Blog tour

WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR

I’m participating in a blog tour where authors talk about their writing process. I was tagged by Lucinda Whitney, author of The Secret Life of Daydreams, coming early 2015.

What am I currently working on?

SO many things. I just finished the rough draft of my sequel to Eye on Orion, a YA sci-fi. Working title “Rommader” is the story of the princess from Eye on Orion after she returns to her home planet. I am now making some edits and applying the changes suggested by my Critique Group for my straight on Fantasy called Blue Bloods that I plan to pitch to Tor during the upcoming Storymakers Conference.  I also have ideas for book 3 in the Orion story. I think that will be my next project to actually start writing new words in. I’ve also got some final edits to do before sending to my editor on a Middle Grade fantasy about the lost city of Atlantis that’s the first book in a series of 6 I’m involved in with 5 other authors. I’ve got another fantasy that’s been put on the back burner for close to a year. It’s a twist on the Moses story and I really want to dive back into it again someday. Then there are books 3, 4, and 5 in my Urban Fantasy series Daimon High that I’ve made notes on and will need to get to soon. Plan is to self-publish them since people still love Werewolves and Vampires, but agents and publishers aren’t taking them anymore.

And then new shiny ideas pop up all over the place. But I have to hold off on those.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

                My books differ in that they come from my mind. No seriously, every book ever written is the same as another book, but different as well. No one can tell the story the same way another can. Just ask a group of friends to join you on a writing prompt and see how differently those stories go.

                For Eye on Orion, it’s technically Science Fiction, but it’s very mild sci-fi. There are people from another planet who visit earth, and they have some advanced things, but it’s still set in the world I live in. Although it’s sci-fi, it doesn’t feel really sciency so I think people who normally wouldn’t pick up a book about aliens, would find mine easy to read and hopefully enjoyable as well.

Why do I write what I write?

                I love make believe. Fantasy and science fiction and magic and elements of things that can’t really exist in the world I live in make me happy. I’ve tried to write contemporary fiction or romance, because I do enjoy reading them but it’s just not something I can do. I started 3 different stories and tried to keep it real world, but all of a sudden: magic, or werewolves, or aliens, or ghosts, or something else pops up and ruins my plans of real world. But I’m okay with that. They tell you to write what you want to read and so I do.  

How does my individual writing process work?

        It’s a jumbled up mess, but it works for me. So here’s my regular process. I write new words in a story that has me by the throat. I write and write and write until I get stuck or can’t figure out a plot point. Then I step back for a bit and go work on a project that needs some editing or tweaking.

Or, I just stop writing or editing and do household projects or yard projects, or vacations with the family to get all the way out of the writing mentality for a moment so my mind has time to rest.

       Then I come back and write more new words until the story is done. When the first rough draft is finished, I go over it two to three times to fix typo’s, take out notes to myself I left in places I skipped to work on something that was working, and I rearrange scenes if they were written out of order. Then I let it sit for a week and come back to it one more time before sending it to my critique group. After they have it, I don’t look at it for as long as possible. Months even. By then, the story is out of my mind, and I can see places where I’d forgotten to add details for the reader. (Sometimes an author knows things so much we forget it’s not in the book and that’s confusing to a reader)

        While that book is being set on the back burner, I pull out other projects that have been sitting and need some revisions. Or I start writing a brand new book again.

Sometimes I have to force myself to stick with a project so I don’t get too many new projects open at the same time. My voice (or the tone the book is written in) is different enough in each story I have to be careful not to work on too many simultaneously so they don’t start to blend together.

                So in a nut shell it’s all over the place, but I’m always working on something.

I've tagged Jaclyn Weist, author of the Luck Series. Check out her blog and watch for her writing process post coming soon.