C-c-c-coooold

Hello lovelies, what's new?


Me, I am in hibernation, staying inside where it is warm. Mind you I had a shower last night and steam rose from my skin so it's not as warm in here as I'm pretending. But it's warmer than out there. And there are blankets in here.
I seem to have completely forgotten how much colder it was in Leeds, London, Scotland and New York a year and a half ago. But the buildings in those places were better insulated. Except for the haunted castle in the Scottish High Country. Now THAT was cold.


I have two weeks left of my semester break from University, therefore am finishing up work on my Certificate IV in Small Business Management (which I snuck in, during the break). I  passed all my assessments, just have to finish my Business Plan now.
I've been working on my website which I think is coming along well and will be unveiled within a couple of weeks and as soon as I post this blog I'm changing the background to match the forthcoming website so that's all rather exciting.
I've been doing some copy editing of sales and marketing documents which has been an interesting experience - interesting in a good way because I've been learning new things as I edit! Coolies.
And I'm currently doing a manuscript appraisal of a novel and am happy to say I'm really enjoying it. It makes the job a lot easier.
Plus I've formatted a few books for eBook distribution lately and I love seeing them up and being purchased and reviewed. I feel like their success is partly my success - even though I only had a small hand in it. I'm proud of them. 


Oh! And the video shop has NOT been robbed for a third time yet, so that's nice.


I'm currently reading The Carrie Diaries: Summer in the City and am getting a kick out of meeting Samantha and Miranda when they were younger. Looking forward to seeing what Charlotte was like as a teenager. Will soon know!
I also just downloaded the sample of a new indie eBook, Restless Spirits by Jean Marie Bauhaus today.

"A paranormal investigator becomes the subject of her own investigation after stumbling into the crosshairs of a malevolent spirit. Finding herself a ghost and imprisoned in a house that's haunted by the spirit's other victims from across the ages, Veronica "Ron" Wilson discovers an afterlife that's full of surprises, the biggest of which is that ghosts can still fall in love. "

I have a secret passion for paranormal investigator TV shows so this sounds right up my alley. It's half-price on Smashwords at the moment so go check it out!

I just watched Lemonade Mouth, and have a new favourite Disney Channel movie and soundtrack. How funny is Wen? Great character. Disney Channel movies are not necessarily Acadamy Award worthy, but they're always fun and I love them all. 

My zombie novel is coming along slowly - very slowly - but it's coming along. Writing's taking a bit of a backburner at the moment. I'm grossing my out trying to find just the right, evocative words to describe a decaying corpse. Yeah. I'll be doing a writing class next semester so hopefully that will help get me back into the habit.

There you go, that's me lately. Not much to report really. :)

Hope you're all well!

Love Sairz

What I've been doing and stuff.

Hello Blogosphere, it is I. Sarah. I just realised today how very long it has been between posts, because in class we’re working on blogs and I had a quick squiz at mine and *cough*…so here I am.

Interesting stuff, actually. We're looking at digital publishing and as well as setting up blogs for the class, we had to rewrite a short story we had already written, but as 5 text messages, and look at how the different technology changes the way the story is told. And it did change the story. You should try it. Except YOU should use a good phone that doesn't make you swear because it keeps turning off mid-text message and moving the cursor so you're typing in the wrong place. You should use a different phone. Learn from me.

Anyway, that was just today. The whole rest of the time I was on mid-semester break for what felt like forever (not a complaint) and my exam went awesome (thanks for asking) and it’s not like I was just lounging around in my pyjamas all winter holidays (yes you American and British types! It’s winter and cold and rainy and very hard to get out of bed because I don't have central heating and the air outside of my doona is c-c-cold!) and technically that wasn’t much of a lie about spending most of my days in my pyjamas because, well, I was in my tracky daks (track suit) for a lot of it. But I wasn’t bludging. I was WRITING. I finished my first draft of an MG called What’s so cool about Carrie (Working Title) within the first four days (sing hallelujah! Sing it…haaaaaallelujah) and while giving myself some space away from that so I can crack the whip and slash pages, characters and kill all my darlings with no remorse when I’m not so attached to it, I got to work on the second draft of a YA book I wrote two years ago, which is now called The Kiss Off.

Two years was enough time for me to get out my butchers knife and hack the bejesus outta that book and feel good about it. The only problem with hacking the bejesus out of your first draft is you may end up with only about 30 pages that you’re going to keep and a whole bunch of awesome characters who need a brand-spanking-new story.

Which is what I did. Actually, what I’m still doing, I’m in the middle of the big ‘oh no she didn’t’ climax but don’t have the time or energy to finish it just now cos I’m back at Uni and working (hard for the money…so haaaaard for it honey) and this whole not finishing my book thing is frustrating. You know? Cos as soon as I finish The Kiss Off, I can get back to What’s so cool about Carrie? and get something off to my agent. I’m looking forward to finished drafts. Oh yes I am.

In other news, I just recently discovered Australia has an Ice Hockey league so I have found my sport of choice. I am not a sport fan, but I am an ice hockey fan, oh yes. Go Melbourne Ice! Can you imagine what the mascot looks like? I haven’t seen it yet. Do you reckon it’s just like, a snowball? Or a block of ice from the freezer tray?

I’ll keep you posted. If I remember.

Pretty much that’s been my last month. Writing, working and some ice hockey.

Thought I might share a teeny tiny snippet of what I’ve been working on since I’ve been working pretty hard. This is from the YA novel: The Kiss Off.

My protagonist, Poppy and her friend Vanya are helping their other friend Mads get ready for a date.

So we were in Mads’s room, Van and I scrutinizing every top she owned and Mads was kind of pacing, forehead furrowed as she glared at herself in the mirror.

‘I’m hideous.’ She said, throwing her hands in the air in defeat. ‘Why am I doing this to him?’

‘What are you talking about? Doing what?’ I asked.

‘This. Tonight, why am I subjecting Dev to the hideousness that is me.’

‘Oh shut up Mads,’ Vanya said. Mads crossed her arms and huffed.

‘I’m with her.’ I nodded at Van as she tossed another top into the “hell no” pile in the corner.

‘You’re pretty and nice and sweet and he likes you. You don’t have anything to worry about.’

‘And you can hardly notice the pimples anymore,’ Vanya said helpfully. Mads gasped and slapped her hand to her chin. I pulled it away and clasped both her hands in mine, squeezing them reassuringly.

‘And you’ve got us there to help you.’

For a moment she seemed to be settling down, but then she pulled her hands away, strode to the other side of the room and declared: ‘I’m not pretty, I’m horrible, I’m hideous, I’m disfigured!’

‘What are you talking about?’

And that was when she whipped her top off. Just like that. She pointed to her boobs. Her naked boobs. This was new.

‘Um, Mads,’ I started.

‘I like this one!’ Vanya threw whatever top she was holding at the time at Mads’s chest. It happened to be her gym uniform. Mads threw it to the “hell no” pile.

‘Look at them,’ she said. ‘Look at the left one, it’s growing as big as a porn star’s but then look at the right. It looks like my dad’s boobs!’ I didn’t exactly want to, but since she was being so demanding about it, I checked out her boobs. I looked from the left to the right and back again.

‘They look fine to me.’

‘They’re not fine!’

‘What do you think, Van?’

Vanya huffed, shook her head, bent at the waist and squinted at Mads’s boobs.

‘You say the left one’s bigger?’ She asked.

‘It is!’

‘I don’t think you have to worry. The other one’ll catch up.’ Van stood up and crossed her arms with a nod.

‘And besides, Mrs. McCleary said it’s perfectly normal to have one boob bigger than the other.’ I reassured her.

‘You see it too, then?’ Mads looked panic stricken. ‘That the left is bigger?’

‘No!’ Vanya and I both shouted.

‘You don’t?’

‘Your boobs are fine, Mads.’ I told her, picking up a baby pink singlet from the “maybe” pile. I handed it to her slowly. Thankfully, she clutched it to her chest.

Vanya held up Mads’s vintage electric blue MotoCross jacket, and we had a winner.

‘I think that’d look good with some long necklaces, don’t you?’

See you erm…sometime before the end of the year?

Sairz

Characters always LOOKING at each other

It was serendipitous timing, when Nathan Bransford posted his latest blog about writing tics, because that's something I've been thinking about a bit while working on a book revision.

Though this is a big revision, so it's more "writing book from scratch" for the most part and I'm not actively looking for my writing tics, but it made me think about what they are. And as all writers do, I have a few.

Mine are different to what I thought they were going to be though. How do I know for SURE which words are showing up in my manuscript more than others?

I created a word cloud with Wordle. Mine has a lot of LOOKED, LIKE, AROUND and BACKs in it. Yeah, okay, my characters look at each other, look at the floor, the wall, into the distance, I understand why there's a lot of LOOKing. Much of this is probably unnecessary and I'll be hacking away at it in my next pass. AROUND probably follows many of the LOOKs, but LIKE? And BACK? It'll be interesting to see what sort of context all of those BACKs and LIKEs are in.

My Word Cloud looks pretty kick ass, I just don't know how to save it to show you. Any clues?

In the meantime, back to my revisions! I'm on mid-semester break at the moment and spending it being as productive as I can. Spending most of my holiday in my writing cave keeps me out of the FREEZING cold weather outside, so I think I've made the right choice. :)

Ciao for now,

Sairz