Happy New Year to everyone!

It's a bright and shiny start to the year. Any day you can start off by sleeping in is a win in my book. I didn't get myself out of bed until 10:30. Then I had lemon meringue pie for breakfast (home made by yours truly!) AND Darjeeling tea my brother brought from India.

Now that's a good breakfast.

Even better, it's Friday so I have a weekend in front of me with total denial about the day job locked in for an extra day. GRIN!!

I don't make New Year's Resolutions because they're always the same, I just roll them over from the previous year. I'm on a 10 year roll. Heh.

I ended up taking a mini-break from writing from shortly before Christmas to now, and I'm must say I'm feeling refreshed and ready to go. I've been dreaming about writing, though, which in interesting. I have two big projects to get cracking on and well, yes. I am blogging instead of writing.

• Revisions for My Beloved Assassin need to be done.
• Final pass through Regency short story
• Need to get going on The Next Paranormal
• Must write up a different Historical proposal

So, yeah. Stuff to do in this bright and shiny year of 2010. How about you guys?

Labels: Happy New Year, My Beloved Assassin, The Next Paranormal

The Next Paranormal is due November 1, so I have my head down and my fingers to the keyboard. I may not be posting too often between now and them. We'll see how desperate things get.


Anyway, my tentative title is My Beloved Assassin but they've hated all my titles so far so I expect that to be shot down.

I also need a series title. Carolyn's Paranormal Extravaganza is the best suggestion so far.

Am in big trouble.

Back to work.

Labels: Book Titles, deadline, series title, The Next Paranormal

Yesterday I was so proud of myself for breaking 50K on the Work in Progress (WIP). Woot! That would put me closely on pace to being done end of September with October for revisions.

Today I cut nearly 2,000 words at lunch time.

Sigh.

The words needed to be cut, but still. Rats. However, my motto is cut the crap sooner rather than later. I'm happier because, after a LOT of work, I got my chapters into an order that flows better and puts me in a position to move ahead. But that being hard work, I was brain dead for making up much word count. I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time listening to old recordings of Susan Boyle. She's the real deal. I wish the world had found her sooner.

(Back on topic!)

Which leads me to the title of today's post. I did some slash and burn and it was good. Tough love for the MS.

I wish I had an amusing anecdote, but I don't. I don't even have a good rant. Well, I could think of one, as there is never any shortage of strong opinions here at Chez Jewel and a lamentable abundance of idiots places other than here. But not at your house. Some other house. Anhyhoo, no ranting because then I'd be up all hours ranting and I find that sleep deprivation generally decreases my ability to do quality writing.

As this point amply demonstrates.

Labels: editing, The Next Paranormal, writing

By the way, if you haven't voted for My One True Love (see previous post) that's okay, really, but if you feel like showing the love, please vote.

Right. Get your mind off Viking vampires, Carolyn.

I'm transferring paper edits of The Next Paranormal to my document today. And I am, in a sick kind of way, happy to say that I did some massive chapter order re-ordering. The pacing was off. Way off. I've moved some bits from one place to another because I've got split actions and they need to be consolidated. I've also handwritten a big portion of a new chapter -- just enough to set in my mind what I want to happen. I have 49K and really, really want to be at 80K by end of this month. I'm 2K behind target though.

In other news, my agent has sent my historical proposal to my editor and since this is Publishing we're talking about it's time to hurry up and wait. Hopefully they won't want chapters because I'm not sure how I could hit 80K for the WIP and also bang out proposal chapters too.

I suppose it's safe enough to say that I've signed the contract for two more paranormals, but until they sign their end, it's not officially official.

Since I'm up too late, time to go to bed.

Labels: editing, proposals, The Next Paranormal

I recently printed off a copy of The Next Paranormal stuck it in a binder and am hauling it around with me so I can edit at every opportunity. I need to pick up a new binder as my current MS binder is falling apart. It's neon green with one of those clear plastic thingees so you can slip a sheet of paper or what have you on the front and spine and spiffy up your binder. I put some colorful stars on the front of mine. Perhaps I will decorate The Next MS Binder with a picture of My One True Love, Alexander Skarsgard. Right. Focus Carolyn!

A wee story for you: At work, I have this large very large project with an insanely impossible deadline. Now, large projects (not unlike a novel) benefit from some kind of documentation. Luckily, I am not the documenter for this project. But the person who is expressed great surprise at the fact that the document when read on paper looked and was completely different from its state when read on the screen. I, of course, am saying to myself, well, doh! (I did offer a warning about this, by the way, but you know the saying about horses and water.)

Be that as it may, my point is that it behooves a writer who is working digitally to read through a paper version from time to time. You will find errors, places where the prose requires fixing, story problems become apparent, you'll read sentences that are pure nonsense or that do not mean what you thought they meant when you wrote them. You will be bored (fix or delete that right away!) and there will be places where you say, hot damn! This rocks! and Oh. I didn't know that was going on between them!

Sometimes when I do this, I don't get very far before I know I have to redo my opening. And, being the person I am, I am unable to continue reading until that's fixed, reprinted and I can start over. In one case, this meant moving chapter 27 to chapter 1. In other cases it just means really tightening the prose or shifting the focus of the chapter.

I'm happy to say that I haven't had to do that with this project. (yet) I'm not quite halfway done so there's lots of things that can change between now and having 95K words written. And there are many places that rock. Yay!

I'm not typically a writer who does multiple drafts, and this process is why. By the time I hit 95K or so, the book is final form and already edited for story and language problems. Works for me. Might not for others.

Labels: drafts, editing, The Next Paranormal, writing

Today I did some major chopping and moving around of stuff in The Next Paranormal. Always a scary thing at the start. But I have a keeping-track-of-the-interim-mess method that works pretty well for making sure renumbered chapters get moved to the right place. I updated my chapter outline to match the story and then got in there with the machete.

And yes, I did end up about 300 words in the hole, not the direction I was hoping to go. But things are in a better order and the story that is emerging for my hero and heroine is making me happy.

I have a few other little things to clear up. My villain needs a name change. Currently it starts with M and I've realized his name can't start with M. I also need a title but haven't thought of anything that isn't horrible.

Anyhoo, I'm fairly happy, glad to have cut out crap and reordered stuff and things are OK. Hopefully I'm now in a position to start writing new chapters instead of fixing existing one. I've learned, though, that there's no point (and in fact there is harm) in going forward when what I have isn't solid yet. But now the foundation is better prepared.

Tomorrow I hope to make up the word count.

By the time you-all read this, chances are it will be Friday, so happy Friday!

Labels: Friday, The Next Paranormal, writing

Today I worked from home because this was the only day I could get my baby registered for high school. (How did that happen?) He got his paperwork all turned in, got his picture taken, got his schedule and I bought P.E. clothes and paid $420 for him to take the bus to school. He's in Geometry which is good except that with the math tutor I take him to, he's already been through and done with 9th grade Geometry. He wants to find out if he can test out of it and take Algebra 2 instead. We'll see.

Interestingly enough, my son struggled to learn to read, in part, I think because it was the only thing he actually had to work at. But we got him over the hump, he learned to read and caught up quickly with his classmates. The thing is I've always thought of him as not as strong in language skills as he is in, say, Math and Science. But every year since about 3rd grade he tests higher in ability, from slightly below his grade level to grade level and now, he actually tests as not just proficient but advanced.

For anyone who worries about a child who is having trouble with reading (and is not learning disabled) I think I can say that this doesn't mean he or she is doomed to poor performance forever.

Until he was about 12 I think, I read to him every single night. I read him books well above his grade level as well as books at his level. I bought him books, and, of course, he's surrounded by avid readers. And there are certain books he inhales the minute they come out. And now that he's picking his own books, he has a pretty remarkable open-mindedness about what to read. And somewhere along the way, he seems to have improved his language skills to the point where I can't point to anything and tell him he needs to work at it more. This, DESPITE the fact that he spends too much time playing World Of Warcraft.

Anyway, just wanted to mention that kids can catch up as long as they have support in the effort.

As for writing, right now, it's going slower than I like. I started freaking about how my hero and heroine in The Next Paranormal hardly interact so I started cutting other characters out of the scenes and getting my two together. Seems obvious now. But I caught it fairly early. But this means I'm cutting a lot so although I'm adding word count it's not 1000, more like 500 ish. However, I can report that I really like how it's coming out now. There was a nice little shift in dynamics that I'm looking forward to working -- if I can just get through this cut-the-crap bit.

I have 42.7K words, which is good, but critical mass is about 10-20k words away.

My son is going camping with my bother and his family until the day before school starts so I'm going to have several days with a Monday and Tuesday off to get myself caught up and moving on.

Wish me luck.

Labels: reading, The Next Paranormal, writing

I just scheduled a post (It will post tomorrow, August 12, 2009) over at the Risky Regencies that is, well, just plain odd. But so fun! Head over there, check it out and join the fun.

Update: permanent URL to the post is here. Click on over if you think you'd like to be a Risky Regencies Minion of Evil.

What else? I've been working hard on The Next Paranormal. I've got just over 40,000 words and things are starting to shake loose as to what plot points aren't going to go anywhere and where I need to concentrate instead.

I remain baffled by my dog's inability to get on the bed by himself. Unless there is food on it.

MacFang continues to be a pleasure to work with. I smile whenever I see his fangs. But mostly I smile because he's not breaking my back to carry around.

Off to word-work for me.

Labels: dogs, MacFang, The Next Paranormal

First, thank you to everyone who commented on my post about Pantsers, by the way. It's nice to know there are many others out there. Solidarity! And there was that fascinating hint of others who share my love for office supplies. That's my biggest regret about not being more of a plotter type, because plotters seem to use a lot of neato supplies for which, mostly, I have no use.

In other news, I am, of course, working on The Next Paranormal which is going pretty well, all things considered. I'm above 30K words and there are interesting developments. Not as fast as I'd like, but consistent progress also gets things done. I'm looking forward to having enough written that I can really tear in to the story. First draft writing is hard work.

All my ARCs of Indiscreet, my October historical from Berkley have been mailed out as have the prizes for my newsletter subscriber contest. I do indeed hold subscriber only contests, so if you like my books and want to know about when the next one is out by all means subscribe.

Last night I went to see Harry Potter. Golly, those movies are well done. But all the movie trailers were terrible. There wasn't one single movie previewed that seemed even remotely interesting. What's up with that?

I am giving some thought to the best way to put fangs on my beautiful MacBook Pro. I'll have to go stroll around an art supply store looking for appropriate materials. I want to put them on the forward edge, where you'd reach to open the laptop. Anybody have any ideas on that one? Too bad HBO doesn't sell an Eric Northman laptop skin, because I'd be all over that.

Since I'm on the subject, I LOVE Fang. (That's the MBP) It's smaller and lighter than my old Dell and on the 4+ hour flight from DC to SFO, I used hardly half the battery, and I had it on pretty much the whole time. It's small enough to easily sit on the airplane seat tray without bumping the neighbors or anything. It's great in the back of the car, too and no problem in waiting rooms either. (Son has had orthodontist, ortho xray and dentist appts -- all routine, no worries!)

I'm delaying any action on the possibility of adopting a Greyhound. We have two gates that need fixing first. One of them is a simple fix. The other is a bit more complicated, but I'm also not clear on why it's an issue. The objection was, in essence, What if someone leaves the gate open? Certainly a good question, but how is that any different than the possibility that someone in a house facing a street would leave the front door open? In our case, if that were to happen and the dog was also outside unattended, it would still have to choose that direction to run -- which is not line of sight from anywhere near the house. Homes with gates across the driveway are the exception not the rule, yet Greyhounds get adopted into homes where an accidentally open door puts them directly onto a street. What we have is not one but two barriers to road access and that is actually safer.

At the moment, I don't have the energy to call and argue the fallacy with the guy. And I've always been one to resent and deliberately fail sekret tests and trick questions because they piss me off and I more than halfway think that's what's going on here.

I need to think about it more.

Anyway, that's the weekend report. Any fang art suggestions are welcome

Labels: dogs, Indiscreet, The Next Paranormal

Today is a Monday and I am not at work. Nope. And I slept in. Bliss! I am futzing around before I do the final errands necessary before I leave for the Park and Fly hotel tonight. It's fun. No writing, because then I'd have to back up to Fang again (just testing out a potential nickname for the MacBook Pro.) and Fang is currently in the laptop bag.

I got up a bit early (but nowhere near the usual 4:15 am) to finish making coffee cake. Twitter user @RedRobinReader sent me the recipe. You make the (yeast) dough the night before, then make coffee cake rings with it the next day. I had my doubts since I needed to add A LOT of extra flour when I was making the dough yesterday. And then this morning I had a total failure on the merinque and had to start over on that. But my goodness, this coffee cake is heavenly! I can't eat anything else the rest of the day now.

The Next Paranormal is going pretty well. I'm over 26,000 words and had to do my first re-org to get things in a sensible order. For once, the theme has revealed itself to me very early on. I am quite happy with that. I think it's because of the new laptop. Apple is some pretty awesome technology, peeps. So far so good!

I handed over the old laptop to my son after making a new login for him on it. By the time I get back from DC, I should know if I need to pull off anything else. Then I can do a total remove of my files. In the meantime, I have deskspace! Oh my gosh. Do you know now long it's been since I've seen that corner of my desk? It's kind of scary, actually.

If you're going to be at RWA, please come by the Literacy Signing and say hello! It's Wednesday, July 15 from 5:30-7:30. All proceeds go to charity, and there will be some great authors there.

Friday July 17 from 3:00 to 4:30 Berkley and Grand Central have their author signings, so stop by there too! I'll be splitting my time between them. Bummer that they're at the same time...

If you're at RWA and you want to meet up, AND you're on Twitter, the absolute easiest thing to do is dm me via Twitter. Or just tweet me. @cjewel

The conference hash tag is #RWA09 I'll be on twitter and blogging when I can.

Labels: futzing around, RWA Nationals, The Next Paranormal

Since I have tomorrow off, I get to sleep in. Yay! I have various bits of news to report, in no particular order.

I've been working on The Next Paranormal and it's going pretty well right now. Some very good ideas starting to gel. It's early days yet, of course.

The RWA National Conference is coming up. If you're going to be in Washington DC on Wednesday July 15, drop by the Marriott for the Literacy Signing. It's for a good cause! Please stop by the J section to keep me from feeling too lonely.

On July 24, I'll be at the Hachette Books booth at Comic Con in San Diego. They're giving away copies of My Forbidden Desire and I'll be there to sign them! If you're going to be there, by all means, come by and get a free signed book. Personally, I'm hoping some of the True Blood folks will be there. I should be able to wander around a bit and see some stuff.

I've given up on the old and creaky Dell laptop and went to the Apple store to buy a 13"MacBook Pro, which I did, only they're out of stock and now I'm just praying mine arrives BEFORE I leave for Nationals because the thought of lugging the current laptop to DC gives me hives. I've committed to Apple and now I'm impatient to make the switch completely and utterly. Everyone cross your fingers for a delivery prior to 7/14 because I have a very early flight.

Twitter has been hellaciously fun lately. Oh my gosh. @barryEisler is being the world's best sport about what is probably the world's most egregious and embarrassing typo ever. By me. I meant to type spill his guts... with respect to the expected conversation I hope to have when I get to have lunch with him due to my winning lunch w/him at Brenda Novak's auction. But what I type was spill his guys... Much hilarity has followed. @VictoriaDahl has been particularly bold, sassy and amusing.

And now I'm off to get some work done before I go to bed.

Labels: Comic Con, RWA Nationals, The Next Paranormal

Ranting about Literature

Today I saw a little blurb that suggested Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse was the best beach read ever. To which I immediately said, WTF?

There's just so much wrong with that statement, which yes, I do realize was meant partially in jest. But what's behind that jest? Nothing less than the usual insulting dig at commercial fiction and the readers thereof-- actual beach read books, which I hope we can agree are books you can take to the beach and read to forget your problems or simply enjoy an exciting story. To suggest that To The Lighthouse is a beach read is simply absurd. It implies that people who read actual Beach Reads are somehow so silly and harebrained that we have to be led down the path to literature because otherwise Beach Readers would never know about Virginia Woolf.

And then there's To The Lighthouse itself. This book is not an easy read. It takes concentration and exquisitely careful attention to the prose. I once said To The Lighthouse is a cubist novel and it is. If offers a perspective that shifts and feels uncomfortable and forces you to struggle to give shape to what you're reading. You are forced to see the world and The Novel itself in a whole different way. It is a tour de force. But as you learn how to follow the shifts and make new shapes from the prose, a new world opens up.

To The Lighthouse is NOT a beach read. And guess what? I've read To The Lighthouse and I've read actual beach reads and I get value from both. I bet I'm not the only one.

True Blood

Last night I watched the season 2 premier of True Blood, the HBO series based on Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books. Which, by the way, I loved.

Then I heard about a controversial opinion that in the final scene of the episode, Eric Northman bites the penis off a hapless redneck who has done vampires wrong. Could that be so? I know other appendages were, er, removed (an arm, seen in silhouette), but was there actual biting off of a male member? Well, upon review the scene and doing my best not to be distracted by the obvious fact that my One True Love Alexander Skarsgard has been working out, I can only conclude that, well, yes. He did do that.

My Current Obsession

Did you read the paragraph above? No, not To The Lighthouse. Alexander Skarsgard. I have it bad. Really bad. It's embarrassing and mostly I'm not even embarrassed.

In other News

I have begun receiving my candy of the month from the brilliant Hank Phillippi Ryan and guess what? Since I won it in Brenda Novak's diabetes auction (ignore the irony! It's for a good cause!) I'm in the club all by myself. And I'm not sharing. Sorry.

Not really.

Also, I finally worked my way out of my earliest dead end in a Work In Progress (WIP) ever. Chapter 4, for crying out loud. But now I'm out of it and things are looking pretty good.

I'm not due for another episode of Writer's Neurosis for another 6 chapters at least.

So, who else loves Alexander Skarsgard?

Labels: books, chocolate, literature, The Next Paranormal, True Blood, writing

I guest blogged at Magical Musings. My post is Can Writing Be Taught And Why I Think That's the Wrong Question Check it out of articles about writing interest you.

The blog Nobody Asked Me had very nice things to say about My Wicked Enemy and My Forbidden Desire. Scroll down in her list of May Reading to find me. Among others things she opined:

My Forbidden Desire: It's edgy, irreverent and has ambiguous characters as the H/H. Can't wait for the next installment. My Grade = B+

MY WICKED ENEMY I'm looking for every Carolyn Jewel book I can find now. My Grade = B+

In other news, I'm working on The Next Paranormal and finishing the synopsis for what I hope will be The Next Historical

My son and a friend are out in the field digging holes. Very deep holes. Intense holes. They are working hard and don't know it. Too bad we don't actually need holes dug. The Border Collie is in heaven. She loves to dig holes, too. I believe they are sharing tips and advice.

I should be working. Will go do that now.

Labels: My Forbidden Desire, My Wicked Enemy, The Next Historical, The Next Paranormal

Saturday mornings are my absolute favorite, especially if I get to sleep through them. Alas, not this Saturday. I had a rather large day job implementation that required my early rising after working most of Friday evening. All things considered, the project went remarkably well.

Today my son goes to his cousin's birthday party and then in the evening leaves for a red-eye to Washington DC with his eighth grade class. I'll need to do some last minute shopping for that. And then what will I do with myself during an entire week with no youngling?

In between all that, I have to start seriously working on The Next Paranormal. The synopsis for The Next Historical is essentially done and out to readers so I don't have to stress about that anymore. Good news! And if you're reading between the lines, yes, I will be writing more paranormals even though I can't officially say so, it's unofficially official enough that I have to get cracking as of a couple of weeks ago.

In other good news, and pretty much all thanks to Twitter, I won two things in Brenda Novak's diabetes fund raiser; Lunch with Barry Eisler and Candy a Month from Hank Phillippi Ryan. (Twitter reminded me I should go bid on something, so I did.) Then I won a True Blood poster, coming to me directly from HBO's PR office and THEN I won a free ad from the Catanetwork folks! I also got an ARC of Lisa Unger's Die For You and an ARC of Jaci Burton's Taken by Sin.

If you're not on Twitter, how come? Because I also found out on Twitter that Dear Author has My Forbidden Desire as a Recommended Read for June. Woot! Also woot!, MFD made bookscan at 62, which means it's one of the top 100 romances.

If you all would go buy the book (please!) maybe I could move up the list and hit the top 50.

Name that Heroine!

The Next Paranormal will be about Durian, and his heroine needs a name. Everything is subject to change, but she's about 26 or so, scrappy, dresses on the punk side, short dark hair with with purple streaks. She might change colors to lime green or something just to tweak Durian. In the proposal, I called her Shelby because for some reason I thought that might work and when I realized it wasn't going to, it was too late to change it. In chapter one, which I am in the middle of completely rewriting, she is wearing orange high top sneakers.

Here's the short list of names:

• Piper


• Zoe


• Mischa


• Pilar


• Willa


• Antonia

Mischa is the front runner at the moment, but see below. And now, my request: Got any good ideas for a name? I keep a spreadsheet of cool names and note which ones I've used in which books, so here's an opportunity 1) vote on the list of candidate names and/or 2) help me add to my list and maybe even come up with the name I end up using (if you do, full credit in the acknowledgments) by suggesting your own character names.

A few parameters:

• Her name can't start with D since the hero's name already starts with D.


• Her name probably shouldn't start with M either since Maddy is a major secondary character who is likely to get some page time


• Other starting letters that probably won't work: K, A and X.


• ethnic names are completely welcome and probably privileged

Leave your suggestions and votes in the comments. Thank you.

Labels: My Forbidden Desire, Names, The Next Historical, The Next Paranormal

I'm over at Patti O'Shea's blog pimping My Forbidden Desire and giving away a copy of My Wicked Enemy. So check it out. Leave a comment.

The day before I was over at Riskey Regencies making my debut appearance as a member of the blog. I'll be blogging about all kinds of stuff, including things I learned about the Ottoman Empire.

In writing news, uh, I need to get on the stick. That dang synopsis for The Next Hisotorical needs to be done so I can start on The Next Paranormal.

So, off to it, peeps.

Sorry to be so boring. I'll try to do better next time.

Labels: My Forbidden Desire, pimping, The Next Historical, The Next Paranormal