptions are being reexamined for 2.6

He also said:

The changes we’re making in 2.6 will be as a result of the feedback given here and many other places.

So, I ask you, do you expect to see fixes / changes, considering those statements? I did.
Well.

I was wrong.

Nothing changed, the widgets are still the same as 2.5, the categories haven’t moved.

I’m looking at new blogging platforms at the moment, because of it, but Wenches won’t change until I’ve tried and tested and am happy with another one, and until I’ve used it a while.

Meanwhile… yeah. I’m pissed.

I have a tricky surname.
A rare one, but it freaks people out when they need to pronounce it, or, God forbid, spell it.

So I am looking for a pen name.

It’s difficult. Really difficult. So I thought I’ll blog about it.
(Hey, it’s Saturday afternoon and I’m bored!)

My first name is Silke (that’s Silk-eh, not Silky, but I don’t really mind being called Silky. If you spell me as Silka I’m going to throw bricks at you. K? I’m not a damned chocolate bar! (Milka)) and I don’t want religious overtones (no Angelo / St.Anything / SanWhatever / Demonico or anything of that nature.)
I don’t want initials. (If I do that, then I can just drop my first name altogether)
No surnames starting with S. (I do not want to end up with the monogram SS.)
I thought about a middle name, but do not want a middle initial.
It should flow naturally.
It shouldn’t feel contrived, but shouldn’t be too common either. (Thank you, but I don’t want to be Silke Jones.)
It should have rhythm.
I want it to be easily spellable.
I want it to be easily pronounced.

Yeah, I know. Picky, picky.

So far I keep looking at Silke DiMarco, Silke DiMatteo, Silke DiSabatino… things like that. (Yeah, I like the way the Di adds to the ryhthm and flow of the name.)
It’s driving me nuts!

Any suggestions will be most welcome!

A few years ago, a critique partner suggested I give the YA market a try. She said I had a youthful voice and it came through in my writing. Now since I loved writing the hot stuff as much as the sweet stuff, it took me a little bit to think about what she said. Then all of a sudden, I had this idea about a teenage sorceress written in diary format that I knew would work as a young adult tale. I wrote it, and found it was much fun for me to write as the grown up stuff .

Now as a teenager myself, I read a lot of Judy Blume. I loved the fact that she didn’t shy away from the taboo subjects, like teenage sexuality. In most of her teenage geared books, with the exception of Forever, sex was mentioned, but the main characters just didn’t do it. Her main characters were very real to me because of this. Because they went through all the same emotions I went through. Currently, I’m reading her Fudge and Peter books to my son now, which are geared towards younger kids, and I’m happy to see that the work still holds up. It’s as much fun for me to read now as it was when I was a kid.

I think I was about sixteen when I discovered the work of Christopher Pike. His teenage paranormal tales were fantastic and I still love reading them. The Remember Me series written from the POV of a teenage girl ghost are all fantastic reads. Maybe that’s why all of my young adult tales seem to lean more towards the paranormal, because reading his stuff inspired me to go that route.

My current project is actually inspired by my son, PJ. The little man asked me why I never write anything that he’d want to read. I told him about my uncompleted manuscript about a teenage boy vampire slayer, and he said that would only be fun to read on Halloween. Leave it to PJ to be so honest and blunt . Then I got to thinking about what PJ likes. He loves space, science, rockets and wants be a rocket scientist when he grows up. So, I came up with an idea for a Science Fiction Young Adult Romance with an alien princess heroine and a fourteen year old hero, who like PJ, wants to be a rocket scientist when he grows up, and I told the idea to my son. He loved it. We read the first chapter together after I completed it, and PJ loved it too. He even gave me some great suggestions.

I really think the key to writing a great young adult tale is to not overload with slang, but still keep the attitude young. And really a great young adult tale is something that people of all ages will enjoy. Just look at Pixar Studios and their movies. Yep, they are animated and generally geared towards kids, but hubby and I have seen all the Pixar movies at the theater and loved all of them, even the ones that came out before we had our son. That’s what I want to do with my writing. Write a fun tale set on Earth and worlds beyond that transcends the age boundaries. I hope I’ll get there, because if I do, I can get one or more of my tales published .

I like gadgets. Any gadget.

Therefore I tend to like software, too. So what do I use?

I use Word to write (2003, I can’t stand the 2007 version), or Open Office Writer. I like both and they are interchangable for me.

I use Onenote to organize things. Anything. Snippets, pictures, links, descriptions, plots… you name it, it’s in my file somewhere. Love the thing. OneNote is part of the MS Office Suite, but if you don’t want to use anything Microsoft, Evernote is a very good alternative. (www.evernote.com) it does almost the same thing as OneNote. I heartily recommend it.

I’ve tried out various writer’s tools, like Writer’s Blocks, Writer’s Cafe and a bunch of others I can’t recall the name of. None of them did anything for me — except distract me from writing. So for me it’s a big thumbs down for them. Others may like them, swear by them, but after trying it… no. Not for me. At all. Too fiddly, too distracting and therefore unproductive.

My reference stuff tends to be books, not software.

What do you use?

Most of us have lives. Well, all of us do. Some lives are more hectic than others, but we all have things we should be doing. And things we shouldn’t. (Like me, typing this at work, looking over my shoulder the entire time. *cough*)
Anyway, I joined the SoCNoC Challenge after Valerie mentioned it.
I won.
Well. I mean, I got the wordcount. I’m not done yet.

It was 50k in June, and I did that, and then some. That leaves pretty much no time for other things.
On the upside, I nearly got the end in sight. (Well, another 20k and I will.) On the downside… This is book 5 or 6 in a series… and I kind of don’t have the others written yet! Eek.
At the same time, I’m trying to come up with a pen name. That’s been proving frought with strife. I cannot seem to make up my mind. Erk.

Another thing I’ve been doing… I’ve played “Mommy” to dragon eggs.
*blush*
These my current eggs: (They might be hatchlings, or adults by the time you see this.)

And here you can see all the ones I “grew”: http://dragcave.ath.cx/user/53176

So that’s my progress — what’s yours?
Ever joined a challenge? How did it go for you?