My Little Pony, Now With 100% More Snakes

On a whim, I've decided to participate in PonyFest '13. It's a contest where you create a My Little Pony inspired by your book. How cool is that? I'm not the least bit artistic, but thanks to the magic of the Pony Creator, I can whip up a pretty mean pony despite my complete inability to draw anything but stick figures. My latest manuscript is Beautiful Medusa, a YA fantasy with Medusa as the hero and a bunch of well-known Greek monsters, so I had plenty of great characters to choose from.

The first one I did was, naturally, the Pegasus.  Ah yes, the snow white Pegasus, soaring majestically with Perseus on his back...  Except my Pegasus is kind of a jerk.  When I was jotting down notes on him, I called him a "flying kelpie war horse."

Here's his description:

Soaring on powerful wings, the Pegasus spiraled downwards, landing with an elegance that belied its massive body.  I forgot myself, gaping at the creature as it shook its wild mane, the sun gleaming off a coat so dark gray as to be almost black, a storm cloud given form.  The Pegasus returned my stare, my gaze having no effect, its eyes crackling with intelligence, rows of sharp teeth lining its mouth. 

And here's the Pegasus in My Little Pony form:

The next one I did was Medusa.  I'm not sure why her background didn't show up, but here she is:  

I couldn't do snakes, so I did my best to give her pony incarnation something that looked snake-like.  Then I added the frown because, well, she's Medusa and she's not really happy about it.  She has bracelets because despite being a monster, she still likes to wear nice clothes and jewelry.  

I hope you enjoy!  Maybe I'll do Prometheus, Athena, or the Sphinx sometime.

It's Like a Basket of Puppies

Story ideas, to me, are like baskets of puppies.  You're looking down at four or five little furry faces, all adorable, every single one demanding attention, eager, and ready to go, and OMG, which one do you choose to play with first?  And then one particularly precocious pup scales the pen and climbs into your lap and settles the debate for you.     

Pick me!  No, wait, pick me!

Yeah, it's like that, except my story ideas don't chew the furniture or have accidents on the carpet.

I always have shiny ideas bouncing around in my head.  Last year, after my final revision of Knights of Avalon, there were several vying for my attention - the Medusa story, the Apocalyptic Pizza Delivery Girl story, the Shangri-La story...  but in the end, it was Medusa who won out.  Probably because she can turn people to stone.  Also, she has claws and her blood is poison.  In a cage match, she'd probably beat all my other characters, even Justine.  

I had tried to write Beautiful Medusa before, in 2009, but I couldn't do it, I wasn't a strong enough writer and I didn't know how to handle the material.  Now, the story grabbed hold of me and refused to let go.  That's how I know a story's ready to be written, when I can't stop thinking about it.  It's all consuming, both the best feeling in the universe and the worst.  There's so much joy in building a new world, in creating characters and imagining their relationships.  If I had my way, I'd lock myself in the house for three months and just create, create, create.

And at the end of three months, I'd look like Gollum.

But I'd have my precious story.

My precious.

Instead of being able to throw myself into my new world though, I had these distractions.  Bothersome things like a job and family...  Human interaction is so overrated.  How was I supposed to concentrate on spreadsheets when there were people in my head, demanding to be heard?  That's the downside of getting obsessed with a story.  Until the story's told, the thought of doing anything else becomes unbearable.  Every day I woke up wanting to lose myself in my writing, but I had to force myself to take care of responsibilities that couldn't be ignored.

From December to July, I balanced my need to create with my need to pay the bills as best I could.  I fought for time to write and bit by bit, the story in my head became words on the page, until Beautiful Medusa was a real, actual book, a book that I love.

Then again, I love all my books.  Still, I've been working on my writing and I like to think that maybe I've actually learned something and improved after all these years.  I suppose we'll see.        

If you're curious, here's the query:

In a land wasted and wrung dry, where happiness is as rare as any jewel, sixteen-year-old Alessia considers herself blessed to be a Priestess of Athena. But when the girl’s extraordinary beauty draws the unwanted attention of Poseidon, her life becomes a nightmare. Cursed for defying an immortal and cast out of her home, the gods transform Alessia into the legendary Medusa and condemn her to live life as a monster.

Snakes for hair. A gaze that can turn a man to stone. Razor sharp talons at the end of each finger. All Alessia wants is to hide herself away from the world before she hurts someone, or worse. Yet to the kings of ancient Greece, Alessia's petrifying gaze makes her a weapon to be won at any cost. With the kings offering unimaginable riches to anyone who can bring them the head of the Medusa, the scared girl soon finds herself hunted by the all too clever hero Perseus and many others.

Struggling to hold onto both her life and her humanity, Alessia flees westward and finds the impossible: Sanctuary and a chance at love with a fallen god preparing to wage war on Olympus. But are his feelings sincere or is he merely using her? And when the war comes, will Alessia, the once loyal priestess, exact revenge on the gods who turned her into Medusa?

Based on the legend according to Ovid's Metamorphoses, Beautiful Medusa is a YA Fantasy complete at 92,000 words. Though the story can stand alone, there is potential for a sequel. Thank you for your consideration!

I don't know what's going to happen with this story.  I'm sure I'll get rundown with rejections soon enough, but right now, I'm excited and it just feels good to be done.

Rhymes with D'oh Llama

This is me.

A dear aunt of mine recently called me "meek and mild."  I kind of laughed, because that's definitely not how I see myself.  Some time later, I asked my brother if the description fit and he said, "Yeah, that sounds about right.  Except when you get all opinionated about stuff, like politics."

Anybody who follows my twitter feed knows that asides from Chop't salad, cats, cephalopods, Pride and Prejudice, Coke Slurpees, and writing, the big love of my life is politics.  So in September, I showed up like a stray cat on the doorstep of a local campaign office and

This is me on politics.

unlike a stray cat, asked to be put to work.

I believe I said something along the lines of, "People are scary!  I spend my days living in a cave, throwing rocks at passerbys.  Can I do data entry?"  And the very kind lady who greeted me at the door responded, "What luck!  We have a Data Coordinator who thinks people are scary too, and she desperately needs someone to help her with her work.  Please, come in and have a bagel."

The kind lady introduced me to the Data Coordinator and we immediately hit it off, bonding over our mutual dislike of human interaction and discussing the best strategy for rock-throwing.  After finding out I had volunteered for this certain campaign in 2008 and that I was familiar with this certain campaign's software, she asked if I wanted to be a Data Coordinator too.  I said 'yes!' without hesitation, because I am an idiot.

The next two months went by in a blur of call sheets, Google docs, caffeine, and bagels.  We were simply one tiny cog in a very large caffeinated and bagel-fed machine.  I would walk into the 'campaign office,' no more than a borrowed conference room in somebody's engineering firm, and find rows upon rows of volunteers squeezed around tables, calling people, urging them to vote and maybe, just maybe, pretty please, vote for our guy.  Or if nothing else, to not yell at us while voting for the other guy.

We got yelled at a lot.

I met some extraordinary people, because no matter whose side you're on, campaign volunteers are some of the most crazy, talented, hard-working people out there.  Many of us were involved in animal rescue, others did Christian ministry and charity work, all while holding down a job or two and taking care of families or running businesses.  And we all looked out for one another.  I remember once, when it was dark, I had forgotten something in my car and dashed out to get it.  When I turned around, two volunteers were standing by the door, making sure nothing happened to me in the poorly lit parking lot.

For the first time in years, I took a break from writing.  It killed me to do that, absolutely killed me, but I figured two months without writing was worth it for four years of having my guy in the White House.   

Besides, in a strange way, working on a campaign is a lot like writing a book.  If you've ever worked for a campaign before, and I highly recommend that you try it at least once, it's an incredibly frustrating experience sometimes.  You can spend hours making calls and if you're lucky, flip one or two voters.  You spend a lot of time wondering if you're really making a difference, if you'll ever see a payoff for all the work you're doing. 

Writing is like that too.  You can spend hours working on a single paragraph, feeling like there's no way you'll ever get the book done, much less find an agent and get published.  But even if you can't see it right away, all those hours of hard work add up.  They build into something powerful.              

That's what I've been up to while away from the blog.  I spent most of November recovering from the election, then in December, returned to my beloved writing and dove head first (more like belly flopped) into my WIP, Beautiful Medusa.  More on that in another post!   

PAYA 2012: Now With 100% Less Hurricanes

It's almost that time of year again. 

PAYA!

No, not the fruit. 

The 35-author signing, auction, and workshop extravaganza! 

And this time, no hurricanes! 

I don't know about you, but I find a lack of natural disasters at my author events to be a plus. 

If you're anywhere near West Chester, PA, I'm hoping you can make it.  The event is tomorrow, August 25, from 12-4pm, with a writers' workshop (you must sign up ahead of time) from 10am-12pm. 

I'll be attending the workshop with the opening pages from my latest, still-in-its-infancy, herpetologically-friendly manuscript, Beautiful Medusa. 

My goal is not to injure myself.  Or anyone else.  Unlike, um, last time...

I hope to see some of you there! 

In other news, remember that amazing class I took with rock-star author/agent/dairy farmer Mandy Hubbard and how you all were sad you couldn't have taken it too?  Well, like the Poltergeist, it's back.  "Writing and Selling the Young Adult Novel" starts September 20 and you can sign up now.  I really can't recommend the class enough.  Do it! 

School's Out

Remember how I mentioned I was taking a class, Writing and Selling the Young Adult Novel, taught by the incredibly talented Mandy Hubbard?  Well, I survived and it ended up being a great experience.  Made some new friends, met a whole bunch of amazing writers, and most importantly, I learned a lot.

First, I learned that I can work under a deadline.  I've talked about it before, but when it comes to writing, I channel the spirit of the turtle.  I don't do NaNoWriMo, I do NaNoSloMo.  It was a four-week class and for the first three weeks, we had to turn in 2,500 words every Friday.  That's approximately 10 pages, double-spaced.

Now I know plenty of people who can do 2,500 words in one day.  I've heard tales of some people being able to do that in a couple of hours.  Those people are cyborgs.  But I'm not that person, and that's OK.  The thing is, Beautiful Medusa is very much a work in progress.  As in, when I started the class, I had written 5 pages, and they were not good pages (you didn't have to have a completed manuscript to take the class, about a quarter of us had next to nothing when we started).  So while turning in 2,500 words once a week might not be a big deal to some, for me, it was terrifying.  I had to write it all pretty much from scratch and to make it worse, the way Beautiful Medusa is structured, most of the scenes I was afraid to write, the gut-wrenching scenes that utterly destroy the character, happen in the first few chapters.

In other words, it was a daunting task, but with a deadline hanging over me, somehow I got it done.  And by 'somehow,' I mean with the help of lots of caffeine and Noodles & Co.  I was worried the deadline would make me panic, but instead, it helped me focus.  I honestly believe it would've taken me months just to get up the courage to write those scenes, but I did it because I had to.

This is me standing atop Mt. "Yeah, I Rocked That"

Second, I learned to slow down.  I've been trying to 'hook' my readers by immediately diving into the action.  I was also afraid I'd lose their attention if I got bogged down in too much description of what my character was going through.  In the immortal words of St. Lolcat, "Writing.  Ur doin' it wrong."  If you throw an action scene at your readers too early, yeah, you'll have stuff happening, but your readers won't be able to connect with the main character.  And if you skip what your character is feeling, readers won't ever be able to connect.  With the help of Mandy and my awesome critique group, I think I got better at exploring my character's emotions, while not going overboard, and doing it by showing, not telling.  What really gets me is that I love to delve into what my characters are feeling, but I was convinced my readers would get bored, so I cut it out.  Yes, I am silly.    

There's so much other stuff I learned:  Tips on how to make characters more memorable.  What makes a really great opening, etc.  The good news is that I believe Mandy will be holding this class again in the fall, so if you were interested and missed it the first time, you'll have another chance.  I'd highly recommend it.  

PS-While I was writing this post, one of my friends tweeted, "Another 6,000 words today..."  Yegads!  What model of cylon are you???

You Haven't Gotten Rid of Me Yet

I'm sorry for yet another lengthy absence.  I admit, I've been in a blogging funk.  I had the time, just not the energy or inclination to blog.  The good news is that this funk hasn't extended to anything else.  Since finishing my latest revision of Knights of Avalon in December, I've been busy with a bunch of things:

Reading:  OK, well, I've been trying to read.  I've self-diagnosed myself with literary ADD.  I'll be reading a book I love and then...SQUIRREL!  I don't have a TBR pile, I have a TBF (To Be Finished) pile.  It took me six months to get through Catching Fire.  It's bad, y'all.   

 
I'm happy to say I actually finished Watersmeet and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Next up is Falling Under and then maybe Thief's Covenant, Witch Eyes, or Born Wicked.  

Writing:  I'm still querying Knights of Avalon.  To distract myself while I query, because querying isn't stressful, nuh-uh, I've started work on my next project:  Beautiful Medusa.  It's about Medusa, as the hero.  And yes, she still turns people into stone and has snakes for hair.  That's so inconvenient for her.  I've also signed up for this class  ------> Writing and Selling the Young Adult Novel, taught by the insanely talented Mandy Hubbard.  I've done workshops and attended panels in the past, but I'm pretty much self-taught and I'm hoping a class will help me with some of my problems with characterization and connecting with readers.     

Besides that, I've embarked on an epic quest to tame the roving hordes of dust bunnies living in my house and have been juggling rescue cats like someone straight out of Cirque du Soleil.          

And while I haven't been blogging, I have been attending author events, so keep an eye out for contests in the near future.  I've been hoarding signed books and it's time to get rid of them!

Dear Mom, My Name Is Not Beth Revis

Last year, I got my mother a copy of Beth Revis' Across the Universe. I knew mom would love it. She adores spaceships and sci-fi and when I met Beth during last year's Breathless Reads tour, I got the sense that she and my mom were on the same wavelength, so to speak.

I handed the book to mom and her face lit up. I was thrilled to see her so happy. She looked up at me. "Did you...did you write this?"

My face fell. I pointed towards the cover. "Is my name Beth Revis?"

Mom thought it over for a bit. "But what if that's your pen name? And you didn't tell me you had gotten a book deal because you wanted to surprise me."

I sighed. This wasn't the first time this had happened. The year before, mom had convinced herself that I was Kelly Gay, because apparently our writing styles are similar. "If I ever get a book deal, you'll know, because I'll be the one running up and down the street in my pajamas, screaming, 'Oh my God! Oh my God! I got a book deal!' Trust me on this, you'll know when it happens."

To re-cap:

This is Beth Revis, awesome author of Across the Universe and A Million Suns. She likes Futurama, Firefly, and things that explode. She also had this freaky painting in her hotel room the other night that looked like a bunch of carnivorous Pikachu on valium, which you can see here.



This is me:



OK, maybe this is me:



The point is: Despite our mutual love of Firefly, you'll notice we are not the same person.

As it turns out, Beth is going to be doing a signing in my area tomorrow. I wanted to bring mom with me, to prove I'm not Beth Revis so mom could meet one of her favorite authors in person. Unfortunately, mom's really into eating and paying her bills and had to work instead. I'm still going though! Besides Beth, Andrea Cremer, Marie Lu, and Jessica Spotswood will be there. I'll be sure to get books signed and have a giveaway.

As always, if you have anything in particular you'd like me to get, let me know in the comments.