2010 in Review

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The time has come once again to reflect on the goals I had for 2010 and soon I'll be setting official goals for 2011. Hard to believe the year is almost over already but I did accomplish a thing or two this year, so that's a plus.


Goals for 2010 (Posted in April)

Tattle Tell - Finish rewrite and perform at least one edit. Prepare to query by 2011.
First Drafts - Try to finish first drafts of Fallen (rename) and Against All Evidence.
November - Take part in National Novel Writing Month with either sequel to Tattle Tell, sequel to Standing Ground, or write first book in Blood Prophesy.
Write in novels every month/week.
Prepare queries and/or synopsis of different novels for practice and for real.



Results for 2010

Tattle Tell - Not quite. I'm on the last 5 chapters, which were the hardest to write and there is a section I still have to figure out because in the first draft I pretty much put "stuff happens here" for over half of a chapter. Will finish it in January.
First Drafts - Fallen is renamed but not finished yet. It's almost half way done. Against All Evidence is on the back burner.
November - Success except I used a different novel. I wrote 50k of an epic fantasy in 13 days but haven't finished the first draft.
Standing Ground - finished the first draft back in April. Sequel won't happen for a little while.
Write in novels - not quite. Did write often but the last few weeks have been little to no writing over all.
Queries - Did one practice query letter so far but haven't done any more.


Coming Soon: 2011 Official Goals

Holiday Wishes

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Hope everyone has a good holiday or two. And I look forward to what 2011 will bring in life and this blog.

Novels for 2011

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Hard to believe it's almost here but I can see it coming. 2011, the big year. Or, I hope it's going to be a big year for me. 2010 went by so fast it's hard to imagine that I'm already planning what to write in the next year. Course, in 2009 I thought by the start of 2011 I'd have a job but I never imagined I'd do a publishing internship either, so never know how things will look a year from now. I'm looking forward to what may come this year and plan to make the effort needed.

While I don't really do new year's resolutions, I do like to make goals. I won't make them yet but I have figured out what I plan to work on and a couple that I may work on but haven't decided yet. Here are the three different categories of novel work I am considering for 2011.

Novels to Edit (and or rewrite):
Tattle Tell 2nd draft and beyond
Standing Ground
Hellenic Distractions

Novels to Finish:
Gathered at Dawn (nano epic fantasy series book 1)
Angel/Demon
Thomas/Kyle Novella

Novels to Start (maybe):
YA mutant book 2
Steampunk/Fantasy
Dystopian
YA contemp Intersex novel
Or other ideas


Are you ready for 2011?

Query Blogfest

Okay. Despite searching for blogfests on a few different occasions, I almost missed this one. Jodi Henry at jodilhenry.blogspot.com is the hostess of this great sounding blog and is kind enough to have it last for a few days so everyone can enter on comment on other people's entries. The query should be less than 300 words for this blogfest. It's best to do a completed novel but I'm going to post one that I'm working on the draft right now because the YA novel is the first I'm going to send out after it does the beta reader and edits route. Why post a draft of a query when the novel isn't ready? Why not? Have to start somewhere and it takes a few tries to get the query down. I did have the query started already, which helps. Be glad I'm not posting the synopsis I wrote for novel writing class on this book because trust me, it's awful.

Posts will go up between Dec. 12th and 18th. My apologies for not making it the first couple of days as this task has been much harder than I expected.

The host has a few links for those that need help in the blog announcement post. Aside from that, I have a post from the workshop I went to with Kristin Nelson over at my other blog. Here is the link to that, which discusses the pitch paragraph of the query: http://dawnembers.blogspot.com/2010/09/query-tips-i-learned-from-kristin.html

Posting to a dream agent is an awesome idea, except for the fact that I don't have one picked out yet. Well, I sort of had one I put as number one until she got an awesome offer elsewhere in publishing and is no longer an agent. So, my query has an imaginary agent for now. And if it's awful, it's okay to let me know. I promise. :-) Okay, I've rambled enough. Time to actually post the query.

*-Are subject to change.

The Query


Dear Superstar Dream Agent:

Based upon the superstar presence you have on both your well-written blog and the educating, as well as amusing, posts on twitter I have been a fan. Based on the works you currently represent, I think you would enjoy my Young Adult novel, Tattle Tell.*

Life as a teenager hasn’t been easy for Ephram Gram. A time meant for having friends and going to school instead has the cloud of secrets and a home life often met with solitude. Hiding a genetic mutation, marked by a metal identification band clamped to one wrist is bad enough, but having to report to a government agency that monitors mutants just makes life difficult.

Over the years, reporting about random strangers that show signs of mutation was never a problem. When one of Ephram’s friends, one of the two that he ever had, must be told on and learning what happens afterwards, he begins to regret his role as a tattle to the government agency. Stuck with limited options, he must decide between avoiding outside contact whenever possible or to attempt to be normal and face the consequences that come with life as a tattletale.

Tattle Tell is a 53,000 work of a YA science fiction.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Dawn Embers

I Found Religion...

...for my epic fantasy series, that is.

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I'm not a world builder and even though I've had this novel idea as an epic fantasy one for over 5 years I had not put any form of religion into the story. Sounds odd right? No religion at all in an epic fantasy that contains humans, elves, dwarves, dragons and maybe even griffins. Yeah. I wasn't sure what to put exactly and it wasn't something I'd really given much thought as I don't often discuss religion in a novel unless it's very important to the plot.

Then I was about to think over my steampunk/fantasy idea, which is still the first to be in world building stage before a first draft is even started, when all of a sudden I had a great epiphany. It was about religion but didn't fit for the steampunk novel. It does work very nicely with the epic fantasy. I took notes so that I wouldn't forget.

I came up with a few things so far. Not enough to get pages of notes from but it's a start. Some segments of the populations are going to go with a one God system. Others are going to go with a 3 God and 3 Goddess system. Dwarves are going to be more agnostic though they'll agree with whoever they are talking to just to not bother anyone. One of the rare topics they do that with, lol. The multi-belief has 3 couples and there are 6 overall, which means the numbers 3 and 6 will be important. In fact, the "group" of good guys includes six people that can easily be divided in 3 sets of 2. Nice huh? And while 6 is good, I'm thinking 3 of them is going to be bad, which the villain can use to his advantage later. I'm excited about the new discovery and can't wait to add little bits of it into the overall story in book 1.

Yay!

WIP Wednesday

Well, it's more of a blogs in progress then novels at the moment. Novel writing is very minimal still even though I have the high goals up for December. Better get to work on them asap. Blogs on the other hand are very busy. So, this is a Blog work in progress report.


New blog: which is the one I posted about for Muse Monday. My first post will be next week and I'm really excited. I haven't quite figured out which characters to introduce because we have two days to do introductions. I'm splitting up the angel from the demon just because the stage I'm at in their novel is one where they don't know much about each other and certainly not those important facts. Sure, the angel should have figured it out but there are good reasons he didn't so now is determined that he is just a not saved human. While the demon is a new demon, so he had never met an angel before and knows nothing about that factor so he really doesn't think he almost slept with an angel the night the two met at the club. Complicated for sure. So, they don't chat together right now in these character conversations. I'll probably keep the YA mutants together because it would come out better for them to speak in the same post. Just need to figure out how to split the characters for the two days.


Guest posting: What started off as one post has already gone to another being asked for by a different friend blogger. Not that I mind. In fact, it's kind of exciting that other people want me to be guests on their blogs. My first guest post is found at Ashelynn's blog where she'd asked me to write something based upon my experience taking part in NaNoWriMo this year. Here is the guest post link.  My next guest post isn't even written yet but I have one that I'm going to do based on a previous topic from my other blog. A friend remembered a post I did all the way from like February and wanted me to expand on it for her blog so I'm going to write a guest post about anti-heroes and anti-villains. Should be fun.

Own blogs: Yep, still posting here and my other blog. Not sure what all to post here since there aren't any blogfests until the one at the beginning of January but I'll figure something out. Have to work on this month's goals and start getting ready for 2011. On my writing topic blog, I have posts up soon about marketing and brand. Plan to interview the wonderful Kristie Cook who not only is a great author but is her own publisher so she has a lot to say about the marketing of oneself as an author.  Can't wait for 2011. It's going to be an epic year for me and my novels. I can just feel it.

Monday's Muse is Character Blog

That's right. I've joined a group blog, or well my novel characters have. It's for a blog that was started a little bit ago but back then I posted as a guest. Now there are going to be six of us posting. It's my first group blog that has actually invited me to be a part of the fun and I'm excited.  The blog page is here: http://thecharactercafe.blogspot.com/. And my personal author page is this one: http://thecharactercafe.blogspot.com/p/dawn-embers.html.

Yay!

For those that don't want to click the link to figure out exactly how it works, basically each writer (there are six of us atm) will have blog posts written from the point of view of one of their characters. For example, my guest post in the original blog was from a mutant character, Noah. He wrote an introduction (me writing from his viewpoint) and then there was a chat where the other two had a character and we all chatted as ourselves and our characters. So, on the new blog I will be posting a blog post from my characters' point of view every other monday.

Check out the blog and follow us because trust me, it's going to be awesome in hilarious proportions.

WIP Wednesday December Goals

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December goal-making time. 


1. Finish the second draft of Tattle Tell with around 25,000 words for the month needed.
2. Read a couple of books. (Finish Shiver asap)
3. Work on finishing nano 2010 novel, Gathered at Dawn.
4. Prep work for 2011 novels. (Currently have 6 to start and/or finish.)


Non-writing or reading goals.
1. exercise 30+ minutes a day
2. eat a little healthier (minus christmas day)
3. Get more followers on both blogs and prepare for book review blog to come out in January.



What are your goals for December?