Monthly Archives: October 2012

Write a Story with Me – Part 14 – Plans and Schemes – What will he do? with Richard Leonard

Posted on October 2, 2012 | 7 comments

Hello there!  If your new over here, Write a Story with me is a little idea I came up with for my Blogiversary.  It’s a story I started in mid July, and a different author ever week adds an additional 250-ish words to the story.  When they are done, the next person gets tagged and they are on their way!

It’s great fun because it’s a super flash-fiction challenge, because you NEVER KNOW what you’re going to get hit with.  You can’t plan, because you don’t know what kind of curve-ball the person in front of you will throw.

Sound like fun?  It is!

If you’d like to catch up, a list of the previous segments is below.

Today, we have Richard Leonard up at bat.  Take it away, Richard!

14 (Richard Leonard)

Yoran fought the urge to crush the evil little monster hovering just beyond arm’s reach. He guessed Janosc spoke in a falsetto voice to put him off guard, which it certainly did. Staring fiercely at the disgusting wasp-like creature buzzing before him, he knew what was to eventuate and could see no way to avoid it.

“What do you want? Speak quickly, we have little time.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”, said Jonasc in his normal gruff voice. “You’ve seen this before, Yoran. You know it’s terminal. I can help heal your daughter… but only if you help protect my world.”

“How?”

“Well… it involves taking her to through the Portal. However, I’m not sure if I’m prepared to do so. It’s a big risk for us.”

The color of Yoran’s face deepened as the veins in his neck swelled. How dare this vile bug hold his precious little Marci to ransom. Her life traded for the promise of allowing the beetle fairies and their world to thrive in his beloved county? For any other father the decision would be easy. But Yoran can never be seen to have made such a choice. Marci’s sacrifice would be expected of him.

SO… does he save Marci or not?  Hop on over to Richard’s site to read the rest of his section.  Have fun!  http://richardleonard.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/write-a-story-with-jennifer-m-eaton-part-14

If you’d like to sign up, come on over.  There’s always room for more!

Part One – Jennifer M. Eaton

Part Two – J. Keller Ford

Part Three – Susan Roebuck

Part Four – Elin Gregory

Part Five – Eileen Snyder

Part Six – Mikaela Wire

Part Seven — Vanessa Chapman

Part Eight — Ravena Guron

Part Nine – Vikki Thompson

Part Ten — Susan Rocan mywithershins

Part Eleven — Kate Johnston  AKA 4AMWriter

Part Twelve — Julie Catherine

Part Thirteen — Kai Damian

Part Fourteen — Richard Leonard

Don’t forget to stop by next week to see what happens next.

 Sharon Manship —- TAG!  You are “It”

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Road to Publication #18: Reviewing the ARCs, OH NO!

Posted on October 1, 2012 | 36 comments

Holy Crud.  This is not happening.  I just found out why you DON’T want to have two works being published at exactly the same time… and even worse… by two different publishers.

I was stunned this morning when the first round edits for Connect the Dots came through. I thought I would have another week.  I have two weeks to finish the ARC edit (the very last edit) of Last Winter Red AND finish the first round edit for Connect the Dots.

Okay.  Breathe.  It’s all good.  This is a great problem to have.  People are going to spit at you for having this problem.  Take a deep breath.  Chocolate helps.  Good.  Relax.

Okay.  No problem.  I can do this.

So… back to Last Winter Red.  I started reading it on Kindle last night.  I made a lot of highlights on the ARC with the handy Kindle Notes feature.

The reason for some of my notes is because my writing style has changed a lot in the last few months since I worked on Last Winter Red, and things don’t seem right to me anymore.

I did find a missing quotation mark at the end of a sentence.  Easy fix (I hope).

What is odd, is every once in a while I stopped and said “Is that what he said?” or “Did I write that?” or “Wait.  That makes absolutely no sense.”

I’m wondering if I even wrote some of these things, or if they were edited to the point of losing “something”.  I want to go through the whole thing, make notes, and then go back to my original copy and see if I need to smack myself upside the head for past mistakes.

Maybe I do.  At this point, I’m not sure what happened.

Either way, I think some more changes are in order.

What makes me cringe over this is that I could have made these changes months ago.  I am tucking this away as a “lesson’s learned” though.

I did have a bad feeling about not reviewing the full version before it went to copy editing.  You know that deep clawing pit-in-your-stomach feeling when you think you lost control of something?

To make sure this doesn’t happen again, I MADE SURE before I signed the contract with Still Moments Publishing for “Connect the Dots” that I WOULD have a chance to review a final before it went to final editing.  Not only that, I will get to see a FULL VERSION as it stands through each round of the editing process.

For a control freak like me, this is a huge relief… because I know I will not be down to the wire and fixing errors I would have seen earlier.

This is not J.Taylor Publishing’s fault either.  It is the way they work.  All publishers are different, and as an author, I need to be ready for this.

What I need to do now is finish reading and marking.  Then I want to go back again reading carefully for spelling/punctuation errors, and then I need to document and changes necessary on  a spreadsheet.

I need to do this within one week, so I can devote the next week to Connect the Dots.

Once again, sleep may become optional.

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