Month: January 2015

Looking back at the original serial killer stories that sparked my desire to write a novel, I’m quite proud of how far I’ve come as a writer.

Before I started #writing the #novel, both the plot and the main character were extremely flat. No dimension, no depth.

Now, just five and a half chapters in (after multiple restarts and rewrites until I finally found the story that needed telling), I have the start of something that I may eventually be brave enough to send to agents and publishers.

I am far from being done, but I hope to have a first draft completed by the end of the year.

I’d like to tell anyone who reads this that you don’t have to give up on your #dreams just because you don’t get it “right” the first time. The first few tries may suck. The first hundred tries may suck. But try number 101 could be brilliant.

Keep #trying, keep #working, and one day you’ll be proud that you kept with it.

Serial Killer III

The night is going so well
My prey so easily caught
Once again subdued with chloroform
Unconscious, ready to begin
I start to tie my knots
Suddenly, everything goes wrong
It wakes up
It grabs a knife
It cuts my arm
A swift elbow to the chin
Succeeds in disarming it
I grab the knife
And return the favor
In its eye
It fights no more
But now the fun is ruined
How can I enjoy myself
When my prey is already dead?
Instead of my usual masterpiece
Of graceful slices
I stab and stab and stab
Furious at the outcome
And the mess
Now my blood sprays the wall
Harder to clean up two sanguine trails
I gather up what I can
Scrub the walls
And hurriedly leave the apartment
My arm throbs
The cut is deep
I must go to the hospital
But how to explain it?
My mind searches for an excuse
As I drive to the farthest hospital in town
When they ask how it happened
I think of the still-oozing corpse
In the now-abandoned apartment
And the answer finally comes to me
“It was my boyfriend, nurse,” I say
“He attacked me”
She is sympathetic
Asks if I want her to call the police
“Oh, no, please don’t
“I don’t want him any angrier”
Inside I smile
Thinking that he shouldn’t be angry
When he has that nice smile
Carved into his face

I apologize, as I have forgotten about the weekly installments of the serial killer stories. I’ll try to post one tomorrow!

Ever wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep? That’s my life just about every day lately.

It seems that I can’t sleep past 4:30am. At all. The best part? Except for maybe one day a week, I don’t really need to be up that early.

Ok, so it started with me getting up extra early because my husband’s schedule requires him to clock in at 0600, which meant I had to be up at 0430 to give myself time to have my breakfast before I had to wake him up.

No big deal since I have to get up that early at least one day a week, right? It gets me into a regular sleep schedule after all.

The problem is, now my body has decided I need to be awake much earlier. I’m talking two, sometimes one o’clock in the morning. And I can’t get back to sleep most of the time.

I have one of those new fancy wrist monitors that tells you how much (or little) you slept. I’m averaging six hours a night, which for some people is normal, but one of my doctors is concerned that it’s not enough.

I’m not worried about the quality of sleep. I certainly don’t feel much different during the day. But I get so bored in the mornings! What am I supposed to do for the hours I’m awake but can’t turn on too many lights or make too much noise?

Can’t read a regular book (not eBook) because of the light thing. And I don’t want to get the laptop out to write because I’m a loud typer and again, can’t make too much noise. It’s pretty much sitting around playing with my phone or tablet. And that only gets me so far.

Writing in this blog works all right, because I can Swype instead of typing, but for longer things like my novel it doesn’t really work.

One of these days I hope to get my body back on track.

Yes, the dreaded #Crud. Cold, flu, I don’t know; all I know is it started about Thursday night, and all day Friday I was mainlining cough drops at work. By the end of the work day I was achy and coughing even with the lozenges, and yesterday I felt like I’d been run over by a couple of buses and a semi truck. Today I feel better, but still have the cough and sinus congestion.

I’m hoping to finish the sixth #chapter in my #novel today. It started out awful, so I have to go back and start over. That’s just part of the #writing process, though. I’m also concerned that I’m going to have to turn my #trilogy into a #standalone novel because I’ve realized that I can’t stretch the plot out like I wanted to. I might be able to, but if it’s a standalone it’s a standalone. Despite the plethora of trilogies and series on the market, there’s no hard rule that I have to make this a trilogy.

#amwriting #paranormal #suspense #SHH

It sounds so boring. Lose weight, exercise more, learn a new language–whatever your resolution(s), once made the idea often doesn’t sound as enticing as it may have at 11:30pm on December 31 after a few glasses of champagne.

I have found a couple things that worked for me last year, which was the first year I ever completed (let alone remembered) a #resolution. A whole list, actually.

First, and probably most obvious, I told good friends about my list. This way, they weren’t just promises I made to myself or empty goals; if I didn’t work on them and complete at least some of them, I would feel bad.

Second, I made a list. Ok, maybe that should be number one, but that’s beside the point. I didn’t just give myself one goal. I gave myself over half a dozen, which caused my #competitive self to try to “win” in a contest with…myself. It sounds contradictory, but it worked much better than any single resolution has in the past 35 years.

This year, I’m adding a third step to the plan: Find a #resolutionbuddy If you can find someone else who needs some #motivation, partner up. Share your goal(s) with each other, and become a taskmaster. You push and encourage them, & they do the same for you. This shares the responsibility and provides a support system for sticking with it.

Now, these tips aren’t solely for new year’s resolutions. You could decide in May that you want to accomplish X things in Y amount of time. The same principles apply.

Find some way to make yourself feel accountable, challenge yourself, and find a support system to keep you on track. 🙂

Well, not literally hell. But literally bloody.

I’ve been playing with my Photoshop and I made a couple nifty covers for my #novel #wip using a painting I did last year when the idea of writing this first had the teeniest spark in my head. Wait, year before last. Stupid #newyear

Anywho, the painting is a tad…graphic. I’m talking open abdomen, intestines being pulled out, and, of course, blood. Lots of it. I mean, all of the characters’ naughty bits are covered, and even though they weren’t exposed to begin with I used a large font to cover up the covered stuff. Still, I wonder how graphic is too graphic for a book cover. This might be. But it looks freakin’ sweet.

The words just have not been flowing for this blog lately. 🙁

I managed to write a good poem this morning for the #charity #anthology I’m participating in, but blogwise I’m stuck.

Maybe something will come to me soon.  It’s been said that you have to keep writing, even if it’s crap, but I don’t subscribe to that theory. I write when the right words are there; I don’t want to write crap if I can avoid it.

Whatever works, though. That should be rule #1 in my opinion.

#bloggersblock #frustrated #sleepy #toomanyprojects