Closing 2019

As 2019 draws to a close, I’ve been looking back over my daily journals to see what I’ve been doing. Let me explain that a little. I have my daily ‘To Do’ list, where I list all the things I’d like to work on that day. And things I don’t really want to do, but need to, like take my pills and brush my teeth. Fact is, if it isn’t on my list, I probably won’t remember to do it.

At the end of the day, I transfer everything I’ve crossed off to my journal and add some comments. Depending on my mood, those comments might be brief (‘I got some stuff done today’), or they could be long and rambling, touching on all sorts of things that happened during the day and how I feel about them. It’s just a method of proving to myself what I’ve done, a way of reflecting on what I’ve accomplished and how I feel about things.

In looking back over the past couple weeks, I’ve noticed that I’ve been writing, writing, re-writing, editing and writing. Oh, yes, and writing.

What does that mean? I’ve been working on a lot of different writing projects. I write 2 blogs and try to post those weekly. Now, that usually means research for one of them, writing and re-writing for both of them, before I can post them. About an hour a day for each blog serves the purpose for that. Maybe a little less.

I’m also trying to write some shorts in order to produce an anthology of Atlan shorts in 2020. I keep running into walls where I’m not sure exactly how the next section of the scene goes, but I give myself an hour a day to work on that. Sometimes that only produces 500 words, others I’ll get 1000 words done. I haven’t gotten to the re-writing stage on that, because I have 3 or 4 more shorts to rough draft to get the number of words I need for a book.

I’m editing John’s next book for a spring release. This is a 2nd edit, so it goes faster, since I’m mostly looking for grammar and punctuation. Hopefully, I found all the places that didn’t quite make sense in the first edit, and John fixed them. On the other hand, I’ve read this book before (during the first edit), and I tend now to start losing my focus after a time, so I only work on it an hour a day.

I’m also writing a novel (a romance). This is a straight rough draft at this point, and I usually give it an hour a day, more or less. If I don’t feel like working on that one, I have 2 other novels (a near-future sf and a paranormal detective) that I can move over and work on for a day or two.

That’s a lot of writing projects. Could I get more done if I concentrated on one? I don’t know. I seem to be able to focus for an hour or slightly more at a time, and then I’m ready to move on to the next project. By splitting up my day in such small chunks, it looks like I’ve accomplished a lot, because I can say I’ve worked on a bunch of projects. And I have ‘naturally occurring’ breaks when I can get up and do other things, like let the dog out or throw supper in the crock pot or even go outside and work on the yard. Except for letting the dog out, those things are on my to do list and can be crossed off.

I don’t know if any other writers work on so many projects at the same time. Yes, it takes time to get anything ‘done’ done. It will be a month or three before I get the romance rough draft done. It could be another week before I get this short rough draft done and can start on the next. But in a year or two, I hope to be churning out books regularly.

Wish me luck! And perseverance.

2014 Successes

Okay, here it is; that dreaded ‘Buy my book’ issue I warned you would happen.

Hubby hates when all the authors make a wall of books between them and the audience at science fiction convention panels. He sees it as a crass commercial. But these days, almost all marketing is left for the author to do; very little is done by the publisher, and that includes the ‘Big Boys’. Most authors - especially new ones - do not have lots of money for marketing, so they take every chance they can to let people know about their book. If you don’t know it exists, how can you buy it?

I made 3 sales in 2014. (So this won’t be that long.)

The Secret in Morris Valley - A paranormal gothic romance novella published by Alban Lake (albanlake.com). It is a trade paperback selling for $6.00. If you are in Omaha and want to see a copy, the Book Worm, currently on 90th Street just north of W Center Rd, has a few copies through the holidays. They only took 3, so I can’t guarantee they still have any. [Note: Since this a romance, I used my pen name, Linda Joy.]

Ondrea is sent by her favorite professor to gather information on the wolves in Morris Valley. But Barry Morris, her host, won’t allow her to do field work on the wolves, saying it’s too dangerous to go out without a well-armed pack of men and vicious dogs. Barry has plans for Ondrea. So do the wolves.

“Truck Driving Women” - This the first published story of Vamps and Cheyenne. It is in the middle of an anthology published by Sky Warrior Books (skywarriorbooks.com) called These Vampires Don’t Sparkle. You can get a paper copy from Amazon for $13.33, an e-book is $4.99. If you really like vampire stories, there is a second volume of this anthology called These Vampires Still Don’t Sparkle that is available as an e-book. No, I don’t have a story in Vol. 2, just letting you know about it.

When terrorists hijack Vamps and Cheyenne, they bite off more than they anticipated.

Cali: A Journey of Discovery - This is a lightly romantic fantasy novel that Alban Lake (albanlake.com) accepted and originally planned to publish in 2014, but its publication has been pushed to February 2015. It will be a trade paperback and e-book. I don’t have any more details, but if you’re interested, keep an eye on the left side bar of this blog; that’s where I’ll post more information when I have it.

Witches don’t drown when they have a thirst for revenge. Sidek had seen a lot of strange cultures, but when he rescued Cali from a flooding river, he made contact with the strangest one yet. Cali was an Atlan, hunting men who had tortured & killed 2 children. She didn’t need a man’s help. But she wasn’t well enough to keep Sidek from tagging along.

Okay, it’s done now, you can breathe again. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blog. Eh. Not exactly, because this turned out to take up all of this week’s space. Soooooo... Tune in again next week!

PS. If you want to keep up to date on my sales and appearances, consider subscribing to the free monthly MoonPhaze Publishing e-newsletter. Just send a request to be enrolled at MoonPhazePub@hotmail.com, and we’ll send you a sample copy. You can always unsubscribe at any time.

Secret of Morris Valley

The first of my works that Alban Lake accepted was a paranormal gothic novella called “Secret of Morris Valley.” A novella is too long to be a short story; too short to be a novel. In this case, that means 16,500 words, or roughly 66 pages, depending on type size, page size, ect.

Do you remember gothics? I remember reading some, 3 or 4 decades ago, but I haven’t noticed any on the shelves recently. So when I saw a call for submissions in 2006 or 2007 for gothic stories, I admit my interest was piqued.

Gothics were romance stories where the woman falls in love with a handsome stranger who lives in some out-of-the-way place - usually far from civilization. Once the woman arrives at his home, it becomes apparent that he, his family, and his servants are all keeping some deep dark secret from her. As the story progresses, she becomes suspicious, worried and frightened, doesn’t know who she can trust... Of course, in the end, the secret is revealed, the woman doesn’t care, and the happy couple fall into each other’s arms.

Yep, that describes “Morris Valley.”

Unfortunately, that anthology chose not to accept my attempt at a gothic, although they did say it had been between mine and another for the final selection. As the saying goes, “Close, but no cigar.”

So I found myself with this overlong gothic story in a market where gothics were no long appreciated, apparently. I had added some paranormal to it, because paranormal was/is hot, but that hadn’t landed me in the anthology. I kept my eyes open, but I could not find a market to submit a gothic novella that had werewolves in it. Until I decided to take a chance and send it to Alban Lake.

We are looking for a July or August release. Stay tuned, for I’ll keep you informed as the details are worked out!

Trudy's Universes, Part 4

I’m going to try and wrap up this list this time. We’re getting into Universes that I don’t seem to visit very often.

O is for Orange Witch. Another fantasy universe. The protagonist is a newly-graduated witch who likes to wear orange. I dreamed up this universe more than 3 decades ago, and haven’t done much with it since.

S is for Spooks. This is where I keep any paranormal projects I might be working on. For me, paranormal includes ghosts, witches, vampires, werewolves, zombies and the like. I don’t write horror, so there isn’t much in this universe. And if I start a project here, and it really grabs hold of me, that project tends to emerge and form its own universe.

T is for Tunad. Tunad is a planet that is secretly colonized by females from a sister planet, Danut. The society of Danut is male-centered, and the females are slaves. Some female individuals are taken off-world by enlightened aliens, taught to think for themselves, and to make use of their skills, and eventually, a number of these are deposited on Tunad to form their own colony. I haven’t written in this universe much, but I love playing with the background; the colonists, the layout of the colony…

W&V is for Wolfie & Vamps. Okay, I’ve already listed one universe centered around a werewolf and vampire team, but actually, this werewolf & vampire universe has been around longer than that other one. This team is female, and their history goes a lot further back in history.

X is for X-Files. Loved the TV show, didn’t find the books to have the same impact. I have a couple projects started here, but I’m just not sure I can do justice to this particular genre.

There you go, my universes. I didn’t used to have this many. Some of these are probably on the path to fading out of existence. There’s always the possibility I will add new ones. But that’s my list right now, early in 2013.

Still More of Trudy's Universes

I think if I could sit here and work on my stories for 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, I would not need any ‘new’ ideas for at least a decade. Think I’m kidding? Here’s some more of my folders:

G is for Gothic. 3 decades ago, ‘Gothic’ was a specific type of romance where the setting was some out-of-the-way household owned by a brooding but handsome bachelor who is obviously keeping some horrible secret from the heroine. I never read a lot of them, but I do have one story in this folder that I wrote and submitted to an anthology. I came )( this close to being accepted, but in the end, they chose other stories. So this story is currently sitting on a different editor’s desk, waiting for him to make a decision.

H is for Halves. A few years ago, I was told by another author, “Everybody’s writing vampires and werewolves.” She was right, but I went ahead and created my own anyway. A vampire is neither alive nor dead, so he could be thought of as half of both. A werewolf is partly human and partly wolf, so he’s halfway both, too. And these guys have a friend who helps them do things, who is of mixed ancestry, so … also a half. Thus I named this trio ‘The Halves’. None of them talk very much, which makes getting a complete story out of them a long deal.

K is for Kandi. Kandi is a member of the same alien race that produced the Atlans, but the crew of this ship was her parents, who had left home for their honeymoon and never went back. When their ship was punctured by a freak meteorite, baby Kandi was thrown into a lifeboat. The lifeboat landed in the Dakota badlands, and Kandi was adopted by a Native American couple, and raised as one of their own. Kandi joins the Space Fleet (precursor to the Fleet that Mac belongs to) and Kandi is kidnapped by a derelict ship her crew is exploring. Kandi spends the rest of her long life exploring the universe, gathering together a rag-tag crew of aliens.

We’re over halfway through my universe folders now. Do you see any patterns in what I tend to write? I do. I’ve been aware of them for some time, and that knowledge has encouraged me to explore new universes. As we age, we have opportunities to grow, to adapt our outlook on life. I suspect my newer universes reflect that change in me and some of my universes may – eventually – be left to their own devices.