Tag: self-publishing

Blog Post #32: Best Books on Writing, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and How to Steal Hollywood

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Alexandra Sokoloff’s Stealing Hollywood: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors is easily one of the best plotting books I have ever purchased. It is a vital tool I use for every plot I’ve written since purchasing the book.

Now, Alexandra Sokoloff is notoriously protective of the contents of this book, and because of that I will be disclosing no direct information including quotes, techniques, or really anything. I’m sorry for that, but ask Sarra Cannon of HeartBreathings on YouTube about it…

What I can say about it is that it’s the THICKEST, LARGEST plotting book I own, and it is chock FULL of crucial information, such as popular scene additions and where they go in the first, second, or third act.

She also includes movie/story break downs, examples, and chapters on dialogue, stakes, love stories, fairy tales, villains, creating suspense, plot twists, and so much more!

I heavily suggest this book to any writer. Even for pantsers the information is vital, especially when you are stuck in a writer’s block and don’t know where to head.

You can find this book on Amazon!

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Short Story: Nightshade and Pomegranate, Part Two

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“Zeus,” she said, her voice small.

“Where is the Goddess of Spring?”

“In the gardens,” Calypso said. Zeus nodded to her, and she scampered off, escaping the ire or desire of the King of Olympus.

“You heard her, brother,” Zeus said, his voice dark. Without looking, his shadow peeled away from itself, and a secondary shadow walked away, silhouetted against the wall. It crept up to an open window, and slunk away outside.

“What is that horrible stench?” Demeter asked, annoyance across her face. Zeus approached her, attempting to calm the nervous mother.

Persephone sat outside in the gardens, alone, still cultivating multiple bushes. A shadow came over her, tall and dark, and she turned towards it, and had to contain her excitement. Hades stood before her, his physical form materializing out of the shadow that he had arrived in. His tall, slender frame came into reality, his pale, gray skin and gaunt face looked down at his love with adoration and affection.
To Persephone, Hades smelled like autumn leaves and his shadow was a deep shade of black she was never able to get her flowers to achieve.

To Hades, Persephone was like a cherry blossom tree in bloom: timelessly young, elegant, and floral.
Hades took Persephone into his arms, holding her against him. “I’ve come to claim you as my bride. I’ve come to bring you to the Underworld.”

Persephone looked at him, beaming with excitement. “I want to be there with you, I want to go there now.”

Hades approached the flowers and bushes that Persephone had grown, and from it he crafted a crown of Pomegranates, Roses, and Nightshade flowers, a floral crown symbolic of their love and matrimonial bond. Hades loved Persephone more than anything he had ever known, her beauty was beyond any other Goddess in existence now, or ever to exist, and he was willing to do anything to have her as his Queen. Gently, he placed the crown upon Persephone’s head.

Zeus edged towards Demeter.

“What do you want?!” She said, her voice harsh. She didn’t trust the God of Olympus, the man who would go to great lengths to disrespect his wife and sleep with anything that moved.

“What is so bad about letting your daughter make her own choice?” He asked, his voice soft.

Demeter looked at him with daggers in her eyes, she bit her lower lip in anger.
“Let my daughter, the Goddess of Spring, lock herself in the Underworld to be the Queen of the Dead?! What kind of mother would I be if I allowed her to do that?!”

At this point, all of the Gods were looking at the pair, their eyes boring holes into Demeter. Demeter’s eyes flicked around the room, she saw that Persephone was nowhere to be found.

“You all smelled him, the stench of death he brings with him!” She cried, whipping around the room, looking for her daughter. “You all know he came tonight, snuck in the manor behind my back, and yet you all laugh in my face and console me with your feigned kindness. Where is he?! Where is my daughter?!”

It was at that moment that the room fell into hushed whispers, everyone’s eyes darting back and forth.

Within a few more moments, the back doors to the garden swung open. In came Persephone and
Hades, wrapped in each other’s arms, a crown upon Persephone’s head.

“I’ve chosen my suitor, mother,” she said, happiness written across her entire being. “I wish to marry Hades!”

Blog Post #30: Best Books on Writing, Using Super Structure to Plot Your Novel

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Drafting can seem like such an overwhelming, odious task. With the right tools, drafting a book’s outline can easily be completed in a single day with the help of multiple sources. This is the beginning of a mini-series on the best books for helping writers become authors.

James Scott Bell’s Super Structure is easily the writing book I use the most when plotting. Period. End of blog post. See you all tomorrow.

In all seriousness, I recommend this book to anyone who plots their own stories. The story beats listed are crucial, especially the MIRROR MOMENT.

The Mirror Moment specifically is a moment (roughly around the middle of a book) where the character realizes they’re going to die (either physically, emotionally, or psychologically) unless they change their outlook by confronting their trauma. It is CRUCIAL to every story, it is the pivotal moment in the character arc, and if your story is missing the mirror moment, your readers won’t care about your main character.

In fact, James Scott Bell has another writing book all about the Mirror Moment called Write Your Novel from the Middle. It is a good reinforcement of the purpose the MM and its necessity to the character arc, but Super Structure is more important.

Bell lists his story beats as “Fourteen Signposts”. Some experienced plotters may go “Hey! This sounds a lot like Save the Cat!” While there are similarities to Save The Cat, another plotting book I own, I find Bell’s Super Structure more concise and straightforward and subsequently, easier to reference when plotting.

The Fourteen Signposts are:

The Disturbance (Act 1 Opener)
The Care Package
The Argument Against Transformation
Trouble Brewing
Doorway of No Return #1 (Act 2 Opener)
Kick In The Shins
Mirror Moment
Pet the Dog (Literally, Save the Cat)
Doorway of No Return #2 (Act 3 Opener)
Mounting Forces
Lights Out
Q Factor
Final Battle
Transformation
The Final Word (Epilogue/Denouement)

The Q Factor is another IMPORTANT piece of storytelling that is often overlooked in other plotting books but is SURPRISINGLY prevalent in story!

To find out how these beats translate to a story, I suggest you get yourself a copy of Super Structure on Amazon today!

Blog Post #29: Facing Burnout while Writing Submissions and Entering Short Stories for Cash in between Writing/Editing Novels

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When I began this blog my goal was always to “soft publish” my short stories here and then submit them for publication before compiling them into a short story compilation. Finding where to submit, how to submit, and when not to submit has become a whirlwind of quick learning. Keeping my muse from burning out has also become quite burdensome.

Submissions is a new realm. When I was in community college there were student journals and papers that were published where students could submit work. My best friend got a work of hers published in it while she was pursuing her AA in English. At the time I was working full time and burning myself out, causing myself to lose financial aid and nix my ability to continue college at that school. Bummer. Due to that burn out I never got the chance to attempt to write anything, let alone submit it.

Currently (but not in the future), my short story titled Dejavu is on this blog in five parts. I will be taking these down soon to polish it up and submit it for publication to Silver Blade Magazine. Fingers crossed, I will get chosen and receive a small cash prize. In the works I just plotted a new short story I will be posting, in parts, on this blog titled Nightshade’s Fate, a retelling of the story of Persephone, the Goddess of the Underworld and the night Hades takes her away. I will be submitting this to Quill & Crow Publishing for their The Damned and the Divine submission call. I’m extremely excited to write this short story.

However, I also feel the siren call of burn out on the horizon. I just finished the first draft of Silver Blood in September, then I finished Dejavu, a short story I started two years ago (and something that had been on my mind for two freaking years!). Now I’m jumping into a new short story. Short stories are, admittedly and obviously, easier than full novels. Short stories can move faster where a full book requires more pacing. Short stories are where clever prose matters most, where every word counts in a tale.

Short stories, like novels, are still work, nonetheless.

My next steps with Silver Blood are to add a B plot to thicken the word count and add more to the world. I’ve wanted to step away from the manuscript for a few weeks to a month (or two, even), so I can come back with fresh eyes and fresh ideas. The short stories I’ve been writing are entirely different than the storyline of Silver Blood, so I’m hoping not to succumb to burnout for too long.

Even if I do burn out, I’ll still be here to tell you about it. Not every part of writing is easy, and now that I’ve been pursuing writing stories as a part-time job to full-time hobby, I recognize that burnouts are cyclical, not a reflection of my inability to become a great writer who has an awesome following. My burnout does not reflect my inability to write well, or to craft stories. My burnout is just a result of pushing myself hard, and when I let my mind rest I allow myself the space to let my muse ponder and give me some ideas.

See you all next week! I will be starting Nightshade’s Fate Wednesday morning!

Blog Post #28: The Prevalence of Romance in Any Kind of Story and the Romance Story Beats

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A majority of stories, even those geared towards male audiences, have “Romance B Plots” included in the stakes. Gwen Hayes’s Romancing the Beat is a great, fast read on applying a romance arc to story structure.

Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat has a story beat specifically called “the B plot” — and it is explicitly stated as the beginning of the love line (if there’s going to be one). These B characters, whether love interests, villains, or friends, are used (mostly) to either show the MC their own flaws or to reflect to the audience a theme, character flaw/virtue, or idea. If executed well, the audience will receive the message the author is conveying without feeling as if they were being “beaten like a dead horse” with the idea.

While many platonic B characters can come to mind (Samwise Gamgee/Golem, Ron Wesley/Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy), for many people love interests will dominate the mind when thinking on these characters (Princess Buttercup, any Disney Prince, Ginny Wesley). We even may recall stories which revolve around letting go of your platonic B (often best childhood) friends for a love interest B character who’s demanding more out of the MC than anyone had prior (The Jungle Book, Superbad). Sometimes the story revolves around trying to make it work with a love interest B character, only to have them realize their platonic B friends were right all along (Saving Silverman). Either way, because of the relationship, the MC learns something about themselves. What the MC learns plays a major role in what kind of book you’ve written.

Crafting a story with a believable love plot line is one of the most difficult writing technics to achieve. If placed under a lens of scrutiny most modern day romances would be reduced to insta-love between two hot characters. To this day insta-love remains one of the biggest complaints about Twilight and its subsequent series, one of the highest grossing romance series of all time (and a potential dreaded future classic because of its impact on pop culture, which… please no). Love requires two characters do more than find each other mutually attractive, especially in an age when hooking up on social media doesn’t guarantee love in your reader’s own lives.

So, how do you craft two characters who have enough commonalities with one another to not only find each other attractive but also fall in love with them? How do you create two completely believable people and convince the audience not only that they exist, but that they they’re madly in love with one another?

Enter: Gwen Hayes’s Romancing the Beat

Now, no, this book cannot give you the inspiration with which to write the next great American romance novel (which will rightfully destroy any chance of Twilight becoming a classic novel because your novel will be so perfect, it will outshine).

What this book gives you is a plotting road map on how Romance books are structured, and what your readers are looking for as Romance genre readers. I argue it is ESSENTIAL to any writer who wants to write a romance B plot in any story, as it gives an excellent outline of the ebb and flow of a romance arc. The flow can be described as so:

1. Set Up (Meet Cute)
2. Falling in Love (realizing the B person is amazing)
3. Retreating from Love (MC lets their past trauma keep them from committing fully)
4. Fighting for Love (MC comes to terms with past trauma and strives to make the relationship work)

These beats align very easily to the plot points of a novel described in James Scott Bell’s Super Structure:

1. Set Up, Disturbance, Care Package, Trouble Brewing
2. First Doorway of No Return, Kick In the Shins, Pet the Dog ((SAVE THE CAT))
3. Mirror Moment, Second Doorway of No Return, Mounting Forces/Bad Guys Close In
4. Lights Out/Dark Night of the Soul, Q Factor, Final Battle, Transformation, Final Word/Denouement

The more writing books I read, the more I realize they are simply maps. We as writers must walk the path they can guide us through. My most current manuscript (a dark fantasy romance) was written with this book at the helm, and at the end of the draft I felt as if I had the strongest first draft I had ever written.

Still, it is not enough to sustain an entire book, I implore anyone pursuing writing to read into character arcs, story structure, dialogue, and theme utilization (as well as literary devices and techniques in general), but it is a perfect guide for anyone looking to sharpen their Romance skills.

You can find Gwen Hayes’s Romancing the Beat on Amazon today!



Blog Post #27: How to Write a Gripping Prologue Without Killing the Pacing!

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Despite the fact that prologues are a staple among fantasy writers, prologues are often rejected in queries because they tend to slow the pace to a halt. Here’s how to write a killer prologue without killing the pacing!

A writer posted in a FB group I’m in about how to edit a prologue they had written. Their friend is an artist who did beautiful artwork for the scenes depicted in the prologue, but the writer also was told to keep the prologue less than five pages, per the current trend. She was at a loss of how to achieve keeping all of her scene while also keeping it to five pages.

In my response I feel I had the makings for a wonderful article on prologues, so here we are. And here we go.

Per Penguin’s Reference Library’s Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (2013), a prologue is: The opening section of a work; a kind of introduction which is part of the work and not prefatory. It was common in drama in the 17th and 18th century, when it was often in prose. Occasionally found in novels. In plays the prologue is usually a chorus.

In most stories I’ve read the prologue is a scene that takes place either in the past or in the future of the main story’s timeline.

In the best instances a prologue can be a strong hook which keeps the reader reeled into the story. In the worst instances, it’s a boring mess that halts a reader’s interest entirely!

So, what makes the difference?

1) LIMITED Purpose.
Here’s the true “meat and potatoes” of the conversation: what are you trying to achieve with this prologue? Are you giving the audience a cliff hanger in the beginning of the manuscript to get them hooked? That, in reality, is really the only reason you should use a prologue. A prologue should be used as a HOOK for the reader to latch on to your story, there is basically no other reason to have one.

If you planned on using your prologue as an information dump: DON’T!
If you planned on using your prologue just to show how cool your main character is: DON’T!
If your prologue is just an exercise in how detailed you can describe things that don’t matter to your plot: DON’T!

These are cheap tricks that your audience will see through. You are not the first author that has tried to include a prologue of droning purple prose and waxing poetic about how misunderstood your character is, thousands of books start that way, and they’re all bad.

The prologue should be used to drive the plot, period. It’s a tool to get your reader hooked on the story, so make it dramatic and DEFINITELY have something happen that is FUNDAMENTAL to your story. It needs to be fundamental to both the plot of the story and, for extra credit, vital to your main character’s (or villian’s) wound.

2) The Stakes.
Following up with the need for drama, your story’s stakes are the entire reason your audience is here! They want DRAMA, but the specific flair of drama that comes from your genre, of course! Your prologue should be carving out at least a few of the stakes while also dropping minimal information. If your audience doesn’t catch at least a whiff of conflict, they won’t stay. We’re here for the fireworks. We’re here for the conflict!

Let’s look at some examples, specifically with fantasy:

Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World did start with a prologue called Dragonsmount (I have a newer copy now that added an additional scene called “Ravens” but the old one from the 90’s did not have this, it started with Dragonsmount).

Dragonmount is a scene depicting two characters: the villain Elan Morin, who claims he is reveling in his moniker “Betrayer of Hope” and Lews Therin, a powerful warrior mage now known as The Dragon. Lews Therin realizes he’s been possessed by madness and in that fugue state he killed off his lover and their family. The villain, Elan Morin, Betrayer of Hope, tells Lews that the madness which overtook him was a curse from the Dark Lord as retribution for Lews’s service to the light. Then Elan Morin begins to torture Lews with lightening magic. Lews essentially goes Super Saiyan, turning into a burning ball of fire and melting down the entire castle until only the mountain remained. Elan Morin, Betrayer of Hope, watches this and says that the Dragon cannot escape him for long, and that their time is still to come.

In this scene alone we get the villain, tastes of how the magic system works, a taste of the mythology, a dash of trauma and despair, and a heroic character promised to return. Now that’s a prologue, and arguably the MC of the first book ISN’T EVEN IN THIS SCENE.

Another beloved example would be the opener to the Harry Potter series. The first chapter in The Sorcerer’s Stone is called The Boy Who Lived, where three magical beings (McGonagall, Hagrid and Dumbledore) leave a baby boy on his aunt’s doorstep because she’s the only family he has left and a psychopathic wizard just killed his parents (and tried to kill him, too). The boy must stay in hiding, so that he may live. So that his parent’s sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.

In this scene we get: the villain’s impending danger, the protagonist, three major characters who play major roles throughout the entire story, the knowledge that Harry is famously known as “The Boy who Lived” to an entire group of people, the backstory of why the Dudley’s don’t see Harry as their own, and the promise of something more to come with this main character.
(We even get a shout out to Sirius Black on page 14 ((where Hagrid borrowed the motorcycle)), a character who doesn’t arrive until the third book and is fundamental to the story overall!)

By comparing these two prologues we can see what a prologue should deliver: relevant characters who will return later, major discussion of/outright showing the major conflict, trauma/drama/intrigue, and some small world building tidbits. This is the formula for your prologue. If the prologue is short of this in anyway, it’s not really an intriguing prologue, it’s a random scene in the beginning of your manuscript!

So, if you’re thinking about adding in a prologue, I implore you to ask yourself why, and to ensure you make it a powerful punch! Thank you for reading! I’m escaping to the beach for the weekend! I’ll be back Monday with more writing advice!

Short Story: Dejavu – Part Four

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Everyday more people arrived to James’s door, the word of what had happened in the apartment spreading across town in the few weeks. They wanted to see him: the man who could tell when people would die. They wanted to know if he could see other things, like affairs, lies, or the future. James tried to shake them away, tried to get them to leave, but they wouldn’t go, but on one condition. They would only leave if they got to see him perform his gifts.

So, that became his daily mission. He’d pick five random people out of the crowd which filled the hallway to the brim. His neighbors always watched from their opened apartment doors.

“My daughter, what is her name?” The woman asked James, her eyes squinted in suspicion.
“Jackie,” James said after a few moments.
The woman gasped in shock, the crowd murmured that he had guessed right again. He had guessed right every time in the last two weeks.
“Did she steal from me? Did she take the wedding ring her dead daddy gave me and pawn it off for drugs?”

James’s mind opened further to a vision of a young woman, with the same flaxen hair and brown eyes as the woman sitting before him. Her slim, shaking fingers gently opened the dresser drawer in front of her in the dark bedroom. She pulled out a key. The young woman’s addled body shook so much from dope sickness she actually dropped the key in the bedroom and spent a good five minutes fumbling around, asking herself whether this was a sign from God to get her “shit together”. She found the key under the bed, buried in a dust bunny. The key to her mother’s jewelry case.

“Yes,” James said, his hands covering his eyes as a headache radiated in his brain. She was only the first person this day, would he be able to continue with his head pounding again?

Never before had he used his gifts so frequently. The woman, shaking her head in disbelief and anger, left a few loose bills on the table in front of the occult man. The rest of the crowd parted for her to exit, and waited with baited breath for him to call his next contestant.

“That’s it for today, I can’t do this any longer,” James said, unable to move his hands from his eyes. His headache had become the strongest migraine he had experienced in a long time; it brought him to his knees, sent his head to the linoleum.

Some people cried out as they left, unable to stand the sight of what they were doing to him. “We have to go, he’s not feeling well! He can’t keep doing this to himself!”

Others spit fury into the air.
“I’ve waited here for days! Missed days of work to find out when I’m going to die!”
“He’s going to fucking tell me, I’M NOT LEAVING THIS HALL UNTIL HE TELLS US!”
The crowd roared with anger, pushed themselves all at once to his doorway. They had become creatures to James, all squirming and fighting one another to enter his apartment.

Their shouts drove the nail in his head even deeper, and he began to cry, to beg them to stop and leave him alone. They heard nothing of it, the shouts of their rage against one another overshadowed his anguish, and finally James could not take it longer. He lifted himself upon his knees and screamed with all his might.

James expected the people to just gawk at him, he had no real faith that they would leave him and go off to their own lives. What James didn’t expect was for his front door to slam shut on its own, crushing against the people trying to enter his home. The darkness and silence finally set in, as James collapsed to an unconscious heap on the floor.

Blog Post #26: Open Source Programs & Why You Don’t Need to Pay $50+ a Month to Be an Indie Author

Anastasia Frost2 Comments

Indie Authors who have an arsenal of tools and experience in their back pockets can utilize open source programs instead of resorting to spending $$$ on popular programs, such as Adobe’s Creative Suite.

Hope you all had a good holiday weekend! My husband and I spent the weekend together enjoying quality time, something that we both needed dearly.

Today I want to tell you all about Open Source software and give you a few suggestions of programs that I use as a writer and graphic designer.

Per, wikipedia (lol yes, wiki, because it had the most straight forward definition of what OSS is):
“Open-source software is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner.”

In short: they are free (depends on the program but I will only be suggesting those that are free) software alternatives to some of your favorite programs such as MS Office Suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design, and so many more.

No longer do you have to pine over whether you can justify a monthly expense just to make a book cover. No longer do you have to deal with MS Word constantly telling you it needs a product key. You can just do it for free, because others who can code also wanted to do it for free. The catch is that there is a learning curve to these programs, as copying a published program line for line would be copyright infringement at the minimum. The programs I will discuss can do all the functions of their more pricey, well known counterparts, it’s just the mechanics of how to do that (buttons, drop down menus, etc.,) will be different from their pricey counterparts as well.

Now, like explained above, not all OSS programs are free, as there are innumerable OSS programs in existence and more being coded every day. Here is a list of my favorite FREE programs.

1) LIBRE OFFICE

Libre Office is a free OSS version of Microsoft Office which includes a comparable program for each of MS’s programs. As a writer, my most used Libre Office program is Libre Writer, basically an exact replica of MS Word. My second most used program would be Libre Calc, their replica of MS Excel. I used Libre Calc to make my writing tracker, something that I use daily when writing to track my word counts, projects, quarterly goals, and progress.

2) GIMP (GNU IMAGE MANIPULATION PROGRAM)

GIMP was a program that was introduced to me back in 2008 by someone who wanted me to stop using my cracked version of Photoshop CS3, something that I was unwilling to do at the time. By the time I was 17 I had spent so much time in Photoshop (CS and CS2 before) that I knew exactly what tools I needed and how to work their functions. Attempting to translate that knowledge over to GIMP, a very similar, and yet, different program proved too tedious for my underage self, and eventually the computer that had that copy of CS3 died, killing my cracked version with it.

Now that Photoshop is behind a paywall and I’m an adult fully capable of being prosecuted by the fullest extent of the law, GIMP has become my program of choice for graphic design. It has the same functions as PS, and you can even upload PS brushes in GIMP for use! Just be aware of the steep learning curve with how the tools function, Luckily, there are a TON of resources online about GIMP and its tools, and how to use them achieve whatever you need. I will admit, there are times where GIMP lags, but I had that problem with PS. I’ve never had a graphics project ruined or had GIMP crash on me in the middle of a design. I am also VERY aware of how many individual layers I have, and I work to compress them as I go. Remember, be patient in getting GIMP to be your gimp (lol, I couldn’t help it I had to).

3) INKSCAPE

Inkscape is a vector graphic design program, the equivalent of Adobe Illustrator. Admittedly, this is not a program that I use at all, just because my projects haven’t required vector work. However, anyone with an eye for marketing can see the vector trend running rough shot over the entirety of the contemporary romance and YA cover styles at this time, and if these are your genres and you’ve considered doing your own cover, this is the program for you!

I am including this program in my review as it was suggested to me by a friend who does graphic design work with vectors, she had nothing but GLOWING reviews about this program and the sample work she showed me came out really great!

Keep an eye out for the next installment of Dejavu tomorrow! Hope you all have a blessed day and thank you for reading!

Short Story: Dejavu – Part Three

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Hello! I hope you are enjoying this short story, and if you are please leave a like! I will be publishing more periodic short stories once this one is completed, eventually turning them into compilations.

The knocking on James Sanderson’s door was heavy and quick, and made him dart out of his bed to grab a baseball bat before approaching the door. He looked out of the peephole. A man he had never seen before was shaking and stammering on the other side of the door, choking back tears and sobs. A folder of papers was grasped tightly in his left hand.

“Come out here now! I need to talk to you about her! Answer this door right now!”

“Who are you?!” James yelled, holding the bat intensely as he peered through the small window.

“My name is Brian!” The man howled. “My wife… Bethany Myers. She’s dead!”

Brian heard the small clicks and grinds of multiple locks being undone, and finally he saw the man whom his wife had told him about. He saw James’s half face leer through the door gap, a security chain keeping the door from opening further. The dark apartment behind James seemed to engulf the man; the windows were all taped over with papers, no light was permitted to enter the man’s home.

“I’m sorry,” James said.

“You knew! We were crossing the street after the show we had tickets for, she looked down at something shining on the ground. A car ran a red light, sent her body flying.” Brian convulsed into sobs again, losing his composure as he relived the moment in his mind.

James felt that memory ripple through the man, felt the heavy sorrow of grief wash over him. James shook his head violently, covering his eyes with his hands. The bat fell, smacking against the hard linoleum flooring. “I only see it, I can’t do anything!”

Brian’s face twisted in anguish and pain. “She’s gone! She’s gone and you saw it! How?! HOW?!” The incomprehensible truth, he cried in the apartment hallway with no shame, his anguished howls echoed through the hall.

The sounds of doors opening, neighbors peeping. James’s anxiety flooded into a panic.

“You knew she was going to die! You saw it! YOU SAW IT!” Brian was a sobbing heap on the floor, his hands crumpling the notes written just the day before.

“I’m sorry, sir, goodbye!” James’s voice was soft and stunned. He looked above the man to see his neighbors gathering around, looking in at him. James slammed the door shut, his heart racing. He heard the man sob at his door for another fifteen minutes before he finally left, his footsteps heavy. James’s thin frame fell back on to his bed, his eyes filled with tears.

Another fortune told with no way of changing the future.

Blog Post #24: Finishing Rough Drafts and The Last Fifty Pages

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Goals for the rest of the week and my thoughts on James Scott Bell’s The Last Fifty Pages.

The past week I celebrated completing the first draft of my dark fantasy romance book Silver Blood. Now it’s on to writing additional scenes for pacing.

Finishing my fourth manuscript felt a little surreal. It’s the first completed manuscript of 2022, and as happy as I am with the draft, sadly, nothing feels good enough when it comes to self-publishing. It’s definitely the most clean of my manuscripts, requiring only minor additional scenes and no major changes to the plot, but I still can’t help but feel like I’m behind the 8-ball. Always behind.

The newest addition to my writing book collection is James Scott Bell’s The Last Fifty Pages, a book very pertinent to my current project. James’s books are very straight forward, a major plus of his craft books because he doesn’t waste time (or pages) being overly verbose; he just tells you exactly what to do. That isn’t to say that you can’t be creative; the entire purpose of writing is to be creative, right? The succinctness of his style just means you’ll be on to writing your manuscript that much quicker. This book is marketed as a writer’s guide to perfect endings, and I hope to utilize the advice in my own revisions.

I’ve made a list of about 19 scenes to add to Silver Blood. If I can write 1,000 words for each scene, that will be 19K words added, bumping me up to (hopefully) 65K words. Then it’s just line edits and proofreading.

Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for a special announcement! Thank you, each and everyone of you, for reading my blog! I promise, I am not going to keep you guys hanging!