P.J. Schnyder's Blog, page 5

Release Day! Sing for the Dead

Woo! I’m so excited to have Book 2 of the London Undead series available for you all. I very much hope you enjoy Kayden and Sorcha’s story. Also, reviews are very much appreciated if you’d like to let the world know what you think of the book. Amazon, B&N, Goodreads…all great places to post reviews and really help my series.

To celebrate the release of Sing for the Dead I’m on a blog tour. Each guest post is short and fun, hopefully sharing something new you didn’t know about the book or the inspirations behind it. There’s also a fun giveaway package, so I hope you’ll check out the tour. Have fun!

Monday, November 4, 2013
Mom with a Kindle {Guest Post}
Rather Barefoot Than Bookless {Guest Post}
 
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Simply Ali {Guest Post}
Joyfully Reviewed {Guest Post}
 
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Pretty Girls Read Books {Guest Post}
HBS Author’s Spotlight {Author Interview}
 
Thursday, November 7, 2013
For Whom The Books Toll {Guest Post}
 
Friday, November 8, 2013
M.J. Schiller, Romance Author {Guest Post}
That’s What I’m Talking ABout {Guest Post}
 
Monday, November 11, 2013
Amberkatze’s Book Blog {Guest Post}
 
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Paranormal Dimension {Guest Post}
 
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Booklover Sue {Author Interview}
 
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Musings and Ramblings {Author Interview}
 
Friday, November 15, 2013
Author’s Cafe {Author Interview}
 
Monday, November 18, 2013
Paranormal Realms {Guest Post}
 
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Deal Sharing Aunt {Guest Post}
 
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Celestial Reviews {Guest Post}
 
Friday, November 22, 2013
Realm of Fantasy and Fiction {Guest Post}

Guest Post: Eliza Knight – Three, two, one… Blast Off!

Note from PJ Schnyder:

Every year I participate in NaNoWriMo and while I’m buried in the event trying to meet my contractual deadlines as well as hit my word count for my experimental project, I try to feature guest authors with posts on why they do (or do not) participate.

It’s a hectic season, plus this year I’ve also got the release of Sing for the Dead on November 4th! And the guests I’ve got lined up are super busy with great book news of their own. Happy dances all around.

I’m very happy to have award-winning author, Eliza Knight, as my first guest for NaNoWriMo 2013.

 

 

Welcome to 30 days of chaos! Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NANO), where thousands of writers throughout the world will hunker down at their computers, challenging themselves to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It’s a whirlwind of angst and excitement. By 11:59 pm on November 30th, you’ll feel accomplished, and wiped out. The skills I’ve learned in NANO have helped me to write faster throughout the rest of the year well, which can come in handy if on a deadline.

Let’s start the day off with a bang! I’ve written my top ten tips for a successful NANO.

Know your characters. You’ll get to know them better as you write, but the hardest thing to do on day one is, set out with a blank page AND a blank mind. Since today is day one, if you haven’t had a chance to get to know your characters—never fear! Take an hour or two and think about them.  What are their goals, motivations, conflicts (internal/external)?
Know a good portion of your story. Just as I said above, if you haven’t gotten a skeleton yet, that’s okay. Take the time right now to figure this out. What is your starting point—what is the ending? What is the purpose of your story? What is intriguing about it? I like to do a quick outline, a roadmap if you will, that will lead me easily down the path from beginning to end. There will be changes along the way, and that’s okay, but at least I have an idea of where I want to be.
Set a daily wordcount and stick to it. Keep in mind days you know you may not get a chance to write—say, Thanksgiving. I calculate my daily word counts based on writing 5 days a week, so if I don’t end up meeting them, I have a few days leeway saved up. During NANO, it works out to 21 days of writing for me—which is roughly 2381 a day.
Gather your support system. You can do this in a number of ways: join the online community at http://nanowrimo.org/. Find your local NANO group and go to write-ins. Hook up with your social networking clan to encourage each other in your daily writing. Tell everyone you know that this is your goal for the month so when you have been wearing the same outfit for three days, they understand.
Don’t edit while you write. This is going to be the hardest part for a lot of people, but believe me, if you stop to edit, you’ll end up wasting a lot of valuable writing time. Save the editing for December.
Do sprints. Writing your entire word count at one sitting can be tough. Do it in sprints. I like to work in 500 to 1000 word sprints, or timed sprints. I might write for 15 minutes, then do something else. Or do a 1K1H with friends online – 1K words in 1 hour.
Write snappy dialogue. Dialogue always moves a story along. Don’t forget to use tags/action/narrative in your dialogue so we are a part of the conversation.
Cut the backstory. We don’t want to hear about how this all came to be. Throw us right into it, and lace the backstory throughout, using action, dialogue and some introspection to show us instead of dumping it all upfront.
Open with a hook. Great hooks to start a story with: action/danger, overpowering emotion, a shocking situation, evocative description, a unique/fresh character, foreshadowing, snappy/shocking dialogue.
Show don’t tell. Remember, readers want to experience your story. Don’t tell us what is happening, show us. Let it unfold in our minds like a movie. Use descriptions, sensory detail, internal thoughts, dialogue, physical action, conflict, emotion, all of these things to make your story come alive in our minds.

I could keep going forever, but I think this is enough to get your blasting off into the Nano-sphere. Best of luck to you!!! Ready….set…. GO!!!!!!!! See you at the finish!

Cheers,

Eliza

Eliza Knight is the multi-published, award-winning, Amazon best-selling author of sizzling historical romance and erotic romance. While not reading, writing or researching for her latest book, she chases after her three children. In her spare time (if there is such a thing…) she likes daydreaming, wine-tasting, traveling, hiking, staring at the stars, watching movies, shopping and visiting with family and friends. She lives atop a small mountain, and enjoys cold winter nights when she can curl up in front of a roaring fire with her own knight in shining armor.

Website: www.elizaknight.com

Blog: www.historyundressed.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/elizaknightauthor

Twitter: @ElizaKnight

Play Find the PJ at the Hallowread Steampunk Tea

This evening I’ll be at Tea on the Tiber in Ellicott City with my good friends, Tee Morris and Philippa Ballantine. We’ll be doing readings from our steampunk works as well as a few surprse sneak previous from other upcoming releases!

There will be plenty of time to enjoy tea and scones, questions and answers, shenanigans and miscellany. Cost of entrance covers tea and scones plus we’ll have various fun giveaways, free swag and books for purchase.

It’s been a rather challenging week, full of learning experiences for me. I’m looking forward to unwinding and perhaps committing acts of random chaos. I hope you’ll come out and join us.

However, if you miss us Friday evening, I’ll have gone from steampunk-mode to paranormal-mode PJ on Saturday morning to sit on panels in fun locations along Historic Ellicott City’s Main Street.

Come play Find the PJ:

Saturday



10:00am-10:45am
The Other Side - Experiencing the paranormal with Joya Fields, Laura Kaye, Jolea Harrison, Cat Miller, PJ Schnyder, Vonnie Winslow Christ and Jordan K. Rose.

Location: The Trolley Stop (a.k.a. the Bloody Bucket).


11:00am-11:45am
Decoding the Genres- PNR, UF, SCI-FI, CF, YA, HR – Delve deeper into your favorite genres and find out what the difference really is, with PJ Schnyder, L.M. Pruitt, Alexa Egan, Kristin Battestella, Vonnie Winslow Christ and Jordan K. Rose.

Location: Diamond Back tavern

Winner: NJRW Golden Leaf Award

Tonight, I joined two authors I greatly respect at the NJRW Writer’s Conference as finalists in the Golden Leaf Award novella category.

There was a lovely cocktail hour prior to the awards ceremony and then…yeah, this happened:

Just before they officially announced the winner, Anne Walradt read a segment of Bite Me that just blew me away. Huge thanks to her, the NJRW, and Golden Leaf organizers.

I am both elated and exhausted. Good night, all!

PJ’s NaNoWriMo Checklist

I was asked by several people about my preparation for NaNoWriMo, recently. I’m not sure if I’ve blogged about this before, but if I have, I’m sure my process has evolved. This year has been full of awesome learning from some great panels and workshops–I’ve been trying out a bunch of new writing techniques and processes. So hell, I’ll blog about it again. If you’re wondering what it IS, go here: http://nanowrimo.org

This isn’t the ultimate checklist. It’s by no means comprehensive. This list is simply what I do to prep for NaNoWriMo. There’s a lot of lists out there, and there is not “one, true way” to write a novel, or a novella, or a short story. There is only what works for you. This is what works for me. And even then, it doesn’t always work because, well, life happens.

Why?

Deciding why I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I’m already a published author. Why do I want to do NaNoWriMo if I’m writing all year round, with contracts and deadlines and series to continue? Every year, the reason has been different. This year, I’m using NaNoWriMo to experiment with something new. It’s something so completely outside of my comfort zone, I’m not sure I’ll be good at it. But I want to give it a try.

Novel Preparation

An idea. What’s my novel going to be about? What is the dominant plot bunny? My Chief plotbunny. My Hazel-rah. There can be other plot bunnies, but I need one main bun.
Plot outline. Not everyone uses one. There are a lot of successful pantsers out there. But if I want to be successful at NaNoWriMo, I have to have an outline to guide me. Granted, my characters may hijack my plot and I’ll have to rewrite the outline as I go, but I start out with an outline.
Character concepts. I might go so far as having full character sheets with physical appearances, personality traits, drivers, hopes and dreams…but at the very least I need names, appearances and a high level idea of the kind of people they are and why they have chemistry together. (I do write romance, after all.)
Setting notes. One of the biggest interruptions to my writing groove is when I stop to look something up. Most of the time, that’s my setting and details of the place I’m using. Better to get as much of this done in advance as I can imagine.
Virtual note board. I use virtual post-its on my iPad or sticky-notes on my AlienWare laptop. These are random floating ideas about the story and snippets of dialog I come up with at random moments in between writing sessions. I can’t afford to lose them in the bustle of the month.

Writing Tools

Scrivener. I can use any notepad, notebook, basic word processing app or software to write. I enjoy using Scrivener to prepare my novel and also to write, using component based authoring. I break my novel up into chapters and write a chunk at a time, usually scene by scene. Scenes may not come to me in order, and during NaNoWriMo, I desperately write whatever scene comes to mind rather than trying to go chronologically through my story.
Write or Die. This is the ultimate writing sprint app for me. I can average 500 words in about 15 to 20 minutes with this.That’s a great pace for me.
Google Drive and Dropbox. The cloud backup is key. I do not want to lose my work to a software crash, nor to the loss of a tiny USB flash drive. Also, these make my novel available to me wherever I can hop onto WiFi.

NaNoWriMo Official Stuff

Register on the official site. This is my profile: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/pjschnyder
Make sure profile is up to date.

Let the World Know

Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
YouTube
Instagram

… I decide where I’ll post updates, tweets, posts, and #PJatR episodes regarding my progress. Public accountability is a great driver. But here’s my most important social media preparation:

Hootsuite. Scheduling my important promotional updates, announcements and author-ly obligations in advance means I don’t need to hop onto social media to do it and subsequently get distracted. As a published author, commitments and promotional efforts don’t fall to the wayside during the month of November. I schedule them to go off in a timely manner.

There you have it. The things I do to prepare for NaNoWriMo. If you’re looking for more comprehensive checklists, or the ultimate checklist, or any other checklists in general? LMGTFY

Best of luck in your NaNoWriMo endeavors!

Beyond the Comfort Zone

A danger of writing every day-back to back projects and sometimes multiple projects-is burning out. Suddenly, you’re staring at the monitor, the keyboard, and the words just aren’t there. At the same time, I want to write every day. How to do what I love without burning myself out?

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I change things up.

Sometimes I’m Paranormal Romance PJ, writing about werewolves hunting zombies in the London Undead series…

Other times I’m Sci-Fi PJ, writing about a shapeshifting heroine and her soldier lover in the Triton Experiment series…

Still other times, I’m Steampunk PJ, writing various adventures of Victorian aesthetic and steam-driven technology…

But even then, I’m getting burned out. Possibly because every one of these genres are comfortable for me. I’m always trying to grow, to learn, to improve my writing craft. Earlier this year I attended some very informative workshops at RWA on writing craft and the lessons learned sparked quite a few ideas.

Later hints from my editor and my agent, completely independent of each other, made me think it was about time to change things up in a totally new way.

Time for a new PJ.

What genre will it be? I’ll leave that a secret right now. I have ideas but I want to develop them further. NaNoWriMo is often my time of year to experiment, so I’m going to do my best to wrap up my deadlines in order to participate.

The key is that I’ll be jumping way out of my comfort zone, stretching my mind and challenging my skill sets. I’m very excited, energized, and all of those are wonderful things to cure burn out.

Sick Days and Comfort Foods

I’ve been sick. It grabbed me by the throat and held on for over a week. Literally, could not swallow or sometimes breathe for a bit there. Not cool. The good news? Negative for strep. The bad news? Since it was likely viral, antibiotics weren’t going to do anything for me. The only treatment, really? Lots of tea and throat soothers, perhaps a decongestant. I made a pot of soup every day and went through copious amounts of tea. I still planned to write the draft of Survive to Dawn.

Then I coughed hard enough to pop blood vessels in my eye. Yay.

In any case, I’m on the upswing now and though the blood vessel thing looked freaky, it cleared up in a day or two. I’m back to writing and madly trying to make up lost time. In the meantime, I did record another PJ at Random with much coughing and hacking in the outtakes. LOL. In this episode, I talk about one of the comfort foods I craved while I was sick.

Cover Reveal! Sing for the Dead

When I saw this cover, this was me – *squee!*

As fond as I am of manly chest, abs, and overall torso — especially the sexy, tempting “V” — I was very happy the decision was made to feature my heroine for Sing for the Dead on the cover in Book 2 of the London Undead series. This is a beautiful cover and I am so excited to be able to share it with you all!

Sing for the Dead, Book Two of London Undead

Kayden, a lone were-leopard allied with the London werewolf pack to keep the zombie infestation in check, is used to working solo—until he discovers a beautiful fae woman surrounded by the aftermath of battle. He’s immediately drawn to Sorcha, but quickly discovers she’s much more than a pretty face.

Half Bean Sidhe and half berserker, Sorcha trained over centuries to become the perfect warrior. She agrees to work with local weres to investigate a new type of zombie capable of coordinated attacks—and is partnered with Kayden. He’s strong, darkly handsome and completely unafraid of her. And his kiss fills her with insatiable desire instead of bloodlust.

As Kayden and Sorcha work together, their attraction grows and their deepest scars are bared to each other. But with the force behind the deadly new zombies poised to overwhelm the city, Sorcha can only pray that the next time her bloodlust strikes, Kayden isn’t among the fallen…

Available at Carina Press November 4, 2013

and Amazon.com for preorder and Barnes & Noble for preorder

and All Romance eBooks November 4

Did you miss the trailer for the London Undead series? Check it out:

Play Find the PJ at the Baltimore Book Festival 2013

The Baltimore Book Festival is less than 2 weeks away and the Maryland Romance Writers will have a weekend full of fun programming. Come join me and over 40 romance writers at the MRW stage and then wander the rest of the book festival Friday, September 27th to Sunday, September 29th.

Book festivals are fun for me because they’re casual and low key. They make for an easy-going day trip without the hectic insanity of a full blown convention.

Things to know:

Books from participating authors will be for sale onsite and authors will be available to sign

Look for raffle baskets and giveaways

Fun swag freebies will be on hand all weekend

I’ll be on panel and hanging out, so please do feel free to come find me for a chat. I’ll most likely be found at the Maryland Romance Writer’s stage. Here’s my panel schedule:

Saturday



6:00pm
Writing Science Fiction

Authors will discuss researching and creating worlds based in science fiction and what draws them to stories based in fantasy or set out of this world.


Sunday



1:00pm
The Part-Time Writer

Authors will talk about the challenges of and tips for how to balance a career in fiction writing with the demands of full-time jobs, family, and parenthood.

PJ at Random Begins!

There’s a couple of reasons for beginning a vlog. The first, and really the most important reason: OrD asked me to. Why? I won’t go into in much detail. But those who pay attention in the near future will probably figure it out. I’ll be posting my #PJatR vlogs here but it’d be wonderful if you all could go to my YouTube channel and subscribe, or even leave comments on the videos themselves. I may even run contests over there. Who knows? It depends on the activity over there and here.

That said, a vlog is an interesting format. I think it’s an easier format for me in a lot of ways. It’s quick and it’s fun. There’s no telling what shenanigans I’ll get up to in this vlog because I don’t even know. And it will supplement the updates I make here, perhaps trigger longer and more in-depth ponderings. #PJatR isn’t going to be specifically about writing or my books, but it will be insight into the random workings of my mind.

There’s not a lot I know for certain about this particular experiment. I do think I’ll be slipping easter eggs into these #PJatR vlogs. It might not be verbal. There’s a lot I can do with my bookshelf. Plus, you never know what I’ll be wearing or have in my hands. The possibilities for tiny little hints and nods to various things in my stories are numerous. We’ll have to wait and see. My goal is to have fun with #PJatR and it’s putting a lot of myself out there. I hope you’ll all enjoy.