Teaser Tuesdays!

{So, talking to a writer friend, I realized that authors should post a blog once a week. I assumed that it was three times a week but I may have gotten blog posting mixed up with social media postings!

Instead of boring you with statistics and cover details, I will try to do this whole "one blog post per week" thing with Teaser Tuesdays! A fair warning: the teasers will most likely be unedited...}

He usually didn’t awake in such a startled manner but it wasn’t the case that morning. Areiv was alarmed to find there was no human in his bed and there was a variety of scents coming from the other room. He immediately got out of bed to investigate at least the strange aromas, not bothering to clothe himself. When he walked into his dining area, Areiv was greeted with Lindsay’s warm smile as she put plates of food on his table.

“Morning!” she approached him and gave the confused alien a kiss. “You usually walk around naked?” she grinned, embracing him. Areiv returned the smile and kiss.

“… No. I smelled these new aromas and… you were not beside me when I awoke. I was worried.”

“Oh, sorry! I got up before you did and… wanted to do something to thank you for last night…”

“… You are wearing one of my tunics…” Areiv noticed. He didn’t know why but seeing Lindsay in his clothing made him smile more. The Baron switched glances from her to the food on the table. “What is all this?”

“This is an Earth American breakfast! I made scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes and… oh, wait; you can digest our food, right?” the thought suddenly occurred to Lindsay. Areiv chuckled as he wrapped his arms around her, planting a kiss on her forehead.

“Yes, of course. Is it customary to thank someone after performing the mating ritual…?”

“Well… no. I just wanted to surprise you.”

“I see. This is a lovely surprise, Lindsay. I was simply alarmed because I looked forward to you by my side when I awake. However, no one aside from the royal chefs has ever prepared a meal for me. I do believe I will take full advantage of being mated to an Earth woman.” the Baron took note. Lindsay blushed at his confession but finally laughed at his later statement.

“I have a smart aleck alien on my hands…”

The Covers!

Ran into a bit of a snag as far as updating/posting/editing. Beyond the Milky Way will contain a couple of sex scenes. And, I'm not good at writing those things; writing them during sprints? Yeah, no. 

In the meanwhile, I want to not only share with you some covers for the story but also let you know that I made the decision to switch the main genre from Science Fiction to Romance. After I received a review that made me scratch my head and complaining to a couple of writer friends about it, it dawned on me that the reviewer was expecting a lot of SciFi-y details. They were disappointed that one particular part didn't do anything for the growth of the characters or flow. 

{SPOILER: the races aren't important...}

Now that that's out the way, I wanted to waste time show you the covers that were made for this story!

1. This was the original cover used on Wattpad. The story was first published on AFF but the site doesn't give you an option for adding a cover. Wattpad does. Keep in mind that none of these are stock pictures. I honestly just went to Google and searched "galaxy". Then I went to Ribbet to crop the photo to roughly 252x400, probably brightened it and then took that picture to piZap and added the font. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, mac n cheesy! :D 

 

2. For some reason, it won't center but that's not the point! Welcome to the rewrite! On the far left is the original cover (for some reason my pen name is missing and I can't remember why...). This time around, when I went to Google, I wanted a picture of the Milky Way galaxy... and I know that because we're actually in it, we won't have a picture of the likes that I was wanting. Problem was, this was the picture that appeared when I Googled and I thought the quasar was cool-looking; the title is literally exploding quasar Milky Way. BAM! Cover for the rewrite! The cover in the middle was my actual first one; I really liked the way my name looked but if you merely glance at it, the Z looks like a G. Redo and you have the third pic!

3. This is the baby. She's the one (and as you can see, my background...)! This is the cover you will see when I publish this story. One of my writer friends has a knack for making covers; this was her end result. I always felt that whenever she asked if any of us in our writing group wanted a cover for stories, it was her way of nicely saying: "Your current cover sucks, let me fix that for you"! In my case, they do. I don't have the equipment to do covers the way I truly would like them; she does. When she asked me if she could design the cover, I was all "sure". I gave her the pic of my former cover and after a while, she asked if the galaxy had to be Andromeda and I was like O_o. Those last covers, for those who aren't science and space heads, were indeed of the closest known galaxy to the Milky Way, Andromeda. Damnit, Google! She wanted to do a Star Trek-type theme and this cover was born!

So, there you have it: a history of covers! If nothing else, I am excited to see this in print soon and I hope you will be as well! Now... I sleep!

A Small Update

Nothing major to report except that I'm closing in on 50K for Beyond the Milky Way! I had all the plans in the world to have it finished before the start of Camp NaNo but it doesn't look like that will be the case. No worries, though: I'll just work on two stories at once. I've somewhat proven that it is possible to write 50k words in a month, even with the procrastination I'm known for!

Thanks to a fellow writer, I was introduced to this app called Writeometer. It is a mobile app but helps you more than you think! It's main idea is for word sprints, which you can set the timer to how many minutes you desire. My friend was used to thirty minute sprints until she asked me to join in. With my time constraints, I could only do fifteen minute sprints; she eventually told me that those worked out better for her as well!

So, once you download the app, you fill in what project you're working on. I haven't truly tested the limits but I have three projects so far; I have no idea if you can add more. After that, you set the other perimeters like your word count goal overall as well as your daily one. It'll calculate how long it will take for you to reach your overall goal, depending on your daily word goal. But, you can adjust all you want.

So, I lied. Looking through the logs for my project, I started on February 11th. I already had a little over 4k words. So far, I have 120 entries of fifteen minute sprints but nineteen empty days; basically, days where I didn't write. Well... I guess it's not a TOTAL lie; my math is wonky but I believe that adds up to a little over a month. Hey, I leave all that math stuff to my mathematician husband, thank you!

Sprints help to fight that procrastination. Because it's just like NaNoWriMo; they don't ask for it to be perfect. The only requirement is to write. What I do is I have two documents up whenever I do sprints for my Beyond the Milky Way project; this is because I'm revising from the 2nd revision (yes, it is a bit of cheating but I am changing quite a bit; I'm not copying word for word). The first is the last revision and the latter is the revision being worked on. After I finish a chapter and log in all the sprints I've done, I open up another document: this one is the one you guys see posted on the sites I mentioned in my last entry. I found it very helpful to have a separate document for revisions because they alter your original word count. The second revision is actually 47462 words in; the totally revised document has 34397. If I count where I've stopped revising for the third time (if that makes sense...) then the second one has 35056. 659 words is practically two word sprints for me!

Yes; you've gotten a glimpse into my method of madness! I am working on my third revision of the story, and after receiving some valuable feedback from another writer, I'm going through a fourth one before it will be ready for print! I am hoping to have this done by my birthday; that would be nice!

And now I leave you; I have a house to tend to. Well... a husband and some laundry. But, according to Writeometer, all I need is 231 words a day to reach 50K by the 24th. Sad that the story won't be finished at 50k but hey, progress is progress! :D

Behold! An Author's Blog!

It took me a while to finally figure out how I wanted to go about connecting this blog and my writing. At first, I wanted to share chapters with anyone who was willing to read. But then, I realized that I was mainly a fanfic writer and my chapters are at least 8k...

The blog would have been cluttered...

But, now, with a bit of pushing from writer friends, I decided to take the road of becoming published. For some reason, the light bulb came on and I knew what I wanted to do with this blog: my readers will travel on this journey with me!

Let's be clear. I am in no way a professional writer. I didn't take any creative writing classes. I don't have any degrees to brag about. I've never considered anything that I wrote remotely publishable. What helped me was the fact that I stepped out of my norm. I usually take around four to six months to write a chapter, let Word tell me which words are misspelled and post away. As I've stated, my chapters are at least 8k, averaging around twenty Word pages.

This time? I'm doing word sprints. I reread what I've done. I run it through two editing programs. I've cut my chapters in half. And then I post. I post, if not every day, every other day. I have a system!

The story that I'm working on is entitled Beyond the Milky Way. I don't want to lie to you; it started off as a fanfic. In my mind, it wasn't a fanfic at all. The story was loosely based off the anime Oban Star Racers. And by loosely, I mean the only thing it had in common with the cartoon was the name of the planet and the theme of intergalactic racing. It was a Self Insert with two celebrities. I eventually turned it into a prequel of the anime; it told of the first generation of earthlings that participated in the races.

In my head, I always wondered about the first set of earthlings to compete. The anime didn't focus on that, of course. It was my reasoning for starting the story.

So! I wrote it and honestly named it "Fan Fiction". I had no intentions of sharing it with the world! I was halfway done when the ideas of the sequel came to mind. I started on that (lovingly named "Fan Fiction 2"). Yes: I have two stories in the same series, both unfinished.

I have no idea what convinced me to post it. But, I did. It received one review, saying how hot the alien sex was! I knew that I had to revise it, to take the celebrities out of it. When I did, I posted the revision on another site. I got plenty of feedback (it was forced, but that's a story for another post...) and put the story on hold.

I won't lie: I only listened to half of that feedback. A lot of those people wanted to know more about the aliens I invented. And let me tell you: it was hard to invent them; these people wanted to know about their planets, their lifestyles, their foods...

The point of the story is not with the aliens but more on the two leaders of the Earth team. Perhaps one day, I will make a side story with more details about the side characters. It was just funny that one story I write, people say I put too much detail in; with this one, it seems it's not enough.

I've rambled enough! I'm working on my second revision of the story and reposted it. I'm getting a lot of positivity from it this go round and it was another deciding factor of it being the one I publish. I'm making a lot of leeway with it but we shall see if the world agrees with the seven fans that I have!

My author's blog will be dedicated to the updates of the writing of Beyond the Milky Way as well as the publishing process. It is available to read for free on several sites:

Wattpad
AFF (for readers and writers 18 and up)
AO3
Tablo
Booksie Silk

There are a couple of other sites but they don't get as much activity overall, in my opinion. If you want to know the name of the others, feel free to ask. Otherwise; select one of those links and please enjoy!