Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 72

Updates

Patty’s Gamble is Being Edited

I sent it off to my editing team yesterday.  The process of cleaning it up after I sprinted the last part of it wasn’t as daunting as I thought it’d be.  Fortunately for me, I ramble when I type, and I ended up deleting rather than adding.  I don’t mind cutting words out when I edit, but I hate having to go back and add them.  To the people who love the whole adding scenes thing, you have my admiration.

Sprinting The Earl’s Secret Bargain

While Patty’s Gamble is with others, I am going to try sprinting out the rest of The Earl’s Secret Bargain to see how that goes.  So two things are happening while I’m sprinting, and these are two things I never thought I’d do.  I am working on only one book at a time, and I’m plotting.  I know.  Who would have thought this day would come?  But it’s true.  It worked great for finishing up Patty’s Gamble, and I’m anxious to see how it’ll do in The Earl’s Secret Bargain.

I’m hoping to have the first draft to this book done before I work on the final draft of Patty’s Gamble.  If I can crank out 5,000 words a day like I did with Patty’s Gamble, this shouldn’t be a problem.  But we’ll see what happens.  It helps that I know where I’m going with this book.

 Book 4 in the Montana Collection

I’m happy to announce the fourth book in the Montana series.  The order is Mitch’s Win, Boaz’s Wager, Patty’s Gamble, and Shane’s Deal.

This will be the book that answers why the men at the beginning of Boaz’s Wager were looking for Madeline Thompson.  I have the sketch of a plot for this one and will develop more of it as I think it through.  But it will be a marriage of convenience story.

This book takes the place of Stolen (which I was going to put in the Mail Order Brides Series).  The cover was going to be this:

But I have changed it to Shane’s Deal, and since I did that, the cover had to reflect the other books in the Montana Collection.  I don’t know if I will use that Stolen title or cover on another book yet.  I have too many books already laid out to write, so I can’t think that far ahead right now. :)

***

I’m still working on A Royal Engagement, His Convenient Wife, and the two co-authored books with Stephannie Beman (The Rancher’s Wife and His Brother’s Wife), but right now I’m trying the sprinting method and only focusing on one book at a time method.  So there’s nothing new to report for those.

Expanding the Montana Collection to One More Book

I debated this for over a month before making the decision, but I have decided to tell Madeline Thompson’s story as the 4th book in the Montana Collection.  Madeline (if you recall) was mentioned brief at the beginning of Boaz’s Wager.

            The man swore, threw the purses aside, and went over to them. They stepped back so he stopped and studied them. “Ain’t one of you Madeline Thompson?”

They shook their heads and Eva cleared her throat to answer. “No, sir. I’m Eva Connealy and this is Rachel Larson.”

The other man stopped going through their trunks and swore another word Eva hoped she’d never hear again for as long as she lived. “We got the wrong lady.”

 

Originally, I was going to put Madeline’s story in a standalone novel or in another series.  But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to just add it to the Montana Collection.

I’ve been working on a cover for it to go with the other covers in the series.  I was going to call the book Stolen.  But now, I’m going to change it.  I am passing the cover and title to the publisher before I reveal them on this blog.  For now, you will notice that on the “Works In Progress” page, I have deleted the title “Stolen” and the cover that went with it.  I need to go in and delete it off of Facebook while I’m thinking about it.

That doesn’t mean I won’t use the cover for another book or the title for another book in the future.  But I won’t use it for this particular book.  I’ll let you know more when I figure out what I’m going to do. :D

The First Draft of Patty’s Gamble is Done!

I can’t believe it, but I did it. Tonight I finished the first draft!  It was shorter than I thought it was going to be.  It’s got 18 chapters.  But it’s done, and I have scheduled my editors to look at it so it will be available by the end of this month.

After this, I will take a brief break from writing to recharge.  I wrote a little over 17,000 words in three days.  This will give me time to finally finish editing a book for a friend.  I know this friend will be relieved since I’ve been working on this for a long time.  It’s been so long I don’t even remember when I started.  I don’t make it a habit of editing other people’s work, just in case someone wants to email me their manuscript.  Sorry, guys.  I’m not a professional editor.  I’m just doing this for a very good friend.

While I do that, I’ll also be cleaning up the mess I made in Patty’s Gamble.  I have tons of misspelled words, lousy punctuation, repeated words, and other things that would make a critique group twitch.  But at least the book is done and I have something I can work with.

Now I’m anxious to see how sprinting The Earl’s Secret Bargain will go when I get to it.  I want to get Patty’s Gamble and this edit for the friend done first.  Those are my two priorities.  After that, I will see what I can do with The Earl’s Secret Bargain.

Back from the Conference in Arizona and Ready to Jump Back into Writing

I’ll be posting pictures from the conference when Janet Nitsick and I have a chance to meet up so I can download the pictures from her camera.  I was going to use my husband’s iPhone, but since Janet has a digital camera, we decided to use hers.

In the meantime, I have learned a technique for improving my word count that I’m excited about.  Virginia Nelson taught the class at the conference.  The method she taught is called “sprinting”, and the idea is to write in 15-20 minute sprints (mine tend to go more to 20 minutes).  Then I need to take a 10 minute break while thinking of the next scene in the book.  The catch?  There is no editing allowed at all while sprint writing.  That means no backspaces, no worrying about punctuation or spelling or anything.  During the workshop I took in Arizona, we were allowed two practice sessions.  And though I wrote things out by hand (because I didn’t take my computer), I did see the potential for this really working for me.

And when I woke up this morning, I was excited to try it on Patty’s Gamble because I really want to get the book out by the end of this month.  Yesterday, I sat down for 30 minutes and gave a rough plot for the rest of the book.  I don’t know if I can plot from the beginning of a book because I never know the characters when I start.  I only have a vague idea of what things will happen, but it isn’t until about chapter 3 that I know my characters well enough to tell what will or won’t happen.

Anyway, I did plot out the rest of this book so I know where I’m going and how things will get resolved.  The matter right now is getting it all down on paper.  I worked out a rough estimate on how many words I have left in Patty’s Gamble, and I came out with a 15,000 to 20,000 word estimate.  Then I told myself, “If I can write 5,000 words a day, I could finish this in less than a week.”

That’s when I got really excited.  It also made me aware that doing this sprinting method probably will require me to work on one book at a time.  It’s hard to shift into another story setting when going at it so hard and fast.  So I have put all my other projects on hold. But I don’t think I’ll end up losing traction this way.  In the long run, I expect to even out to my current output or even improve it.  But I do think I need to start being more of a plotter if I’m going to be successful at this.

I plotted out 90% of The Earl’s Secret Bargain.  I’m not as far in The Earl’s Secret Bargain as I am in Patty’s Gamble, so it’s not as easy for me to see where the story is going.  While the plotting to Patty’s Gamble took about two pages, The Earl’s Secret Bargain took five pages (and that was after wiping out my first attempt).  I need more direction (apparently) the further from the end I am.

But it does feel good to have a sense of direction before I start “sprinting” my way through these books.

These sprinting sessions leave me with a very rough draft, and I have to write each scene in a blank new document so I don’t get distracted by everything else I already put in the book.  Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but I tried it the other way and kept stalling out.  So I swapped to a blank document and told myself, “Nothing comes before or after this scene” and I was able to do it.  Then I copied and pasted it into the actual book.

This is what “sprinting” looks like when I do it in case anyone wondered just how bad a rough draft can look when no editing is allowed:

            “You all better hope you still have jobs when I’m free of these this…this…” He glanced dat this the lasso around his chest and grumbled. “What good was it to try to threaten them when he was apprehended by a woman. and by a woman of all peop;le! The randch hands would never let him leive this down.

Needless to say, I am aware that editing is going to be more intense than what I’m used to, but I think it’s going to be worth it.  So yes, the first draft is horrible, but it’s something I can work with.  Today, I got in 6,500 words, and I’m not worn out.   After I fix up all my mistakes, I probably have about 4500 to 5000 words I can actually use from the 6500, but that’s still better than my usual 2500 words on a really good day I used to pull in.

I don’t know if this method could work for everyone.  It is hard to get around the need to edit as you go along, and while writing this blog post, I had trouble adjusting back to “edit as I type mode.”  So switching back and forth is a bit jarring.

Anyway, my estimate at the moment is 15,000 more words for Patty’s Gamble.  If I can manage 5,000 words a day, then I can finish it this week.  Now I need to give my beta readers and editors a heads up.  I’d like to have it edited and ready for them by June 15.  Fortunately, I have half this book already edited from my nightly edits that I tend to do on 1-2 chapters of a current work in progress.  Most of the book is polished up already so it’s legible.

Tomorrow I’ll be sending out emails to my beta reading/editing team.  I took today off from emails because I got back from Arizona late last night and needed a day to regroup.

Updates

At the moment, I am behind in just about everything.  Some rain got on the books I had ordered to sign and send out to giveaway winners, so I reordered them.  Then I discovered a couple of my books weren’t on Barnes and Noble.  Yesterday and today, I did get them published.  They are now available, except for Kent Ashton’s Backstory which I can’t publish directly on B&N at free.  If you want to read that, you’ll have to go to Smashwords.   At the end of this week, I’ll be at a writer’s conference in Phoenix, Arizona, so there will be no writing done then either.  By the way, if anyone happens to be in the Phoenix area, let me know. :)  I’d love to say hi and give you a paperback or two of my book(s).

And just a word of warning, since all this other craziness is going on, I am behind in answering emails.  So if I don’t get to you right away, I’m not ignoring you.  I just haven’t caught up yet.

That all being said, this is what I am currently working on and my progress…

There’s no way this will be ready in June.  July is now the earliest month.  I see no reason why it won’t be out in July, but you never know.  *Fingers crossed* that it’ll be out in July. I am well over the halfway point (at 37800 words), but I have also been writing the book out of order.  I got to the point where Greg realizes he wants to be with Patty, but I am going back and filling in the scenes that come right before that.  After that, I want to go forward in the book and bring John Meyer back into the picture.  Interesting stuff.

This is at the 25,000 word mark.  It’s not where I wanted to be at this point.  I was hoping to be halfway into this book.  But I am getting close to the point where the wager is exposed and things really get interesting.  I’m still hoping for an August release on this one.

The heroine is in love with the hero (and vice versa), but the wager is about to be exposed and let’s just say her opinion of him is about to go way downhill.  The wager, in case anyone reading this doesn’t know, was introduced in His Reluctant Lady.  This is the one where Lords Davenport and Pennella made a bet on who could win the hand of Miss Giles.    Needless to say, Miss Giles will not be amused when she finds it announced in The Tittletattle.  (We can all thank Christopher Robinson for telling Agatha who then reported in the scandal sheets.)

This is now at 60,000 words.  I have been rewriting all of it, and I’ve added more than a few extra scenes.  The main structure of the book is the same.  An ordinary human woman from Earth is called to be Queen (capitalization done on purpose) of another planet.  But I have changed her personality so she’s a lot more likable.  After going through the book, I decided she was way too cranky and wanted to slap her across the head.  So I have changed all of that.  I’m happy to say that I like her now. :)

The original book was 61,500 words.  This book is looking like it’ll be in the 75,000 word range.   So I have at least 15,000 more words to go.  So I’m hopeful for a late July to late August release.

I’m still working on this one and am happy to say it’s going along pretty well.  I’m thinking it’ll be more along the 50,000 word mark, but we’ll see.  At the moment, Harriett and Stan just got married, and Harriett’s thinking she made a big mistake while Stan’s thinking that no matter what he does, he’ll upset her.  Fun stuff.  I am enjoying these two.

I know Stephannie and I are close to the 40,000 word mark on this one, but I can’t remember the exact word count.  So we’re over halfway there.  This book is scheduled to release early next year.

I’m doing the lovable hero thing in this book. :)  He decided early on that he’s going to marry the heroine.  The problem is convincing her of that because she has a hard time believing that there’s a man who is capable of loving a woman for who she is, not in order to use her for something.  (I’m taking the hero’s role in this book, and Stephannie’s taking the heroine’s role.)  In this book, we thought it’d be fun to have the main characters marry by an Indian tribe’s customs.  I can’t remember the name of the tribe off the top of my head, but I do enjoy learning about Native Americans and their cultures.

I think we’re also halfway into this one.  35,000 words or more.  I don’t know for sure.  But this is delightfully suspenseful.  Okay, it’s not suspenseful as in “who killed the heroine’s husband”, but it is suspenseful in the manner the killer is caught.  From time to time I like to do something a little more “thrillerish” and this fits the bill.  It’s definitely a historical romance though set in Alaska, so no need to worry that we’re skimping on the romance.  The hero and heroine are married, but not everyone is happy about this.

This will be released in January.

Kent Ashton’s Backstory, Catching Kent and Bound by Honor Bound by Love Are Missing From Barnes & Noble

While I was in the process of gifting some ebooks to a giveaway winner, I realized that Catching Kent was missing from Barnes & Noble.  A search through the store showed me that Bound by Honor Bound by Love is missing, too.  Another search showed me that Kent Asthon’s Backstory is gone as well.

I am working on getting those two books published directly to Barnes & Noble today.  I don’t know how long it’ll take for them to get up there, but I wanted to let you all know that I am working on it.  So if you happen to go to B&N and not find them there, please be patient with me.

It looks like the other books are up there.

As for Amazon, Kobo, and Apple iBooks, the books look like they are all up there.

Edited to add: I won’t be able to publish it directly to B&N until Monday.  Something unexpected came up that I have to tend to.  No need to worry.  All is good. :)

Day 8 Giveaway Winners

3 winners of the $50 gift card (of their choice) and 7 books (ebooks or paperbacks) are below:

Lu Mullins-Sellers

Debra MacArthur

Debbie Mccreary

7 winners who will get 7 books (ebooks or paperbacks) are below:

Sharon Gilbert Fournier

Kimberly Dawn

Toni Whitmire

Gail Palmere

lionpeach

Hannah Roberson

Heather Kumar

Congratulations!

Facebook Giveaway Winners for Day 7

Here are the winners for Day 7 of the Giveaway!

Catherine Coleman Michel: won the $50 gift card and 7 books (ebooks or paperbacks)

Deborah Armanious: won 6 books (ebooks or paperbacks)

Virginia Brady: won 6 books (ebooks or paperbacks)

Congratulations, ladies!

Facebook Giveaway Party Day 8 (The Last Day): Romantic Getaways

On Facebook, we’ll be talking about any romantic getaways we’ve been on or read about in a book.

This time there will be 10 winners.

Three winners will get a $50 gift card* + 7 books of their choice. Winner chooses the gift card (we have to be able to buy this gift card at our local grocery store, so check the list below) and whether they win ebooks or paperbacks.

Seven winners will get 7 books (ebooks or paperbacks).

*Gift Cards We Can Get (If you want one not on this list, we will try to get it. If we are unable to get something that is not on this list, then you will have to choose from this list.)

HyVee

iTunes

App Store

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Bed Bath & Beyond

Walmart

Target

Sears

Bass Pro Shops

Home Depot

Lowes

Red Lobster

Olive Garden

Starbucks

Cracker Barrel

McDonalds

Burger King

Red Robin

TGI Fridays

Panera

Applebee’s

Chili’s

Subway

Dominos

Panda Express

Outback Steakhouse

IHOP

Ruby Tuesday

Buffalo Wild Wings

BP Gift Card

Shell Gift Card

Jiffy Lube

Fandango

Regal Entertainment Group

AMC Theatre

Xbox Live

Gamestop

Disney

Groupon

Nordstrom

Kohl’s

Gordman’s

JC Penney

Old Navy

Cabella’s

Office Max

Petco

$50 MasterCard

$50 Visa Card

The winners will be announced on this blog and Facebook on May 19 at 8pm CST.

To enter, fill out the form below:

[contact-form]

Winners for Day 6 of the Giveaway

Here are the winners for Day 6 of the Giveaway Janet Nitsick and I are running on Facebook.  We’re running the party through May 19.  I figure May 20th can be the final day to catch up on all the great comments over there.  The party has been so much fun.  You guys are awesome!

I’ll be contacting the winners tomorrow. :)

The winner who gets the trunk and 7 paperbacks or ebooks is Lauralynn Elliott.

These winners get 5 books (ebooks or paperbacks, their choice):

Leslie Rowberry

Nayda Torres King

Bridget Frederiksen

Carrie Miller Fisher

Kesia Saenz

Anusha S