#GUTGAA Tag! You're It! Me! I'm It...

Tamara One Magic Bean Buyer tagged me! First, I still love tag -- I played every tag ever invented (don't quiz me on this) so this is super cool to be tagged, now if only I can come up with some answers to these questions!

What is the working title of your book?
I hope it's not just the working title! GODDESS IN THE MECHANICA. It felt like a long route to it, but once I got it, I did a forehead slap.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
I sort of touched on this in my Meet & Greet, but, once I got the time-period and setting and main character (actually, only her circumstances, none of her powers or foibles).

The short answer is, Thor.

And then what if  a genius scientist (mad, of course) was obsessed with alchemy, bio-metal alchemy, changing base metal and infusing it into living beings, and what if gods and legends were a part of this world's real history, and what if he used artifacts of legends and gods and experimented on babies...which all takes place before the story, but I had to get there to understand the young people at the school.

The other short answer is, what if the person you loved was the person responsible for your parents' death? How do you reach a happy ending from there?

What genre does your book fall under?
YA Paranormal/Steampunk...maybe I should call it Mythpunk.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in the movie rendition?
This was hard! I can see my characters in my head...so to figure out actors that would translate, well:

Princess Merida was the first person that comes to mind for Tess, I know she's not real, but since Tamara got to change ages of actors I get to change reality!

Alex Pettyfer is almost perfect, if he were a bit sharper in his cheekbones...or:

Tyler Hoechlin (younger, of course) I really like his pissed-off look.

What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?
A young woman thinks she needs one thing to avenge her parents' death; an ancient artifact, stolen and in the hands of an evil genius. With help from her classmates, she must retreive the artifact, save the world, and exact her revenge. (Mine's two sentences too!) And probably will change after all the feedback from the query.

Will your book be self published or represented by an agent?
An agent would be ideal. But I'm not averse to self pubbing it either. Right now I need to concentrate on finishing!

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscrpt?
I'll let you know when I'm done...

What else about the book might pique the reader's interests?
PIRATES! Air Pirates that is, and one in particular: Captain Arkady Flint...

Anson Mount, practically perfect in every way for Arkady Flint.

What fun! Thanks again to Tamara for tagging me -- link to her site at top, check it out, she is cool and funny and I love her premise for her book.

Now, let's see...I tag
Stephsco and Talynn  ink in the book

Have fun!

Pitch Polish -- Please Help With the Shiny

I know I need some help here...perhaps serious help. So hard to distill! Anyway, thought I'd hang it out there. I plan on visiting other blogs Monday. Thanks for any comments.

New, updated pitch, after all the lovely messages, I finally sat and worked at it. Thanks to everyone who commented!

Title: GODDESS IN THE MECHANICA
Genre: YA Paranormal Steampunk
Word Count:

Tess St. Cyr, a 16 year old orphan, who sees things that aren’t there, wants answers and vengeance, and yes, in that order – fostered to a theater family affords her neither. Then she receives an invitation to a marvelous school, run by a friend of her real parents, Miss Carmilla. Now, perhaps, she’ll get what she wants.

Sebastian James, 16, knows exactly who he is, or what he is: Nephilim. Now, if only he could forget it. He spent his time searching with his Air Pirate father for the fiend who used Sebastian’s powers to force information from friends of his father’s until he too receives an invitation to a special school.

Tess and Sebastian are like magnets, at times attracted and at others repelled. But as Tess starts to learn about her and her classmates’ strange biology – an experiment with oldgod artifacts and human babies – an artifact is stolen in front of the entire class. More experiments, or something worse? Just as the class starts to train for serious battle Tess find out a terrible secret of Sebastian’s and Miss Carmilla is kidnapped.

They both want to find the mad scientist responsible for the kidnapping and their fates. But can Tess forgive Sebastian long enough to work together to save Miss Carmilla, and possibly the world.   

    

Mr. Smyth had the job of driving me to my new school and residence. My foster parents said I should feel lucky, not about Mr. Smyth, with his rickety cart and OldHorse, but about the “opportunity” to attend this school. I felt anything but lucky at this moment, as I clutched the invitation – sweat and fear ruining it for any keepsake, and wondered, for the hundredth time, why they would want me.

We left behind a bustling thoroughfare and turned onto a desolate lane. Mr. Smyth slowed the horse to a stop at the only drive I saw, an enormous wrought iron gate barring the way.

I considered this closed gate and looked back at the equally closed Mr. Smyth, he nearly smiled, and then reached behind the bench, grabbed my bag and heaved it. I watched its graceful arc and hard landing at the gates. A good aim, that Mr. Smyth, I thought as I continued to sit and fidget with my skirts and invitation.

MEET & GREET!

Questions for the Meet and Greet

-Where do you write?

Usually in the office (lucky to have an office), sometimes on the porch and sometimes late at night in bed.

-Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see?

A pile! Encyclopedia of the Strange, Mystical, & Unexplained (Rosemary Ellen Guiley), my book bible (three ring binder filled with names, myths, inventions, and what-ifs),  Steampunk Bible (Jeff VanderMeer), a journal, and a composition notebook. It's a good pile of stuff. 

-Favorite time to write?

Either early in the morning or late at night. But anytime I can carve out is my favorite.

-Drink of choice while writing?

Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee. Unless it's late at night then a glass of red wine is nice -- and helps quiet the editor!

-When writing , do you listen to music or do you need complete silence?

I like to gear up for writing with music -- I like to find my own soundtrack for the book I'm working on, but I want quiet while I'm actually writing. Now, brainstorming to music is great.

-What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?

It was a long route...but my own pre-teen years and the movie Thor.

I had finished the first(ish) draft of a Contemporary YA -- and was having a hard time with one of the heroes, as in: What is he? What's the mythology? Etc. And, because I like to make things difficult for myself -- or I can't face the difficulties -- I thought, why don't I plop this in the 1800s and instead of a parapsychology center(which I really lived in for a while as a kid) I'll make it a school for "exceptional" kids...and, hey, what if myth and legend were actual history...

So, it ended up being it's own story -- nothing made it from the original YA (which is good, still need to figure that one out) 

-What's your most valuable writing tip?

Writing leads to ideas, ideas lead to more writing (a tip I often forget!). And use a beat sheet! Blake Snyder or Alexandra Sokolloff -- it's like a WIP GPS.

Excited to meet people!

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOULD BE WRITING WRITER

If confessions are good for the soul, then I'm golden. I can only hope they're good for the Muse's soul as well.

I haven't been writing.

Seriously not writing. Like, doing laundry instead of writing not writing. 

Okay, (another confession) I've done some creative things, because my brain will explode into a ball of dust if I don't create something, yet even these things started to feel like resistance (no matter how cool), because I have written and created other things too -- sometimes, nearly simultaneously! But this was instead of writing.

I'd like to blame it on WRITER'S BLOCK but that wouldn't be true. I didn't know what it was, I'd nearly come up with an idea for what needed to be written next (I do have a rough outline -- I know the ending, I know BIG key points) and it wouldn't work for me.

I had Writer's Indifference. (I just came up with that term!)

And then, and then it hit me. I had too much going on. Too much! Too much para in the normal, too much story in the line, too much, too much, too much. And the stupid thing is, I thought this one was golden: perfect conflict, perfect character arc, perfect plot. I was wrong.

Last night (late, because, why would an epiphany come early) I realized I had started this book last year and it coincided with Deana Barnhart's Gearing Up to Get an Agent (an awesomely fun thing) which is, again, happening soon, and what lead to the epiphany -- because I'm still writing the darn thing! -- suddenly it hit me: mine's broken.

Okay -- maybe not broken, but it certainly needs fixing. And, I think that's why I wasn't writing -- I couldn't see what was wrong, because there were so many things going on, I couldn't see that there were so many things going on! Now, the main story remains the same -- girl wants revenge for her parents' death. I just need to brainstorm how far I should take the paranormal aspect.

I can do this. So, while I will definitely be Gearing Up to Get an Agent,  I will be concentrating on finishing my manuscript. I'm giving myself until the end of the year (seems kind of long -- I really want to shorten it, but I'm not). December 31st 2012. That is it.

P.S. Next post I'll show you what I did instead of writing.

What do you do instead of writing?

ROW80/Red Door(!) Check-In

Aack, I'm late! Probably because I did a dismal job on my writing goals:
1,417 words added. I guess it's not horrible...not horrible is okay.

Still reading both craft books.

Finished painting the entire back of the house -- porch and everything. At one point I was almost in tears -- transitioning from high ladder to porch roof...gah! I don't mind the roof, especially ours, with a nice little pitch -- I was on a high ladder all day and I think my adrenaline got the better of me.

Extra added bonus of a shiny newly painted door -- red! I have always always always wanted a red front door.

But nothing else is painted on the front of the house yet.

I go back to work tomorrow, plan on stocking-up on all the research books I need. Which gets me more excited than I can tell you.

How's everyone else doing?

ROW80 Check-In the Second

Feeling pretty positive about my goals.
Pages/Words: 
Added 2581 words to my first draft (150 pages goal -- knocked off 10+ pages). woot!


Craft Reading:
The War of Art (have been for the last month  (I read and re-read and re-read) by Steven Pressfield. Pressfield is lyrical and persistent. He continually opens my eyes to Resistance.
The War of Art

250 Things You Should Know About Writing by, Chuck Wendig.
Chuck Wendig writes in your face, laugh out loud, reallyreallyreally no holds barred stuff we all need to hear, or read.
 250 Things You Should Know About Writing
Here's a sampling of one of the categories:
25 Things You Should Know About... Writing a Novel
1. Your First And Most Important Goal Is To Finish The Shit That You Started
{{{One of my favorite lines (because I'm so freaking guilty of it:}}}
Your hard drive is not a novel burial ground. {{Okay, two lines}} It's like building your own Frankenstein monster -- robbing a grave, stealing a brain, chopping up a body -- and then giving up before you let lightning tickle that sonofabitch to life.
A link to Chuck Wendig's blog: Terrible Minds

That's about it for now. Hope everyone is doing great.

ROW80, My Goals, My Plan, My List

Driving home from work the other day, I saw a bumper sticker that read:

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Wow. Um, you mean all those goals of losing 10 pounds and writing more were just wishes? No wonder they didn't come true. Except, when I actually had a set plan of writing so many pages a day, or running a mile three days a week.

Plans are good, lists are good -- I love lists, I can write lists all day -- love checking off items from the list, love seeing what's left on the list. So, here's my goals, my plan, my list:

Goals:
Finish First Draft of GODDESS IN THE MECHANICA
by writing150 pages by September 19th

Write 14 posts for Those Kennedy Women
(convince co-bloggers to do the same) complete by August 1st
Blog grand re-opening by September 1st

Plan:
Write 2 pages a day, every day
by planning out the scene before I write it


Meet with Mom and Sister 2nd or 3rd week in July
Brainstorm ideas for blog posts.
Write 3 posts a week in July


List:
Research late 1800s in Minnesota
Research/invent cool Steampunkish gadgetry
Research Alchemy
Research Nordic, Greek and Irish Mythology
Read craft books


Read lifestyle books
Visit other lifestyle blogs
Take pictures of every house/craft/garden project I undertake


Unrelated to writing goals:
Re-stain porch railing, base around screens and stairs
Paint exterior trim
Paint exterior house


 Phew. Here's to plans and lists and I'm reallyreally happy to back in the saddle again! Can't wait to see how everyone else is doing!