Swan's paddles on

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‘Swan’s mate for life’ is still going. One of my betas, Feebes, assures me that it will end up longer than ‘Best Friends’. Yeesh, I hope not; that was over 200,000! But she might be right, because the word count is already way over 150k. This was taken on the sixteenth and I have written some since then.

I made a rash promise to the JBNP readers that I would try to finish this story before Christmas... yeah... that’s not going to happen. Sorry guys. I have made a huge effort and written 22,035 words in the last seven or eight days and posted all of those chapters. I have got them to a point where the three are back together, but now there are a lot of loose ends to tie off. And they are kind of important loose ends, so I don’t want to do a rush job on it.

My Scrivener plan has 24 scenes marked out to follow the last chapter and that doesn't include the sex... lol. Sex always blows out my word count.

·       Who was the gas station vamp? Who sent him and why?

·       How does the alpha pair change the status of the pack?

·       Vampire battle scene? The pack fights with an alpha pair in place,

·       Paul has matured and Leah has accepted her wolf, but Bella still needs to prove her worth to the trio as well,

·       Bella needs to tell Charlie the whole truth (because I insist on it), and

·       More information on the gene theory of phasing - who is next? How can the tribe be better prepared?

·       And of course, the happy ending!

I have been having major issues with Google Drive. I plan and write in Scrivener and cut and paste into Drive for my betas to check/edit/comment. We also chat and brainstorm. For some reason I crash the chat function, and last night, Drive decided it didn't like Feebes and took away her access to all my documents. I have no idea why. My other beta Bansidhe assures me that I should be sent to foreign enemies to crash their computer systems.

I swear I am magnetic.

So, sorry guys, it will take some more time. But happy holidays to you all! May you enjoy your time off and survive the time spent with relatives.

Fandom Choice Awards

I have been nominated for four categories in the Fandom Choice Awards.

1.            All-Time Favorite Author

2.            Favorite Short (One-Shot) - ‘Wake Up and Smell the Coffee’ by Mrstrentreznor

3.            Best Love Scene - [I have no idea which scene they chose… lmao] ‘Best Friends Share Everything’ by Mrstrentreznor

4.            Best Slash - ‘Best Friends Share Everything’ by Mrstrentreznor

Vote here: http://thefandomchoiceawards.blogspot.com.au/p/nominees.html

There was a limit of three nominations for each writer, with some exceptions including the all-time fave category. If you were nominated in more than that, they just took the top three, so clearly Friends beats out Apologies.

Voting is open until January 3rd and you may choose three in each category. Thank goodness, I know I had enough trouble limiting my nominations. I was particularly pleased to see 'Boys with Girlfriends' by audreyii_fic in the best Bella Swan category. It is a gender swap story, and her Bella is called Lucas. It certainly made more sense to me for Edward to be an Edwardian female.

I was also pleased to see my beta feebes86 nominated for six categories. So proud of her. She has worked really hard to push herself in her writing femslash and horror/action, both of which she has been nominated for and in the all-time fave category, as well. 

There are very many great writers listed, so make sure you vote.

Nanowriwon’t?

If I had been doing the national novel writing month, I would have failed. Perhaps I would have tried a little harder if I had registered, but in any case, I only wrote 43,550 words not 50,000 for the month. In my defense I wrote 41k in October and 43k the month before that.

According to the website the big three genres this year, were fantasy, young adult and science fiction. So it looks like those three are still popular with writers, and hopefully with readers.

There were some super neat offers making the rounds. Scrivener was down to $20 for Nano winners (people who finished the challenge) and 20% off for those who didn’t finish but registered. Now the tricky part is to finish it, edit it and then do something about it.

Yeah, right. Easy for me to say. *looks sideways at pile of unfinished projects*

Sighs.

I think that might actually be the hard part.

It’s always hard to hold yourself out there. To show to someone else, the thing that you have poured so much effort into.

So shop around. Find out what publishers accept the kind of stories that you have written. Don’t waste your time, and theirs, sending a Christian publisher your vampire porn story. Think of it as a job interview. Get it right. Do your research. You wouldn’t apply for a job if you didn’t have the qualifications.

Meanwhile, read it through again. Polish it. Edit it. Make it the shining jewel that will catch someone’s eye.

Worst case scenario? Get a cool cover made for it and load it up on Smashwords.

You just never know. And of course, with Smashwords, you haven’t actually signed away the rights to anyone else. Ugh *shudder*. I remember reading some fine print pages and backing away fast. One actually said that if you uploaded the document, it now belonged to them; even if they never ever published it. No thanks.

*I cannot find the image owner, but clearly the words are Neil Gaiman's.