FADED, book three in the Flicker Effect trilogy, is my fifth novel (sixth full-length manuscript), and one of the things I’ve learned over the course of writing a half dozen books is I don’t feel like I’m officially into the draft until I’ve passed the 10,000 word mark. I started writing this draft when I published FRACTURE at the end of June, and as of yesterday I can finally declare this draft a WIP!
Melanie Hooyenga
Why I Read YA
A recently published article bashing YA as a lesser form of literature has been making the rounds, as have numerous rebuttals defending YA. My favorite is by Rob Moran, titled Men Should Be Able to Read YA Too, where he states, “…Gordon seems to view reading as a means to an end, rather than an activity in its own right…
Fracture is Published!
I’m thrilled to announce that Fracture is now available on Amazon! Today you can only get the ebook, but tomorrow (probably in the evening) the print version will also be available!
Things I learned (or remembered) while prepping this book for publication:
Take This Draft and Shove It
It’s been a very hectic several months, which I’ll get into in another post, but today I’m here to tell you that I’ve finished Fracture! If you recall, I said something similar while buried under three feet of snow, but since then I’ve tackled four rounds of revisions, the most strenuous of which I completed today! I’ve added roughly 3500 words, which is nearly fourteen pages, and I’m really proud of how this novel has developed.
Outlines, Plug-Ins, and Beta Readers — Oh My!
Hi everyone! There’s a lot going on in my writing world, starting with yesterday’s exciting accomplishment: I downloaded the Kindle plug-in for Adobe InDesign that allows you to format an ebook from the page layout program. This may not seem exciting to you, but as a designer I pride myself on figuring out how to do things on my own (well, I pride myself on that in all walks of life. My dad used to fret that he raised me to be “too independent”, but that’s another story for another time) so formatting my own ebook is important to me.
When Inspiration Strikes
Ideas are a very important part of a creative person’s life, be they a writer, designer, or someone just looking to redecorate their office. All three of those labels apply to me, but I only have trouble generating ideas for the first one.
People often ask “where do you get your ideas?” A common writerly response is something snarky, along the lines of “from the idea book” or “I have a monthly subscription to Ideas-R-Us”, when actually writers get idea from everyone and everything. The entire world is fair game.
The Importance of Beta Readers
For those of you who are NOT writers, a beta reader is someone who reads a draft of your manuscript to tell you where you’ve screwed up and how to make it better. Some even tell you where they laughed out loud, gasped, or wanted to punch a character (thanks Nadine!).
Dictionary.com defines the slang version of beta as:
Help Me Name Book 3
Happy almost new year! I hope everyone had a nice holiday and is ready to close out 2013 with a bang. The first draft of Fracture is currently with a couple beta readers and while I wait to hear back from them, I’m brainstorming the yet-to-be-titled Book 3 in the series. I know the overall …
Every New Beginning is Some Other Beginning’s End
I finished the first draft of Fracture! I missed my self-imposed deadline by a week, but considering how long it took me to get back in my writing groove, I’m okay with that. The first draft ended up being 8000 words longer than I expected, so there’s the extra week! In all I’m happy with …
In the Home Stretch!
As most of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and while I’m not competing officially, I’ve quietly sucked the enthusiasm and ambition from my fellow writers to push through to the end of my wip, Fracture. That’s right — I’m THIS CLOSE to finishing the sequel to Flicker! NaNo competitors are supposed …