Sometimes Stellar Storyteller Six Word Story Challenge

Here we go again! “Discontent” is the word of this week’s challenge.

New Writing Plan

Don’t I always have a new writing plan? Aren’t I always changing it?

The answer to that is…no. No, I don’t always have a new writing plan because for the longest time I haven’t been writing. You can’t have a real plan if you’re not actually writing.

Does this mean I’m writing now? Not really, no. But I will be. Very soon.

So! My plan is this:

First I need to finish reading what I previously wrote so I can remember the style etc of what I was attempting. Luckily, this isn’t such a long process as there’s only about 6k words written. Still, it will take a bit of time as I have other things that need my attention.

For instance, I have fitness stuff that I’m going through right now (meeting with the fitness director for hopefully my first teaching job! I’ll keep you posted on that in Fitness Freak.). I’m also proofreading a book for someone. It’s what I do best really – nitpick grammar, spelling, etc. Not fun when the writing’s crap but hers is never crap. Wordy perhaps, but never crap. Honestly, if the first chapter is any indication as to the rest of the book, this is going to be a seriously easy proofread. I mean, when you start your first sentence off with a kid puking rainbow sprinkles on your protagonist’s shoes, I figure the author’s got something in those pages that needs to be read.

There’s something about Night’s Treasure that’s been nagging me. A couple somethings really. But since it’s a full-length novel I don’t particularly relish going back and figuring out how to fix it if indeed it does need fixing. After all, I could be overthinking it.

The manuscript’s lack of success in the publishing world still has me bummed because it’s my baby and I want people to like her. So I’m putting her to the side and focusing on something a bit more manageable. Way back when I was hung up on writing the sequel to NT, I thought to give my brain a rest from Sophy and her trials and tribulations (though not from Greek mythology) so I started up a novella about Psyche. She was the mortal who married Eros, the Greek god of love.

You know, Cupid? Valentine’s Day? Little chubby toddler with wings and a bow and arrow. Except he does grow into a man so we’re not treading on sensibilities and morals by being baby-marrying pedophiles.

Anyway, I wanted it to be a series of novellas about ladies from Greek mythology – goddess and mortal alike. I wasn’t sure what I could do with them but I knew I wanted to write them. People nowadays take a myth and completely change it for their retelling. They want to give something fresh and original. Sometimes it doesn’t resemble the original myth at all and that’s fine. Each to his own. There are tons of retellings of myths and fairytales I love to read.

I, however, wanted my novella series to be more in depth tellings of the myth.

Is that a word – tellings? Tellings…hmm. Well, it is now!

I wanted to keep to the original myth (or one version of it anyway) and give it more life and feeling. Put stuff in it to flesh it out and give the characters a life outside of what was originally told. We don’t know much about the inner workings of the people so I want to delve into that.

So while the myth is basically the same, it’s not. Does that make sense?

Anyway, if it does or if it doesn’t I’m still going to do it. These won’t be YA or NA like Night’s Treasure was. These will definitely be for adults. While everyone says Aphrodite was the goddess of love, to me she’s always seemed more like the goddess of lust and her son, Eros, was more the god of actual love. So I’m going with that idea and putting in more adult content.

Although these stories will be Adult instead of New Adult or Young Adult, they will be in the same kind of world as Night’s Treasure. What I mean is, the way I portray the gods in these novellas will be the same way they’re portrayed in NT. They’ll be the same people, just in another time period. Hopefully they’ll garner interest for NT when I try to get an agent later.

The last thing I wanted to say about my new writing plan is that instead of looking for an agent for these novellas, I’ll be going the route of self-publishing. I’ve been reading a lot of self-published books lately and I’ve been thinking my novellas would fit better in that line rather than in the traditional line of getting published. Does that make sense?

Anyway, there’s my plan! Wish me luck with Psyche’s story!

Lastly, just because I can and I thought this was funny…

Sometimes Stellar Storyteller Six Word Story Challenge

6-word story. Challenge word is Tease.

Ready? GO!

Books Over Reality

That really says it all, don’t you think? When it seems like humanity’s gone crazy and all’s wrong in the world, I can pick up a book and forget it all. I can pick up a book and transport myself into a realm of myths and legends, of fantasy, of horror. A place where good triumphs over evil and love live happily ever after.

As a writer, I can create the same worlds for myself and for others. It’s harder than just picking up a book and reading but it’s worth it. To have created a world like that. I don’t need to pick up the book to lose myself in it because it’s all in my head. I know all the ins and outs and I can make it how I want it to be.

It’s too bad I can’t do the same with the real world.

So I read and I write and I try to ignore the bad stuff happening. Some of it gets through and I can’t stop that, but I can continue to read and write and try to spread happiness where I can.

Sometimes Stellar Storyteller Six Word Story Challenge

This week’s 6 Word Story Challenge from Sometimes Stellar Storyteller is a good one.

Using the given prompt word, write a 6-word story and leave it in the comments on her blog. She’ll pick a winner next Friday.

The word is… Insult.

Sometimes Stellar Storyteller Six Word Story Challenge

Every Saturday Sometimes Stellar Storywriter hosts a 6-word story challenge. She gives a word prompt and you make a “story” that’s 6 words long and leave it as a comment on that page. Whoever’s entry gets the most likes wins. Simple. Nothing fancy. The word this week is “Naughty.” Go check it out!

Book Review – Tim McGregor

Writing World seems to be filling up with book reviews lately. What happened to my writing life? It’s on hold I guess because I haven’t been writing, I’ve been reading. A lot. It’s fun.

The book of the day is The Spookshow by Tim McGregor.

I found this one, again, through a deal listed on BookBub. I got it for free on Amazon and I have to say that I’m really glad it was free. Even 99 cents would have been too much.

I had such high hopes for it because it sounded really interesting – a good spook fest. But I was doomed to disappointment. There were lots of good qualities about this book, one of which was the premise. The story could’ve been so good if it had been fleshed out a little more.

It was too short for one, way too short. And the horror aspects were glossed over. For a horror story, that’s a no-no. I know a lot of times less is more and I’m not into the gross out factor of blood and guts flying everywhere, but every time something truly scary could’ve happened, McGregor skipped ahead and only thought back to the scene in vague terms.

I’m going to try not to spoil anything here, but there was one instance I’d like to use as an example. Billie and Mockler are walking through Murder House. She sees things but you don’t get to see any of it through her eyes. You only hear her telling a bit (not detailed) about what she’s seeing. Then she says she needs to get out, doubles over to throw up…and the chapter ends. The next chapter starts up after it’s all done.

What just happened? You then get a brief recap of what Mockler remembers and you get his feelings of what he experienced and saw. But none of it elicited likewise feelings from me. For a true scare I want to see and experience what Billie sees and experiences. Or, in the case of Mockler witnessing what happens to Billie in the house, I want to be there in the moment in Mockler’s brain. I want to see it and feel it, not have him think back on it.

This book could have been so good if McGregor hadn’t kept the reader distanced from it all and had fleshed out the really juicy parts. If someone is going to be dragged across the floor by unseen hands, you want the reader right there experiencing it, not hearing about it later in vague terms. It’s just not the same.

I will, however, keep reading in the hopes that the second book, Welcome to the Spookshow, is better. It’s longer so there’s hope in my mind for more detail. I’ll be able to learn about the near-drowning experience that is continually referred to in this book but never fully explained (which was a bit annoying) because the second book is a prequel to this first one. It would’ve made more sense to have the second one actually be the first one but the first one probably came about first (obviously) and then enough interest was generated to write the events that came previously. There’s really no help for that when it happens. I’m just glad he wrote about the previous events at all.

If I had had to pay for this second book, no, I would not continue reading based off of this first book. I hate saying that because I’m shooting another author down and the book has a lot of potential. But it’s true and I don’t want to mislead people. I enjoyed The Spookshow but not enough to pay money. I am looking forward to reading Welcome to the Spookshow. I still have hopes that he’ll do a better job because the skill and the ideas are there. I just wish he had done a little more editing before publishing.

Enough of that. If you sign up for his newsletter (which I did), you get the second book free so it was a win-win for me.

“Tim McGregor is an author and screenwriter. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children. Some days, he believes in ghosts, other days, not so much.”

Book Review – Robyn Peterman

This is the final book I bought on my BookBub savings spree. Don’t get me wrong, I bought tons of free books (and still get 1-2 every week), but this is the last one I BOUGHT…with real money (as opposed to Monopoly money) after reading a free sample.

Author: Robyn Peterman

“NYT and USA Today best selling author, Robyn Peterman writes because the people inside her head won’t leave her alone until she gives them life on paper. She writes snarky, sexy, funny paranormal and snarky, sexy, funny contemporaries.

Her addictions include laughing really hard with friends, shoes (the expensive kind), Target, Coke Zero Cherry with extra ice in a styrofoam cup, bejeweled reading glasses, her kids, her super-hot hubby and collecting stray animals.

A former professional actress, with Broadway, film and T.V. credits, she now lives in the south with her family and too many animals to count. Writing gives her peace and makes her whole, plus having a job where she can work in her underpants works really well for her.”

Book: Switching Hour: Magic and Mayhem Book One

It’s hard to find the correct adjectives to describe Switching Hour. I haven’t read anything like it before. I have a feeling one of my creative writing teachers in college would sneer at it and say the writer wasn’t taking her craft seriously therefore it wasn’t worth reading. He was a bit serious. More into literary fiction I think.

While Switching Hour can’t even pretend to be serious literature, it’s really fun and that’s just how I like them. The “heroine” is snarky, shallow, and disrespectful (as evidenced at the start of the book where she’s in the “pokey”) but she is nice and does have a heart. It just takes a while for her heart to come out and play…and for good reason. Having an emotionally abusive mother and an absentee father not to mention never being able to keep a relationship with anyone will do that to a person.

The character was, for the most part, nicely constructed though there were some issues I had with her. Not her per se, but her portrayal. Throughout the entire book we’re told that she’s selfish (shown), shallow (barely shown), and unhinged (not shown).

Do you see my problem? I get minor references here and there that she’s shallow but she’s already getting over her shallowness so I don’t really see it. Mostly I just get to see that she’s a caring person who doesn’t want anyone to know it so she puts on this gruff exterior to hide it.

As for unhinged, I didn’t get that anywhere. Yeah, she threatens Shifters left and right but there’s nothing to show me that she’ll go through with her threatens to smite them. Except in one insistence and it wasn’t smiting – it was turning someone into a flat-chested baldy. And then she felt bad about it immediately after so she reversed the spell. That’s not crazy. That’s proving you’ll go through with your threats and then allowing the person the opportunity to be better later.

Good, practical tactics. Not unhinged.

Things also moved too quickly and were way too easy but I guess that’s the problem when you get a book that’s less than 200 pages. 134 pages to be exact (although Amazon says it’s 222 that’s probably counting the excerpts from the other books that have been added after the book’s ending). She could have easily given it an extra 100 pages in the middle and fixed that quickie problem.

The fight scene at the end was also hurried and waaaaaaay to easily finished. Now that’s disappointing because, while I can usually ignore hurried writing (to an extent), I can’t ignore a climax being anticlimactic and short.

If you don’t read the foreword before the book, you might think (like I did because I maybe kinda sorta only glanced over it) Sassy is an unexplained character who should be edited out of the book because she disappears after the beginning. The foreword assures you that she will return at some point though how she’s Zelda’s best friend I don’t know. I don’t see it myself because their relationship wasn’t really fleshed out as it didn’t really matter for the rest of this first book.

All in all I found the book quite fun to read but not worth the paperback price. I got the Kindle version for 99 cents and that’s appropriate. Audible has it for $1.99 which I think is actually pretty cheap considering audiobooks are notoriously expensive.