Apparently prologues are "out"?!?

  I did not know writing was akin to the fashion industry where things went in and out of fashion, but apparently that happens. Recently, I heard some writers from my writing group talking about how the prologue was now seen as undesirable, and it got me thinking... Who decided that? 

 Was there really some huge reader outcry saying that the prologue was an annoying tool they'd rather live without? Were there lists with millions and billions of names added to it demanding the removal of this vile thing?

 As someone who writes stories, I like the prologue. I use it to tell a piece of the story that is either set in the past, the future, or that hints at something that I won't be able to go into for a while (looking at you, Shattered Dreams). 

 As a reader, I've never once read a prologue and thought: "I wish this scene wasn't in this book". 

That's about it for these random thoughts for today. 

Also, here's a shameless plug to the Dublin Creative Writers Cooperative website.

 

Take care out there!

And... time for a check in...

Hello all! (or random person who stumbled on this)

First, time flew by, again. It always does, doesn't it? And more and more as we get older. :)

I hope everyone is doing well in 2020. This has probably been the weirdest year in most of our lifetimes.

Some quick updates:

- Finished the first draft of Recurring Nightmares (Book II of In Dreams)

- Started thinking up things (aka, piecing random dreams together) to form another story about a girl and a labyrinth

- Joined an AWESOME writing group

- Finished a post-doc

- Got a new job

- Read a ton of random things including some manga/manhwa/manhua

 I've been working hard on editing Child of Moon, Daughter of Sun (when real life lets me), so hopefully I can get it to be as good as I wish it were. :)

 I decided to set Stargazer aside for a bit until I'm comfortable working on the sequels. There's a lot of backstory and plotting that gets interwoven along several books in the series, so I should probably work on it only when I can go back and review all my notes and get all the planning settled. 

Now let's see if I can update this within 5 years.

Stay safe out there! 

Yes, blogger had locked me out of posting...

But that's not why I haven't posted in over a year.

Time flew away again.
 Or rather, I fell into an interdimensional hole where the passage of time does not occur normally... Who else has had that happen to them?

Anyway, bulletin-style updates:

 -  I finished In Dreams - the first one
 - Back on KDP (at least for Grace and Cameras, still figuring out what to do with In Dreams)
 - Proofing Vanishing Act
 - Finishing up Sun & Moon
 - Trying to remember where I put the kindlegen instructions...


Okay, that's it for the month. :)
Hugs!

Quick warning - I'm getting kicked out of KDP, kinda...

I'm taking a break from reading about horse embryos - why on Earth am I reading about horse embryos, even I don't know - to tell anyone who might be interested that my books will no longer be available on KDP. I hope they'll still be allowed to remain on print form at amazon. I don't remember what the tax requirements were like for that one.

This is what happened:
 I got an email saying I had to fill out some form to figure out which type of tax forms I needed to fill out for the IRS. Since I have never dealt with the IRS and have watched enough series and movies to be scared of them, I'd rather not fill any forms I do not comprehend. Especially not when I'm focusing on a dozen other university-related things...
  Maybe in the near future - or in 2015 - I'll manage to get all that sorted out and I'll be able to get back to KDP. I also plan on looking for alternatives as soon as I get enough time to think.
Maybe freebies don't require tax forms? That would be an alternative, I guess...

Anyway, ebooks won't be there starting on Dec 4. If you wanna read it after that, email me and I'll send you a copy. How's that sound?

I'm still struggling with getting In Dreams finished by the end of the year, but real life is really not helping.
If you don't hear from me by the holidays, have a nice Christmas and may the next year be always better than the one before.

Hugs to all!

Time goes by very quickly... whether you're having fun or not

What do you mean it's August already?

Okay, so I've been slow with my stories... and most of everything else. Some time in June I decided I'd wait until I got my computer fixed before continuing this blog-thing, but then the computer was declared KIA and I just decided not to think about it in fear of realizing what files and photos I might lose.

I'm still not sure if they're lost or not, but now I've started to actually miss the files... One thing I'm sure I had no backup of was the initial draft of the cover for In Dreams. I don't even have the photograph I was using for background. The draft for the cover of Vanishing Act is also somewhere in the dead computer, but I think I sent a jpg of it to a friend to get her opinion so I might still have that at least.

Anyways, finished reading a book, started reading another one, should probably be studying, and haven't gone to the university for more than a week in the last 3 months for several reasons ranging from bus strikes to illnesses. That's pretty much what's been going on with me since I last wrote anything here. :) 

I just figured I should stop by the blog and see if I still remembered my password. Glad to say I only needed two tries this time to get it right. Better than the manuscript submission page (five tries!).

Hopefully, I'll have some real news soon if I ever get to sit down and finish either story I'm currently working on.

Hugs to all!

So close to the end... and I'm having second thoughts...

Don't you just hate it when you have a jumbled up ball of yarn-looking story pieces, redundant conversations and multiple possible outcomes that you have to sort through and figure out how the story will go?

What? You don't? It's just me? Really? Huh... didn't see that one coming. ;)

Anyways, I spent an hour waiting for a professor to sign a paper for me... he didn't show... I wasted an hour of my life, right? Wrong! Because that hour allowed me to finish up a conversation between Sarah and Pegasus that I was stuck on... Yes, I do have a character named Pegasus... No, that's not his real name...

I think I'm only a couple of chapters away from the epilogue... The aforementioned ball of yarn is the pieces I've written down leading to the epilogue and the conclusion of the first part in this series. Ooops, forgot to say which story I'm talking about: In Dreams.

There's this girl called Sarah, and she gets mixed up in some complicated secret stuff when her parents are assassinated... and I'll wait until I come up with a proper blurb before I try to explain this to anyone without giving away too many spoilers. :)

I am wondering how much of an explanation of what's going on I should put into the epilogue. I don't want it to just be a long list of "and this is what happened" or "so that's why they said that" or whatever. But I also want to have things explained enough in case someone falls asleep while reading. I know I could have used a recap during the last mystery book I read over a few months. When I got to the end, there was a character I could not remember for the life of me...


So, I had to change my counter thinguie for In Dreams over there (look right) because I had gotten past 200 pages already with the draft. I have to confess that I didn't calculate the percentage, I just guessed, but since my guesses are usually more accurate that my actual calculations except when a calculator is involved, I'd say we're okay.

I think I mentioned that I thought I lied about my age, turns out I didn't. I calculated wrong how old I was because I forgot what year we were in... And no, I didn't use 2012 for the calculations. It was worse than that. 2014. :) It sounds so ridiculous when I say it, but it really was funny...
Here's the transcript of the conversation between me and my friend Cassia when I found out I had miscalculated:

Me: How old am I? Because I thought the last candles on my cake said 30, but last night I was counting and I think I might've missed a birthday somewhere along the line...
Slightly-less-insane-friend Cassia: You're 30.
Me: Are you sure?
Cassia: Yeah. 1983 to 2013 is 30.
Me (laughing now): Wait... we're in 2013?

Needless to say I was not asleep at the time. I am just naturally insane. I blame my dad. He started it.
But now it is time to sleep. I hope I got at least a smile out of someone out there. I know I've already laughed myself silly because of this.


Oh, and in real life news, I'll be away from my computer for a month in May, which will probably change nothing for this blog because I rarely post more than once a month anyway. ;)

Hugs to all!

Posted my review for Kathy Garlock's Gone for a Soldier on goodreads and amazon.com... finally

It too me a while... Actually, it took me a very long time, I think...
I read it fairly quickly, mainly because I couldn't stop reading. Couple that with my natural insomnia, and a saw the sun come up a few nights while reading about Lucy's adventures with the First Minnesota.

Gone for a Soldier is a historical fiction, but even if that makes you look at the book with skepticism, I'd suggest you give it a try. I know I really enjoyed it, right down to the seemingly random details that to me added so much color to the whole ensemble...

I know I sound like I'm talking nonsense, but I'm trying to explain how I liked it without describing the stuff I really liked. That's hard.

Here's the goodreads review:

                                     http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/590167652

On another note, real life is mean...
... I stopped staring at the VM KS counter - and if you don't know what that is, you don't watch as much TV as you think you do. :)

And there's less than a month before the family trip...

... and I may have lied without my age without realizing it. Someone asked me my age, I told them, and now I'm thinking I told them the wrong age... Yes, that's totally possible. But in my defense, it was only off by one year and last month I was writing down the date as being Dec 2012, so a little lunacy will be expected, right?

Anyways, I just decided to make sure the blog still let me on here, it's been so long. And what are you doing online? Go read a book. j/k :P

Hugs to all,