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Preparing for Fast Draft

The weekend yielded good wordage, but I didn’t finish the story as I hoped.  I’m sitting just under 8.5K, so I made decent progress.  I also outlined the rest of the story.  All along, I knew how I wanted to end, and I knew roughly what happened in the middle, but I didn’t have all the details explicitly listed in my mind.  Seeing them on paper, I’m worried.  I think I’m only about half way through this story.  Ack! 

It’s going to be at least 15K.  I’m just now getting ready to send the protagonist on a rescue and the resulting “capture” of the heart (yes, I seem to be writing a romance yet again, but this one is “sweet” and not erotic).  Then there’s a bit of a lull that leads up to the humdinger of a climax.

So the good news:  I know exactly where I’m going and how to get there.  Bad news: I have way too many words left, and another (even longer) story to write post haste.

I did get some work done on my workshop planning for LB&LI but I won’t be ready to post until Wednesday.  I’ve been talking with my accountability partner and writing buddy, Jenna Reynolds, aka Anna Black, and I think we’re going to do a workshop “in concert,” both talking about how to write emotional, transformative sex scenes.  She has a very interesting take on the writer’s journey with respect to sex scenes, which I can’t wait to read more about.  Even though we’re loosely going to talk about the same things, we’ll be coming at them from different angles, with different perspectives, so I’m hoping you’ll find our discussion very interesting!

Meanwhile, I’ll be pushing hard to finish this story.  “Storms as She Walks” needs to be done by Friday, and I need to have all my character work and plotting done for “Gifted,” so I can slam through it the following week.  Gah, it’s going to be very tight indeed.  I really need the last week of July for edits.  I’m trying to write pretty clean, but a first draft is still just a first draft.  I’ve left several [notes to myself] and one needs some research on colleges that might have taught Northern black doctors in the 1850s leading up to the Civil War.  Anybody know?  I’ll be forever in your debt!

*cracks knuckles*  Hold on to your butts for a crazy ride the last two weeks of July!

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Temporary AWOL

I need to get a LOT done this weekend.  If I have any hope at all of hitting both deadlines by July 31st, I need to finish the first story by Monday.  I’ve only got 3K of a 10-15K story, so yeah, I need to really crack that whip.  Then I’m going to have to pull some kind of Fast Draft out of my ass for the other story, which needs to be 20-30K.  *headdesk*  Anyone want to participate?  Shout out in comments.

Plus, next week is Left Behind and Loving It, so I need to get my posts written, which requires some research, and of course, re-reading of some of my favorite sex scenes.  For research, I swear!

So don’t expect another update on the blog until Monday.  I’ll report then whether I was successful or not.  I’ll tweet my progress on Twitter if you want any updates.  Gregar’s just about got me dragged into the Well, so I’ll leave you with a single line from my WIP.  After all my stewing about “branding,” I find it highly ironic that I’m writing in yet another genre.  *snort* 

“Well,” Abe drawled out, “I got to wonderin’ exactly why we never saw you take a piss.”

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Lessons in Photoshop

Or in other words, call upon the masters when you want it done right.

Instead of writing today, I decided I would try my hand at creating a flyer for The Rose of Shanhasson.  I’m lining up a bunch of promo mailings for the print release in December, and the deadlines are fast approaching.  Everything has to be done MONTHS in advance. 

Printing all this stuff ain’t cheap by a long shot, so to save some money, I thought I’d create one myself.  I had the VistaPrint template in hand, and I bought PhotoShop last year.  I didn’t have to “create” new graphics — which I already know I can’t do after my class last year — just use what I already had at hand.  And honestly, it wasn’t bad.  A little blocky and too symmetrical, but not bad.  I did a gradient in the background, added the cover, the DP logo, a few reviews…

But it didn’t have that magic I was hoping for.  Hey, this is my FIRST print release.  I want it done right.  So I sent it to Deena, the mastermind behind most of Drollerie’s incredibly unique and beautiful cover art.  Bless her creative little heart, she took the cover flat and whipped up a very attractive flyer.  It looks like art, not like an inexperienced person trying to use PhotoShop!  I hated adding another thing to her light-year-long list of to-dos, but wow, she does gorgeous work.

So the VistaPrint order has been placed for 100 flyers.  If I didn’t screw anything up in the upload and everything looks good, I’ll order a ton more and get ready for the first mailing.

Okay, so here’s the difference between an amatuer PhotoShopper (mine on the left) and a professional (Deena’s on the right). Click for larger version.

Rose_Flyercoverflat

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Left Behind & Loving It Next Week

Don’t miss PBW’s awesome virtual workshop next week.  RWA Nationals may be in full swing, but those of us left behind will be having a blast, too.  I don’t know what I’ll talk about yet — if anyone has requests, please shout them out in comments or drop me an e-mail — but I do know what I’ll be giving away.

Patti O’Shea’s Light Warrior series, including: In the Midnight Hour, In Twilight’s Shadow, and Edge of Dawn.

Victoria Dahl’s Talk Me Down and Start Me Up.

A $30 gift certificate to any online book retailer of the winner’s choice.

I’ll probably break this up into three separate giveaways, with winner’s choice book from my backlist on each day included.  Now if I can only find three topics to talk about…

No geographical limits on shipping the dead tree books — I’ll ship them anywhere on the planet.  So spread the word and plan to stop by next week!

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Celebrate Chocolate Giveaway

Love chocolate?  Love a good book about chocolate?  Then you don’t want to miss Drollerie Press’s giveaway!  Cindy Lynn Speer’s delightful The Chocolatier’s Wife is on sale 20% off (check out our Book Chat posts to see how much I enjoyed her story), and you can enter to win a $25 gift certificate to Fanny Mae Chocolates!

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July Plans

I have two short works I must complete this month.  The deadlines are TIGHT and I don’t want either project to slip off my radar.  In many ways, this month will be worse than a NaNo month — because these works need to be polished for submission by July 31st.  No mere slinging of words will suffice.

Despite vacation the last few days, I’ve started the first project.  I think it’ll be shorter than the other so I’m tackling it first.  Working title:  Storms As She Walks.  Targeting about 10K in length but I really don’t know.  I have this thing in my head, not much on paper, so it may grow as I write.  So far I haven’t quite broken 1K yet (but I’m close).  I’m still searching for the voice of this piece, sort of like wandering through a new house in the darkest hour of night, hands outstretched to keep from running into something.

The longer piece hasn’t quite come together in my head yet.  Tentative working title: Gifted.  I know the general external plot, but I don’t have the romance angle worked out yet.  The internal conflicts and how they work against each other haven’t quite firmed enough in my head.  So more doodling on paper.  I don’t have this one plotted either, so I need to try and get some of that detail down before I plow ahead.  I’m guessing it’ll be 20-30K.

To make things even more exciting, I plan to write at least one piece for PBW’s Left Behind and Loving It virtual workshop.  I’ll be giving away some great books that week, so stay tuned!

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Road to Shanhasson Review: Best Book Rating!

Wheee, check out this fabulous review from Holly at Long and Short Reviews — BEST BOOK!

…this book pushes the limits to new levels, in terms of passion, strength and pure lust. The scenes between the three main characters are so explicitly hot and erotic I expected my e-reader to melt. Ms. Burkhart creates her world so skillfully, the people and places become real to the reader, and the emotions are deep and, at times quite gut-wrenchingly real. There were many places in the story where I cried along with Shannari, at her depth of loss and her heights of joy and passion.

You can read the whole review here.  Thank you so much, Holly!

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Synopsis Suckage II

When all else fails, return to pen and paper.

I sat down over the weekend with my favorite pad of paper — purple legal pad — and my favorite pen.  I pulled up the Synopsis Lesson with Dr. Connagher.  And I started over from the beginning.  Oooh, I thought Conn was a taskmaster in his classroom, but geez, he’s really been a hardass about this synopsis.  Even The Rock has been walking around on pins and needles, occasionally sneaking over to stare down at my messy pages to see if I’d written about his character yet.  (I haven’t.)

Haven’t seen hide nor hair of Gregar, the smart-mouthed Shadowed Blood.  Smart man.  I’m sure he’s tucked away nearby, laughing his ass off each time Dr. Connagher loses patience with me and begins cursing in poetry.

After about 20 sheets of scribbles on purple paper, I finally have a somewhat decent beginning.  I have the hook, my protagonist’s intro, background, and inciting incident.  A decent start. 

Where this synopsis is going to get tricky is the “suspense” or “thriller” angle.  There’s a TON of plot happening in this story, and it’s crucial that I capture some of that in the synopsis.  This isn’t just a Boy Meets Girl kind of story.  Demons are running amok, some mad scientists are making things worse, the FBI is on the case, etc.  I think what I’m going to do is treat each plot suspense thread sort of like a “love interest.”  I’ll write up a paragraph to set up the thread, and then see if I can neatly (hahaha) summarize in between the inciting incident and the resolution. 

The nice thing (groans) about writing a synopsis is that it forces me to see the story clearly.  I have to define the events and characters very carefully, fine-tuning threads into as few words as possible.  Often that makes a puzzle piece slide a little tighter into the big picture.  I realized tonight that I’d missed a slight opportunity to up the suspense a bit more once Jaid arrives onsite at Lake Atitlan.

*dies*  More revisions.  This is becoming the project that never ends!

When Dr. Connagher finds this synopsis satisfactory, I’ll write up a post like I did for the original “Letters” synopsis.  I’m sure it’ll be a hoot.

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Mrs Giggles Reviews Dear Sir, I’m Yours

I’m thrilled to death with a score of 84!  Mrs. Giggles says:

The most memorable parts of this story are the letters to Conn that Rae had written but never sent to Conn. These notes are a beautiful showcase of Ms Burkhart’s way with words – elegant, heartbreaking, without being too overwrought or melodramatic – as well as a fascinating doorway into Rae’s head. These letters present a clear and often haunting story of Rae’s in the last five years, and through these letters, I get to feel as if Rae is real indeed to me.

You can read the entire review here.  Thank you, Mrs. G!