Cool Tool, Another Interview, and Title Problems

I discovered this awesome writing tool that you should all check out. It's called The Wasteline Test and checks a sample of your writing (up to 1,200 words) for be-verbs, abstract nouns, prepositions, adjectives and adverbs, it this that and there. It'll then give each of the four categories a rating: lean, fat and trim, needs toning, flabby, or heart attack. It's only a guide but I think it's a pretty handy tool that I'm going to start using and thought you all might want to learn about it too.

Author Katie Hines interview me here. The questions were really fun to answer this time around and I go into a fair amount of detail about Knight of Glory that you all will hopefully enjoy! :)

I posted on facebook about my titles problem with Torn Between Murder and Love. So many wonderful choices to pick from! I've narrowed the choices down to three:

Assassination of Love

Hidden in Shadows

Lorna's Deadly Choices

Which do you like best?

Winner and Lori Foster Get Together

First things first, the winner of an ecopy of Knight of Glory is.... Janice! Congrats, Janice, I'll email you.

To refresh your memory here is my list:

1. I've never broken a bone. TRUE
2. I married the only man I've ever kissed. TRUE
3. Wintertime is my least favorite time of the year. TRUE
4. At one time, I wanted to be an actress. TRUE
5. I love to fly. FALSE
6. I planned my wedding. TRUE
7. I sometimes think I was born in the wrong century. TRUE (You get a virtual cookie if you know which century I think I should have been a part of!)

It's not that I hate flying, it's more that flying scares me. Hubby always says you're more likely to get in a car crash than a plane crash to which I reply, you're more likely to survive a car crash than a plane crash.

Now about the Get Together:

I got in Friday afternoon, took a shuttle to the hotel, checked-in and met my roommate, Michelle Levigne. Registered (the bags were awesome, full of goodies) and proudly wore my heart bead author necklace.

If I give you a detailed account of everything, it'll just bore you so I'll just move on to the highlights. I didn't go to any of the workshops as they were going on while other things were too so it just didn't work out. I had signed up for an editor appointment and was able to stand by and get in with an agent as well.

The editor, Margo from HQN, was such a great person, easy to talk to. I didn't feel intimidated at all and she set me at ease. I pitched her Torn Between Murder and Love. She asked for the 1st 3 chapters and the synopsis. Yay! She also did mention that I should probably change my title, that the cover art department had been asking for titles shorter than 5 words. She also said she could see that (torn between murder and love) on the back of the book.

The agent, Laura Bradford, had already rejected my fantasy YA so I pitched her my assassin story as well. And she asked for the 1st 50 pages. So two appointments, two partial requests! I was extremely happy about that.

I met a bunch of wonderful people at the conference: besides Michelle, there was Diane Craver (the three of us were the representatives of Desert Breeze), DeNita Tuttle, Jennifer Allison, Sara Reyes, among others. I also briefly met Faith Bicknell-Brown and Trinity Blacio from a bunch of the yahoo groups that I belong to.

Faith's Avoid Writers Hell yahoo group (AWH) contributed two huge baskets and a small trunk. There were about 150 raffle baskets, some with huge prizes including a Nook, a Kobo, an iPad, and DBP authors pitched in to get a Jet ereader. I bought a lot of raffle tickets and dumped most into the Nook basket but won zero baskets. Several people won multiple baskets, and I was so envious. The proceeds went to One Way Farm, for abused kids. We ended up raising over 5,500 for the charity.

I also want to mention the fun and games at the pirate party courtesy of DeNita Tuttle and Author Island. It was a lot of fun and some of the people went all out with their costumes, it was crazy!

Hubby and I are going to take our boy to the park now so I better wrap this up. Any one have any ideas for a new title for my assassin story? I would appreciate any input!

Acceptance

I woke up this morning to a wonderful email - an acceptance from Pill Hill Press for a short (A New Magical Earth) in their Daily Flash anthology. It's a for the love of market but the exposure has to be good. Plus the flash piece only took me about a half hour to submit, edit down to under 500 words, and submit.

Other than that flash piece, my muse has been on vacation. Which is fine with me, after all I wrote 56k in 6 weeks to finish up Torn Between Murder and Love. But June it'll be back to the grind, I have several ideas that I want to get started on.

In the mean time, I'm getting ready for the Lori Foster Reader and Writer Get Together. I have so much to do yet and the conference is next week already! I'm really excited about going.

How are you all doing with your writing? Is your muse cooperating or giving you a hard time? I would love to hear about your latest WIP!

More on Edits

Each writer has there own distinct style. I'm sure there are a few (whom I utterly despise) that can sell their first draft. Few and far between. Most authors have to revise and edit and polish their stories several times before they send their babies to editors at publishing houses and/or agents.

For me, my rough draft is the meat and potatoes of the story: the dialogue and the action. Some emotions. But I tend to gloss over the descriptive parts of the story, the garnishes, the loaded aspect of the potatoes, the marinade.

Right now, I'm just editing Torn Between Murder and Love for content errors. Then I'll go back through it again and add in more descriptive passages and more emotion. The main character, Lorna, undergoes a big character change, and I have to make certain its believable, otherwise the story will fall flat.

I think some of the reason why I had a hard time adding description into my stories from the start comes from my tendency to gloss over the big paragraphs of setting and description in books. I love my imagination and I like to see the characters and the buildings as I want to see them, and since it doesn't always mash up with what the author says, I ignore the author. LOL Wow, does that sound narcissistic. But I honestly think that's where my problem comes from.

What about you? Is there any part of your writing that you have to go back and add? Or do you just tighten up and fix grammar when you edit?

Editing

I'm working hard on editing Torn Between Murder and Love.

It's amazing, I can type for hours and it doesn't bother me, but when I'm editing, I have to take breaks for my eyes and I almost always develop a headache. Maybe because I'm working too hard.

So far, I've cut out nearly 1K tightening up the story. There are parts, especially toward the end, where I'll need to add in more descriptions, so hopefully it'll round out to about 100K. It's at 96K right now.

What's your self-editing process? Have any helpful hints/tips/suggestions? Anyone might want to critique it once I'm done editing it?

Writing Update

Last night, I finished my assassin WIP. Woot! It's called Torn Between Murder and Love.

Lorna McCloud likes to think she's an assassin for the money and because she's good at it. But the real reason, because she was traumatized after witnessing her father's murder, is one she longs to keep buried. However a fresh lead in the cold case brings her closer to discovering her father's murderer.

Along the way, Lorna is captured by the Paranormal Intelligence Agency (PIA) and learns she is a paranorm with the ability of shadow manipulation. She flees to Creigh, where the country's king, Alaric, has an enormous bounty on his head.

Instead of killing Alaric, Lorna falls for him. When he learns that she is the assassin, he wants nothing to do with her. However they are linked -- there is some evidence suggesting her father and his killer had been on Creigh before the island had been discovered. Furthering digging reveals that the island's original inhabitants had been killed, most likely by the same man who later killed Lorna's father.

Will Lorna ever have her revenge? Has her assassin lifestyle doomed her to a life without love? And the PIA -- what do they want from Lorna?


Okay, that pitch is awful but it gives you a general idea what the story is about. I'll definitely have to work on it and polish the pitch as well as the story before the conference in June!