Joely Sue Burkhart's Blog, page 89

MayNoWriMo Day 1

Here it is almost 6:30 PM CST and I've barely started MayNoWriMo. 

I'm sitting here with my first cup of coffee of the day (gasp!) and pulling together my notes for tomorrow's Coyote Con special session with Heather Massey on Science Fiction Romance (Sunday, 2 PM EST).  I'll also be gathering questions during the chat to send to S.L. Viehl, aka Paperback Writer, the author of the incredible StarDoc series.  She'll be posting answers on her blog throughout the month.

I do have Liquid Story...

Prepping the Calendar

As May approaches, I've been taking a careful look at my schedule.   With a calendar in front of me, I start circling and marking important days.  Mother's Day.  My birthday (and it's a significant one this year).  A guest blog spot for Carina.  My beloved sister's first Samhain release.

Ask yourself questions.

Any school duties this month?  e.g. Princess Monster just finished the science fair at her school (lucky it wasn't next month)Note when the kids get out of school. Any major projects...

MayNoWriMo Prep: Baby Steps

My number one goal for May (other than keeping my sanity with all the Coyote Con and MayNoWriMo group stuff to juggle) is a synopsis for a possible follow-up to The Bloodgate Guardian.  That might sound like a small goal (versus writing 50K in one month!), but as I go through my initial notes, it's going to be quite difficult.

For one thing, the characters I planned to base the second book on are side-characters I'd created in the second incarnation of BGG.  They lived in subplots — they...

Writing Fast(er)

This is from a post I wrote up for MayNoWriMo.

Everybody's writing process is different, so don't get hung up on the "right

way" to do anything. The trick is to find what works for YOU. You may be a

write-by-the-seat-of-your-flaming-pants writer. Great. Maybe you need to have a few notes written in advance. Maybe the whole thing should be plotted out in gruesome detail. It's totally up to you.

This is what works for me.

1. At least some plotting. Each of my projects had different needs.

Join the MayNoWriMo Yahoo Group!

Click to join maynowrimo2010

Catching Up

Sorry for the unexpected blog silence!  I've been sick this week.  Pretty much all I've done for two days is watch movies (Snow White A Tale of Terror, Pan's Labrinyth, The Invasion, and several others that I've already forgotten) and cross-stitch. 

I have a new idea I want very much to document, but I haven't had the energy to even take a single note yet.  I'm returning to the Evil Day Job tomorrow one way or the other, even if I can't sleep like last night (cold medicine right before bed...

Coyote Con Live

The website is live and we've also got a tentative schedule.  I'm so thrilled that Lynn Viehl, aka Paperback Writer, will be taking questions from the SF/SFR panel and blogging her answers later in the month!  Also Heather Massey and Nathalie Gray will be talking about Steampunk!  woot!

It's going to be such a great month!

I turned in the blurb sheet for Victor tonight and finished a late critique.  All the MayNoWriMo and Coyote Con stuff has totally derailed me — so it's a good thing I took...

MayNoWriMo Guests, Sponsors, Virtual Con

Take a look at the MayNoWriMo page to see the terrific prizes and guest authors who'll be writing articles of inspiration for us all month. 

We're also working out the details for a virtual con hosted by Drollerie Press at the same time.  We'll have live panels in the chat room on topics ranging from worldbuilding to character develop to transformative sex scenes.  Once we finalize the schedule, I'll link to that information.   If you're interested in leading a panel for the virtual con...

Interview with Alissa Davis

If you're curious about the Carina Press editors, then head on over to the blog.  I interviewed my editor, Alissa Davis, here — and other authors are interviewing their editors too.  Of course we're asking each of them what else they'd like to see for Carina!

Hidden Object Games

As part of my "vacation" I've been playing a bunch of computer games, mostly hidden object games from Big Fish Games.  I love being able to try the game for an hour and decide if I want to buy it or not.  It's usually pretty obvious within the first few minutes of a game if it's "for me" or not.

Sounds familiar, I bet.  Agents/editors know within a page or two if the project is right for them.

There are tons of hidden object games out there, but there's only a handful that I'm going to be...