The Writing Process Blog Hop
I was tagged by Christina Delay, a super talented writer, and one of my amazing critique partners.
You can view Christina’s writing process here.
Now to my questions and my answers.
1. What am I working on right now?
After many years, I’m actually embarrassed by the number, I finished the final edits to my Urban Fantasy, Evil’s Unlikely Assassin, and find myself in querying hell, so technically I am still working on it. Here’s a blurb about that story.
Vampire Alexis Black is on a mission – to rejoin the human race. Too bad she has to kill her own kind to complete it.
Coerced into signing an ironclad contract by an Angel-with-an-attitude, Alexis is stuck with a Jekyll and Hyde personality, an insatiable hunger, and a vampire-hating human sidekick named Reaper. The deal: hunt down and assassinate at least one vamp, werewolf, or creepy crawly, every night, for fifty years. In return she gets back what was stolen from her – her humanity.
But when a revenge-seeking bloodsucker threatens her city, Alexis must risk everything to ensure there’s a humanity to return to. Since her vampire nature is her greatest weapon to defeat the monsters that threaten her friends and future, Alexis must choose to accept her inner beast or watch those she loves die.
Because sometimes it takes evil to fight evil.
While I wait for the agents to get back to me, I’m writing a paranormal Romance called Struck By Eros. It’s a modern day retelling of the story of Apollo and Daphne with a wicked little twist. I’m really excited about this story, and the series potential, so I plan on having the first draft done by the time I go to Immersion in September. Here’s a quick blurb on that one.
Five months ago, Cupid waylaid Noel Chase’s life by saddling her with Grayson Adler, a couldn’t-be-more-wrong-for-her match, and forcing her to be his mini-me on earth and play eHarmony to the lonely, shy, and desperate. All Noel really wants is to spend her days with Len, her fiancée, but when Len turns out to be one of the soul mates she is supposed to match to another woman, Noel pleads with Cupid to let her end up her one true love. But Cupid doesn’t play fair, and Noel is forced through a series of trials to see who is waiting for her in the end, Len, the man she thinks she loves, or Grayson, the man she know she loathes.
That blurb isn’t as polished as the other since I am still writing it, but you get the idea.
2. How does my work differ from others in the genre?
My voice helps me stand out from other writers in the paranormal genre. I’m sarcastic, funny, and my heroines are all really dark. They’re not coming from a world where only good things happen to them, they are coming from a dark place, where bad things happen, and they are put into a set of circumstances that they didn’t choose, and don’t want. In other words, I don’t write characters that are likable from the start, but soften as they grow and learn to deal with the crap that life has thrown at them.
3. Why do I write what I do?
It’s funny that I am getting this question right now. After I finished Evil’s Unlikely Assassin, I pulled out Struck By Eros to start working on it after a long hiatus. Both stories are paranormal which is what I read too. But then I had a moment of crazy and dusted off an old Contemporary romance that I started eons ago. I wrote 3,000 words and found it very unexciting to write a story that didn’t include some kind of other worldly creature. The whole time I wanted to throw a vampire in there, so that it would spice the world up. I guess I write what I do because I enjoy all the fun ways that vampires, werewolves, and vengeful little gods can wreak havoc on people lives.
4. How does my writing process work? 
It all starts with an idea, usually a first paragraph that summarizes the story, just a tiny spark that takes over my brain and won’t let me feed the kids, do the laundry, or clean the house, until I flesh it out.
I scramble for the nearest notebook and play with the idea, turning it into something more, something that I can write about. I have five notebooks full of different ideas right now, so I this happens to me a lot. Then I write, and write, and write. I write to get the words out of my head, the idea on the paper, and the story into something manageable.
Once the first draft is done, I print it all out, because I have to work on a hard copy, pull out my highlighters, and apply Margie Lawson’s editing system to the whole thing, this takes more hours that I want to admit, but it is one of the best tools that I have found. Once everything is highlighted I can see where I am weak, what is missing, and how to fix it. So, I go back and I edit again! And edit again! And edit again. I think you get the idea, I edit a lot!
Then I sit and read it out loud, listening for beats that are off, words that don’t flow, and stumbling blocks. Once the reading is done, I sit and go through my millions of sticky notes and make all those changes.
Once I’m happy with the manuscript, I beg my Readerlicious girls to read it, give me comments, tell me that it doesn’t truly suck, or that it does. Once the comments are in, I go through and yes. Wait for it…edit again, and fix everything that they found. Then I ship it off to my kindle and read it like I would read any other published book. Hopefully, after I’m done reading it, I’m still in love with the characters and the story, if I’m not then I rinse and repeat the whole editing process.
It’s head pounding insane, but you know that you love writing when you look forward to that amount of work every single day.
This is my process, not glamorous, or unusual, but it works for me.
And the blog hop continues. Next Monday, you’ll get a chance to meet the two authors I’m tagging: Sandy Wright and Vaun Murphey..
