Lucky Seven: ASHES AND WINE
Cindi Madsen tagged me in this fun little thing making the rounds on the writing circuit.
Here are the rules:
1. Go to page 77 of your current MS
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines – sentences or paragraphs – and post them as they’re written. No cheating.
4. Tag 7 authors
5. Let them know
This is from my ASHES AND WINE novella from Entangled. I’m just into the first pass edits. So, God knows what this bad boy looks like. It’s a scene between Tessa and her friend Mercy and there is much tequila involved.
She needed to get some water in her or she was going to be absolutely useless by morning. Did tequila draw every last bit of moisture out of your mouth? “Tell me how you really feel.”
“Alaric, who names their kid Alaric? That’s just asking for their kid to be an overbearing, arrogant piece of overbearing—”
“You said overbearing.”
Mercy stabbed a finger at her. “It bears repeating!”
Tessa forced a wide plastic cup into her hand, half full of water. “Drink this.”
“What is it? More tequila?”
“Water.”
Mercy made a raspberry noise with her lips, but glugged back the contents anyway. “It should be tequila,” she said sadly. “I think I might be in love with Alaric. Stupid name.”
And now…tagging.
*rubs hands*
Cari Quinn
Faye Roberts
Ros Clark
Kiersten Krum
Leigh James
Alice Keezer
Joshua Keezer
Avoidance = Twitter
Yep. I’m in the end stages of first pass edits with my book ASHES AND WINE. And seriously…It’s heavy stuff. So heavy that I keep avoiding it and it’s taking WAY too long to finish. So instead I went on Twitter and lost…oh, roughly 3hrs to mancandy, book recs, new release squeeing, and tv lusting. Now part of it is good social play. As an author they tell you to go play with people and don’t mention your book. Just let people enjoy you and the reading will probably follow.
So part of a twitter frenzy is good for my social media side of things. But it’s no less of an avoidance technique. One that I used WAY too much in the last 2 weeks. Another one was an ungodly string of Scarecrow and Mrs. King episodes. (Shh. Don’t judge. Bruce was WAY hot in the 80′s) Amazon Prime has a level of evil that I have to get under control. Oh and Pinterest. That’s just in league with the devil. Period. But since I’m a visual writer it’s also another tool that I love.
But in the end the avoidance is just fear. This is my 2nd book with a bigger house. And there’s a lot of good press going on with Entangled. I don’t want to fuck it up. That’s the bottom line. I want this book to be filled with awesome and it’s making me a little crazy. And as my editor told me, it’s already great…it sold, right? But the pressure to make this story awesome is all on me.
Because the other part of the avoidance factor is the subject matter of this novella. Death and family and coping. It brings back a lot of personal crap that’s still very fresh. It helps with the writing because I know first hand what it’s like to watch a parent die, but it also feels very invasive.
Hopefully that equates to good writing.
*crosses fingers*
*steps away from Twitter*
Time to finish, dammit.
Editing, Writing & Friends
Most of my weekend was spent with this guy in mind. Royal Andreas from my first Entangled Publishing novella under their Ever After line. I’m in the first pass phase of edits for ASHES AND WINE. This is probably the last time I’ll have complete control over the ins and outs of this story. My editor is pretty fabulous and I’m looking forward to working with him on the nuances that will come up when we get deeper into the editing process. But for now I have a list of wants and needs that he feels I should be adding to my manuscript.
I think they will add a lot to the story, but man…it’s hard to slash. And I will, and have been, slashing whole passages from my 1st version of the story. Already, I know he was right in some of the choices. I had to tone down some of my sexier passages and beef up Tessa’s story so it wasn’t Royal with a side of Tessa.
I spent most of the weekend with some writer pals and we laughed, bitched, moaned, ate a lot of bad-for-you food and spent a little too much time on twitter as we worked. I wouldn’t want it any other way…well, except for 12 more hours in the day sometimes.
If you’re reading and would like to share…I’d love to hear your side of the story on 1st round edits.