2016 was an awesome year for writing! What have I been doing? What am I going to do in 2017? This is the post that will tell all!
(Well, no, not all. But it will give enough details to tantalize.) I give you: A review of my 2016 writing journey!
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 “Pereleth,” Edric said. “The City of Water. The Old City, at the center of the Pereleth, was built on an actual island in the center of the lake. The latter portions of the city were built directly over the water.”
“An island on an island?” Katryl smiled at the irony. “A little like the Septeru themselves,” Edric answered. “Isolation within isolation.” Last week, I introduced you to Katryl through excerpts from my work in progress, The Seeing Queen (Book 3 of the Firewing Chronicles). This week, meet Edric, the man who has acted as her guide, protector, and guardian since Book 1.  “I thought I had masked my accent," Katryl said.
“When you are taken off-guard, you sound far too Dashani.” “Dragon’s teeth!” “And the swearing makes you more Dashani than ever.” Because I'm up to my eyeballs in my NaNoWriMo work-in-progress, The Seeing Queen, Book 3 of the Firewing Chronicles, I figured it'd be fun to present five juicy excerpts from the book (in addition to the one above). What inferences do you make about Katryl's character from these excerpts? I'd love to know!  This week in The Dying Prince, I wrote an important scene in which one of the characters is able to get closer to their mysterious enemy--the Forbidden--than any one else has gotten so far. I needed to reveal enough to give the story a little more momentum--more questions, more chills--but not enough to blow all the secrets in Book Two that should be discovered throughout Books Three, Four, and Five.
I began to write the scene with the appearance of a nebulous figure:  Okay, since it's the day after Christmas, we have gifts on our mind--gifts that we are psyched to have gotten and gifts that perhaps weren't so enthusiastic about. (Personally, I've never had one of those.) So today I am giving you a peek at gifts: the Gifts of the nations in The Moonstone, the unwanted gift that Katryl received--her mother's Moonstone, and the awesome gift I have for YOU!
 This week as I was running and playing epic soundtracks to clear my head from all the crazy doings in The Moonstone, I got inspired. As the driving music ignited my imagination, I realized that many of the tracks seem to match my characters' personalities and life stories.
So here is something new: Introducing the six main characters of The Moonstone's cast--through the soundtracks that best exemplify their personalities and destinies.  This week I ran into an interesting snag as I wrote The Moonstone: How do you keep track of time while you are underground?
Here's the background: Katryl and her companions accidentally wind up in Undercountry, a vast kingdom under the earth whose inhabitants have not seen the sun for a thousand years. There are no days and no nights, no natural wake and sleep cycles, no seasons, no celestial bodies to mark the passage of time--nothing by which we would normally keep time.  This week, I made it past 50,000 words in my novel The Moonstone. This is a HUGE milestone, because it means that I am a NaNoWriMo winner. Cue the next question: "So what does that entitle you to?" Bragging rights, mostly, but also the right to wear a cool winner's T-shirt and to get a few free goodies, including a certificate validating my accomplishment. Since this is my first NaNoWriMo, and I joined last-minute on a whim, I am pretty excited that I have made it this far.
So, in celebration, here are some of my favorite excerpts from the story and a behind-the-scenes peek at how I designed the cover.  Katryl, the main character of my NaNoWriMo 2015 project entitled The Moonstone, excels at archery. But the techniques that I describe her using in my book are not the sort of techniques you'll hear about in Hollywood, because, as it turns out, Hollywood has got it wrong. When ancient peoples used bows and arrows, they developed techniques that work while you are moving, riding a horse, and in the heat of an actual battle. Here is the video that helped me discover some of these techniques:
 I am having a blast participating in NaNoWriMo 2015, despite the fact that my word goals are clashing with the demands of real life (and, as you'll see, some unusual circumstance as well)! My first few videos, you can tell I'm just getting into the swing of things, but as the days progress, I add more details about my story-in-progress, I encourage fellow WriMos with some tips I've discovered along the way, and I share meaningful stories from my life that relate to my writing. This week: Discover the special new person in my life!
Read on for an excerpt from this week's progress on The Moonstone! If you're a YouTube fan, you can subscribe to my channel instead of waiting for the weekly blog update! |
