The Descent Into Madness

And this time I don’t just mean for Camp NaNoWriMo.

While the descent into that madness does start tomorrow, I have been spiraling down into madness on more than one thing lately.

Remember me saying on my post last Friday that I had a seven day straight work period and finally three days off after it this past weekend? Well, that weekend was shot due to constant dreary weather and rain. And my day back to work today wasn’t any better.

It was definitely Monday, and I swear it was a random Mercury in Retrograde fluke with all the tech problems I had at work.

Just to keep things nice and sweet, let’s just say my registers were not accepting credit or gift cards, the wi-fi was completely down, and the phone lines were not receiving calls and putting any out. Not to mention a few various other things. I pretty much played phone tag (using my cell phone) to get ahold of everyone I needed to about the problems, which took up most of my night so I didn’t get much done at all.

Between the Hell Week of work I had (which was my seven day straight work period), my dismal three day vacation that got rained on, and this lovely night of weirdness and frustration, I feel like I’ve lost my mind.

Tonight was definitely a shoot-me-now kind of night.

So besides my descent into madness over all those lovely adult problems, Camp NaNo is about to spiral me down even further into insanity.

Or maybe I’ve already hit rock bottom in that department. I don’t even know anymore.

I was supposed to have off on Wednesday for the start of Camp, but I’m now picking up a shift for my GM (general manager) because my DM (district manager) called a sudden GM meeting in which she has to go to on that day after the schedule was made and since I’m the only one that can pick that shift up, guess who now has to work?

Not too happy about that.

I was looking forward to having the first day of Camp off to try to build a cushion for Camp. (Goddess knows I will need it.) But now since I no longer have that day off, plus I’m working Wednesday through Sunday, I am going to be scrabbling to keep at goal for the beginning of the month already.

Not how I wanted to start this Camp off.

Luckily, I do have today off so I can hopefully get some other things out of the way and be all set up for Camp tomorrow. That way I can just dive right in and hopefully hash out a thousand words a day. Because yes, I am an idiot and set my goal to 31k for the month. Which means I need 1k a day to make that goal on time.

Fingers crossed I keep to it this time. I’m trying to pep talk myself into keeping with it and not changing my goal towards the end of the month because I know I won’t make it. Like last Camp in April. I’ll see how it goes.

But if I get things set up tomorrow, like small outlines or something, and then make sure I light a fire under my ass for the rest of the month, I think I’ll be okay. Work killing me is going to be my biggest problem when I don’t have much time off. I’m already exhausted as it is, this is just going to add to it.

So I think I’m just going to see what else I can get done before July 1st, cross my fingers, and hope I don’t spiral too much farther into madness.

Who am I kidding though?

I’m already there.

Snippet Sunday: June 28, 2015

I am running uber late this time for Snippet Sunday. Was away all weekend on a vacation that wore me out even more from my seven day straight work period and I’m barely keeping my eyes open now I’m so exhausted. So if this really doesn’t make sense or you find typos, just remember I feel like a walking zombie right now.

Anywho…

I am still going to continue on with my work from Camp NaNoWriMo, Darkness Becomes Her. A dark fantasy novel in the works yet. (And is also going to be my project for this coming Camp in two days. Soooo not ready.)

Picking up right where I left off from last week’s snippet. The scary woman Heather is facing in her bedroom from a very real nightmare is throwing her around and hurting her. Heather is, of course, terrified beyond belief. To make sense of what the woman is asking of her, she had just demanded that Heather not make one more sound or plea to be let go.

Please still keep in mind that since this is a first draft, it is rather rough and unedited yet. (Some sentences may have been creatively punctuated to fit the ten sentence limit.)

—

“Understood?” she snapped sharply this time. Heather cried as she nodded, wanting to avoid the unexplainable pain she kept feeling.

“Good,” she grinned wickedly, but she was annoyed and disgusted by the child’s constant crying already: that was a weakness and a fear she would need beat out of her quickly. She pulled out a piece of cloth and releasing her grip on the child’s arm, she gagged her, muffling her sounds. After all, she couldn’t have her screaming and crying loudly outside when she left.

“Time to go,” she hissed, grabbing her roughly once more before the same swirl of black mist formed around the two of them.

When it faded once more there was nobody left in the room. The silence of the rest of household hadn’t even been disturbed, not a single peep of their daughter’s screams and pleading had been heard; not even the dog outside her door had heard the commotion that went on inside the room. Everything was untouched, left peacefully. The only signs of the scene that had just gone on where the rumbled sheets upon the bed and the teddy bear that laid on the floor where the small child had been forced to drop it.

—

I am debating if this might be my last excerpt from Darkness Becomes Her at the moment. This scene marks the end of chapter 1 and with Camp going — and the fact that I have used this work for awhile now in snippets — that I may switch it up and move on to a different work. I’m thinking I might. So for those of you that will want to know what happens to Heather, you just might have to wait and find out. Gotta love cliff hangers. ;)

And as always, check out my works on Wattpad for some other stories I already have posted!

And if you’re looking for some other great stories of fellow authors,

hop on over to Facebook and check out Snippet Sunday!

No Rest For The Weary… Er, Wicked

So it’s my first day off after a seven day straight work period. A period I liked to call Hell Week. (Appropriate right?)

And it’s not even a sit back and relax day off. It’s a I-got-a-lot-to-do kind of day off.

Work seven days straight, get three off for a weekend vacation, and then back to work Monday.

Fun.

Not really.

You know I’ve been working a lot when my hands have blisters and my feet hurt from walking so much. But one thing is for sure, I’m going to love that next paycheck.

Since I’ve been working almost non-stop (I should have just ate, slept, and played in my work clothes for the past week) I haven’t had really any time to myself to do anything. My writing has fallen behind, drastically. I know I’m not going to make goal for the month at all. Though I have managed to somehow keep my room/desk decently organized.

Not sure how I managed that one.

However, this weekend vacation has a very high chance (like 100% high) of being rained on all day tomorrow camping. Which is really, really going to suck since it’s an amazing campground. My fingers are crossed it by some miracle misses us but I’m not holding my breath.

If I do get rained on, I’ve got plenty of time to read and write though! And since Camp NaNo starts in five days, I need that time to get organized for it.

Although, I need to write the journal entry for the last camping trip I had a month ago yet.

Yeah, about that…

Can you tell how much I’ve been working that I’m so far behind?

So here’s to hoping I get lucky and have an amazingly nice weekend to enjoy the trip. And here’s hoping I get caught up on things. Because when I come back this weekend, my work schedule isn’t going to be much different in terms of having any time to get anything done. I’ll have one more day off, then work five in a row. All long hours.

But hey, at least I remembered to write this before I left! Now I just have to remember to do my Sunday Snippet over the weekend — if I have Wi-Fi access.

And now it’s back to doing a million things at once to get ready.

There really is no rest for the weary.

Or maybe it’s no rest for the wicked in my case…

Light A Fire Under Me

The second Camp NaNoWriMo starts in a week again and once more I am crazy enough to dive into it.

Just like last Camp, I’m going to be working on the same fantasy novel that I’m taking snippets from on Sundays, Darkness Becomes Her. I just have to make sure I know where I’m going with it.

Well, let’s put it this way.

I know the beginning of the book, and I know how the book is going to end. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out all of the middle. Which, I have a majority of the big plots and scenes already rattling around in my head. I just have to sort them out and put them in the right order. Somehow.

As for the goal I set myself, I’m pretty sure I’m crazy.

As a way to get myself really motivated and going, I’m setting my goal for 31k. Part of the 1k-A-Day challenge I wanted to do for so many months already and have yet to make that goal for the month. I’m hoping that Camp is going to let the fire under my ass to actually stick to it fully this coming month.

I had originally opted for a 25k goal, but I’m daring enough (and probably crazy enough) to up it to try for that 1k-A-Day.

I’ll see how it goes this time around.

Hopefully, and I mean fingers-crossed-hopefully, that I can get some more writing done before July starts. Considering I have a journal entry I need to write before Friday and I have a whole bunch of other things going on, I’m not sure just how much I’m going to get done. I haven’t been getting anything done for the past week.

I think it all boils down to the fact that:

1) I need a break, badly.

And

2) Someone really needs to light a fire under my ass or start nagging the hell out of me to keep on things. Or maybe I need to light the fire and someone needs to keep it lit for me.

Snippet Sunday: June 21, 2015

First off, Happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there in the U.S. and everywhere really. And also happy first day of summer! A Blessed Litha as well for those that know what it is. ;)

I am still going to continue on with my work from Camp NaNoWriMo, Darkness Becomes Her. A dark fantasy novel in the works yet.

Picking up right where I left off in last week’s snippet again. Heather is still facing the scary woman that came to her bedroom unexplainably and is now trying to get away from the woman after crying and screaming for her parents. But are her efforts in vain?

Please still keep in mind that since this is a first draft, it is rather rough and unedited yet. (Some sentences may have been creatively punctuated to try to fit the ten sentence limit. I might be one sentence over. Better than how I struggled last week though!)

“L-Leave me a-alone!” she sobbed, screaming yet. The woman yanked her back even rougher this time and forced her face down on the bed, pulling her arms behind her. Heather cried and dropped her teddy bear that she had been clinging to for comfort, trying weakly to pull away from the woman’s strong grip.

“Do not fight,” the woman spat hatefully now, sneering down at the whining and crying child as she tied her hands behind her back, too tight. She was no longer in the mood to gloat now that the child was acting like such a pathetic baby.

“It h-hurts!” Heather cried, trembling in terror as the tears streaked down her face. “Mommy! D-Da–!” she broke off with a scream of pain as the same stinging sensation tore through her entire body, making her cry harder and try to curl up on herself.

The woman grabbed her by her hair none to gently and hauled her up, making her scream and blubber again; she yanked her head back roughly, hissing in her ear. “Shut up, you pathetic mortal, make one more sound and I will curse you worse than that little stinging sensation. Understood?” she growled, giving her head another yank.

Heather whimpered and cried, too petrified to answer her and the woman didn’t seem pleased with that for with another growl, she cursed her once more, making her terrified sounds even louder yet.

Check out my works on Wattpad for some other stories I already have posted!

And if you’re looking for some other great stories of fellow authors,

hop on over to Facebook and check out Snippet Sunday!

Roleplaying: An Author’s Best Friend

I’m sure all you fellow authors out there know the nagging plot bunnies that bug you to figure out every character’s backstory. There reasons for why they act the way they do and so much more.

But sometimes, it’s just not important enough at the time that you need to think about it.

I mean, you have an idea about them, but you don’t know all of it.

Well, that’s what happened to me with about nine characters in the series I am working on. Characters that aren’t important for a couple of books yet. Characters I shouldn’t really need to worry about until said book comes along.

Characters that I have now gotten into thanks to a book roleplay I do with a fellow author. Which so happens to be the same author I owe this post to.

Said roleplay is the only place I get into these characters at the moment, but the more I work with them, the more I am figuring out for them.

Now thanks to a certain plot that came up out of a random conversation we had, I was presented with either figure out the rest of my character’s backstories or have them stay kids forever.

You see, what happened was a certain character decided to play a prank on the rest of them by using a spell (mind you this is all fantasy) to turn them into kids again. And they were only left with a riddle to figure out how to change back into their present selves. (Example is my character was twenty at the time, and was turned to her ten year old self.) Now the only way they could turn back after figuring out the riddle was to face their fears and realize who they were then, to find how they had become who they are now. Which involved telling their regrets and fears from the age they got turned back to.

Easy, right?

Not for all of them.

As I said though, unless I wanted to leave them as kids forever, I had to figure out those backstories quick. Which, surprisingly, wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I knew the general personalities of said characters already, and I had a small idea on what some of the backstories would be.

What I found though was the stories just came. I didn’t have to think so much about them, they just kind of came out. From brain to fingers to keyboard on a spark of inspiration.

It helped me to figure out more about them and how they act, and more importantly why they act that way. I was suddenly able to get further in their head then I was able to before.

My only problem:

Now that I’ve gotten into their heads, I can’t seem to get back out. I suddenly want to sit here and write a short scene or novella or something that shows the experience to the backstories I just came up with. Which completely hinders me and puts me in the wrong direction of what I should be writing.

Which is the first book of the main character’s series of said characters that will come along much later.

The plot bunnies have gone wild again. Someone gave them fertility drugs and let them out of the pen on this one.

One thing is for sure, I’ve learned that roleplaying your stories and putting yourself in that character’s head with no possible way to control what the plot is doing really tells you a lot about their character. Not to mention it really helps you build an actual personality for them that is believable.

I think roleplaying might have become an author’s best friend.

Or, at least, this author’s best friend.

Snippet Sunday: June 14, 2015

I am still going to continue on with my work from Camp NaNoWriMo, Darkness Becomes Her. A dark fantasy novel in the works yet.

Picking up right from where I left off in last week’s snippet. Heather had basically just woken up from her peaceful sleep to find a scary woman standing over her bed, with an ominous thought of she didn’t like it when her Heir disobeyed…

Please still keep in mind that since this is a first draft, it is rather rough and unedited yet. (Some sentences may have been creatively punctuated to try to fit the ten sentence limit. I failed to make it fit though and eventually gave up.)

Tears welled in Heather’s eyes in terror as she stared wide-eyed up at the woman; she whimpered against the hand over her mouth, starting to shake slightly. The woman chuckled darkly, a low, evil sound that made Heather whimper again and try to shrink away back under the covers, hoping this was some sort of very real nightmare. However, the woman yanked her back harshly, making her squeal a little, the sound muffled by the hand still over her mouth.

“Ah ah,” she scolded, letting go of her arm and reaching inside her cloak to pull out a coil of thin rope. Heather’s eyes widened even more, horrified now and she squealed again, trying to call for her mother and father, attempting to scoot out of the woman’s reach. The woman let her get out of her reach this time, grinning underneath her hood in a sick sort of way.

“Mommy! Daddy!” she screamed, her voice breaking and cracking in her terror. “Daddy!”

The woman merely chuckled once more, and Heather suddenly cried out in pain as she felt pain shoot through her body. She doubled over on herself as the stinging sensation faded away, sobbing now and shaking uncontrollably. She wanted her mommy and daddy, she was scared. What had just made her hurt?

“Scream all you want, mortal, they cannot hear you now,” she taunted darkly, sweeping around to the other side of the bed and grabbing Heather roughly before she could try to get away again. Heather screamed once more, her little voice shrill in the silence of the night.

Check out my works on Wattpad for some other stories I already have posted!

And if you’re looking for some other great stories of fellow authors,

hop on over to Facebook and check out Snippet Sunday!

Magical Creatures Galore

Mythical. Magical. Mystical.

The joys, and hardships, of writing a fantasy novel when you find yourself trying to create a creature.

I have two creatures I already have planned out and made, but I feel like I should be making some more. I have an idea for one, but I can’t seem to get how I want it to look just yet. This is where I really wish I was better at drawing freehand so I could sketch these ideas out.

But I’m not that good.

I can only draw when I have a reference picture. And if I’m creating a creature, I’m damn sure I won’t find a reference of it anywhere.

For this one I’m doing though, I’ve got the notion that I want its power to be able to put its prey in a trance like state from…something. I haven’t figured out what yet. Kind of like the Pied Piper does. The problem is figuring out the rest. (I.E. size, type of creature, looks, where in this made up world they will reside, nocturnal or not, etc. etc.)

Actually, by saying that, I think I just figured out I want this one to be nocturnal, makes it spookier for the trance like state. I believe I plan to make it a water and land creature as well, somehow. Maybe. I don’t know.

Then of course there’s the problem about what to call it.

And…

I’m probably getting ahead of myself now.

This is the fun, yet frustrating part of writing fantasy. You can do literally anything with it. But it also takes so much more work because you are creating everything from scratch. Maybe that’s why I love fantasy so much though. You can play around with it a lot to get the desired effect you want. Plus, it can make for some really interesting plots.

Either way, I think I’m going to keep brainstorming up ideas for creatures as I write. Even though they really aren’t needed just yet.

And I just gave myself a new plot bunny.

Drat.

Writing Is Life

Sometimes I will get people that ask me, “why do you write?” Or, “why did you even start writing? What’s the fun in it?”

Because really, all a writer does is stare at a blank page with pen in hand, or a blank computer screen with fingers posed above the keyboard and ramble on nonsense from their head.

Right?

Wrong.

Writing isn’t just me rambling on. (Okay, maybe sometimes it is.) Ninety percent of the time, my writing has purpose. It has direction. It has focus. And it has a world all it’s own.

Well, at least when the characters decide to listen and stay on track for me.

It’s so much more than just writing anything down though. It’s an expression of myself, an art. A very difficult one. There was a quote that I found that I believed summed up writing in the easiest way to show all those non-authors out there that it isn’t just throwing words on a piece of paper.

It went like this:

“Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter on the computer screen.” -Katrina Monroe

And that’s really the truth. Non-authors have no idea how many hours we put into a book. How many times we stare blankly at the words we typed, or a blank screen. How many times we want to throttle our characters because they have a mind of their own and throw us a plot twist. How many times we feel with the characters — anger, sadness, disappointment, loss, fury, betrayal, all of it. How many rewrites and edits we do. How long we spend tearing our hair out in frustration and cursing in made up languages because things aren’t going right. How often we have to fix gaping plot holes somehow, or try to tame the raging plot bunnies. And how much heart and soul we put into a book.

So, I know why I write.

Simply because if I didn’t, I’m fairly sure I would go crazy with all the ideas that are bouncing around up in my head. But I never really thought about what I learned about myself through writing.

Until I was asked a question by a good friend and author about what I have learned about myself through writing.

And that’s when I realized:

Writing, to me, isn’t just about the characters and their story; it’s so much more than that. To me, writing is about finding yourself. You explore the deepest parts of your mind, the complete depths of emotion and thought. Every twisted nook and cranny. Every dark alley you never knew you possessed. Every saddened and plucked heart string. Every rush of pure joy that you never knew you could feel so elated. Every crippling fear and thought you tried to bury and destroy. Each and every little thing comes up, forcing you to face it in writing. For me, in writing, I didn’t learn just who my characters were, I started to see myself in them. Little tidbits here and there, pieces of a personality that together fit together like a puzzle to reveal myself, at my core. I saw myself, a reflection of who I am, and who I wish I was.

It’s a past and a future; an accomplishment and a new goal of my life.

Writing is who I am in so many mixed forms.

Writing is life.

Snippet Sunday: June 7, 2015

I am still going to continue on with my work from Camp NaNoWriMo, Darkness Becomes Her. A dark fantasy novel in the works yet.

Picking up right from where I left off in last week’s snippet. The figure that just appeared in the child’s room is looking down at Heather.

Please still keep in mind that since this is a first draft, it is rather rough and unedited yet. (Some sentences may have been creatively punctuated to fit the ten sentence limit.)

Heather stirred in her sleep and rolled over so that her back was to the woman standing by her bedside, completely oblivious to the fact she was not alone in her room anymore.

The woman chuckled a little darkly to herself before leaning over the small child, close to her ear; she grasped Heather’s arm, her long nails digging into her arm painfully. “Wake up, mortal,” she whisper-hissed. “You’re going for a little trip.”

Heather woke up immediately, whimpering from the pain in her arm, wondering if it was just part of the dream she had been having; until her eyes latched onto the woman hovering over her. They widened in surprise and terror and she was about to scream and yell for her parents when the woman clapped her other free hand over her mouth, silencing her.

She tsked, still holding her tightly. “No screaming, they cannot help you now as it is. Be a good mortal and stay silent for your mentor,” she sneered wickedly. “She doesn’t like it when her Heir disobeys.”

Check out my works on Wattpad for some other stories I already have posted!

And if you’re looking for some other great stories of fellow authors,

hop on over to Facebook and check out Snippet Sunday!