Marissa Farrar's Blog, page 21
December 12, 2010
Twelve Days Till Christmas!
I am still shocked at where this year has gone and how much has happened.
This time last year was a weird time. I was six months pregnant, still living in Spain, and had a husband who was flying back and forth from England to Spain, trying to find work.
It was a hard time. We were broke, pregnant, and didn't even know which country we were going to be living in to have the baby. Last year Christmas was kind of just a formality we had to go through for the rest of our family.
This year, I'm happy to say, is looking like a lot more fun. We're settled (ish), have a new addition to the family, and have careers that are coming on leaps and bounds for both of us. We actually have something to celebrate this year! The whole family is coming for Christmas day and I'm looking forward to having the sort of big, family Christmas I dreamt of as a child.
We've got our tree up now and I've done the vast majority of the present shopping. I'm quickly running out of places to hide things, especially as my three-year old has the eyes of a hawk and seems to have some sort of sixth sense about when ever I stash something in a cupboard or under the bed...'mummy, what's in that bag!'
We've also opted out of having the traditional turkey this year and are going for goose instead. I've never actually cooked a goose, so there is a good chance my images of the perfect family Christmas could go down the pan if I make a hash of it!
So how are your Christmas preparations going? Are you all sorted and feeling smug? Or are you running around in a mad flap, wondering, like me, where the hell the time has gone?
December 10, 2010
Guest Blogging over at Preternatura!
I'm a guest blogger of the lovely Suzanne Johnson over on her site Preternatura today.
http://suzanne-johnson.blogspot.com/2010/12/dark-genres-with-author-marissa-farrar.html
I'm discussing my choice of dark genres (or if they actually chose me!). There is a chance of winning one of my novels if you leave me a comment, so I really hope you'll stop by...
December 7, 2010
That old chestnut, Rejection!
It's a know fact you need to have thick skin to be a writer.Let's face it, we all want to write our new manuscript, send it out to our dream publisher/agent, and have them call saying you have produced a masterpiece, you are a genius writer, and they would love to give you a huge amount of money for said masterpiece. Unfortunately it very, very, very rarely happens that way. Most of us have to plod through numerous rejection letters before we find someone willing to take a chance on us.
I went through eight years of nothing but rejection letters. I remember the first time an editor actually wrote a personal note back to me--it was the editor of the magazine Interzone--telling me he liked my stuff, but it wasn't quite right just yet, but to keep submitting. I was overjoyed. Okay, it was a rejection, but it was a great rejection! Someone had actually bothered writing something other than a standard note. In my mind it was almost as good as an acceptance. Yesterday I had a short story rejected. It was the first in three acceptances, so I think I had got a little cocky. I had to actually read it twice, and my first thought was 'a no'? How can it be a 'no'? It's easy to forget how rejection sucks! So how did I deal with it? Well I sulked for about half an hour and then I turned around and submitted it somewhere else. Maybe it will get another rejection, but at least I won't be quite so shocked this time! As the saying goes, pride before a fall!
I found some rejection letters on the Internet and had to share them. Find some solace that however bad your rejection letters are, at least they're not as bad as these ones!
By the way, the Harlequin one was a fake!
December 6, 2010
The Dark Road giveaway!
Hope you had a good weekend. To start what looks to be a bit of a grey and miserable week (here in the UK, anyway) I am doing a giveaway of three copies of my new ebook (though hopefully paperback soon) The Dark Road.
Just hop on over to http://www.facebook.com/marissa.farrar.author and tell me where The Dark Road was set. Leave your answer as a comment on my page.
Good luck!
November 30, 2010
Yay! I did NaNo!
Phew! Finally NaNo is over and I made it past the 50K mark. My final word count, for the time being any how, is 50321 words.
Despite all my whinging and whining and general carrying on, I did end up quite enjoying the whole process. I now have a good chunk of a novel which I have ended up actually quite liking, and I'm looking forward to discecting it and then putting it all back together again. I really hope what I have the basis for could end up being something really special, but I still need to add a good 30k to it to make it a decent novel length, and a whole heap of editing needs to be done, of course.
One thing NaNo has taught me is that I am capable of sitting down and focusing on one thing. Okay, I may have sneaked off and done a couple of other things as well--I finished writing, submitted, and had a short story accepted during NaNo month, and I've also been working on a couple of other projects on the side as well. I think I still needed to do this to keep me sane, and it seems to have worked out okay.
With my new frame of mind, I have decided to dedicate each month to a different project, making sure that month's project always gets priority over everything else. I'm hoping this may make me more productive, and even a bit more organised, but we will see.
So, will I do NaNo again? Probably, though my husband will probably fall to the floor and weep, begging me not to! He has already threatened that if I do NaNo next year he will do Movember. Ahhh, I can see next November being a fun time in the Farrar household!
November 25, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving and win The Dark Road
Just a quicky to say happy thanksgiving to all my lovely friends over the pond. I hope you all have a wonderful day full of turkey, pumpkin pie and family.
You can also stop by Nicole Hadaway's new page, one of my fellow vamplit author's http://dandridgehouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/writers-wednesday-featuring-marissa.html
to win your copy of my new novel, The Dark Road.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
November 24, 2010
The Gracken by Lori R. Lopez
If you want to know more about Lori and read more of her work, you can find her at http://www.trilllogicinnoventions.com/. She would love to hear from you.
Now sit back and enjoy....
THE GRACKEN
Six grackles on a limb once sat
To have a raucous bird-brained chat
Like magpie gossips they did sport
Then snoozed a bit with a sneerful snort
When just below them from the soil
A wickedness began to roil
And writhing upwards out of smirch
A peckish dauntling climbt the birch
This heathen gathered mass and crept
Up bark and branch to where they slept
The smudge begrudged them their sweet nap
And plucked most up in quite a flap
Drooling for these fickle bites
He gulped them down and set his sights
Upon the last who woke to glean
Himself alone, his pals unseen
And a monster they had conjured forth
Through gabbiness from malish pour'th
Of vicious rumors, slandrous spewl
These spouters summoned a pentaghoul
Five scowls he wore; five eyeballs glared
Five arms, five legs; five faces stared
Five birds he ate with fervent glee
The sixth, dessert would surely be
Licking lips, he reached a paw
To plunge the fowl down a single maw
This gracken had a case of greed
And six was more than he did need
The final bird held up a wing
To make him pause for one small thing:
"We made you mad, we made you mean
We made you brown and orange and green
We didn't make you such a glutton
And we forgot a shut-off button
So if you won't mind, I think I'll leave!"
The blackbird flew, to the gracken's peeve
And the monster slunk back in the dirt
His belly full but his feelings hurt.
November 22, 2010
The Dark Road is now available to buy!
After a lot of hard work from myself and Gaynor at Vamplit Publishing, my second novel, The Dark Road, is now available to buy!
You can read sample chapters by clicking on the links just to the left of this post, or you can download 30% free from Smashwords.
If you've ever done the 'traveller' thing, you may even recognise the journey the characters in this novel take, as they try to make their way from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia. But the backpackers have more than just the normal travel problems to worry about, as they are plunged into a world of temples, curses, and long-dead kings.
It's a bargain at only $4.99 and I hope you'll all stop by http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/30776 to take a look!
November 19, 2010
Win 'Let The Right One In' and more NaNo whining...
Eleven days to go and I cannot wait for this whole thing to be over. I am bored, bored, bored.
I don't think it is the story—though it is women's fiction, and I've not been able to introduce any ghosts/demons/vampires and general spooky/violent/gory stuff that I love. I read plenty of women's fiction quite happily.
The thing that is throwing me is not being able to work on anything else. I normally veer between different projects, which keeps me excited and interested in what I am doing. I've got loads of other things I want to do and so feel resentful towards my poor Nano project, which really has done no harm to anyone.
I'm currently at 30555 words. Do I think I'll make it to 50K? I don't know, it's doubtful at the moment, though I hate giving up on something or letting anything beat me! So I will continue to plod on and see what comes out the other end.
If you, too, wish to escape the tedium of NaNo, you can head to my Facebook Page where I am having a competition to win a copy of the novel, Let The Right One In.
November 15, 2010
NaNoWriMo—Halfway There!
Hey everybody, can you believe we're halfway through NaNo already??? Where the hell has the time gone?
I'm almost on track; current word count of 23,088, so should make it to the necessary 25K by the end of the day.
Of course, as always seems to be the way, several other projects have been thrown in my path, trying to distract me, and yes, I have definitely been distracted. However, unless something definite happens, I'm hoping to remain on track.
Is the novel actually any good though? I honestly still have no idea. I hope so. I really, really hope so—I wouldn't be writing the story otherwise. But I don't think it will be until I am able to give it a good scrub and polish that I'll be able to decipher if it is a diamond in the rough, or just a plain rock.
Several people have offered to look at it for me (and thank you, you know who you are) but I NEVER allow anyone to see a WIP until it is exactly how I intend it to be—something that has prevented me joining crit groups. How can anyone judge my work when it is not how I want to it to be?
How is everyone else getting on? Are you enjoying the whole experience or has it been a nightmare? On track, way ahead, or falling waaaaay behind? I'd love to hear your stories!
