Platitudes, Schmatitudes

Unlike my darling critique partner, I don't need someone else creating annoying acronyms to keep me on track. I consider myself extremely lucky that i can announce that i just finished my WIP! Battle for Valhalla, an exciting urban fantasy about a kick-ass Valkyrie heroine, is now done. Woo hoo!

And, even better, the agent i met with in Dallas, at the RWA National Conference, emailed me and said "You have an interesting premise and some intriguing characters, and I’d love to see the complete manuscript." Pitching rocks, no matter what Sonja says.

Which means, of course, that Sonja now has to rework her priority list (I'm always throwing things out of whack) and make editing my most recent writing! And, of course, while she's doing that, I'll be relaxing in the south of France. Yep, that's right, I get to go on vacation. Lucky me!

Of course, not so lucky is the fact that as soon as I'm back, school starts. Anyone have any study tips? If you do, I'll send you a book. Yeah, that's right, I will. Not Sonja. She can't be the only one in this partnership giving away things (or paying for postage). So send me either a study tip or a horror story from school and Sonja will pick a winner and I'll send off a book. When I'm back from France, that is. :)

I'll actually have internet access in France, so you might even get a post from me. But don't hold your breath, since there is an awful lot of cheese and wine calling my name.

Should i rub it in some more? Or maybe i could create an acronym... SUCKS: Sonja Unfortunately Can't Kill Skye.

Now it's time for... Name That Tune!

Hello good citizens of our world. It's so 5 to see you again! Today, we have a special game for you!

It'll help exercise those brains of yours and keep you mentally limber. Yes, that's right, it's name that tune. But, because of the low-budget and shoddy operation we run around here, we don't actually have a tune that you can listen to. Instead, we want you to use your minds even more and imagine it.

The Tune:

Picture the scene. A misty battlefield, warriors all around. Silence fills the air, everything hushed with tension and fog. Suddenly, the leader of one of the armies draws his sword out of the sheath. A very distinctive noise fills the air as metal slides against metal.

The Game:

What words would you use to describe the sound of a sword being drawn from a sheath? A couple of people have given me great analogies, which helps, but right now, I'm looking for descriptive words to describe the sound.

The Payoff:

If you supply me with the most wonderous description, Sonja will give you a book! (I haven't actually checked with her on this, but it seems like she'd be okay with me volunteering her to give stuff away...)

At any rate, I'm looking for description to make my new book resonate in my mind... Bring on the genius, people!

Hang on! I'm actually posting about writing!

Yeah, like the title says, this post is actually going to be about writing. Sonja's dying of shock somewhere, but hey, I like to shake things up every once in a while. Okay, always. :)

I had a story idea. Now, that's not anything unusual, given I consider myself a writer and almost any writer will tell you that they often have ideas and if they're really lucky, they remember them and then can eventually spin them into a story later which they sell for lots of money and, lucky them, Fabio appears on the cover. So it hasn't worked exactly that way in my case, I do have a lot of story ideas. I keep a file for each, usually and add to it when i think of something that relates.

At any rate, I need to preface my post a little bit with how this idea came about. I was lucky enough to get an xbox 360 for my birthday this year. Along with it came a bunch of arcade games. I've been wandering through the arcade games, seeing what there is to see. Tonight, I was playing Bejeweled 2, which is a totally brainless game involving gem swapping to get rows of 3. Or something like that. So I was sitting there playing it, not really focusing, and I started daydreaming. And in to my mind popped a story idea about a girl who plays video games. (Now you'll never ask an author where they get their story ideas from ever again, right?)

And the longer I played, the more fully formed the idea became. I started expanding on the main character... and who her hero was going to be. I started pondering how much research it would take (because, let's be honest, no one's going to read a book about Bejeweled 2, and that's pretty much the only game I know anything about), and other facets that i will eventually need to bring this book to life.

Obviously, the moral of this story is that I need to turn my brain off and let it do it's thing. For the first time in a long time, I was actually inspired to write. Which is a bummer, given I'm in the middle of packing up a 2 bedroom apartment to fit into a 10 x 10 storage space and also, theoretically, working on my work in progress (forever after referred to as my WIP) which is entitled A Girl's Guide to the Afterlife, and is, to my egotistical way of thinking, a really great concept. I mean, who wouldn't want to read about Valkyries? I know I do! Besides, there's so much potential for Fabio to be a manly Viking on the cover.

So, my writing goals (which Sonja has been wanting me to post since the beginning of the year) are now thus:

1) Finish the damn book. A Girl's Guide to the Afterlife really needs to be finished. And I need to make the hero less lame.
2) Send massive amounts of paper to Sonja so that she can take 2 years to edit my book, much like the last one :)
3) Work on new book, an as yet untitled project about competative video gamers

and finally,

4) Play Bejeweled 2 a lot more in the hopes of sparking more writing brainstorms