This is an updated version of my 2013 NaNoWriMo USB drive post (which was, awesomely enough, featured in NaNoWriMo's procrastination station. Whoa!).


Back up your work.

Every year, too many writers lose the one and only copy of their novels due to computer malfunctions, unfortunate accidents, and novel-stealing gnomes. Fortunately, you can avoid losing your manuscript by frequently backing up to multiple locations. (Use two or three from this post for maximum security.) Today, I'm going to show you Mac users how to set up a snazzy USB drive for NaNoWriMo. (If you're using a PC, follow this tutorial instead.)

I've been doing a lot of web re-design lately and haven't been able to muster the desire to write. Rather than tackle Flowers When You're Dead while in such a funk, I decided to fuse several ideas I've had -- to write a modern version of The Coquette, to have a character named Nancy Pregg, and to write a story involving the idea of "Secret Time" - into one story. I'm not sure what this thing is going to become (short story, novella, or novel), but hey - at least I'm writing again. Note that this is unedited. (I'll get to it someday. Again, I'm just glad I managed to write something!)

Bella Donna took a sip of her coffee as she stared out at the streets of New York through the café’s grimy window. The water, too hotly boiled for normal consumption, scalded her lips. She flinched and set down her drink.  Of course, the singeing of her taste buds was the least of her concerns. Instead, she scrolled through her cell phone, re-reading the texts her paramour, Howard, had sent throughout the course of the day with damning fascination.

It was a decision she had to make alone. After all, how could she confide in her friends? They all knew Jeff. They were all friends. Their loyalties would be split. No, she couldn’t possibly tell her friends that she was having relations with a man other than sweet, vapid Jeff. Jeff, the man she’d been encouraged to fancy since graduating college. He made a good living, her parents loved him. Life was comfortable.

But that was the problem - Bella Donna didn’t thrive on comfort. Rather, she thrived on the better things in life; the excitement that only deception and the thrill thereof could bring. First of all, Howard was British. That alone put him leagues about Jeff. He was also a freelance photographer, which lent itself well to inciting other thrill-bringing events that pushed their relationship from friendship to affair status. That’s how they’d met - through his photography. She wanted a purse. Jeff refused to buy it for her, arguing she had two like it already and that, jokingly, he felt used. Bella Donna told him she'd do a modeling gig and pay for the purse herself. They both knew there was truth behind his words, but neither would directly acknowledge it. Bella Donna was Jeff’s hot trophy wife; he was her cash cow. The system had worked for years, but now, Bella Donna wasn’t so sure how much longer it would last. 

She’d cheated before. Five times, in fact. Jeff knew about one of them, but he was in the middle of some big financial deal and was too busy to talk about getting a divorce. He forgave her, and that was that. The affair didn’t stop him from bringing up the subject of children, something that Bella Donna always deflected. We have forever to have children. I want to live a little. Jeff didn’t like that, but he put up with it. That’s what she liked about him. He was a rock in the brayed beach of her life.

Unlike with her other affairs, Bella Donna had actually entertained the notion of leaving Jeff for Howard. Maybe she loved him. She wasn’t sure if she knew what love was; or, at least in terms of loving a man. The only person she had ever loved was herself. She had no qualms with admitting that. But there was something about Howard; so alluring and sexy that made her second-guess her marriage more than she felt comfortable admitting to herself. Maybe she was growing up seven years too late.

Bella Donna sat in the coffee shop for a while longer. To a stranger, she appeared to be thinking about something life-changing; but in reality, her thoughts had already moved on to the purse she carried and how she wished she had bought it in red.

Bella Donna would be the first to contract the virus.

Nancy Pregg sat patiently at the daycare center. A copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles was spread across her lap. It was an admittedly dreadful book; one that perpetuated tragedy at a unfathomable level. It was one of many on a long list of novels some website had deemed must-reads. She’d gotten through them all - even Catcher in the Rye, for God’s sake - but could hardly bring herself to pick up this one. She’d written it on the day’s to-do list, however, making it a mandatory part of her routine to complete. For Nancy Pregg, life was a checklist. It was the only way she could justify waking up each morning and starting the whole ordeal all over again.

Nancy Pregg wanted nothing more than to have a child. Unfortunately, the good Lord above didn’t share her beliefs on the matter, and has thus rendered her infertile. It was a fact that plagued her, strangled her, and brought her to her knees in every waking moment. She took anti-depressents, but all the dopamine in the world couldn’t erase the fact that she would never have a child of her own. 

[To give context: Nancy is waiting at the day-care center for her sister's son.]

Here's a little excerpt from Flowers When You're Dead that had me cracking up when I read over it.

I've never been to one of these places before. Never had my hair cut. Maybe my mom took me once when I was little, but I don't remember. Don't care. I'm getting nervous. There's no one here, and I'm all weirded out just standing there all spacker-like. I'm getting ready to leave, but someone comes out. Plump sort of woman. She asks me if I'm here for a haircut and if I have an appointment, and I tell her yes to the first one and no to the second. She lets me come in anyway. First, she takes me over to some sort of deep black dish that looks kind of like a urinal, and she has me sit down and she puts my head in it.

I'm guessing it's not as funny to you all because you don't know much about Daron, but then again, maybe I'm wrong. In other news, Creation is still looking at a March 3rd release date and is being dissected by my editor. I'm planning on finishing Flowers When You're Dead by April and pitching it to an agent later in the month. Wish me luck!

Kat

I really wish I had something epic to blog about. Well, I do, but it's kind of a secret (although you may find a hint on my Twitter!). Instead, I will leave you with this horrific image of my bathroom counter.

I was flipping through a later installment of the Rebound manga (which inspired the initial idea for The Atavists Trilogy!). Rebound follows a basketball team through their tournaments and hilarious dude-spats with competing teams. Some pretty epic drawings in there. Anyway, I suddenly remembered where DeathX came from...

Hehe. Well, I've got a paper due that needs writing. (Funny how much easier it is to write a novel than a paper...)

Kat

I'm looking for people (particularly who've read Anthem by Ayn Rand and/or Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro) to be test readers for my novella, Creation. Please comment below with your email address if you're interested! Creation is a short literary fiction novella.

Warning: Contains excessive rambling.

I'm struck by how different an experience I'm having with editing Streets as opposed to Darkness Surrounding. With Darkness Surrounding, everything was crafted over five years. My use of "crafted," of course, is used jokingly -- in reality, I dribbled (pun wasn't intended, but it totally works!) out my first draft as a high school student, at which point I had no voice and many a bad writing habit. (Still do.) A lot of re-writing and hair-pulling resulted. Regardless, I had a clear, solid idea of what I wanted to happen and where it would go as I did my final re-writes and editing for its 2011 release.

I can't say the same for Streets.

Shit's going down. Characters are having issues. More about the Immortals is being revealed, and there are even some scenes from their perspective. And here I am, working with a 50,000 word draft I stamped out in two weeks during NaNoWriMo 2010. Two weeks. I bet you can fathom how shitty that draft is!

Don't get me wrong. There are days where after a good editing (read: re-writing) session, I'm overwhelmed with a sense of HECK YEAH, LIFE IS AWESHUM. Then there are the days -- such as today -- where I'm totally bogged down by my lack of direction. Without giving too much away, I have to really subject myself to the psychological pain of my characters to get the scene just right, and that takes a toll. I don't like going there, but I have to. Kinda part of the job.

So I load up the Rainy Mood website, pump something with M. Shadows through my speakers, and slowly turn into an angry/sad/blubbering writer until my next class is about to start.

Lovely, I know. Such charming mental imagery of me with a hankie and snot. But I digress.

What I liked about Darkness Surrounding is that it was backstory. A reviewer called it a "prequel," and I absolutely have to agree. For that reason, it was easier to write. The action wasn't happening. The psychological brain-picking hadn't begun yet. My subtle political undertones hadn't taken root yet either. However, all of the afore-mentioned aspects are supposed to come to fruition in Streets.

And MY GOODNESS, they are SO DIFFICULT TO NAIL. (I am so terrible with action. Never ask me to write an action novel.)

I also want to break the immature teen heroine mold, and I don't like bad guys that are evil just 'cause. I want some wit and depth, dang it! Of course, having a whiny, love-stuck girl and an OMG EVIL villain is a much easier formula to follow and develop. It's been done before. It's familiar. We've read it dozens upon dozens of times. However, trying to find a new voice and bring something fresh to the YA world is a huge, huge challenge, especially in keeping my philosophical crap to a down-low. No one wants to be bombarded with my political/world views (ehem, James Patterson), yet I can't dismiss them completely. I want my story to have a point, an underlying message which isn't in your face, but is there if you choose to explore it. Adding another layer to an already complicated story is, well, a barrel of monkeys.

Ok, my rambling has gone on for long enough. To make the rest of this short and concise: Streets and Warmness on the Soul won't be your typical YA reads. I have my shortcomings as an author, but I intend to use my style and what I can do well to bring a new and often neglected type of conflict to the table. Expect something a little unconventional. (And a lot of swearing, because that's how us New Mexican teens roll. Just writing truth, 'yo!)

With that, I'm off to an oboe lesson.

Kat

Huzzah! It's me. I'm attempting to bring you an audio snippet of Creation, which is currently in its first draft. The audio is—gasp—seven minutes long.

Creation, a novella reminiscent of Ayn Rand's Anthem and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, is an exploration of the nature of artistic creation in the context of self. Literary Fiction.


This story was inspired by a weird dream I had one night, which involved the name Jess, the Exhaustion Hounds, and the daily milk-drinking concept. Robert Pattinson starred as Wes. Sorry.


I found a few things to work on for draft #2—"non-fiction" wouldn't exist, all of the girl's names begin with "J" (oops!),  Josie's use of the word "delicate" in context doesn't work, plus there are some issues with flow and word repetitions. 

Despite these issues and my horrible "mish-mash" accent, I do hope you find this interesting.

creation_sample.mp3

Don't mind me as I butcher the pronunciation of words left and right. I love how "either" became "aayyyeeeetha" and "necessary" morphed into "nessessessree"...

I discovered the author (Roz Morris) of a novel I recently read, My Memories of a Future Life, recorded her own audiobook. And guess what? She did a killer job. It doesn't hurt that she has the best, most sophisticated English accent ever. Jealous? Me? Never.

I attempted to record the first chapter of Darkness Surrounding as a promo tool for today's local author event. Sadly, I caught a cold and a nasty cough to boot, so I had to cancel. Therefore, there won't be any further audio-booking until I cease to sound like a ninety-year-old man. In the meantime, I'm stalking around the internet for tips and advice.

I hate the sound of my recorded voice. Hate it. Loathe it. Despise it. I don't sound half bad when I hear myself blab on and on out loud, but once that crap gets recorded, it's a mindblower. Like, do I really sound like that? All the time? Really? (Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way!)

So here you go. I think I did better as time went on, but I'm only going to torture myself with posting the first 40 seconds or so, which were, by far, the most awkward to record.

DS_Ch1.mp3

What qualities do you enjoy about audiobooks? Is all-around slow reading better than sticking to something more realistic (i.e. getting into character, even if it means reading more quickly and with more emotion?). Are multiple narrators better than one narrator? Is there a type of voice that is irksome to listen to? 

I did not grow up with audiobooks, so I'm WAY behind on this stuff. Opinions are appreciated!

EDIT: I've decided to use the second cover!

Two awesome covers that I love. A difficult decision with many factors. Welcome to the grand Streets debate (auto-corrected to "death" by my Mac after a typing blunder. Oh, how appropriate...).

Take the first cover. Regard the charming young man who slightly resembles DeathX. Photogenic. Grabs your attention. The setting suits the name of the novel. The orbs of light are carried over from the Darkness Surrounding cover. Both Zanni and DeathX stare off into opposite directions. The covers flow. The dude is hot, and the femmes shall swoon.

However, this young lad is not a dead ringer for DeathX, and he is not threatening. Enter cover number two.

The young man in cover number two is a dead ringer. Bingo. Bullseye. Spot on. He's creepy, haunted, spooky. The darkness engulfing the Darkness Surrounding cover has, well, surrounded. DeathX is here, so everything totally sucks for everyone.

The boy folk aren't afraid to pick up this book. It looks inviting. Dude-ish. The girls aren't so sure, and would rather stare dreamily at the young lad of cover number one.

Now personally, I like both.

Which totally gets me nowhere.

Now, I could use the image on the second cover as the back cover of the first cover. (Whoa, that was a trippy sentence!) Still, that wouldn't be a win-win for me. I want people to get what DeathX looks like. Although the ambiguity in his appearance would work in terms of what goes down in this particular installment of TAT, I'm still struggling with what I've always struggled with: making money or staying true to my characters. One of the reasons I self-published was so that I could make the people on the covers juuuuust right. Trying to sell copies now after I could have tried to publish the normal way is stupid, don't you think? Well, maybe not. Maybe I should sacrifice a little bit of creative control for the sake of actually making a profit, even if it is a little too late in the game.

Which is your favorite? Which would you buy? Which caught your eye first?

Or should I pin both up on a board, tap-dance, spin in circles, throw a dart, and use the one that gets gutted?

If you don't know what YearNoWriMad is, I'm not surprised. I made it up. It's a modification of National Novel Writing Month, and it's going to help me -- and hopefully the other twenty people who're on board -- write 200,000 words in the year of 2012. (It's called Year of Novel Writing Madness for a reason!)

January calls for an average of 645 words per day, and WOW, THAT IS A PIECE OF CAKE. The 10,000 word months (which call for around 333 words per day) should be a total breeze. It's slow and steady progress, and I'm A-OK with that.

I have the added task of editing and re-writing Streets, with a deadline that is, for all intents and purposes, two months away. This includes designing a new cover, which feels more difficult that writing the damn novel. Seriously not my forte. (But I digress!) You can expect me to be frantically pulling double-duty on bringing two novels up to snuff from now until March. After that, it's on to editing Warmness on the Soul, which is in considerably better shape than Streets is. (I won't procrastinate so horribly on editing that one, though. I've learned my lesson!)

What awesome feats of strength will you perform this year? Will you tag along for YearNoWriMad? Record some songs? Hit the gym? (Speaking of which, how's Planet Fitness? Considering getting a membership.) Meet new people? Have The Summer of George sans paralysis all year long? (Stolen from Facebook). Let me know!

Currently Reading:
GONE by Michael Grant
FREY by Melissa Wright
ANGEL EVOLUTION by David Estes
MY MEMORIES OF A FUTURE LIFE by Roz Morris

Your cover caught their eye. Your short and sweet blurb on the dust jacket commanded their attention. Now, they're about to do what a number of book perusers do—they're going to read your opening sentence.

This is no trivial matter. If the first sentence is boring and unimaginative, your prospective reader will likely put your book down and walk away. Good sentences reach out of the page, grab you, and yank you in. 

Those opening lines sold me on this novel.


LITERARY FICTION—Opening sentences should convey a universal struggle.

I first saw this opening passage on an e-reader screen in an advertisement. I liked it so much that I googled the opening line on my phone in hopes that I would discover the author. (It's from Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.)

The opening lines are relatable, and the struggle depicted therein is universal. We all age whether we want to or not; the passage of time is inevitable. These opening lines capture a struggle of identity and existence, a human condition that affects just about all of us. By conveying a universal struggle, readers can instantly connect with the story on a personal level.

But what if your novel falls more on the commercial side of the spectrum? The very essence of literary fiction is to provide commentary on something far more important than the story itself—but unlike its literary counterpart, commercial fiction can't draw interest with universal themes alone.

Opening sentences should convey the overall tone of your novel.

To help the reader know what to expect from your novel, let the mood and tone of your story shine through in the opening sentences.

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.

The opening line suggests this story is different; bold. The world is unpleasant and the narrator has a sense of humor about it, so it stands to reason the rest of the book will maintain a similar tone and perspective. (Uglies by Scott Westerfield.)

Congratulations. The fact that you're reading this means you've taken one giant step closer to surviving till your next birthday.

This is the opening line from James Patterson's Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, and its hook is obvious. Urgency. Max is reaching out to you, the reader, through the page. A connection—albeit an abrupt one—is quickly established.

Opening sentences should be interesting and/or clever.

• They said morning sickness would be tough. Judging by the fact I just puked up an alien, I'd have to say they were right.
• Insanity is when you swore you put the pizza boy six feet under last night, only to wake up to him banging on your window and begging for brains.

The number one element of a good opening line? Surprise. It sets the stage for an enjoyable read.

What is your favorite opening line? What do you look for in the first page of a book? Do you use the first few lines to gauge if a book is worth your time?

Interesting link: http://www.storyispromise.com/twilight.htm