1st Kiss

And now for the tail end of BLOGFEST... Thank you Jackie and Danielle (Dani) for hosting this!

The First Fight/First Kiss blogfest: 

• Post 1  June 12 - Share with us a 1st FIGHT scene on your blog.
• Post 2 Thursday, June 14 - Share with us a 1st KISS scene on your blog.

*sigh* So, here's the first kiss in FAUX PAS:

Sam killed the engine. “Welcome back.”

“What if they don’t recognize me?” I panicked suddenly. The hair alone, but then the eyes, my shape, everything had changed.

“They’ll recognize you.”

I looked at him. “How can you be sure?”

“You’re still you, Faux.”

A compliment? Yes, he meant it in a good way.

I played with the hem of my shirt. “What if they’re angry with me, or frightened by what I can do, or-?”

“They love you, Sparky. No worries.”

“Thank you, Sam.” I breathed nervously. “For everything.”

He placed his other hand on top of mine. “It’s gonna be okay.”

I nodded apprehensively.

“I’ll be right there with you.”

I nodded again. “I know, so why should I be worried? Without you I’d be dead, probably five times over. What’s facing my parents compared to the Soulless?”

He smiled, a covert little sweet thing. It consumed my attention and pulled me out of my nervous twist.

“Thank you.” I leaned across to kiss his cheek.

He turned.

Our lips touched.

An explosion burst through my chest—warm and real, but thankfully not in the flame variety. It launched through me, leaving my skin tingling with warmth, brilliantly charged, radiant with life.

I pulled away, worried I might actually fry him. His fingers gripped mine solidly, eyes mesmerizing. He wasn’t afraid.

I’d never felt anything like it, this amazing rush. Is this what it felt like? To truly care about someone? To be in love?

I swallowed, looking down.

He squeezed my hand. “Let’s go meet Mommy and Daddy.”

I love my story, I love my story not

I've reached that magic point with my WIP (work in progress)--you know, the spot twenty feet before the finish line where you look at the remaining ten steps and collapse screaming, "Why?!"

James Scott Bell warns in Plot & Structure, "You are going to spend a lot of time with the plots you choose to write...passion is the most important for your writer's soul and, almost always, your ultimate success."

Oh passion I've got, but most of it wants me to turn a firehose on my computer and laugh manically as the device sparks to death. Here I stand on the brink, wondering if I love this story enough to finish. I imagine it's like any relationship. We go through ups and downs, times when we want to throttle the source of our adoration, and times when we could die of sheer joy. I'm needing some of that bliss right now.

In consequence, I'm attempting to publicly remind myself WHY I love my WIP with the top five reasons.




1. Faux (Fox) is a freakin fire hazard, and so totally awkward I never stop laughing. Josef (Jason Dohring) said it best in Moonlight, "But this is so awkward. I love awkward."





2. The mysterious Sam. Dangerous. Bad mouthed. Ridiculously talented, but also tortured and careful. Learning what makes him tick and why he's so dedicated to his "cause" has me aching to write the sequel.

3. Greg. I'm too much a nerd not to love Greg.









4. Blowing stuff up is awesome. (Yeah, yeah!) That would be my inner tom boy stepping out. Excuse me while I put it back.



5. The ugly duckling. I LOVE transformation stories... And lest I should give away too much, I'll leave it at that.

Can you feel the love? I'm trying. What do you do to rekindle the spark when all you want to do is scream? And what is it you love most about your WIP?

Post 100: Nostalgia and Branding

I'm the girl who was NEVER going have a blog. Many of my friends had one. Several writing associates had one. Family members kept pressuring me to start one, but what can I say? I'm a rebel. Police put me on edge, politicians turn me to rage, and social "norms" leave me debating arson. So how did I, the rebel, end up with a blog?

This one started as a beta reading forum ONLY in 2009 and has steadily become...

Yeah, I don't have an answer for that, but hitting post 100 has given me pause to think. Why do I blog?

Why do you blog?

Been reading a great deal about branding yourself in the blogger nation, and really finding your niche. So, to help us (pointing to self) in this process, I've compiled a couple questions:

1. What is it you know? (Writing, computers, field mice, parenting?)

2. What is it you enjoy about blogging? (Reading, writing, networking, socializing, learning?)

3. What do you hope to accomplish with blogging? (Taking over the world, selling books, making friends, astonishing people with your fabulous knowledge of cheese?)

Blogging should be tailored to your interests--after all, you are the author. It should be something you like to do, not just another weekly/daily chore. (Heaven knows we all have enough of those!) 

To answer #2 up there, I enjoy blogging most when sharing something I'm working on--be it the first 250 words, flash fiction, blurbs, tag lines, books etc. (Ironic--considering that's why I started a blog in the first place.) Right now I'm finishing up another book (#6) to be beta read here at the end of the summer: Faux Pas. Hoping you'll stop back in and join me for that adventure.

Back to my roots. What is your reason for blogging? What do you enjoy most about the process?

Hello Blogfest, Goodbye Cheese

Shelley Watters is hosting a "Twitter" pitch blogfest for completed MS's. The prize? A full manuscript request from Suzie Townsend of Fine Print Literary Management. See more here. In 140 characters, not words, characters, here's my pitch:

Title: Faux Paw

Genre: YA Urban fantasy

Word Count: 70,000

Socially inept Faux only wanted a boyfriend, until she burst into flame and initiated the apocalypse. Now all she wants is to go home.

The non-scaled down blurb goes a little something like this:

Ugly, socially inept Faux (Fox) never hoped for more than a boyfriend by the time her seventeenth birthday rolled around. Alone—abandoned by both career-parents on her special day, she lit the candle. “Make a wish!” she sighed, blew out the cake, and exploded, literally.

Seems there’s one or two things Mom and Dad hadn’t mentioned—like the freaky way she could imitate the human torch, or the reaper-like creatures on her trail, or the two opposing and steamy misfits working to psychologically win her over. Now uncovering the truth about her past is the only thing that may save her from the monsters on her trail—all of them.

AND ON TO THE CHEESE:

I keep hearing it, and so my "youthful" days of wishfully thinking I'm above the law...

are over.

What law? Oh, the law of name branding. So, (as much as it pains me,) I'm retiring the profile name of "Happily Cheesy" (*don't cry, don't cry!*) in favor of my real name.

It's not that I don't like my name. Actually, I love it! When I realized I was going to marry a Collier, I leapt for joy. I mean--besides the fact my hubby rocks, I'm now an alliteration. =)

Faux and the Inner Fire: Never Giving Up

I recently participated in a facebook discussion on an abundance of “unfinished” works. A fellow writer talked about putting away the works she doesn’t think she’ll ever finish—essentially banishing them from mind and heart.

Ouch.

It got me thinking. See, I’ve got this hang up. After an inspiring dream or a new idea hits, I’m on fire. Can’t stop thinking about the possibilities. Can’t stop planning. Can’t stop the character’s conversations in my head. The computer is my best friend, and the pillow is my outlining board. For a few weeks it’s the only thing I want to do—writing that story. For a few weeks. Eighty pages in my foot gets caught in the web of editing, and it’s all over.

 I recently read an article by David S. Goyer, the screenwriter of The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Blade, and many many other big box shows. He says anyone can write a great first act. To quote Goyer:

“The trick is moving past Act One into the inevitable, sagging Act Two. Many writers bottom out in the middle of their scripts – the point where they actually have to start weaving the various storylines together. They get depressed, they procrastinate, they flounder. I do it as well. Even now, I frequently find myself questioning the merit of any given project when I’m in the middle of it.

“But it’s important to resist the temptation to jump back to Act One and begin endlessly rewriting it. Rewriting Act One before plowing through Act Two is just an elaborate form of procrastination. More often than not, fine-tuning Act One will simply result in further demoralizing you. And honestly, how can you be revising Act One when you haven’t even finished the rest of the draft?”

 Way to go Mr. Goyer.

SO, here I go, back to a story I started in 2005. For the next couple months I’ll be writing 1,000 to 2,000 words a day until I can slam that first draft on the desk and say, “Ha!” My official WIP is:


Faux Pas

Ugly, socially inept Faux (Fox) never hoped for more than a boyfriend by the time her seventeenth birthday rolled around. Alone—abandoned by both career-parents on her special day, she lit the candle. “Make a wish!” She sighed, blew out the cake, and exploded, literally.

Seems there’s one or two things mom and dad hadn’t been telling her—like the freaky way she could imitate the human torch, or the reaper-like creatures on her trail, or the two opposingly steamy misfits working to psychologically win her over. Now uncovering the truth about her past is the only thing that may save her from the monsters on her trail—all of them.



What do you have sitting in the attic, earning dust?