K.C. Shaw's Blog, page 29

Books I didn't finish and why

Oddly enough, I had already decided to write this post when I found a very similar post over on The Book Smugglers published just a few days ago.

Anyway, until fairly recently I never put down a book I'd started reading. I made myself finish no matter how much I hated it, probably because I was an English major and often had to read books for class that I didn't like.

But now, I need to read a lot to keep new content up on Skunk Cat Book Reviews. If a book doesn't hold my interest, I'll usually...

WIP Wednesday: monkey edition

Yesterday evening I had a rejection waiting for me when I checked my email right before leaving work. On the drive home, I ranted mentally about the State of Publishing, as one does. I ended up wondering what the hell I could write that would actually get published.

My thinking went like this: "I'll write a YA book. YA is hot. Vampires are out, zombies are peaking right now so there's no point in writing a new zombie book. What'll be the next big thing? I know, monkeys. I'll write a YA book ab...

A sad lack of tiny ponies and dragons

Best blog post ever. Trust me on this. I got the link from cuteoverload.com, and you know they never steer you wrong.

I remember now why I stopped writing the romance novel this spring. It wasn't that it sucked, although the beginning was really uneven (fixed nao ha), it was that it was boring. I like the characters, but they lead tedious, small lives with not even the slightest possibility of a dragon or a unicorn or even a tiny pony showing up unexpectedly. I'm going to forge on with it beca...

Welcome to Cliche-land

I've now reread all 25,000 words of the romance book I started writing this spring. The bad news is it needs a lot of work. The good news is that it's actually almost done--most of the work it needs is padding so that the first few chapters don't feel so rushed, and once I do that and write the last few chapters (where the poisoner is revealed and the main characters declare their love for one another, very physically), I should be right at the wordcount goal.

It's kind of amazing how many cli...

Now 3% grimmer!

I've added about 2,000 words to The Trickster Society, fleshing out the worldbuilding just a bit and adding a longer, darker fight at the end. I still want to do some tinkering, but I think the revisions will be fairly minor. For once I took the time to get the ending right!

Now that I'm getting close to wrapping up the first-pass edits and will soon set Trickster Society aside to cool a little, I'm ready for my next project. I'm going to finish that awful romance book I started this spring, b...

September

Happy 3rd birthday to my blog! I started it on Sept. 1, 2007. My goodness, what a lot of blather I've perpetrated since then.

Since it's the first of the month, here's a picture of my garden. Everything got so tall it fell over. We took down the fence since I didn't think it was keeping the deer out; turns out it was keeping some of the deer out, and now the deer have eaten up the tomato plants and the sweet potato plants and even some of the pepper plants (geez, deer, what the hell is wrong w...

What I write when I've finished writing

I didn't have anything to write today. I've finished The Trickster Society and I don't have anything lined up to work on immediately, so what did I do today when I had some downtime to write?

I wrote the query for Trickster Society, of course!

One good thing about writing one or two books a year, I get a lot of practice writing queries. Of course, I'm still no good at them (just consider the 100% disinterest in Bell-Men). But I keep plugging away at it because otherwise I'd have to figure out a...

My summer baby is all grown up

The Trickster Society is now complete at 90,000 words--precisely the length I'd hoped for! It needs a lot of tinkering and editing and probably some rewriting in spots, but I think it's pretty solid.

Even better, I finished it without haste but in time to rev up for the first fall project. After a light editing pass on Trickster Society, I plan to return to my unnamed romance book. I'm hoping to finish it either before NaNo or during NaNo, depending on how much work I need to put into it. I ca...

Pencils and Pens

I haven't been slacking from posting (much), I wanted to delay posting until I could say I typed THE END on the last page of The Trickster Society, which is back to its original title. And I have! Only I'm not done! I skipped ahead and wrote the very short last chapter since I knew precisely what I wanted in the denoument, and now I have to go back and write the big fight at the end. I'm partway into that, but I think it's time for bed.

But the real reason I posted is because I'm thinking abou...

Empty-headed as usual

I'm stuck on The Trickster Society, or as its shiny new title is, Shadow Crossing (100% more urban fantasy in that title! 100% less fun!). I have no clue how to tie everything up with a proper whizbang ending. I'm around 77k words in and have maybe 2k more that I can write without having to make a decision on the plot.

I tried outlining the ending last night, but I kept getting bogged down because, yes, it's hard to outline a big mental blank spot. I think the main problem is that this book's ...