Saturday 27 June 2015

Words & Wonders (7)

Welcome to Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!

Another late update, because I'm been editing like the wind and lost track of the internet for a while.

In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Loosely planned book four in The Legend Mirror series. It's looking fun for me to write but not so fun for the characters.

- Started writing a novel in verse based on the Hades & Persephone myth. It's set in my Love In The Gilded Age world (Fissure) and I have absolutely no time to write this right now (not that it's stopping me!) Here's a tiny thumbnail of the initial cover I designed for it (part of my planning process for all my works!!):



- Continued through The Hotel of Fresh Hell (aka line editing), mostly screaming as I edited 21 pages. 

- Revised 75 pages of The Dryad of Callaire by adding my second draft changes to the manuscript, and I am DONE with this! Now I can focus fully on line editing and hopefully it'll speed up the process (a wonderful pipe dream.)

- Written 1,484 words of The Legend Mirror book 3. Next week I start Camp Nanowrimo, so I'm hoping to churn out much more words!!! (Hoping being the operative word!)

In my life:

- I'm mostly watching tennis, to be honest. That's 50% of my life now. (The other 50% is worrying about missing deadline.)

On the internet, this week I found useful:

- Nothing, because I've been fairly internet-absent.

A book I have loved recently:


This book is perfect. Just perfect. Read it.

Have a good weekend, folks!!
~Saruuh

Sunday 21 June 2015

Words & Wonders (6)

Welcome to Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!

Sorry for the late update, guys. It completely slipped my mind!

In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Got stuck in The Hotel of Fresh Hell (aka line editing) and edited 12 pages. 

- Revised 53 pages of The Dryad of Callaire by adding my second draft changes to the manuscript. 

- Written 3,306 words of The Legend Mirror book 3. Finally had a good writing day and I can't believe I ever had days where I hated writing. Now that I have little time to write anything, it feels so freeing to put words on a page.

In my life:

- I attempted to update the iOS of my iPhone and it wiped the entire drive. So I'm back to factory settings!!! Yay!!!! *sarcasm*

- I got sick and had to miss two days of work, which I am pretty grumpy about, since I have a very tight deadline with this. I'm looking forward to being done editing, though, when I can actually move forward with TLM3.

- Got two new shiny notebooks so I can begin the planning phase soon on two future projects. One is a YA fantasy novel to which I refer as Codename: ApocalypseGirls because there is the end of times and a hella cool gang of ladies in the book. The other is my first graphic novel, another YA fantasy in which all magic is sustained by plantlife and two best friends become enemies when a rogue magician begins deriving magic from the pain of others.


- I had the book haul of all book hauls:



On the internet, this week I found useful:

- Samantha Shannon's reply about originality

A book I have loved recently:


This book is beautiful and raw and everything I wanted. All the main characters are diverse (as they should be!), the setting is authentic, and the story is perfect. A brilliant retelling and a memorable main character.

Have a good weekend, folks!!
~Saruuh

Saturday 13 June 2015

Words & Wonders (5)

Welcome to Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!


QUEER YA SCRABBLE

To raise money for Stonewall UK, the Queer YA scrabble is auctioning a freaking huge box of books (32 of them! A lot of them signed and awesome! The Beast of Callaire amongst them!). You can join the auction here to support this amazing cause. Here's where you can bid on the box including BEAST.



In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Meandered through The Hotel of Fresh Hell (aka line editing) and edited 27 pages. I hate it so much but I KNOW my story is stronger for it.

- Revised 54 pages of The Dryad of Callaire by adding my second draft changes to the manuscript. This is really quick to do and rewarding, so it's taking a tiny bit of the sting out of line editing.

- Written 2,664 words of The Legend Mirror book 3. Slowly building up word count and wishing I had more days to write.

In my life:

- I watched two seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in five days. I have a problem, and that problem's name is Jake Perralta.

On the internet, this week I found useful:

-  Apparently nothing. Huh.

Have a good Saturday!!
~Saruuh

Saturday 6 June 2015

Words & Wonders (4)

Welcome to Words & Wonders, a weekly journal of writing updates, links I've found useful or interesting, and book recommendations. I hope W&W will prove to be useful to you writers out there as well as offering an insight into my writing progress for my readers. Don't forget to leave a comment with your own writing progress!


QUEER YA SCRABBLE

Readers, you can win a signed copy of The Beast of Callaire, along with some hella cool other queer YA books, and Writers, you can win a bunch of query and critique prizes, by taking part in the Queer YA Scrabble. It's a sort-of-easter-egg-hunt-sort-of-anagram-puzzle, and it's really fun, and all in favour of raising money for Stonewall, so you'll want to get involved. 

You can find information about the scrabble and my team (Team Dragon, hells yes) over at Gay YA.


May in review:
14,895 words written of The Legend Mirror book 3
271 pages edited of The Dryad of Callaire (TLM2)
& a whole heck of TLM3 plot fleshed out
I edited ALL these pages???
In the Writing Cave, this week I have:

- Checked into The Hotel of Fresh Hell (aka begun line editing) and it takes me three times as long to line edit a page as write it from scratch, so I am definitely, 100% enjoying this slow-ass process. (Sarcasm is possible here.) Yesterday it took me 3 hours to line edit a single page. But this week I've edited 7 pages, so it's a start.

- Revised 40 pages of The Dryad of Callaire by adding my second draft changes to the manuscript.

- Hacked my manuscript to pieces by cutting 10K words (some of them were precious scenes to me, so it felt like carving out a lung.)

- Written 3,717 of The Legend Mirror book 3. With editing getting crazy (and slooooow) I've dedicated weekends to drafting TLM3 and I'm hoping to write like the wind today and tomorrow, so next week I should have better progress on this!

In my life:

- Pretty Little Liars is back and IT FEELS SO GOOD. I screamed when I found out the first episode was on Netflix. Literally. Screamed.

- I also started watching Warehouse 13. I've only seen the odd episode of this, and watching it from the beginning is pretty cool. I like the characters, the premise, and I LOVE Claudia.

On the internet, this week I found useful:

- Questions for Beta Readers by Jodie Renner 
(If you're one of my betas, you can expect to see some of these in my email for DRYAD)

A book I have loved recently:



I finished the Soul Screamers series and I might have cried twice. This series is an emotional drag race. It hurts then it's happy then it hurts again with a side of terrified for your faves. If you haven't read it, I can't recommend it enough.

Hope you're all having a great June!
~Saruuh