41 Large and 20 Short

So I'm churning out the first draft of the second book in my steampunk series and boy...is it a tight timeline. I've set word count goals every week to keep on track with my deadline, but I have to say its feeling fast and furious like NaNo. The thing is, I don't want to deal with the kind of manuscript I usually end up with with at the end of 30 days of frantic writing.

I'm not too worried, though. A LOT of planning went into this book beforehand. As an architect author (as opposed to you discovery writers) I do have the entire book plotted, outlined, and visualized. So I've got that going for me.

The pace of this book is sort of break neck. I have to get to 95,000-ish words by the end of August. I'm at 41,000 right now with two weeks to get another 20,000 down. So if I type for twelve days (we are camping somewhere in there) then I have to hit 1,600 words a day.

Not too hard...right?  Right? Gaaah!

I lost a lot of time caring for my mother in hospice and then helping my father through her passing this past month. We finally had the memorial and it was beautiful and sad and really messed up my head. I'm not sure how to deal.

For now, I'll just keep going. Putting my hiney in the chair and my hands on the keys and pray the story flows despite my troubled mind.

If any of you have suggestions for or experience dealing with this kind of situation...I'm all ears.

Until next time...Go Write!

Cover Reveal: Nora and Kettle!

Nora

and Kettle

by Lauren

Nicolle Taylor

Release

Date: 02/29/16

Clean

Teen Reads

Summary

from Goodreads:

What if Peter Pan was a homeless kid

just trying to survive, and Wendy flew away for a really good reason?

Seventeen-year-old Kettle has had his share of adversity. As an orphaned

Japanese American struggling to make a life in the aftermath of an event in

history not often referred to—the internment of Japanese Americans during World

War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having “one drop of

Japanese blood in them”—things are finally looking up. He has his hideout in an

abandoned subway tunnel, a job, and his gang of Lost Boys.

Desperate to run away, the world outside her oppressive brownstone calls to

naïve, eighteen-year-old Nora—the privileged daughter of a controlling and

violent civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the

interned Japanese Americans. But she is trapped, enduring abuse to protect her

younger sister Frankie and wishing on the stars every night for things to

change.

For months, they’ve lived side by side, their paths crossing yet never meeting.

But when Nora is nearly killed and her sister taken away, their worlds collide

as Kettle, grief stricken at the loss of a friend, angrily pulls Nora from her

window.

In her honeyed eyes, Kettle sees sadness and suffering. In his, Nora sees the

chance to take to the window and fly away.

Set in 1953, NORA AND KETTLE explores

the collision of two teenagers facing extraordinary hardship. Their meeting is

inevitable, devastating, and ultimately healing. Their stories, a collection of

events, are each on their own harmless. But together, one after the other, they

change the world.

 

About the Author

Lauren Nicolle

Taylor lives in the lush Adelaide Hills. The daughter of a Malaysian nuclear

physicist and an Australian scientist, she was expected to follow a science

career path, attending Adelaide University and completing a Health Science

degree with Honours in obstetrics and gynaecology. 

She then worked in health research for a short time before having her first

child. Due to their extensive health issues, Lauren spent her twenties as a

full-time mother/carer to her three children. When her family life settled

down, she turned to writing. 

She is a 2014 Kindle Book Awards Semi-finalist and a USA Best Book Awards

Finalist.

Author Links:

   

IWSG, I Panicked

Welcome to another installment of the Insecure Writer's Support Group conceived by illustrious Ninja Captain, Alex J. Cavanaugh! Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG

So I'm plugging away on my WIP and usually a third of the way through I stop and go through a few helpful "how to" lists I have compiled over the years. I check to make sure I'm hitting the right action beats and leaving the proper amount of threads...just sort of taking the pulse of my novel, as it were.

This normally helps to double check my Type A tendency to need order when sometimes in the midst of writing it can get pretty messy.

However, this time I found that I was missing something essential. A truly high stakes, doorway-of-no-return motivation that sets my heroine in motion. I THOUGHT that I had one. Its in my outline and synopsis...but as I wrote it, truly just let the story unfold, I found that it wasn't enough. It was kind of -- well it was a little blah.

I panicked...

Hopefully I've figured out what I need to do, but it requires ripping the story open at the seams and really scooping some stuff out, wrangling some new stuff in, and tying those pesky threads together again. Well, it all seems so intimidating. I don't really know how to begin. 

So glad this all happened so close to IWSG posting time because just reading about how other authors face similar struggles and triumphs really is a great thing.  And actually, now that its off my chest...I'm feeling a little better already.