Sheila Deeth's Blog, page 90

66,000 words, loving that transfer

I've started connecting part one of Love on a Transfer to part two. It's 66,000 words now, with several chapters still waiting to be written. And I like it! I guess I'm hoping lots of other people might like it too, but that's all in the future. For now, it's nice to see it coming together and feel like it's going to work. I shall switch off my computer in a moment and go wander around the green, talk to Tom who's going to tell me how he felt when Ellen went back to England with Eric, and how...

24,000 words, 103 puzzles, 2 short stories and 3 novels

Want a fun free book? I just got Steven Shrewsbury's Overkill free on a kindle deal--available today and tomorrow. I keep reading about how good it is, sword and sorcery and so on, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Not that there's much time for reading at the moment. The sun came out, so yesterday I spent hours cutting the grass while my characters chattered over the sound of the lawnmower. American Tom's really down on himself. English Anne's feeling left out and lonely. And the wedding's...

20,000 words and Getting a Round Tuit

Tom, from Love on a Transfer, has finally arrived in Cambridge. Taking a walk around town he finds the mysterious Round Church and buys a postcard with a picture of a Round Tuit. Now he has no excuse to put off getting on with his life. But the girl of his dreams is due to get married here in just a few days. His head's spinning round.

Meanwhile my book review list includes a book set in the other place!  I'm due to read Andrea Kaufman's Oxford Messed Up pretty soon, and I just heard it...

Ignite your Muse, with Danika Dinsmore

I'm delighted to welcome Danika Dinsmore, author of Brigitta of the White Forest and the Ruins of Noe, to my blog today as part of her Lightning Book Promotions tour. I thoroughly enjoyed both of these books and I'm really pleased to get to know the author better through this post. Danika Dinsmore has created an amazingly detailed White Forest, peopled with faeries full of history, character, emotion and common sense. The novels stand alone and fit together perfectly, and the world itself unf...

18,000 words and horror too !

Love on a Transfer Part II is now 18,000 words long, and no, it hasn't morphed into a horror story, though navigating the vagaries of British English vs American English might give poor Tom some horror stories to tell when he gets back home. I'm trusting my writing won't be horrible either, and I'm still in awe that Willow Moon have trusted me to complete the story this way.

There's no horror in the romance novella I reviewed recently for Nights and Weekends either, but you can find my review...

16,000 and counting

That heading should be 16,000 words and writing, but housework calls, yardwork's soggy, and the cupboard's getting awfully bare. I checked the bottom of my page in Word and it's counted to 16,000, which sounds pretty good. Tom has finally realized what day it is--ah, the trouble with jet lag--and now he's planning how to get to his friend's house in time for the wedding. Anne has at least become a voice on the telephone instead of just an email address. And love awaits... Love on a Transfer,...

14,000 words and editing

I know, I know. I should be writing more words. But when that editing itch gets me, I just have to reread and revise what I've got. The weekend's 13,000 are now a little more polished, and they've grown a bit too. Tom's about to get back online and work out what day it is--strange how the sense of time goes awry when traveling abroad. And Anne's going crazy wondering why Tom hasn't been in touch yet. Given a little more time and words, I'm hoping they might meet soon.

In other news, there's a...

13,000 words, and the streets are full of Ellens

Love on a Transfer, Part II, has grown to 13,000 words. Poor Tom's beginning to wonder if every woman in England looks like Ellen, but perhaps it's just the way his feelings for her affect him. Girls and women in pink micro-skirts, skin-tight jeans, long overcoats or even thick jackets over saris, they all remind him of the angel of his dreams. Meanwhile he needs to find an internet cafe so he can catch up on email. Did he but know it, a whole new set of dreams are waiting there.

Meanwhile, ma...

6,000 words and reading too

I added another 3,000 words to Love on a Transfer yesterday. It's definitely growing. Tom's just met a girl dressed in pink, but she's really not impressed with him. Meanwhile I should be grabbing the occasional moment of sunshine to pull weeds (I did at least cut the grass), and using periods of rain to get on with housework. Or perhaps I should be reading...

One great virtual place to read is the World Literary Cafe. It's well supplied with books, book reviews, special offers, publicity opti...

3,000 new words and counting...

I've tried stitching short stories together to make a novel. I've tried starting from the beginning and keeping going til I reach the end. I've tried writing character sketches and listing the high points of the plot. This time I'm trying a mixture of them all. The one thing all my attempts at novels have in common is I can't write anything more than the first few chapters till I've spent time chatting with the characters. The trouble is, my characters seem to share my memory traits, fixating...