I am thinking of you and your family. This must be so hard on you all.

As for the review, try to take a break from thinking about it. It's too fresh! Get some distance from it, and get more beta-reads and do more writing (maybe on another WIP). In a week or two you'll be able to decide if this particular review is going to be helpful or not.

Thanks Lucy, and you're right. I've been stewing on it for the last couple days, and that's not productive.

I'm going to not think about it for a while, and try to get some writing done. There are a few scenes in Destiny's Bond that I'm wanting to revise, so I'm going to try doing that. I'm still fiddling with Crimson Fury, but I feel I want to let that one sit a bit.

--edited by Amber J. Wolfe on 10/30/2015, 1:46 PM--

This is lovely!  Congrats on getting it complete and live!  I may have to give this a try for my 'down' time.

Amber -- Oh lady, the reviews like that are so tough!  

Be gentle with yourself!  I think it's much less common for a writer to shot the stars the first try.  Practice is part of the gig right? <.<  

I hope you'll get other beta readers to give you feedback, you gotta have more than one! 

--edited by DianaRoseWilson on 10/30/2015, 5:17 PM--

Thanks, Diana. That's sound advice indeed.

I do have a few others beta reading for me. We'll see what they say and I'll go from there.

25k words this week -- going to try to throw more down tonight but it's been a strange couple days.  I had a bee-swarm arrive at my house and so I've become a bee-mom  They are nice honey bees not crazy bees or anything.  So I have a hive now and the queen and her crew are tucked in.  I have wanted to do bee-keeping for awhile now -- just strange how things sometimes fall into your lap.

My Erotica story rated a 4.83 out of 5 so I'm really happy.  Lots of responses and requests for more so I think I'm on the right path.  (I don't get feedback on this site and assumed it was because my writing wasn't good.  It's nice to have requests for more.)

I hope everyone else is having a great kick-start for NaNo time!  Week one almost in the history books. How are people doing?

Today's Saturday, not Friday, isn't it? Oops.

I've been editing more than anything. Not much to report. My mom had the biopsy so now we're waiting for their verdict on what the growth is. Fingers crossed that it's not cancerous.

Hope everyone else has been doing well!

Hey y'all! 

I've been editing this week (yay! And I'll be posting the revision soon), so you're not alone, Amber. I've also been watching a lot of period-set movies (Austen, mostly) to get inspiration. I'd of course watched the big-budget Hollywood versions of most of the Austen stories, but I'm searching out the BBC mini-series versions now. I can't for the life of me read the books, so I have to get the speech patterns and culture through movies. Yeah, I'm *that* person. lol

@Nancy - those are some amazing numbers! Way to go!

Hope you have been having a great week,

Noelle

@Noelle --  Have you tried listening to one of the books?  Audible is great and you can pick who reads it for most of those classics.  I find it really helpful and I can listen while I garden or what-not.

Noelle, I second Diana's audiobook idea--I listen to the Jane Austen novels on audio all the time and the dialogue just shimmers! I of course love the movies and miniseries as well, but like Diana said, absorbing them while I am doing other things around the house is one of the greatest lifehacks of all time!

Sorry I did not post my progress last week; I think I even had the window open and then got distracted. I'm doing okay with my daily writing, especially because of Nano!! I even wrote in the car on the way down to DC yesterday. I am getting overwhelmed by my WIP, though: over 100K words and no sign of being done. It's unwieldy.

How's everyone else doing?

@Diana and @Lucy - I wish I could listen to audiobooks. Unfortunately, aural retention isn't my strong suit. When I'm listening to something, if I don't write it down, it's literally in one ear and out the other. I've tried several times, but I can't focus on them (I learned at a young age to block out steady noise. This helped when I played sports in high school and had a father that constantly yelled at the refs, the coaches, and me, as well as when my children threw tantrums. Not so much of a help during class lectures or anything else I need to retain from sound).

I might try the books again now that I've immersed myself in the language of that time. I have them all on my Kindle. Can't hurt, right?

Off to edit now. I'm almost ready to post the revision on here.

N

Hi, all

Just wanted to let you guys know that we just today found out that the lump in my mom's throat is benign. As in, not cancerous!

Whoohoo! Me and my family are so relieved. And I wanted to thank you all for your prayers and support through this dark time. I can rest easier now and put my full focus into my writing.

Ooh, I'm so glad I could bust!

@Noelle:

I'm feeling . . . calm now. It's difficult to describe. I was so tense and depressed for a long while, but I'm feeling more calm now. I still have to let the news sink in so I believe it. My mom's going to be okay.

Even writing it down, I still find it difficult to believe, ahaha. I was steeled for bad news, not good. So, so happy I got the good news instead

Happy Writing, all!

What a relief! I'm so glad to hear it.

Thanks, Curtis, Mimi! Things have been getting back to normal--I finished a rewrite of a chapter in Destiny's Bond that I'd been stewing on for about a week now, so that's a start. I'm contemplating adding a scene in another chapter--a flashback of a scene directly after my prologue. Haven't made up my mind yet.

My mom isn't as depressed as she was, and that's getting her strength back up. I'm praying that this keeps her in good spirits for a while--she'd prone to depression, and has to take medicine for it, which doesn't work often, especially if she's stressed. Right now she's okay, and that's good.

Happy Writing, all! And thanks so much for the support!

Oh, and it's Friday, isn't it? I gotta be held accountable.

I wrote some this week--can't say it was a lot, maybe a little over 1,000 words, if I'm lucky. But at least I got some down. Hopefully I'll be able to get more done, now that I'm nearing my last edits for Destiny's Bond and can put some focus on Volume 2, which I'll be uploading to Book Country once I have at least 10,000 words/the first few chapters finished. Looking forward to what people might think of it

Oh, and Lucy, I was wondering about a feature that I think would be nifty for the site: We upload our manuscripts, and then we wait for someone to take interest and review it. We don't have any idea whether someone is reviewing, however. So, wouldn't it be cool to have a feature that tells you if someone has a review in progress? Like say, you click onto your Book's Profile page, and beneath the book cover--or wherever--it will have the picture of those who have reviews in progress for your novel. What do you think? I feel it would help the authors to know if anyone on the site is actually looking at their manuscript or not. Most of the time you have to twiddle your thumbs and wait, even those who are reviewing actively. They review, but have no idea whether the review is being reciprocated. This feature would remedy that.

It would also be cool to have a feature that lets you see how many people clicked on your manuscript and checked it out, even if they didn't review.

Just a suggestion. If it's not viable for Book Country--or if it's not a feature that could be added--ignore my rambling on about it, ahaha

Amber--great update! Glad things are getting back to normal, especially your awesome writing output! Sounds like you are gathering momentum for an awesome volume 2.

I like that idea of a feature. I'll definitely try to find out it is feasible and add it to my list!

I'm writing a lot . . . Nano will do that to you, I guess . . . my novel is now at 110K words with no end in sight. I am feeling a bit . . . overwhelmed. But momentum is hard to maintain so I am just going to go with it! New words is where it's at.

It's not Friday, but it's another slow night at work, so I'm on here. 

.

What am I up to? I'm doing experiments with my drawings, what dpi to scan at (I'm not happy with the sharpness I'm getting.) I want to work as large as I can in order to get good detail in my bugs, but 150 percent may be too much. Well, I don't know what the exact problem is, but I'm not happy with what I get off the laser printers at work. I'm doing something wrong. I'm going to take some art over to a pro out-put place and get advice and test scans from them. 

.

While I fiddle, I've started the sequel to 'Sly - Catly Curiosity'. It will be called 'Home is the Sailor'. It starts with Sly talking about being summoned to court to an audience with Queen Elizabeth. She sits him on her lap, picks off his fleas, and drowns them in a bowl of gin that she keeps handy. (She does the same for her own fleas.) I've done my research. A vet on the web has advised that ticks can be killed in gin, so why not fleas? Don't nobody tell me different, I don't want to hear it. 

No rest for the wicked, eh?

I've been editing slowly, and not every day, but I'm bringing my laptop with me during the holiday and I'm pretty sure the cabin doesn't have wifi, so I'll be less inclined to follow shiny FB posts and such.  

I'm uploading a new version of Reaching for the Moon (soon to be retitled something like How To Train Your Rogue, or The Lady's Guide to Ruining a Rake or something else witty to reference the How-To books my heroine uses during the course of the story). There might be some small typos, as I haven't gone through it with much detail yet (I edit with track changes on, so sometimes my spacing/formatting gets screwed up when I accept the changes). 

Anyway, hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Noelle

Thanksgiving or no, I've been busy.

.

.

.

Not for sure, but I think my love-lorn critter, my frog, Ferd, may fall for, not a female frog, but a very fetching damselfly, whom he calls Mam'selle. I think Ferd sees a relationship as entirely possible. They both love to splash in ponds, they're both green. I have to think about it.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 11/28/2015, 1:24 AM--

Whew! What happened to the last few weeks?

Thanksgiving threw me but I managed to win Nano and I am back on track writing at least a little every day. Planning on doing a big chunk of new words on Sunday. I am trying to get this draft DONE by the time I go to San Francisco for the SF Writers Conference . . .

How's everyone else doing?

I'm still messing with Home Is The Sailor (title will change, the story took another direction). You guys know how you can write something at night and say, well, this is brilliant. Then you look at it in the morning and say, hell, this is total crap. That goes double when you write verse. Maybe triple. 

--edited by Mimi Speike on 12/4/2015, 9:52 PM--

Awgh!!! I'm laaaaate! :O

I've been working on a test rewrite of Destiny's Bond these past couple weeks. I've got about 14,000 words of it down, and so far I'm liking it. Two other writers from a different Writer's Workshopping site have been reading the chapters as I finish them, and so far the feedback has been positive. My fingers are crossed that this version is even better than the previous.

So, that's what I've been up to, writing-wise. Hope everyone else is doing well!

I forgot to post last week, too, didn't I? 

I've been busy. I released a short story for Christmas, called The Nutcracker's Legacy this week, so now I'm back to working on the historical. 

@Lucy - congrats on winning NaNo!!

@Mimi - I admire you for writing verse. I can't do that to save my life. Literary-like prose is beyond me, too, but I love it.

@Amber - glad you found some critique partners. Looking foward to reading the rewrite when you post it. 

Have a great week!

x♥x

Noelle

Thanks, Noelle!

Tell us more about the Christmas story!

I saw you also posted a new draft of REACHING FOR THE MOON . . . What's the scoop?

And how is everything going with the coloring books?

Hi, Lucy! 

The Christmas story is one I posted here about a year or so ago to get feedback, and I just put it out. When I went to see The Nutcracker ballet with my daughter, I started thinking about "what ifs." What if the prince and Clara had a genuine love story? What if they had a child? What if the child didn't know the story was true? So I wrote it. The Nutcracker's Legacy is more (true) fairy tale/fokelore/fantasy than romance, unless you count the brief allusion to the prince and Clara's love. It's written from the point of view of Alyson, Clara's daughter, on Christmas Eve after her mother dies, and runs about 4500 words.

...and I love the cover for it. Took me a few days to finish it, but I think it worked well.

The historical is getting a rewrite/edit, and I finally finished the first act, so I've posted it. I won't be posting more on here, but I am happy with the changes I've made to it. It's lighter, and relies more on the advice books than before. I also think I've made my hero clearer, which was one of the things you'd mentioned in your critique a while back. 

Coloring books are doing well! I'm slowly working on a third, which will probably be another for writers, since that one is selling like hotcakes (way more than the general one, which really surprises me). I'm guessing it's because I have a larger base of writers on Facebook and other advertising/promo avenues. 

x♥x

P.S. Are we going to see your NaNo book on here? What's it about?

Hi, Lucy, Noelle

I've got my first 14,000 words of my tentative rewrite uploaded to Book Country now.  Now I'm just waiting for feedback, lol. Hope the changes I've made are working . . .

Awesome that you wrote a short story for Christmas, Noelle! I bet it's a great short story

Amber--wow!! You are a revision machine!

And Noelle, the cover is gorgeous! I also think your Amazon author page is on point! That's so great about the coloring books . . . I ordered copies!

Thanks, Lucy! It is much appreciated. Hope they help you, however you choose to use them.

So...I'm editing my little heart out, especially because I want to enter the Golden Heart contest, and I'm all excited because I thought I'd been making a lot of headway. Except when I started glancing at the first few chapters to see if I'd already mentioned something, I realized that 50% of the edits I *thought* I'd done were NOT THERE!! Sigh. So I've spent my morning going over all the chapters I uploaded here the other day, thinking they were done. I'll be uploading another version by the end of today.

On a totally non-writing-related note: my 9 year old daughter is testing for her first degree black belt in Taekwondo tonight!! <--proud mama. She amazes me every day.

Now, I'm back to the editing cave. Have a great Friday everyone! 

Noelle

Go, black belt!! So cool!

Did you dream that you did the edits??

Hello!

I haven't posted for a bit thanks to cracking the whip to complete the projects I worked on for NaNo.  Now, I know I said I was going to be working on my big 'important' story, but I ended up writing erotica instead.  Not only did I finish of the projects, I got them posted on a site and one story has a vote of 4.7 with 3500 views in less than a week.  The other one is lagging behind with a 4.45 but I messed up some editing and the main character is really not very nice so I expected it might suffer.

I also put together covers for the stories and posted them on Book Country.  There's not much of an Erotica crowd here but on the chance someone wants something to comment on they are up there. (They are semi-holiday related in case you're curious--also ...sexy)

Now, I need to get focused on my Frankie story.  I intended to re-write the story but even with a re-write, I found myself stuck in the first act and felt like I should re-write my re-write.  I  think the story has promise, I just wish I had the right tools to launch it.    So, now that I have to sit down and do real work...I'm feeling really depressed despite the accomplishment (cough--if erotica can be seen as an accomplishment!. LOL!)  

I hope everyone is having a great Friday and has wonderful plans for the weekend!

It's Friday, so I must be held accountable!

So . . . I wrote a little today. Not much more this last week. Been distracted. Yeah. That's my excuse!

Oh, and Noelle, good luck with the contest you're wanting to enter! Your writing is really good. I'll be surprised if you don't win--or at least come in second place. And I hope your daughter does well in her test!

Book two of my Sly verse is up. I've not got all the quotation marks in, I'll work on that. Title: Yo Ho! Again, around 1200 words, with an additional couple hundred in comic footnotes. 

Hey @Mimi, I see you've already gotten a couple of really great reviews on Sly--The Poem. Nice!

How's everybody on this Friday afternoon? Things are quiet around here, so I got a chance to review the first chapters of a couple of titles I've been following on Book Country for awhile. Both were really good: The Kitten and the Cloud by Meg Ripley and When Demons Hide by Mary-ellen Deleon.

Also have written and edited every day this week!

How are you writers holding up as the year comes to a close? Any new milestones?

Thanks, Lucy. I hope nobody reads Yo Ho until I post the (I think) final final. I've been tweaking problem areas all week. I think I've finally worked them out. But, you never know. I may wake up tomorrow morning and say, hell no, not yet. 

It has been a week of rest and reflection in the pre-holiday haze.  I ordered a little treat for myself and the Adult coloring book for writers just came in today!  Along with my Tombow markers.  I'll figure out a way to make that work somehow.  Beautiful book and I'm looking forward to meditating on my tangled plot to some soothing holiday tunes over the weekend.

I did a lot of editing and my muse is convinced I should write a romantic story about two new characters rather than focus on the work of editing.  I'm staying on target though and doing a little heavy lifting before going back to something fun.  Word count is probably only 2k but 

Hope everyone is avoiding as much holiday stress as possible!

I'm a day laaaaate! Agh!

I'm still trickling in my writing. It's not a fountain, more a small stream. A sentence here or there. A paragraph or two or three in a day . . .

I think I'm depressed. And for the first time, the source is my writing that's depressing me. I've gotten one review on Book Country so far (thanks for that, Mimi! Your thoughts are helpful!), and several others on a different Writing Workshop site. One critiquer insists the new beginning doesn't work and that the characters are blah. Another critiquer likes my new version and is offering helpful suggestions on how to improve.

Why is it I'm so timid when it comes to my Craft? I'll start off strong and confident, then a few chapters in I get fretful and wonder whether my writing is good or stinks.

Siiiiiigh. You hear this from me a lot, don't you guys? I'm having one of my classic 'Am-I-Kidding-Myself-By-Thinking-I-Can-Write' crises again, lol.

Before I ramble, I want to wish everyone an early Merry Christmas! I hope your own writing is going better than mine, Lucy, Noelle, Mimi, Diana

Oy, Amber, we have all been there. Don't worry. Every writer has days, months, years, where they feel they are totally in the weeds. But look at how much you've already accomplished with this book. Just keep trucking and it will smooth out.

Diana, what are Tombow markers?

Holidays ARE stressful. Buying all these gifts this year feels like hardcore project management!

Hey everyone!

I'm coming up for air for a sec. I've been editing and doing graphic work for clients before vacation starts. The kids and hubby are off for the next two weeks, so I hope to get some more editing done, but I'm holding my breath. With Christmas and traveling, I anticipate a lot of interruptions. Sigh.

Amber, I don't know any serious author (even NYT published authors) who doesn't wonder if his/her writing sucks. That just means you're in good company. I still owe you a review, and I swear I haven't forgotten. I'll be in a car for 8 hours the day after Christmas, so if you'd prefer, you can send me a chapter or two and I'll read it while I'm in the car and can give you feedback on that. Let me know.

Lucy - OMG, I haven't even started Christmas shopping yet. This week is going to be a scramble. 

Time to run...

Noelle

Luci;-- Oooo! Tombow markers are the best.  LOL!  They are just color pens. A step or so down from Copic markers if you know about them.

Thank you Amber!  I think this time of year is just rough between social obligations with work + family and the stress of wrestling the perfect gift for everyone.  It will be better in a few weeks and you'll be ready to take on the tigers again!

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone! I'm feeling better now--I've written about 2,000 words in the last couple days, I think, and I'm liking how the chapters are turning out again, so the crisis is over

@Noelle, I know you haven't forgotten about reviewing: You're a busy gal, and I understand. I'm pretty patient when it comes to return-reviews, so take all the time you need on reciprocating. I would send you a couple chapters, but I don't have high-speed internet, and can't really access my email account on dial-up. I could make a trip to the library, but fear that they may be closed for Christmas week.

So, no hurry! I'm interested in your thoughts on my new beginning, but I can wait for your feedback

Gasp! It's only four days until Christmas! Where'd all the time go!?

Luckily, I have all my Christmas presents wrapped and waiting to be delivered, so yay me

Merry Christmas, guys.