Jeremy Chikalto and the Demon Trace, Book III of The Hazy Souls (in progress)

So my young adult novels tend to run about 55,000 words each. It's what works for me. I'm writing the last book in the series now. I am so excited, it's ridiculous. Three weeks from now, I'll be in the Florida Keys with my laptop. Writing will happen. There will be wine, too.

I. Cannot. Wait.

Anyway, just wanted to update my readers on how things were going. I write between 400-1000 words a day, five days a week, depending on how quiet the kids are. I write quickly. It's fun. I'm about 10,000 words in now, but the entire novel is outlined and I sort of just write by the seat of my pants.

I love writing my books because I feel like I'm watching my favorite show and I'm really, really engaged. Does that sound terrible? Anyway, I'm a huge fan of Game of Thrones at the moment. If you're familiar with that show, and you're a fan like me, you know how you sort of lean in towards the screen? Writing is like that for me. I can't wait for the next chapter. :)

Thank you for being so patient.

So I'm thinking I'll be done the first draft by September. The second draft should be ready by December. Third draft, fourth draft--well, it's just minor tweaking at that point. I might miss the 2013 deadline, and now I'm looking at a Spring 2013 release.

Wish me luck!

Mommy of 2: Difficult Time Finding Time

I really mean to update my blog more, but watching two children is proving to be more difficult than I had ever imagined. My youngest, 10 months, is napping now. My oldest, almost 3 years, is trying to ride my back as though I were a pony. Still, this is about the closest to a break I get in the day, so I'm trying to type what I can.

There are so many arguments out there as to which is the more stressful gig--staying home full-time as a stay-at-home-mom or working full-time and then coming home and watching the kids as a second job. I'm convinced it has everything to do with your own unique introversion-extroversion tendencies. Of course, other things go into it, like patience and stress tolerance, but I'm just going to focus on how the ability to have private thoughts and experience an "inner-world" is what makes it more difficult for some stay-at-home-moms but not others.

When you are a stay-at-home-mom of two young children, you never, ever get to just sit and enjoy your own thoughts. It's exhausting for me to go from one external prompt to another. This was never the case with a job outside the home. My husband, who is a lawyer, is like me in this respect--we're both introverts who are energized by internal thoughts. He values what I do because he prefers doing intensive research and drafting briefs and going to court over sitting around with children who make it impossible to enjoy quiet time and private thoughts.

On the other hand, there are individuals who are easily exhausted by internal thoughts and are instead energized by external stimuli--the extroverts. I imagine that staying home with the kids and doing "stuff" all day--answering questions, repeating spoken requests over and over again because the child needs to be reassured, playing, watching, teaching, and all activities being back-to-back-to-back without a moment's pause to live inside your own head--is energizing to these individuals.  Being a lawyer and doing research and writing papers, on the other hand, might be exhausting.

Everyone falls somewhere on the introversion-extroversion scale and of course it is not to be confused with intelligence or with shyness. Just because you're extroverted doesn't mean you'd want to stay home and watch your kids--you might enjoy the fast-paced environment as a sociable CEO or something. You might be painfully shy, but not an introvert--you're still energized by the external world and exhausted by too much time spent in the internal world. Everyone knows someone who is shy but who keeps showing up at party scenes, or who is really easy to talk with but who prefers to stay in on a Friday night.

It comes down to what energizes us.

I enjoy spending time with my kids, but I find it incredibly exhausting. I feel like I can't get anything done, despite the long list of things that do "get done," simply because I have no time to think through my own private ventures, thoughts, and dreams.

For me, I'm 100% certain that working outside the home would be easier than being a stay-at-home-mom. But of course, like many things, it's a bit more complicated than that. Being a parent has had the effect of making me love my children so much that I'm afraid that no one else can watch them and love them as well as I could. I've been pushed to the brink of the irrational, I know. I might be convinced to place my precious sweets in the charge of a highly-paid, highly-qualified nanny who would watch them in the safety of my own house, but alas, such services are incredibly expensive. And I don't even have my own house yet. I don't have a reliable, familial matron to help watch the kids, either (that would probably be my first choice.) So here I am, watching my chillins.

I'm grateful to be able to stay at home and watch my chillins because I know that there are people out there who really want to but who aren't able to for whatever reason. I'm grateful to be able to build their self-esteems and imaginations and to watch them grow. It gives me peace of mind and I carry no guilt about my children's upbringing.

I'm disappointed that what I do is still under the radar as being challenging work. I'm disappointed when I feel judged for not contributing to my family's finances. I'm disappointed that my career has been put on halt and that I may never recover from the substantial gap in my resume. I'm disappointed that women and men continue to quibble over something that is highly personable and that is experienced quite differently for people with different personality profiles.

And of course, even children have different personality profiles and experience the presence and involvement of family members and various caregivers differently.

Anyway, I'd like to thank my toddler for holding off on her "cheesy eggs" just long enough for me to write this.

Background noise while creating this post included:

"Mommy? Mommy? Where's Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer? Is he under the blankets? Mommy, I'm hungry. Mommy? I want cheesy eggs. I want orange cheese. Are you done? Where's Rudolph? He had a very shiny nose. Turn the tv on. Turn the tv off. Okay! Okay! Okay-kay-kay! Turn the computer off!" etc., etc.

Background sensations while creating this post included:

Kick to the back. An "accidental" hair yanking. Acting as a pony ride. Getting my lap crawled into. Various jabs. Shirt sleeve pulls.

All-in-all, some pretty good "self" time (considering the other, needier child is still napping.)

It's a good thing I love my babies so much!

Make Your Words Count: Novels vs. Novellas

First, let's start with some famous novellas (generally considered a novella with less than 40,000 words):

 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka


Novellas can pack a punch.

A story should only be as long as it needs to be. Don't spread a novella thin by writing towards the 50,000 word goal that qualifies it as a novel, etc. Just let the story tell itself, irrespective of word count.

And then some say, "Self-publishing has brought back the novella!" and I hope they're right.

But for all the "Yay!"s and "Huzzuh!"s, there's the real issue of classification and finding a readership.

Smashwords has this nifty sorter feature that allows people to click on an ebook length to help narrow down search options. But Smashwords also estimates your ebook's word count. So what if you've written a book that is 52,000 words long? This should qualify it for the "50,000 word +" category, right? Wrong. Smashwords, as was the case with my first book, can estimate a book's 52,000 word count at about 48,000 words, and in so doing, lump the book in with the 20,000 word novellas. This can be a problem because it can prevent a book from being discovered by its intended audience.

But you just said word count was a superficial assessment. Quality is better than word count. Right?

Yes, but some people think in terms of 1.) Novel and 2.) Short Story

Anyway, so I wanted my 52,000 word count to be just that and get me into the 50,000 + word category. How did I get around this conundrum? I tacked on the first few chapters of my second book to the end of my first book. This can work with any extra material you might have--author's bio, book teasers, etc.--so long as you aren't misleading your intended audience. If you've written a 35,000 word novella, don't include an additional 15,000 words at the end just to bump it into novel territory.

But maybe readers just need to catch on to the fact that that they can enjoy their favorite genres in less than 40,000 words.

Book Review: The Day Zombies Ruined My Perfectly Boring Life

The Day Zombies Ruined My Perfectly Boring Life by Jen Naumann

Synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Emma Ferdig has spent her entire life stuck in an itty-bitty town that is basically smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. She’s not bored because there are always the same mundane things to do with her best friend Finn every single weekend, but bored as in there is literally nothing for a teenage girl to do that doesn't involve farm animals and the threat of law enforcement.

But now she would do pretty much anything to go back to that boring life.

Emma's life is turned upside down after a night of senior pranks by the discovery of a real, live (better make that dead) zombie in her own backyard. In a breakneck journey across the rural Midwest, Emma will recruit a minivan full of teenage misfits while trying to survive, and uncover the secrets behind this zombie invasion. She’ll discover the true identity of Finn’s mother, the dark conspiracy that has infiltrated the U.S. Army, and maybe even realize the person she has been waiting to save her was right by her side the whole time.

As it turns out, life in a boring little town hadn’t been such a bad thing, after all.

Page Count: 
Paperback, 338 pages

Published: 

June 2012 by At or With Me Publishing 

Rating:  

3.5 / 5 Paw Prints

1/2

 

Review:

Jen Naumann's The Day Zombies Ruined My Perfectly Boring Life is an apocalyptic zombie novel about seventeen-year-old Emma and her band of oddballs and misfits. Together, they strive to uncover the truth behind a virus outbreak that claims the lives of loved ones and changes the landscape of the United States forever. The action propels the novel forward at light speed, but the characters slow down the reading for all the wrong reasons.

It took me a third of the novel to accept that the characters were all pretty cheeky, and that if enough jokes were made, one or two might actually make me laugh. I wasn't really a fan of the protagonist, Emma, mainly due to her strange bout of self-hatred for all things "womanly." There's nothing I can't stand more than a female protagonist who's all, "I don't really like other women. I'm a tomboy! I get along with guys sooooo much better!" However, Emma does eventually somewhat redeem herself when she finds an ally in Marley.

Anyway, so her character was a huge annoyance in the beginning, but after accepting that that was just her voice, etc., she became less distracting, and I was able to enjoy her point of view and all the comedic bits it had to offer. I found myself rooting for her, and felt sympathetic for her inability to emotionally process the horrors that she had experienced.

But it was the pacing of the novel that really stole the show--the plot that races along with the characters in souped-up cars, the seamless transitions from one fight to the next, and the mounting horrors looming around every corner.

The Day Zombies Ruined My Perfectly Boring Life certainly has its share of surprises. At times, I really did feel like I was kicking back and enjoying an X-Files episode. The plot keeps getting new layers added to it, and I was eager to watch the band of misfits survive or at least experience some degree of closure. I was disappointed with the ending, which seemed abrupt, but it was the kind of disappointment that accompanies a strong desire to keep reading. I'll definitely be checking out Jen Naumann's other books and recommend this gem for YA fiction lovers, especially those with a hankerin' for action/adventure, humor, and zombie/apocalyptic genres.