Category: blood witch

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waiting for daylight

Some mornings, when I can’t sleep, I lay in bed and cuddle kitties while I ponder on some plot or world-building. Eventually, I will get up because the cats want their morning treats and I want coffee.

Today was one of those days. I’m not sure what woke me at 3:30 am, but once I was aware of being awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep. So, with Freya laying on my hip and Morrigan curled up beside me, I lay in bed and considered a few plot points that have been bugging me…at least until my bladder decided it needed my attention most immediately.

The cats have had their treats, and I’m tucked in with a cup of coffee and staring at words on a screen. I’m starting on my next edit pass on book 2, and down to the nitpicky details and minutiae, revving up descriptions of people and places and that sort of thing.

Book 1, meanwhile, has started back on the agent hunt. I’ve queried a few agents in the last few weeks and hang here awaiting responses. This is the part of writing that people who aren’t authors don’t understand, all the waiting and self-promotion (which I suck at).

In other book related news, Amazon has sabotaged my current publisher this week, declaring that they broke some KDP rule, and thus they have pulled all ebooks from that publisher for all of its authors (hundreds). We’re still working on getting this sorted out, but for the moment, ebooks are unavailable for any of my books.

So here I sit, sipping coffee and waiting for daylight when I will gather up my portion of the family dinner and some crochet project, and head out to the family. Between here and there I hope for some words, maybe some breakfast and more kitty cuddles. It isn’t a bad way to start the day.

I hope this day is filled with kindness and love, Readers. Kindness and Love.

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and now I wait…

This past weekend, I began (again) the search for an agent to represent me and the Blood Witch books. This is one of the things I have always been bad at…this advocating for myself, selling myself. It’s also why I suck at marketing and promotion.

But, if I want to take the next step as an author, this is how it must be done. I submitted to three agents that seemed like a good fit for me and the books…and now I wait.

In the meantime, I am continuing my edit of books 2 & 3 to bring them up to the same level as book 1.

I really believe in these books, in these characters and I can’t wait to share them with the world.

I’m also looking ahead to what comes next, because there’s always “next” and I have all these ideas in my head.

But first, it’s time to get back to the day job. And another cup of coffee.

It’s Wednesday, and I hope it’s wonderful for you.

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ain’t she a character

Sometimes I come here knowing exactly what I want to write about. Other times, I don’t have a clue until I start writing. Today is the latter.

I always come away from Sirens with new inspiration and this year that has become a series of character studies. I’ve always done them for my main characters, but I’m feeling my way through some of my minor characters for the first Blood Witch book.

I think it helps make them more three-dimensional and alive.

For me, a character study begins with physical characteristics, but delves into the person’s background/history as well as their personality. Mine tend to be fairly long, because I usually have a lot to say about a character, even if that never makes it onto the page.

It’s also a continuity tool. If I have complete character studies, I don’t generally have those little errors with things like eye color or height. And, it lets me carry those characters forward into the next book without losing track of things like educational background and such.

I start my character study early, sometimes even before I start writing, and I keep them open or easily accessible as I write so I can add to them as I go along. Then, I review them after I finish a book to make sure I captured all the information that is important.

I also use them while I edit. It helps me make sure I get the little things right.

That’s what I’m working on this weekend, updating character studies with all the good stuff that happened in books two and three before I start edits.

Right after this cup of coffee. Happy Saturday, Readers! And may the Samhain season bring you many blessings.

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zero drafts and idle hands

Yesterday I completed the zero draft for the third Blood Witch book. This is a pretty huge accomplishment, even if there is still a lot of work to do. This means I have all three in some state of “done” and it’s time to run back to the beginning with my notes of all the changes that need to be made in books one and two.

Of the three of these, I think the middle book came the easiest and there were a lot of times struggling through book three felt like I was trying to push my way through frozen molasses.

Book one is the most complete and polished. Three is the least.

I guess this is what comes of trying to write during the apocalypse. I am glad I didn’t push out book one when I thought it was done, because some of the changes and tweaks I need to make to better set up two and three will also make book one better.

I’ve settled on tentative titles, but realize that a publisher may suggest changes.

So where does that leave me, here on a Monday morning before the dawn? To be honest, I’m running through my packing list for Sirens in my head (still need to do meds/makeup/toiletries/electronics). I’d like to say I’m not going to poke any of the three books until after Sirens, but I won’t promise. After all, I can’t seem to sleep past 5am these days, and I need something to do with my hands.

But that does remind me that it’s Monday, and I have to stop working early to go get a COVID test, so it must be time to suck down some Death Wish Coffee, put on my tech writing cape and crown and get to it.

Have a wonderful Monday, Readers! Treat yourself with kindness and love.

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wherein Natalie is a dork

The first few weeks on any job can be trying. There’s so much to learn about the company, the product and your role/team. For an introverted agoraphobe like me, there’s all the stress of meeting new people and orienting myself to the culture of the place.

It can be overwhelming, no doubt.

At this moment for me the fact that I can do it in the safety and comfort of my own home helps. If I was meeting all of these people face to face in this short space of time, I’m not sure how well I’d cope.

However, one of my favorite things about coming in to a new situation is the opportunity to make order out of chaos. I’m wrapping my hands around my first real project, one which will give me a lot of hands on with our product, as well as help me really get to know that project through reorganizing and updating the documentation.

As a tech writer, I am fairly used to this as we are often the last role a company thinks to fill, and the first to be let go when money gets tight, so documentation is almost always in a state of flux. It might even be one of the reasons I love being a tech writer.

This type of project really makes me happy. It’s probably related to the reasons I love a jigsaw puzzle or those solitaire games like Freecell, where your job is to organize the cards in a particular way.

I am well aware of my dorkishness, thank you very much.

Now, I’m off to grab a cup of coffee before I get a little Blood Witch writing in before the start gun goes off on my day of organization glee. I hope your Thursday is FABULOUS, Readers. May kindness be abundant.

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new day job

There is something fitting about starting a new job on my birthday. It feels like new beginnings.

Today I start as a technical writer with a company called Quantcast. Which means I also start my new job with learning new things. A lot of new things. I already have 52 emails, most of which are meeting invitations and training classes I need to slog through.

My morning of course will be filled with onboarding stuff and meeting my team.

Then I’ll buckled down and start reading, taking training and all that good fun.

I also had a breakthrough that fixed a plot problem in the third Blood Witch book, so that is now back on track.

But for now, I need to go jump in the shower and then get second coffee started. DeathWish Coffee to the rescue!

Have a wonderful Monday, Readers!

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doing the work

Some days, when I sit down to write, my mind goes blank. Other days my fingers can’t type fast enough to get everything in my head down on paper/screen. Some days words flow freely and they express things beautifully. Other days it’s more like slogging through mud.

This last week or so there has been a lot of mud slogging. Every word feels like work. Every sentence falls flat.

Yesterday, I hit a point where I wanted to just toss it all. All 205700 words of this trilogy because it is just rubbish (it isn’t) and no one would ever want to publish it (someone will).

To help counter that mind set, I went back to some of my favorite pieces in this story, some of those sentences that sing, those paragraphs that hit with just the perfect (*chef’s kiss*) combination of snark and sass in the midst of terrible circumstances.

And I remember how it feels to write like that. And I remember that all of the slogging at least means there are words on a page, and I can edit words on a page into polished nuggets of gold. And I remember how much I love this story and this character.

Never let someone tell you that writing isn’t work. Hard work.

Do the work. Get the words out. Making them pretty can come later.

Write.

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let’s build

I get asked fairly often how it is that I do what I do. For a long time I didn’t realize that not everyone has an endless loop of stories in their heads or characters that pull up a chair to have a chat. It seems inconceivable to me and I know that in those brief periods of writer’s block I felt like I was going crazy without them.

Each story starts as either a character who just springs to life in my mind, or as world building. Brain, my muse, loves world building. I have hundreds of partially defined worlds in my head at any given time. Sometimes it starts with a concept, say a universe where corporations govern, or gender-bent Victorian era. Sometimes it begins with a character, say an orphan raised in restrictive religious colony that shuns technology but is herself a technological wonder or a pickpocket who is quick on her feet.

Those are the easy things. The stuff that comes before the writing.

Of course, the challenge then is to populate those worlds with characters that will get the reader’s attention or to find a world for that character to live in.

When it comes to plot, I often start writing without one. The first words I get out tell us something about the character, usually by dropping in on them in the middle of some scenario or situation that may ultimately have nothing to do with the primary plot, but gives us a good idea who this person is.

Most of the time, I let the plot fill itself in as I write. Sure, this means that sometimes I have to do some extensive re-writes to make sure it all comes together, but I find that this is where the story comes to life for me. Sometimes I have specific plot points in mind that I want to hit along the way, but not always.

Of course, because Brain is fond of world building, I sometimes craft these meticulously detailed worlds that then sit idle until the right set of characters come around. I have a notebook full of these, and a folder on my One Drive as well.

Now, if I could just get Brain back to the work of telling this story! I have two weeks until I start my new job to try to finish the zero draft of the third Blood Witch book. My coffee is getting cold, Readers, so I’ll leave you here. Have a fabulous Sunday.

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let’s talk tense

As a new writer, one of the hang ups I had was tending to slip between past tense and present, particularly when I was writing action. There’s just something more intense about action in the present tense.

It was an accident that I would sometimes catch, and sometimes not. I still do one thorough reading pass on everything I write just to look for tense slip ups.

None of this to say that one is right and the other wrong, but like POV and you narrative voice, your tenses need to be consistent or you risk pushing your reader out of the story.

I don’t know that I’ve ever read a full novel that was written in present tense, but I’ve read, and written, a fair number of short stories that were. It seems to work particularly well with actions scenes, as I already said, and in particular with sex scenes.

And yeah, I’ve written a few of those in my day. Present tense seems to feel more immediate, more intimate for those moments. However, if your entire story is all past tense, and your action is present tense, well it just feels off. Some readers will recognize the problem, others will only realize that something is different.

Don’t let it keep you from getting your first draft down on paper/screen though. That’s what editing and editors are for.

Happy Friday, Readers! I accepted a job offer yesterday, so I have two weeks to try to finish up the last Blood Witch book before I’m back to the daily grind!

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what matters is now

For a long time, in my teens and early twenties, I was sure that we would see the end of the world in my lifetime. Part of me clung to science fiction in what I only now recognize as hope that I was wrong, or some unacknowledged notion that even if Armageddon was to happen, some part of who we are, the best parts of who we are if I’m using Star Trek as an example, would live on outside the scenario I was taught.

Even after I learned my way out of that fear, and out of that particular flavor of Christianity, I maintained a love of sci-fi and in particular dystopian stories. The little spark of hope, that even if the worst of humanity prevailed, something good could remain was a driving factor in what and how I changed myself.

I’ve traveled a lot of roads spiritually and academically since then, and what I believe has changed and grown as I did. In some ways, the more I learn, the more I question, and I am less sure of a good deal many things than I have ever been.

One thing I do know, however, is that what I believe about where we come from, what comes after this life, whether or not there is a god or gods, does not define how I live my life. I no longer believe that my eternity rests on a belief, or on a specific god or on a specific ritual. Or, if it does, I am not interested in it at least.

What matters to me is this life. How I live now. How I treat others now. How I grow and learn now. Love and kindness are what motivate me, both for how I approach the world and how I approach myself.

We’re here, on this earth, now. This is what matters.

Those are my thinky thoughts for this Sunday morning, Readers! I hope you are well and that your life is filled with love and kindness. I’m off into the world of The Blood Witch with my Death Wish coffee in hand.

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