Posted by Christine on Oct 19, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
I won, I won, I won… oh and did I mention I won? What you ask did I win? I won the Surrey International Writers Conference Storyteller’s award. Yup, that’s right. That contest I posted about way back in July – I won it. Right now at this moment I am so in awe I can hardly describe what I feel. It is so amazing to know that people are reading and enjoying my story. Enough to give it an award. Wanna see.. There a four categories: Writing for Young People, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and The Storyteller’s Award (fiction). They had a group especially donate this engraving just for the Storytellers award, and I won it!!!! How cool is that! I was the only one of the winners to get this crystal engraving!!! The story “A decade of Scottsdale” will be available for sale online after the conference. It ends Sunday and I will post a link to where you can buy it as soon as it is up. Outside of that the conference is going great. I have learned a tremendous amount and I got to meet an author I really like. I will post more when I am not so tired, but now I need to rest so I can be awake for another day of conferencing tomorrow. Good night...
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Posted by Christine on Sep 25, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
I am having one, right now. What has awed me? Today I posted my first story on the web site This is by Us. You can find a link to it in the box on the right hand side of my sight. Please go check it out. I will be posting more over the next few weeks. The stories I am posting are “news” articles written by the fictitious character Chelsea Cole. The central character of a short story currently entered into an international writing competition. So why am I awed. Well, you see, six months ago I was an aspiring writer. Today I am a writer. So here I sit, in awe. Happy...
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Posted by Christine on Aug 5, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
Well, I have been working at my other job – the one that pays me :). I have a confession or two to make. Confession the first. I haven’t written anything in about two weeks. I haven’t really done anything writing related since I sent out my short story to the contest a week ago and before I sent it all I was working on was editing and cleaning that. The second confession. I have decided to revamp my story. Things will be changing that will totally reshape parts (but not all) of the plot. I am going to be doing some major rewriting. In truth I am kind of glad that none of the agents I sent to requested a partial because I think that the story is going to be even better when I am done with the rewrites I am currently imagining. So why haven’t I been writing? Because this is intimidating. Pretty much the only thing in the story “safe” from revision is the names of the characters. I worked way to hard coming up with all those names. It is intimidating to realize that I am going to basically say lets ditch what I have and start from scratch. Yes, there will be things I keep but in reality I am starting from scratch. My goal – To have a viable draft of my Manuscript ready for agents by the end of October. That gives me three months to rework my novel. So over the next 10 weeks I am going to try to post an excerpt for you once a week. Be prepared, these will be rough, I would love idea and feedback as you read...
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Posted by Christine on Jul 15, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
I’ve made quite a few over the past week. Decisions that is. So What are they: 1) I’ll be attending a writing conference in October. I’m very excited about this as it’s the first time I’ve ever attended a writers conference. 2) I’ll be putting all queries on hold till after the conference. I expect to learn a lot there that will help me in the query process and so I think I’ll wait till I have that information 3) I’m going to submit a short story to the contest at the conference. I have written it (see the post below) and am in the editing process. 4) I need to write more. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time doing research and working on “about writing” stuff, but spent little time actually putting words on paper. I miss that. So having made all these decisions I plan to turn my attention to writing more. I’ve barley started the sequel to Coradonna Lost and I think I’d like to work on that more. The problem of course with working on a sequel is that if I never sell the first book I’ll likely never sell the sequel so it may be a gigantic waste of time (in terms of financial’s). However the story wants to be told and it rumbles around in my head at night as I fall asleep, and often other times as well. So I’ll write it and see what happens. After all, even if I’m never a writer in the published sense of the word I’m always a story...
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Posted by Christine on Jul 9, 2007 in Publishing, Scottsdale |
This weekend I wrote a short story. Well actually I wrote the entire thing on Friday night then spent most of the weekend adding, rearranging and changing it. The story is set in the same universe as Lexi however it is unrelated to the Coradonna Lost story. Sort of. I have never really written a short story like this before but I wanted to enter a contest at a conference I am going to and I needed a short story to do it. So I decided to try. I like the story I wrote but I have to admit that I think short stories are a little harder then novels. There is no time to develop plot, or characters or anything. I prefer writing longer things where the story has time to take shape and the characters have a chance to learn and grow. Not that I will not try my hand (or pen) at another short story. I have several ideas of events that happen in Lexi’s world that would fit a short story format. But I think that this will be a skill that takes some time to hone and perfect. I will be working on this particular short story for a few more weeks before I send it off to the contest. I am not crossing my fingers that I will win, however I am excited about the experience of giving my work away to someone to be read. Things are on hold with Coradonna Lost right now and will be for a while. I am working on it but very slowly and I am not sure that I will send the next round of queries until September after some more editing and such. I may change my mind but I know that I have some work to do before the next round of queries is ready to go out and I am not sure I can get through that before...
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Posted by Christine on Jun 28, 2007 in Randomness, Scottsdale |
Sorry it has been so long since I posted last I have been having a lot of family time. All my children are out of school now and my time to write and Blog has dropped off dramatically. Over the summer my Blog might be more sporadic. I will try to post at least once a week though. So what has been going on. I have joined an online critique group and I have the first chapter of Coradonna Lost up for critique right now. I am hoping to learn things that will help me on my second round of submissions. No I haven’t sent those out yet – summer and kids and all. Also I am hoping to find out if the story grabs people in the first chapter. If not then I need to do some revision before sending out more queries the first chapter needs to suck the reader, or agent in. I have also been reading ( I was up till 1 am today reading a library book), lots and lots of books. Science Fiction books. I have been trying to see what is out there and what it is like. I have read a few books on terra forming and several space operas. I have liked some and not liked others. There are several themes that seem to repeat in Science Fiction that give me a great deal of hope for my own story as it seems to function within these themes while still having an original story line. Ok enough for today. I will post again as things...
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