Alison Kent's Blog, page 30

Where I am on the book

1) I've updated my Scribometer to reflect that instead of 70K words, I will be writing approximately 68K. This was one of those page count vs word count issues, and we three launch authors learned we were all writing long. Better than writing short!

2) I've started a new spreadsheet changing my self-imposed deadline from 4/13 to 4/11. This allows me three full days to do a final read through and edit of the finished book to turn in 4/15.

3) Starting a new spreadsheet adds an extra 102 words to ...

If you're worried about the end of publishing …

Watch this all the way through. ALLLL the way through. You'll thank me.

My story as it unfolds

Today is an editing day. I've been up for two and a half hours, and all I've done so far is pull up my manuscript and my timeline. I really don't need the spreadsheet as I'm not writing fresh content. I want to write fresh content. I want to sit with my Alphasmart on my lap and let the story unfold. Here's what happens when it does:

"Last month I had my girlfriends over for brunch. One of them insisted I sign up, and they all made a big deal about it. They're the ones I went to the symphony...

My darker side, an excerpt

I've been working on something different for me. It's kinda gory, bloody, maybe even gross . . . but I'm having a good time playing with it. What do you think?

"Boss. We got one."

From his perch atop the Frost Bank Tower, Canaan Quinn followed the direction of Colonel West Hamblin's gaze to the corner of 4th Street and Guadalupe Avenue thirty-three stories down and four blocks west of their location. Rooftop gravel crunched beneath his boots as he swiveled and crouched.

Dawn was three hours...

Friday writing thoughts, mine and more

I'm just about halfway through THE ICING ON THE CAKE. Before doing today's writing, I've got 148 pages, and 31,666 words. The first act is pretty much finished and polished, and I have chapters written in both the second and third acts. Yes, I write in acts. For me it makes sense to plot out a commercial novel in a screenplay format, with a clear beginning, middle and end. I have a spreadsheet in Google Docs with the events in my couple's romantic story, and I've laid them out for best...

Marital blogging

Today I ranted at Cuppacafe just for fun.

Win me!

Should mention you can go here and win one of my books from Emily Cardinal. Don't post here; I'm not doing the giveaway. Go to her blog!

Our steamy bodice ripper wedding

Yes, that's the title of an otherwise really great article in Macleans.ca about the new VOWS line of Reality Based Romances. It's a pretty good article, and it mentions my couple by name. Here's their story.

The Icing on the Cake, by Kent, is about Todd Bracken and Michelle Snow. HCI found their story in the Washington Post earlier this year. They met through a matchmaker website. The only hitch: they lived in different cities. From a distance, he supported her dream of opening a cupcakery...

Keeping the little woman down

I've mentioned before that the husband and I have shared one car for years. We married in 1997, and each had our own car at the time. By early 1999, my car had been taken over by my oldest driving child, and the husband and I relied on his car for errands, etc., and to get to the bus lot (five miles from home) for the daily commute to downtown (25 miles from home). When the oldest driving child allowed the water in my car to go dry at some point (this point being days after we'd dropped in a ...

Full In, aka Immersion Writing

I've mentioned many times that I'm an immersion writer. Head down seven days a week till the book is done. Even if there's a day or two with less words than others, maybe even no words at all put on the page, there are still many MANY words going on upstairs. Example. Last night I was already in bed, having read some of Swan Song. I'd shut off the iPod Touch and was staring at the ceiling, thinking of where I needed to start this morning, what revisions I needed to get to. I ended up...