Without Wings is now available!

Without Wings, my second chapbook with Turtleduck Press, released yesterday!  It explores the dark side of love.

My friend and fellow indie author SM Reine wrote an awesome review!

Here’s an excerpt:

“Her poetry has a way of painting pictures with negative space– that is to say, the things she withholds from the poems, rather than what she puts in them.  She dives right into the depths of emotion without hesitancy, and she has arranged the poems within to create a rhythm throughout the chapbook that flows as well as her poetry itself. ” 

You can read the review, as well as a short interview I did with SM Reine, here: http://www.smreine.com/2011/04/review-and-interview-without-wings-by.html  .

And to buy or for more information, visit us at http://www.turtleduckpress.com . I will be doing a giveaway very soon!

In other news, the Free-For-All ended up becoming Pirouette month. Which is just fine.  I’m on page 32.  It sounds like not a lot, but I’ve made some fantastic progress on the worldbuilding and the characterization.  I also have some ideas for the story as a whole.

Which leads me to my next point.  I realized that, while writing and rewriting novels may at times seem slow and inefficient, it also helps bring the entire thing into better focus.  For an example, in draft 2, I had Alisia totally unwilling to do something.  She fought with the people forcing her into it, but eventually figured she was overruled and went along with it.  That to me seemed rather shaky and Alisia is not one to go along with something she doesn’t want to do.  So, instead, in this draft, she’s going along with it, yeah, but to prove everyone wrong.  I think this is keeping with her personality more than in draft 2.

I also added some neat little touches to the world that will become important later on.

Alisia is more snarky now, if that’s even possible.  I’d wondered if I’d forgotten how to write her.  Nope, just took a little sabbatical.  She’s alive and kicking again!

So you see, I had to write 3 drafts to get to that destination.  I believe that nothing is ever wasted, even if I scrap something and start over.  It’s still there, in my head, and it can be revisited or refigured.  But I wouldn’t have gotten here without the original scene in draft 2.

Now my task is to keep the characterization consistant throughout the book.  Alisia and Lucien have to work for their happiness, and there needs to be obstacles.  And there are many.  So, that’s what’s next.

As for Alpha Female, I have a few changes I want to make, and the things I added to Pirouette will affect a few things in Alpha Female, so I think it would be best if I put it on the back burner for now.

I also was considering trying to write more poetry this month.  We’ll see how that goes.

Free-for-All month!

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen!  Since I can’t decide on one project to focus on and the muse is complaining, I’ve decided to do a free-for-all.  Whatever I feel like working on (besides the chapbook – that has to be done), I will work on.  As long as it’s a current unfinished project.  So basically Alpha Female and Pirouette are in the running.  Today I rewrote the first scene of Pirouette and got 606 words I didn’t hate.  That is progress.  😀

I’m not sure if this will work, and what the result will be, but I’ve got to get whatever I can get out of my muse.  Because that’s better than taking a month off, which I considered, but dang.  With just over 14k for the entire year so far, I didn’t want to do that.

But why torture myself?  If I want to work on Pirouette, then good.  Alpha Female?  Fine.  Something else?  Sure, as long as it’s unfinished (I highly doubt that, but gotta give myself room to move here).  It’s an experiment.  We’ll see how it goes.

The running tally:

Pirouette – 1 day, 606 words
Alpha Female – 0 days, 0 words

I’m crazy, I know.

God help me…

Been trying to get into some kind of rhythm and groove after my surgery.  Well, it hasn’t really happened.  Sure, I’ve written stuff.  I’ve spent a lot of time brainstorming and figuring out things.  But I’ve been feeling off kilter. I think part of it was my forced time off writing and part of it is my grandfather’s death.  He was my last living grandparent, 97 years old. His funeral was last week.  I’ve cried only once, but I’ve felt his absence.  I wrote a blog about him on the Turtleduck Press blog.  http://www.turtleduckpress.com . Scroll down a bit.  It’s called “Honoring My Grandfather.”

I have my 2nd chapbook, Without Wings, releasing April 1st.  So this month for me will be getting everything finalized.  We’re down to less than 30 days!

Alpha Female has continued to be my problem child.  I had to cut 5k because, as usual, it wasn’t working.  Started poking at it again tonight, and that didn’t go very well.  I’m thinking of setting it aside and working on it here and there. I’ve only got 5 parts to finish and the draft will be done.

Annnnnd I started the Pirouette revision.  Just 210 words, but hey – gotta start somewhere!  It’s daunting, knowing that this is the last revision (so I’m telling myself) and I’ve got to nail it.  So I’ve been putting it off.  Well, I decided today that I’m going to work on it.  Sentence by sentence if need be.  A lot of it is fine.  It just needs to be tweaked and cleaned up.  There are some things I’m changing too, but nothing major.

It feels good and it feels scary.

Lastly, I got clobbered by a plot bunny recently.  It’s a psychological horror, which I hear has no market, so I’m in no hurry to write it, but dang.  It speaks to the twisted, kinda crazy side of me and it’s drawing me in.  Relentlessly.  It’s about a girl who has erotomania – that is, she believes that someone is in love with her, a famous person, and he’s not.  It’s all a delusion.  And this is a real condition.  And it’s fascinating because, well…imagine what someone in love would go through for the one he or she loves…when the love is reciprocated.  Now imagine that intensity but without it being reciprocated but the girl believing that it is.  Can you imagine some crazy things?  Yeah.  That’s what I’m talking about.  It’s tentatively called Eros in Chains.  Another one to add to the pile.

So….this is going to be an interesting month.  I’m hoping to finish Alpha Female but who knows if that’s going to happen.  I need….something, and I’m not even sure what it is.  Just feel so lost right now.  Hopefully, I’ll find my way again.

Status update.

I’m still alive.  The holidays just about ate me, and I’ve had a few things come up that kept me from making any noticable progress.  But I persevere!

The first thing is Alpha Female.  I’m almost done with the current pass.  I have a few new scenes to write, and do another overall edit for things I might have missed, and after that, I’m calling it done.  Going to see if I can get it beta’ed.  It’s been slow going for the most part.  I haven’t really been focused as of late.  I don’t really know why, just that I’m getting tired of looking at this story.  But I promised myself I wouldn’t set it aside to languish after spending all these months hammering away at it.  So I gotta hang in there, and get it done.

Without Wings, my 2nd chapbook for Turtleduck Press, is almost ready for the approval process.  It’s due on Feb 1st.  I’ve done a few edits and it looks good, so I’ll need another pass to make doubly sure — and to add the acknowledgements and such.  Very exciting.  I was hoping to have some new poems written for it, but that just hasn’t happened.  I just haven’t been in the poetry mindset.  I’m hoping I can write more in the future, though, because I want to get back into it.

And finally, my surgery is happening Feb. 2nd and I anticipate being laid up and doped up for a week, so I have no idea if I’ll be able to get any serious writing done.  We’ll have to see how I’m feeling.  I want to use this time wisely, but if I’m not feeling it, it’s okay.  I remember when I had surgery to remove some hardware from my jaw — the pain meds made me so dizzy that I couldn’t sit at the computer to save my life, so I dictated a scene to a microcassette (this was in 2004).  It was weird, but it worked (and it pre-dated my first serious foray into voice recognition software).  That’s how desperate I was to get something done.  Dunno.  We’ll have to see.

Future projects are Pirouette and Darkweaver, in that order.  That’s another reason to get Alpha Female done and gone.  So I can move on.  I want to move on.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to start Pirouette sometime after my surgery.

So that’s what’s going on.  I had a recent career development that I can’t get into at the moment, but it is a good one, so cross your fingers that it comes through.

2010 in Review and 2011 goals

This year just flew by.  I don’t even know what happened to it.  It felt as if I were making no progess anywhere, but I did accomplish a few key things.  I also had to adjust my goals to accomodate Alpha Female, which wasn’t planned.  All in all, this was a pretty productive year.

What I accomplished:

~I finished the 3rd draft of Pirouette in May and am gearing up for the final revision (which is my #1 goal for 2011)
~I started the Flamebound revision using HTRYN.  Got to lesson 8 of 22.  Yeah, that was one of the things that got adjusted. 
~I wrote and rewrote and completed Alpha Female.  My original goal was to submit it to an anthology by the November 1st deadline.  After getting it back from a wonderful beta, I realized that it wasn’t going to work for the antho.  I decided to expand it, as most of the issues were due to trying to keep the wordcount within the limits (25k) and then decided to try to finish it up by the end of the year.  Which I pretty much did, if you don’t count the tweaks I’m currently working on.
~I started Broken and got it up to 12k.  Broken was a personal challenge to myself, as it’s got a bit of BDSM in it and I’d never written that before. It’s also a different genre for me. I am very pleased with how it’s going.
~I critiqued 3 novels for writer friends.  While this isn’t a huge thing, I made my deadlines for the most part and got the honor of reading some really good books.
~I joined up with a few writer friends and started Turtleduck Press, which is our publishing endeavor which will hopefully change the world, muhaaaa.
~I self-pubbed Life as a Moving Target through them, which has been a dream of mine since December 2002 when I wrote the very first poem in that collection.  After trying traditional publishing, I decided to go ahead and self-publish it.  I’ve gotten some great feedback so far.  And it’s so dear to my heart.
~I wrote approximately 100k this year.  Not bad considering I did mostly revising and editing.  Some writing, too.  I’m glad to have hit 100k.  It certainly didn’t feel like 100k.
~I wrote and rewrote my query letter for Pirouette.  I think I have it nailed.  We’ll see.

So, yep, not a bad year at all.

Goals for 2011:

~SUBMIT something.  This is HUGE.  This year was supposed to be the year for that, but I got a bit derailed.  I will submit something if it kills me.  Most likely either Alpha Female or Pirouette.
~Finish up Alpha Female and get it critted
~Do the final revision on Pirouette and get it to critters.
~Submit something!
~Continue Flamebound revision, hopefully finish (I see a rewrite in my future…)
~Finish Without Wings, my second poetry chapbook with Turtleduck Press, and get it to approvals by Feb. 1st.  This is a biggie because it still needs some work and time is ticking.
~Write (hopefully) Darkweaver.
~Work on Don’t Close Your Eyes, chapbook #3.
~Do not get derailed this time.  Stay to the goals.
~Get an agent

Will I accomplish all of that?  Perhaps.  But I will try for sure.  It feels like 2011 will be a good year.

So what have I been doing?

Yeesh, that’s a really good question.  The short version: banging my head against the wall.  And hating everything.  And jumping when my Inner Slave Driver says so. 

Lemme  explain.  Awhile ago, I got horribly, mercilessly, wacked-out-crazy stuck on Alpha Female.  It was so bad that I’d open up the file and I’d go numb.  Nothing would happen.  I’d feel uncomfortable and slightly panicky.  And then it would get so intolerable that I would have to close the file.

Imagine about a week of doing this, and then spending all my time away from the computer obcessing about it.  How to fix it.  What went wrong.  Alternate ideas.  Throwing lots of stuff on the wall.  Seeing what stuck.  Soul searching.  Wondering if  I really need to finish this draft now.  That’s important, yanno.

So at the end of that hellish week, I finally — after brainstorming until my eyeballs damn near started bleeding — came up with something.  The current direction?  Wrong.  The current ending?  Wrong.  It all needed to go from where  I started rewriting it last.  Ugh.  That really friggin hurt, but I saved the file under different name, just in case it was The Crazies and not a Brillant Idea like I thought.

Soooo I start in on the new direction and it’s flowing for a day or two.  I’m on friggin fire.  I can’t type fast enough.  It’s going, it’s going, and then..it went.  Just…nothing.  I went to start the next scene last night and ended up with this mess:

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Derek asked as we walked quite a distance away from the Circle and through a copse of trees. The sunlight sent diffused light through the canopy of leaves, and I hugged myself, suddenly cold. The smell of saltwater reminded me of the time that Luke and I spent at the beach, and my heart clenched tight.

“No, I’m not,” I admitted. “But I have to do this.”

“It’s just down this path.” A dirt path lead to complete darkness. Disconcerted, I followed him, wondering how far into the darkness Luke was. I realized that I should have had my daggers. Some kind of protection. Who was to say that Derek wouldn’t just..kill me? They didn’t exactly owe me anything. Although, I was still the Alpha Female, and it had to count for something, right?

I tried to think positively.

I’m positive that I’m going to die.

 I shook my head. This wasn’t going to work.

“Natasha?” Derek asked. “Are you okay?”

I blinked. “Wha – yes, I’m fine. Just a little worried.”

“I can imagine.” Derek stopped at a short nondescript building made of brick. It seemed to completely fill the area, but maybe it was my imagination. Luke was in there. Right now. I wasn’t sure if that scared me more or gave me comfort.

The sound of chains banging against each other broke into my thoughts. Derek was trying to unlock the chains.

Not even going to go into why this sucks, just that it does, okay?

So what’s going on?  Well, my best guess?  Some things have been weighing on my mind, and as usual, I’m putting too much pressure on myself (what else is new?).  I would like to finish this draft of Alpha Female by the end of the year.  What might be the reality is that I don’t, and that’s okay.  But I have goals!  Well, sometimes goals aren’t everything.

I’m not giving up on it, but I am going to lighten the load a bit on myself.  It’s been difficult and I know I need to work through these things, but I have been working on Alpha Female since August.  Three rewrites plus countless other scene rewrites.  This has been one of the toughest books I’ve ever written.  Why?  I don’t know.  I can’t say it was because I had a deadline, because that was shot to hell halfway through.  It’s almost as if the book is fighting me.  Why?  I love Natasha and Luke, I love the Pirouette world, I love the story.  So why am I so effed up about it?

I don’t know.  That’s a bit of a mystery.  But it’s really pissing me off.

I’ve also been thinking about Pirouette and where to go with it once I start the revision.  Out of the gate, I’ll need to revise the first two scenes.  That’s been simmering in the back of my head for awhile.  And a new project — well, an old one that’s screaming for my attention — is Darkweaver.  I have Ideas, baby, but can’t work on it.  I need to finish Alpha Female and Pirouette before I can even start think about writing it.  Because I could get involved in that for a year and meanwhile, Alpha Female and Pirouette suffer.  Can’t do that.

And, lastly, is poetry chapbook #2, Without Wings.  I have a preliminary file started with the poems in a possible order.  They still need editing and the order needs to be studied.  It’s due to the Turtleduck peeps on Feb. 1st.  So that’s in the plan as well.

So, I’m taking it easy.  Hopefully, I can get something going before the end of the year.  I hope.

Buy my chapbook!

You know you want to.  Come on, it’s only $7 and Christmas is coming…

:looks around:

Oops, did I just say that?  Sorry.  I think Alisia’s been hijacking my brain again.

What I was going to say was that my chapbook, Life as a Moving Target, is now for sale by Turtleduck Press.  Head on over to the Turtleduck Press site at http://www.turtleduckpress.com or to my website at http://www.erinkendall.com to get more information and/or to buy a copy.

You know you want to.

Even if you’re not into poetry — my chapbook is written so everyone can understand it.  That was important to me. 

:glares at Alisia, who’s grinning at her:

Um, sorry about that.  She’s doing it again.

Anyhoo, a friend of mine reviewed my chapbook on her website.  Here’s what she had to say:

Again and again, she uses metaphors for balance, for movement, for focus — tightropes and pirouettes, crawling, tops, the world pulling her along with it. Other images appear, rainbows and fog, medical terms and magic, shadows and shapes.

Overall, this is an incredibly moving and personal collection of poems, that deserves to be lingered with, reread, and shared. I encourage everyone to check out the excerpt at the Turtleduck Website and consider buying the chapbook.

If you’d like to read the full review, check it out here: http://www.erinmhartshorn.com/life-as-a-moving-target-review/ .  I’m so excited about it!

In other news, Alpha Female is giving me fits, so it hasn’t been going well.  But I did finish the Pirouette notecards.  The grand total? 118 !  That’s alot of notecards! But they will really help me nail down what needs to be changed.

Goal for the rest of the year: get as much done on either project.  After the first of the year, things will get crazy again, so for now I’m taking it easy.  No outrageous demands.  :grabs Inner Slave Driver by the throat:  You hear that?  I need a break.  And I will take it.

:whip cracks:

I mean, uh.  Yeah.  Going to write till my fingers bleed.  Uh huh.  Must work harder.  Must…….  :incoherent whispers:

NaNoRevMo – days 21-27

This past week has been really rough on me.  I lost a few days due to some personal stuff that made it virtually impossible to work on anything.  Everything is fine.  I just wasn’t in the mental place for writing and taking the time off actually worked to my advantage.

I was also horribly stuck on Alpha Female.  It always happens near the end: I’ll lock up completely and not be able to move forward to save my life.  I’ve heard that some writers subconsciously don’t want to finish their projects and by getting stuck, they’re able to delay the inevitable. It happened with Flamebound, too, although I’m not sure if it happened for Pirouette.  But it’s starting to flow better now, so I might actually be over the hump and into the home stretch.

I don’t doubt that I’ll need to do another edit pass, though.  Some of it is new words and right now, the goal is to finish it first.

I also worked on more Pirouette notecards.  That’s also coming along.

And of course, my chapbook is launching with Turtleduck Press on December 1st.  You can find out more at our website, http://www.turtleduckpress.com .  I’m looking forward to that. 

Bits of poetry are still rattling around in my head, but nothing’s jumped out at me.  I may need to just freewrite sometime soon and see what happens.  For some reason, I can’t seem to make the pieces gel into something cohesive.  I imagine it’s because I haven’t written much poetry lately.  Must change that.

All in all, I made pretty good progress if a bit slow.  Hopefully, things will pick up in the final 3 days.

NaNoRevNo days 15-20

Yeah, just moving along.  I’ve worked mostly on Alpha Female, except for one day when I got really, really stuck and couldn’t conceive the notion of writing.  I thought about it instead.  That day — I don’t remember which — I worked on the Pirouette notecards.  I also gave some thought to my second chapbook that’s releasing April 1st from Turtleduck Press.  Working title is Without Wings, and it’s all love poetry.  I’ve been trying to get myself to write more happy poems because the happy ones I have are of inferior quality and the better quality ones are mostly sad.  I’m not sure I want to have a whole collection of sad poetry, so it’s time to write some happy poems.  But, unfortunately, the muse isn’t cooperating.

Last time I wrote a poem was last year for Life as a Moving Target.  I actually wrote 3, 2 of which are included.  The other, Insignificant, will be in the second chapbook.  But as much as I try, I can’t get into the proper mindset.

I used to freewrite alot and then turn it into poetry.  I wrote alot.  I still have alot of my drafts.  I’m considering using some of those as jumping off points for the new poems.  I have a list of lines in my iPhone, but they are all for the third chapbook, Don’t Close Your Eyes.  I wish my muse would just throw me a bone.

Anyhoo, so that’s what I’ve been doing.  Slowed down some on Alpha Female, but today I was able to work through the block.  It’s still not perfect, but good enough for now.  I’d like to finish it by the end of the month.  I should be able to do that still.

What got me so stuck?  Werewolf pack rules and werewolf fight scenes.  Yep, that was my undoing.  And I decided to use something from the original draft (nothing is ever wasted) so that was an added bonus.  I still have a few things to clear up and a plausible way for the ending to happen, and another edit, and then I think I can call it done.

This has been a very insightful experience.

Also, one of the winners of my giveaway hasn’t contacted me so I’m re-drawing a new name tomorrow.  If you weren’t part of the first, comment here (with an email address or you will be disqualified) and I will add you to my original list.  Those of you who were part of the original giveaway are still eligible for the re-draw so no need to add your name again.

NaNoRevNo – days 6-13

My bad.  I meant to update every day or every few days and I kind of dropped the ball here.  I lost 2 days due to being sick.  The others I worked on the Alpha Female revision.  I’m actually almost to the end of the draft and have discovered that I’ll need to rewrite most of it.  That’s a good thing and a bad thing.  There is a lot wrong with the end.  It needs to go in a different direction.  I also have a few more tricks up my sleeve. The actual ending is kick ass.  It’s just that what comes before sucks.

There, I said it.

Little bit of work on the Pirouette notecarding.  A few awesome first lines came to me a few days ago at work (where else?) so I’m kind of excited about that.  Still fending off the plotbunny from hell.  I now have a kick ass first line.

“I tried to cheat Death once.  Instead, I became Death.”

Doesn’t that just give you shivers?

In chapbook news, I’m pulling names tomorrow.  If you want to be in on it, comment to this post or my status on Facebook.   The short version is that 2 people will win a signed copy of Life as a Moving Target before it releases on Dec. 1st.

We go live in 2 1/2 weeks.  I still have some stuff to finish up on the website.  A “behind the scenes” page that will contain the first draft of the opening poem and a few that didn’t make the chapbook cut.  Also, a bit about how the chapbook came to be, what inspired particular poems.  So if you end up reading it and want to know more, stop by my website after release.  Dec 1st.  Got that?  Good.