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RB if you have lesbians in your WIP

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I just want to say a little hello to my followers! :D I know I haven’t been active until recently. I’m new to this writeblr thing and... I’m horribly introverted and I’m not nearly as engaging as I’d like to be. So, I’ll try to rectify that. Maybe do some of those memes I’ve been tagged in lol

I’m not technically participating in NaNo this year. But I am going to work on Blood and Beryl and track my progress throughout the month.

Recently, I’ve learned that writing an original story is a messier process than fanfiction. I knew it would be. With fanfiction, I’ve got the side characters already created, the world, the lore, the places, the things. It’s like a ready-made outline. But with B&B I feel like it’s such a mess because I’m discovering things as I write and while I want to go back and edit earlier chapters to reflect the change, I am not. I’ll never finish if I do that! So I’m just making notes on what will need to change in the second draft and I just keep on trucking.

Regardless of the “mess” I’m making, I am enjoying every moment. I really dig this story.

Anyway, in an attempt to keep up with the spirit of Nano, my current word count as of 11/1 is 11,045. It’ll be interesting to look back at the end of the month and see how much it has changed.

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Atticus and Loryn from my in-progress novel - Blood and Beryl. The characters were drawn and colored by me, and that gorgeous background was painted by the lovely @magentainks.

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Thank you so much! These two look like they’re up to no good...

Fanart of Loryn and Ashe from @jreversole‘s original novel.

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Malrian and Riordan of House Hartshorn

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Last Line Tag!

Tagged by @verazelinski​!!

This line is from Blood and Beryl.

I swallowed my anger, tamping it down to the core of my soul. Hatred took root in my heart a long time ago, but I’d learned to control it— to suppress it, lest it get the better of me.

I tag everyone! Do the thing!

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Trinity Veil WIP

Draft 1 - Chapter 6

The heady scent of cloves clung to Aria’s hair as she stepped out of the taxi. Keeping her head down, she ran inside the rain-streaked apartment building. It was monstrous, in a way. The building did not age as others did. Ivy did not deign to grow upon the structure, nor moss or lichen. Instead, it stood out against the dull November sky in a constant, crumbling state of urban decay.

Inside, Aria was careful to avoid the residents that preferred sleeping on the stairs to their own homes. The stairwell was partially exposed to the elements, and the rain created puddles on the landings— she was careful to avoid those too, as they were a disgusting swill of water and piss. Aria hated the rain. Perhaps she’d like it if she lived somewhere vibrant and green, where the world felt clean and fresh after a rain shower. But in a city dominated by concrete and steel the rain didn’t wash away the filth of nearly 3 million people, it mixed it all together in a toxic, polluted soup.

Stepping into the third-floor hallway was like entering a different world. A realm of litter and rust, illuminated by the diffused, orange glow of sodium lights. Trash littered the floor and graffiti covered the walls. Life could be heard beyond the closed doors that lined the walls. People were laughing, loving, and fighting. Babies were crying, and dogs were barking. Music pounded, and televisions blared.

Everything was normal. Positively mundane, even. And yet dread kissed Aria's neck as she walked beneath the flickering lights. She glanced over her shoulder and loosed a breath. The hall was empty, no one was following her. But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

If there was anything odd about that moment, it was her. Beyond the smell of the cabbie's cigarette was the unmistakable stench of decay. A lasting remnant of her time spent at the medical examiner's office. Hours ago she was shrouded in a body bag, silent and still. Now, she was a dead girl walking, the keys to her apartment dangling from her fingers.

Aria never gave much credence to the concept of fate, but if it existed, she was defying it with every beat of her heart. She was dead; she was alive, and her world was forever changed.

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Free will is an illusion.

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I broke past the 10,000 word mark on Trinity Veil over the weekend.

I psyched myself out initially because I thought my pacing was too fast. But I’m on chapter 4 now and I think the pacing is good. The book has a lot of action in it and once Weird Shit starts happening (which is like... line 1) it never stops. The characters barely get to stop for a breath, and that’s how the story is supposed to be.

I think I’m doing a good job. I’m excited.

I’m also excited because I have a portrait of Aria in the works and a painting of [spoiler]. Ha! The hard part about drawing scenes from the book is that I won’t be able to tell you all anything about them because they’re spoilers...

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Writing agent Jonny Geller gives advice to young writers. 

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Excerpt from a work in progress

WIP “The White Room” - Draft 1 - Chapter 5

Kate smelled like coconut.     She sat next to him. Next to him, not leaving an empty seat between them—and he didn’t, either, when he sat back down after presenting his paper.     Next to her.     Next to her, close and snug as he was a wide man and the rows of chairs were set seat-to-seat. Next to her, for the whole two hours while his colleagues presented their research at the first-in-a-long-time session on North American Viking archaeology.     There wasn’t much to talk about, generally, these days. Only once in a while did a new site pop up. A year ago, a site popped up. Now Ben and his colleagues were presenting their findings, and that of their Canadian and other colleagues who couldn’t make the trip to Texas.     Ben’s colleague Anna, speaking about the burials found at the new site (the paper Kate was most interested in), made a joke he had already heard. But Kate laughed heartily and, as her head tilted back and her body jiggled as a laughing body did, she patted, almost swatted but in a playful way, the back of his hand.     It was a brief and simple gesture, one likely meant to spread her amusement. Ben knew there was nothing more to it and, yet, the skin of the back of his freckled hand tingled in the wake of her touch. The muscles of that arm tensed, his shoulder and chest following. He laughed with the rest of the room as Kate attempted to regain her composure, but his mind was focused on his arm and his leg and the thin fabric coverings that came into brushing contact with Kate’s bare upper arm and blue flowery dress.     Kate covered her mouth with her hand; her fingernails were painted the blue of a perfectly clear late morning sky. Her eyes held his as she forced herself to calm, as her shoulders continued their shallow bounces in silent, diminishing laughter.     Her face was a tomato.     The room’s and Kate’s laughter had only lasted a handful of seconds, and Anna had since moved on to describing of one of the skeletons she had analyzed. Just a few seconds to memorize Kate’s crow’s feet and playful brown-and-green eyes. Just a few seconds to study the patch of grey hair near her temple. A few seconds to memorize, like a song, the notes of her laughter.     Kate sat next to him, and for the remainder of the symposium, Ben could not stop thinking about reaching for her hand and holding it in his.

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A Quick Tip for Controlling Pacing

Short sentences speed up the action. They pack punch. They also draw focus to each event. Subject. Verb. Like a camera zoomed in close. Slow-motion shots. Good for fights and epic chase scenes. Don’t fear using sentence fragments. But don’t use it for everything. It can get exhausting for the reader.

Long, complex sentences slow down the action and can create suspense and tension. Imagine them like twisting corridors and long, slow camera pans following the action from beginning to end, moving smoothly from one image to the next without lingering too long over anything in particular. Whole years can pass in the duration of a long sentence; imagine them like those panoramic establishing shots where one season fades slowly into the next. Embrace semicolons; do not shy away from complicated sentence structure from time to time as necessary. But, like all things, practice them in moderation. Long sentences can slow the reader down too much, leading to boredom; they may wander away from the page.

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Trinity Veil - Aria

The ubiquitous “they” say death is the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor; famous or utterly unknown. Death is inevitable. Yet, even in death, inequality exists. Our privilege, or lack thereof, follows us long after we’ve breathed our last.

There are fields of gravestones that will be standing long after the last human turns to dust. Acres upon acres are wasted just so you can rot comfortably in a shiny, expensive casket. There might even be a fancy headstone marking your burial site, and if you’re really lucky, it’ll bear the tears of those who wept when you passed. Death sucks. But it’s a little less shitty if you were someone’s something.

If you’re one of the penniless, the unwanted, or the unloved, some dead-eyed state employee decides your fate. You’re shuffled off to the city morgue where a medical examiner cuts you open with all the finesse of a butcher. The sum of your parts are weighed, bagged, and placed at your feet. Then you’re tossed in a freezer with the hope that someone will claim you.

There was no one to claim me. I was nobody’s nothing, and I was destined for a cheap, pine box and a place in a government-mandated mass grave— but I didn’t make it that far.

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“Your exile has done nothing for your personality. Five thousand years, and you still haven’t learned to obey.”