Mar 22, 2012

Seven and Author News

I was tagged with the Lucky Seven by Madeleine Maddocks of Scribble and Edit

The rules:  
1. Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences, or paragraphs, and post them as they're written.



Well, I'm not up to page 77 in The Renaissance of Hetty Locklear yet. That's what I'm writing right now. I'm also editing The Backworlds, which will be done by end of next week. Then I start formatting. So, I'll give you an excerpt from The Backworlds: (release date: May 7, 2012 :D )




“Do we have a plan?” Craze asked.
“When we took the ship to the docking facility, after loading up our cargo,” Talos said, “First Officer Lepsi ‘n I were fortunate to spy a spacecraft with black smudges painted on the aft panels. I went to examine closer ‘n noticed the contours of the Fo’wo symbol underneath.”
        Craze took cargo to mean the aviars had the chocolate bars stashed on board. “An actual Fo’wo vessel?”

Want to read more? You can read chapter one HERE.







Madeleine is also hosting a bloghop on April 17th. To correspond with the letter P, she's hosting a Plotfest. Sign up to the linky and post your tips and secrets on how you plot your novels. Even if you are a Pantser rather than a Plotter, there must be some methods you follow when writing your stories. Or you can post about any aspect of plotting. SIGN UP




Suze of Analog Breakfast and Anna Smith of Universal Gibberish on the Versatile Blogger award to me. Thank you awesome writer women. Seven truths ...

1.  I spent most of my childhood in a stable. I rode Western. One of the few cowgirls on the east coast.

2.  I dreamed of a crawfish invasion the other night. What was that? My college roommate was in it, too. She drew some crazy cartoon of a rabid dog. For some reason it was very important, but I had lost the cartoon, and I didn't want to tell her. Please forgive my carelessness, Valerie. I blamed the crawfish.

3.  I am highly sensitive to caffeine and had to give it up over the summer. :-(

4.  Husband Unit and I have been together 21 years, married for 17. We met in a bar. I hit his car on our first date. I was pretty convinced he'd never want to see me again... I almost didn't get out of the car.

5.  I had never looked through a telescope before starting work at Pine Mountain Observatory five years ago.

6.  I lived through the Blizzard of '77 in Buffalo, NY. The house was literally buried under a snow drift, a two story house. I've only seen more snow on the high peaks of the Cascades. Not this year though. We've not had much snow or winter.

7.  My favorite book as a kid was Man O' War by Walter Farley. I read it a few hundred times or more.




Tara Tyler--A Picture Paints 1000 Words Blogfest, March 26th-28th.



Here's how it will work:
1. Sign up in Mr. Linky below.
2. Tell your friends any way you want and send them over to sign up for the party.
3. Choose a picture to inspire your short story (the story can be about what you see in the picture, or just something that it sparked in your imagination.)
4. On Monday-Wednesday (March 26-28), post your story of 1000 words or less and go around to visit the other participants. You may want to post early, see below.
5. The four of us at UB will do the same and pick our four favorites to post links to on Wednesday night.
6. On Thursday you get to read the four and vote for your favorite.
7. The winner will be announced on Friday. They will have a choice between a first chapter critique from those of us at UB, or a $20 gift card to Amazon (courtesy of me).




Congrats to:




Nancy Thompson, who signed a contract to have her suspense/thriller published. Wooot! I can't wait to read it.

Ciara Knight, Rise From Darkness

Alexander Lorre gives new meaning to the term “tormented teen”. He’s a newly fallen angel, which means he has the self-control of a three-year-old, the hormones of a teenager and the strength of an angel. When he rescues Gaby Moore from drowning, the chemistry between them is undeniable. With a local demon threatening Gaby’s life, he struggles to find a balance between remaining close enough to protect her but distant enough to control his desires.

As danger draws closer, Gaby uncovers shattering secrets that will lead to an ultimate choice. Will she fight alongside her father, an earthbound hunter killing fallen angels and demons, give into the demon blood coursing through her veins and join the demon world, or save the man she loves from both? The first two choices damn her, but the last one could destroy them all




 Weapons training and winter formals… a deadly combination

All Mia ever wanted was to fit in at Whispering Woods High. But being a portal-finder who dates a guy from another dimension sort of makes it hard. A month ago her brother disappeared, and agents from the IIA began policing people’s movements through dimensions. She’d trusted Dr. Bleeker from the local university when he’d told her the IIA were the bad guys. But even a girl with an extraordinary ability to sense things can make mistakes.

Now two people are dead, and as a portal gatekeeper for the IIA, Mia needs to find Dr. Bleeker before he hurts anyone else. And her boyfriend Regulus, an Agent for the IIA, carries secrets of his own. Between learning about weaponry, finding the perfect dress for the winter formal, and catching bad guys, who has time to fit in?




Homesick upon the SS Perseid, Linia, a young linguist, thinks she signed up for a mission of peace, but her crew members have another plan: attack the planet Medusa.

Bored with his dying planet, Alezandros, a space cruiser pilot, joins the Medusan army in his quest for adventure.

When the SS Perseid clashes with the Medusans' cruisers, Alezandros and Linia's lives intertwine. Sucked through a wormhole, they crash upon a post-apocalyptic Earth and are captured by cannibals. In adjacent cells, Alezandros and Linia cast their differences aside for a common bond: escape. But when romantic feelings emerge between them, they might do the unthinkable because for a Medusan and a Persean to fall in love, it would defy gravity.





1. Receive assignment.
2. Save a life.
3. Sleep.
4. Repeat.

Protecting humans from dangerous magical creatures is all in a day’s work for a faerie training to be a guardian. Seventeen-year-old Violet Fairdale knows this better than anyone—she’s about to become the best guardian the Guild has seen in years. That is, until one of her assignments—a human boy who shouldn’t even be able to see her—follows her into the fae realm. Now she’s broken Guild Law, a crime that could lead to her expulsion.

The last thing Vi wants to do is spend any more time with the boy who got her into this mess, but the Guild requires that she return Nate to his home and make him forget everything he’s discovered of the fae realm. Easy, right? But Nate and Vi are about to land themselves in even bigger trouble—and it’ll take all Vi’s training to get them out alive.



One by one, Laura Armstrong's friends and adoptive family members are being murdered, and despite her special healing powers, there is nothing she can do to stop it. The killer haunts her dreams and leaves cryptic notes advising her to use her powers to save herself because she's next.

Determined to find the killer, she follows her visions to her hometown and the site of a crashed meteorite. There she meets Ben Fieldstone, who seeks answers about his parents' death the night the meteorite struck. In a race to stop a mad man, they unravel a frightening mystery that binds them together.

But the killer's desire to destroy Laura face-to-face leads to a showdown that puts her relationship with Ben in jeopardy and her pure spirit to the test. With the killer closing in, Laura discovers her destiny is linked to the stranger and she has two choices – redeem him or kill him
.




 OK. That was more to get through than I thought. Congrats to Nancy, Ciara, Brinda, Cherie, Rachel, and Donna.

What are you up to this weekend? I'll be writing and editing. One of my local author friends is having a signing at B&N on Saturday. So, I'll be going to that and meeting up with a few writer friends. So, congrats to Karen, too!

Sometimes I think it's so weird that I now hang out with writers, and that doing stuff like this is just normal. It's so cool. I may get paid crap, but this is an awesome job. Have a great weekend everybody! :)