Mara Dabrishus's Blog, page 2

Get the first chapter of All Heart!

The first chapter of All Heart is now available exclusively to my newsletter peeps!

If you’re not receiving the newsletter, you can fix that by signing up right here. The second you do, you’ll get the first chapter sent straight to your inbox.

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Enjoy.

So what’s All Heart about, you ask?

I know, I know, I’ve been talking about this book all year and I’ve given out absolutely no details about it other than Lighter’s on the cover. And he is! Just look at him!

Then things went dark over here for two months as I fell into the editing/writing hole. Things happened in that period of time, though. I wrote another 100k book because I couldn’t help myself. I edited All Heart and then edited it again. I survived the tremendously ridiculous heat wave while formatting the book and battling Scrivener’s insane need to make everything bold and in italics. (Why, Scrivener? Why do you hate me?)

But here we are. Finally on the other side. Today, All Heart is available for pre-order on Amazon. I’m also going to give you the summary because you guys have waited long enough.

Summer’s over.

It’s been a summer of changes for July Carter, who has left the high stakes racing season at Saratoga with not only a young filly to call her own, but also an unexpected boyfriend. Change, it appears, is good.

But as the Thoroughbreds return to Belmont Park for fall races, July is caught up in all of those summer changes. With Kali struggling at her new barn, college applications to write, and her relationship with Beck frustratingly undefined, July doesn’t know what to tackle first. On top of it all, her mother is back in New York to ride Lighter, the barn’s most promising–if completely crazy–colt, stirring up trouble in the shedrow, which now sits mostly empty.

When Lighter goes lame during a workout, July simmers over. And when Beck decides that she might be too much for him, July finds herself staring down another change. This time, it’s unwelcome. This time, her heart is on the line.

Are we excited yet? (I mean, I am.) The official release date is September 30, 2016.

Cover Reveal: All Heart!

Ta-da!

I expect to release it in September, so be on the lookout for some All Heart related goodies this summer!

Reader Shout-out!

Sometimes readers are just so awesome that you need to showcase them once and a while! Today it’s Courtney from Courtney’s Reads, cracking open Stay the Distance from the back of her obviously good-natured horse, Lily!

@horsebackreads Not sure this is quite what you meant with #horsebackreads…

Swept away: 107,000 words, 31 days.

This May, I wrote a novel in a month. A NaNoWriMo, if you will, only this particular novel wasn’t 50,000 words. It was 107,000.

Okay, wait, let’s back up.

In April, I was obsessing over first drafts. I had just finished the first draft of All Heart, my horse book sequel to Stay the Distance, and had squirreled it away to let it marinate before attempting to figure out its flaws, because that’s the way of things. I never want to be too close to a first draft when I start on the second draft. There has to be some time apart. It’s for the best, really. Otherwise I’ll lose all sense of self and fall into a pit of impossible rewrites.

So, separation. But what to do in the meantime?

Just a little Northwest Arkansas to spice up this post.

I had already told my editor that I was going to work on what I was calling the Arkansas Novel (Uninspired WIP title? Yes.) this year. My editor and I are both Arkansans. Not born and bred there, but definitely grew up there for years and years. We’re drives on dirt roads, dunks in swimming holes, hope-you-don’t-get-snakebit Arkansans. Naturally, her response was write it now. The thing is I had already tried writing this book. I’d tried five years ago and failed miserably, not sure where it was going and not sure I could even write what I wanted to write. So I let it sit on my hard drive, languishing in a state of unfinished disrepair.

It couldn’t go on that way. But it couldn’t stay the way I’d previously envisioned, either. So I pulled up Blacksnake, the Arkansas Novel’s prequel (available in How to Trick the Devil) and glared at it for a while. Then I opened up a new Word document and proceeded to go nuts.

Okay, not nuts exactly. But I did get really into it. I took my main characters and I started to stretch back their history–something my editor calls writing the fictitious reality. My main characters’ stories, their parents’ stories, their parents’ parents’ stories…I went back to the 1600s. (Like I said, really, really into it.)

Most of the time when you plot a book, you look into its future. You’re plotting out where a book is going, not so much looking into its depths and trying to see its past. That said, by looking into that murky background, I found the story I wanted to write. I found characters I didn’t know I was going to even write about, who would be major players in the story I wanted to push out. Once I got them on the page, their history written down and how they connected to the rest of the world I’d just created, I stopped and turned my attention forward, opening up a new Word document to lay out the backbone for three books–just plot points stringing to plot points from beginning to end across the trilogy. From there, it was fleshing out those plot points into chapters until everything was in place and I could start writing.

So–to the figures. 107,000 words, 31 days. I started the draft on April 11, and I finished it on May 12. I kept a log of how much I wrote every day. I set daily goals in Scrivener, which showed me how fast I was writing with its little gradient-hued progress bar. I was diligent. And I wrote. 1,400 words on May 5th constituted a slow day. 8,000 words on May 9th was…a little frightening. What happened on that day? Did I consist only of story and a flurry of keyboard strokes? How did I even accomplish this?

And the answer, I think, is I enjoyed what I was doing. I sat down and I didn’t spend half my time agonizing over every detail, every bit of dialogue. I got out of the story’s way. There was only the story in my head that said sit down and write me. Shockingly enough, I decided to obey it instead of fight it tooth and nail to the end. There was no forcing it to do anything. The story went down on the page, and where it deviated from the outline, I re-outlined. I added chapters. I just held on as it rushed onto the page–for thirty-one days. When I wrote the ending on that last day I just sat there and stared at the behemoth that seemed to magically have appeared on my computer’s hard drive as my editor yelled at me over Google Chat, “Did you finish it? DID YOU?”

I told her I did–in all caps because EXCITED–and I sent it her way. Then I sat there, thinking about everything else that needed to be done, because there’s always that second draft to get through. And maybe a third, fourth, fifth–the work never really seems done. It’s the most anticlimactic of feelings, finishing a first draft. But still, I was excited. I am excited. I want to rip into this draft, make it better, get this sucker so polished it is shiny with editing, and then write the second book, and the third. I am swept away, and maybe that’s been the secret all along.

Finding Daylight: Deleted Scene #1

The reviews are in, and a Finding Daylight deleted scene has been unlocked! I decided to go with a scene that I cut out of the lead up to the Kentucky Derby because, well, it’s May and we’re in the middle of Triple Crown season. Perfect time for a Derby scene, right?

In this particular scene, Georgie and Harris are climbing onto steadier ground. While it served to show the media frenzy and some of those baby steps toward friendship between Harris and Georgie, I largely found it unnecessary once I’d restructured the novel. I also thought that these particular baby steps weren’t the right steps to take at this particular time, so the scene got cut. Luckily I saved it for posterity. After all, in this version Georgie gets to do a photo shoot and Harris is going to college. Weird, right?

Click here to get the scene!

Want more? Keep those reviews coming! I’ve got a ton of Finding Daylight deleted scenes to share.

The audiobooks have arrived.

Hello, my lovelies! I am here to announce that the audiobooks for Stay the Distance and Finding Daylight have landed on Audible and Amazon for your listening pleasure. They’re enabled for Whispersync, so if you have the Kindle version, you’ll be able to switch back and forth from text to audio. Pretty cool!

Stay the Distance: Audible | Amazon

Finding Daylight: Audible | Amazon

First Drafts: the Point of No Return

This past Friday, I finished the first draft of All Heart, the sequel to my first novel, Stay the Distance. It is all well and good as far as first drafts go–meaning that it must be ripped to shreds and reconstructed out of my blood, sweat and tears in the next thirty days in order to produce the second draft, which I will let actual people lay eyes upon.

That said, I don’t like to rip into a first draft right away. I just spent two months producing this draft–the shortest amount of time it has ever taken me to really sit and write down 81,500 semi-coherent words. By the point I’m at 81,499 words, I’m basically living inside the story. I am story. So when I write that last word, I usually sit there and stare at it for a good while, wondering what the heck just happened. Is this done? Did that happen? And then I feel lost for the next day, wondering what world I’m living in without that constant story going in my head.

Needless to say, story and I have to have some time apart. A week, at the very least, for me to regain my sense of self and start functioning like a normal adult again. (Are writers normal adults? I sometimes wonder…)

Luckily for me, this time was a little easier. I finished the draft on Friday and on Saturday I packed up what felt like my entire life and drove to Columbus for Equine Affaire. To me, this was a surreal experience. Sitting down and watching people peruse my books in real time, watching their initial reactions and then (occasionally) gleefully buying one (and sometimes both) before scurrying back over for my signature was probably one of the best things I’ve ever experienced. As a person. Honestly. I got to live four hours of that parade of people, and it was a great way to break things up for me–going from writing that last sentence of All Heart to watching my new readers flip through those books wrenched me out of my thoughts and plopped me back down into the real world. However surreal it seemed at the time. It was good for me. It was good for my writing. Because when I went back home, I didn’t open up All Heart.

No. Oh, no no no. I at least stayed true to my word. I was taking a week-long break from All Heart. We needed some time apart to think. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t start thinking of something else–which, I admit, I’d already started to do. Now, in this downtime, was the perfect moment to strike out on my new adventure. I copy/pasted a bunch of plot points I’d obsessively strung together in my free time into a new file, and chapter-by-chapter outlined a new book. That by itself would be one thing, but then I went a step further and I started to write it. 8,000 words and three days later, I have a new first draft on my hands.

So, for those of us who are counting, two first drafts. Two baby stories that I am determined to nurture to adulthood this year. They are wildly different–so different that I’m not sure yet if I’ll be able to wrench myself out of one to return to another when it’s needed, but I’m going to have to try because there’s no going back now.

In the meantime, who else has juggled this madness? I know you’re out there. Tell me your multiple story stories!

Originally posted on Horse Crossings.

Did I mention there’s a giveaway? (There’s a giveaway.)

La Romantique is offering one print copy of Finding Daylight on her blog! It’s super simple: just go there and leave your e-mail address. That’s it! The last day to enter is April 30th, so scurry over there and throw your name in the hat.

Finding Daylight – Deleted Scenes

The secret to writing a novel is there is so much rewriting. Or just flat out deleting. Sometimes the story changes mid-sentence, negating whole swaths of previously written story. Scenes that I really loved no longer make sense. Or, as is sadly the case, the scene has some fatal flaw–some quirk that can’t save it from the trash bin. Like magic, it has to disappear.

Then, because I’m a pack rat, I like to keep those old bits of story. They’re cast-offs, but I still love them. And just because they didn’t make the cut doesn’t mean they have to languish forgotten on my hard drive.

So! I think it’s time to release some deleted scenes! I have about twenty-two pages of cut material–five scenes in total. (Yes, I wrote a lot of Finding Daylight. A lot, a lot, a lot.)

But! There is a catch. Finding Daylight currently sits at 8 reviews across Amazon (six from the US, and 2 from the UK). When Finding Daylight gets to 10 reviews across all of Amazon, I will post a scene in full right here. When it hits 15, I’ll add another. Then at 20, 25, and so on. And these are big, juicy scenes, you guys. Twenty-two pages worth! (And maybe more–I mean, who’s to say what else I’ll find as we go along?)

Have you already posted a review? Then you are amazing. Please e-mail me and you’ll get that first scene sent straight to your inbox.

Haven’t posted a review yet? Please pop over to Amazon and let your opinions be known! Write a few words on your honest thoughts and press that submit button. Then wait for some juicy, deleted-scene goodness.

To get us started, here’s a snipped of the biggest scene. This is the scene I gloriously call “Deleted Scene #2,” in which Georgie and Harris engage in some delightful banter:

“Well, that was unexpected,” a voice announced behind her. Georgie shrieked, jumping around and finding Harris standing in the aisle, peering over her shoulder at the groaning mare.

“Are you kidding me?” she asked, letting out a huffing breath. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you leave,” he said, shrugging. “And I was bored.”

“That’s called stalking in modern society,” she said, a smile starting to make its way up her lips.

“And you could be trespassing,” Harris pointed out. “Is there a two wrongs make a right rule?”

Want more? Start writing that review! I’ll be over here writing All Heart while I wait.