For those of you reading this post on Facebook or Livejournal, click through to NomChron itself and check out the new layout! I’m also testing out a couple plugins like getting comments to crosspost between various platforms. So knock yourself out! Say something nice!

Part of the new layout, is to get a more uniformed look with my business cards. You heard me. Business cards. As I haven’t made some kind of official statement about it yet, but I’m going to the Silken Sands Conference March 16-18. I decided to take the plunge and get some more specific business cards for the event. I’ve very recently changed my erotic romance pseudonym from Morgan Chase to Lex Chase. Let’s be fair, I was kind of freaking tired with being confused with JP Morgan Chase Bank!

The company I went with was MOO and I’ve had business cards from them before. They’re pricy but they are seriously really nice. Thick stock, laminated finish, crisp images, and easily legible. What I like about MOO is you can have multiple designs in a pack of cards. This time I decided for such a small run I was doing to use photographs of things that meant something to me, as well as tweak the colors for a more faded and color-warped photograph feel. Of course three of them are about my cats. Because. Really.

Click to enbiggen!

In there I have a couple shots of Atlanta, Krispy Kreme, flowers from my garden, and of course Dali, Remmi, and Pootie. The LxC is a logo I cooked up because I couldn’t make LC look interesting and LxC when said aloud sounds like ‘Lexi.’ Lexi was an option I was considering with the pseudonym change, but I don’t look like I could pull off the name in real life. But aren’t they quaint?

In revision land news, Darkmore has entered the second round of revision while my crit group finishes chowing down on the first round. Now it’s mostly fine tuning at this point like raising flaws in characters, and adding little glimpses of stuff that dovetails into the end. The hardest part is making the voice match between the first half and the last half. I’ll get a chapter how I want it to sound, then pick it over again.

Things that have started rolling around in my head is picking an better title, but part of me wonders if I can come up with anything with as much staying power. Sevon’s Sins comes to mind. And part of me busts out laughing.

Now if I can just bang my pitch into shape, life would be grand.

Annnnnnd… Done! At 11:20 PM on January 9th, I crossed the finish line on Darkmore’s first round of revisions. Of course, now it’s January 12th that I’m making this post. Things have been a little on the crazy side on this end. You understand.

On the morning of January 9th, I was three and a half chapters in the hole. Class started on the 10th. And pressure, I’ve come to realize, is an excellent motivator. I didn’t want Darkmore hanging over my head when class started. So, by a lot of willpower, and maybe a few bottles of Mio Energy mixed into a metric ton of water, the ending to Darkmore came out of my brain and onto the page.

Is it the right ending? Maybe. Is it a better ending? No doubt. The new interpretation of the ending was based on comments from my critique group and made me realize, Sevon and Jack made it out of their ordeal much too easily initially. Now, everyone has been touched, changed, altered, or has a whole new outlook based on the outcome. Even the social classes of the kingdom of Darkmore ends up forever changed.

I made the executive decision to mostly close off the story to the opportunity of a sequel. There is a possibility for one but it will more or less be a story within the same universe and not necessarily the same characters. There’s a few breadcrumbs dropped in here and there of those that could have stories. Sevon’s parents Anna Maria and Louis is a potential story I’m seriously considering. How did they meet? What adversities did they face? How did Sevon get in the picture? Jack’s brother and sister-in-law, Kaltag and Mirabelle, have a story of how they got to such a level of mutual adoration of one another. What did they face? Bianca and Chaney, the captain and second of Sevon’s royal guard, have their own remarkable history.There’s potential for three interlinking prequels right there. That’s not counting potential future trials and tribulations for Jack and Sevon down the road.

I feel I’ve learned a lot more with this round of revision. I’ve learned more about the characters and about my writing. I’ve picked up a few new methods along the way. Such as jotting down beats to scenes as suggested by Rachel Aaron on her blog. Still figuring out how to work in a 10k word day without killing my life. But jotting down a loose road map to the final battle really saved my bacon when it came to crunch time!

I’ve also experimented with eliminating thought verbs as Chuck Palahniuk explained here via la vie boheme and according to the critique group, while my work wasn’t shabby before, it’s definitely had quite a bit of a power-up.

Now, all that’s on the menu is tweaking the ending and making sure that my sentences aren’t total gibberish. You try avoiding ‘was’ and ‘is’ usage and watch your sentences go pear-shaped. Or sentences that turn… how shall we say… A little too abstract and expressionistic? Or better yet, too freaking obtuse when you’re trying to choreograph a final battle.

And then I get to go for round two with this thing, and a final round three. I’m giving myself only three times with this and then I’m shipping it out. I don’t want to be trapped in revision hell for the rest of my life.

In two weeks, I dust 10-9 off and take a look at it again. I already have some pretty drastic measures planned. The thing is 91k at current. That’s a bit unwieldy for a romance novel. Some things are going to have to get cut and cut hard.

Anyway. My class is about to start and I’ve got ten minutes to edit and post this. Whee~

Once again, I grossly miscalculated. This time the miscalculation worked out in my favor! I’m so much closer to the end of the book than I thought! While exciting, it’s going to take some elbow grease on my part. I have to write the last seven chapters from scratch, and unlike when I wrote the final 7k the first time, I don’t intend doing it in a day.

College is back in session on the 10th, and I intend finishing the first round of revisions on the 5th. It’ll be great having it out of the way! By my initial calculations the revisions would take eight months. I’m pleased that I’m finishing three months ahead of schedule! Once I bucked up and resolved to revise 7k a week things really got going!

My critique group, provided nothing comes up between now and then, will finish going through it around February 14th. Accidental perfect timing on my part because it’s the exact date of the 20 year anniversary. I might need a cupcake. ;D

Overall, I like the new direction Darkmore went in. I’ve said before the first draft wasn’t bad it just wasn’t the right. Of course, that’s just conjecture on my part. Darkmore has drifted from straight up romance and naughtiness all the time to a bit more of a action-romance still with the same naughtiness. ;D Instead of things concluding with a mere whisper of a warm fuzzy, I’m hoping that the new conclusion reads with the same emotional punch I’m visualizing. I want people cheering with the new ending instead of settling down with a ‘oh isn’t that nice….’

I’m also kind of tired of being totally spoiler-free with talking about my stuff. I want to tell the world with all the tasty bits! I realize in the game of publishing that’s not a good idea. Alas!

Also, I’ve busted out my calendar and blocked out my writing schedule for the new year. The table breaks down as follows:

Table Code Here

Posting it here for accountability sake, plus I’ll stick it up on its own page so I can have a check off list as I go. I’m happy about it. I’ve managed to fit everything in I wanted to do in 2012. I guess it’ll be the Year of Revision and I can only imagine 2013 will be the Year of Writing.

Happy New Year everyone! May you accomplish all of your goals!

I think I need to commemorate this because I will never see 44.44% ever again. That’s awesome. Darkmore is a teensy bit shy of halfway into the editing process and I’m four chapters away of completely running out of material I salvaged and wander into Make The New Ending Land. Considering I started this in oooh… August I can only cross my fingers I’ll be through it by end of February. I’m giving myself till March 10th as a final due date for the first round of revisions. I’m thankful for my Critique Group because I’ve been able to make more sweeping changes sooner instead of whittling at it layer by layer on my own. It’s because of the questions raised by the Critique Group that I’ve decided to completely rewrite the ending. Likewise, it’s because of the Critique Group, I have to go back to the earlier chapters and work in new details, alter certain character attitudes, and add more to the worldbuilding.

Overall, I’m happy just to be mostly back on my feet. Editing Darkmore has been utterly peppered with starts and stops from my sudden cases of death. I’ve had the flu twice, I’ve had crippling days of acid reflux twice, and now that my wisdom teeth are gone I dealt with developing dry socket and unwittingly near overdosing on ibuprofen. I’m happy to report my dry socket packings are out as of yesterday and while I’m still a bit tender it’s nowhere near as bad. I’m trying to tough it out a bit and let the clots form but eating is still a bit of an adventurous chore. Right now, I have a delicious brownie from Firehouse Subs sitting in front of me and I’ve only managed eating a quarter of it. Normally, this thing is in my gut in under a minute, but I can barely open my mouth wide enough to bite it. So, I nibble.

Nonetheless, I am committed to getting this friggin’ book done. It’s become the principle of the thing now, and when it gets to that point it’s time to put on your asbestos lined boots and march into that hell. School’s back in session come January 10th and I’ve got a lot of ground to cover between now and then. The more I make a dent the better off everything will be.

It’s getting closer to the point of writing a synopsis and query letter, and then it’ll be all the more real. The day Darkmore gets sent off into the submission works is the day it stops being a story I created as an angsty 13-year-old and traded chapters with friends to being something more. It stops being this nebulous thing that lived in my head for two decades and starts being a thing that perfect strangers can see, touch, hold, and read.

It’s terrifying… And at the same time, absolutely liberating. Honestly, I think seeing Darkmore in print is far more personally monumental for me than 10-9. Trust me when I say that’s saying a lot from the kid that put her nightmares on paper and turned them into heroes so they wouldn’t scare her anymore.

Remember that anthology story I said I was starting way back in this post? Yeah. After dealing with school work and a bit of beating my head into the wall, it’s done.

The only problem is I overshot my goal of 12k and ended up with close to 15k. Unless there’s three thousand words I can just dump, which hopefully there is, my chances of making the anthology have become slim to none. On the bright side, the potential for publication as a stand alone novella has increased exponentially.

The lovely little tale I call Pawn Takes Rook and stars a first person POV by a guy that’s had way too much caffeine and too little sleep. The prose kind of bounces all over the place like a kid without his Ritalin….

For fifteen thousand words. Also no chapter or section breaks because it reads like one long, long, long stream of consciousness rant only with an actual plot.

Overall, I’ve created characters I feel proud of. The protagonist and resident spaz-monkey is a young hipster fellow by the name of Hogarth Dawson. I chose the name as a reference to Burne Hogarth, the guy responsible for the Dynamic Figure Drawing books. And honestly, I can’t imagine Hogarth with any other name. It’s one of those things that just fits him. He’s very peppy, a bit nerdy, and for a technopath has no idea what Deloreans are but loves giant robots. He’s definitely more than meets the eye. Oh a pun~

His partner in crime is a near seven-foot tall, blond and brawny Viking by the name of Memphis Rook. When it comes to Rook, let it be known I never throw anything out. His first name was recycled from Memphis Archer, the self-esteem lacking protagonist in my failed culinary-student-in-love story Doughboy. Once again, it was just a name that clicked in and worked. In writing Rook, I realized I had tapped into the very first superhero I had ever created as a small child, D Westbaylen.

Westbaylen to this day is a username I practically use everywhere because the chances of it being used is absolutely zero. I’m even the variation Westiebee on Twitter. I haven’t written the character in nineteen years because I hated what he had become. He went from being a sarcastic and likeable badboy to being a completely deplorable anti-hero bordering on being a villain. Writing him in those days since I had changed him up never put me in a good place in my head and usually left me depressed for days.

Rook I realized is what Westie started out as. Sarcastic, likeable, and with just enough sexy badboy mojo. I was never at a loss for a zinger, or a one liner, or a pun when writing his dialogue. He never felt stiff. Like I was trying to create something that just wasn’t there. He flowed easily, and his motivations were always clear in my mind. His fondness for 80s trends and gadgets was a charming quirk that pretty much materialized out of thin air.

Whether Pawn Takes Rook makes the grade in the submission process or not, I’m going to make the vow not to beat myself up over it if it doesn’t. While the usual Five Guys Burger and Fries of Rejection is delicious, I need to find healthier avenues of dealing with my moping. Like going to the gym and turning the moping into positivity.

Still, hey, I wrote a friggin’ novella with an all new world, new style, and new characters… That’s nothing to sneeze at.

And now I will sip my Coffee of Victory. Cheers!

Darkmore Editing

17 / 45 37.78% Done!

Now that I’ve recovered from another bout of the flu, I’m at the stage of Darkmore editing that I’m pretty much creating new material all over again. I’ve salvaged all I can, and now I have to write nine chapters from scratch. All in all it’s really not that bad. I think it’s the post-flu productivity and seeing what’s piled up while I was in a coma and it just seems like it’s a mountain when really it’s a molehill. If I really bust ass at it I’ll get those chapters done in nine days no muss no fuss.

I think it’s because I’m preemptively planning for my December, a month where I get a lot of writing done, not to be a very productive one this year. I’m getting my wisdom teeth out on December 12th and while my mother assures me I’ll only be totally useless for three to four days, I’m pretty sure I won’t be totally okay until Christmas. I’m telling myself not to panic.

Tomorrow, I start work for a currently untitled anthology submission, and I’m going to try my luck once again. The point is I kind of have to get the draft down by December 11th. December 5th if I can swing it and give it time to cool off while I get my teeth yanked out of my head and focus on hardcore editing afterwards. I’m going to aim for the 12k limit since I think the story can stretch for that long. I actually might have to trim a bit since I think my concept is honestly too big to squish into 12k.

At first I wasn’t totally married to the idea but this morning the missing puzzle piece that gave it an extra oomph came to me. So I’m fairly good to go on it. Truth be told I had planned to try for the anthology when it was initially announced months ago. I just didn’t have an idea until 48 hours ago. We’ll see how this pans out.

I’m conditioning myself to practice reverse psychology with the piece. I’m going to go in telling myself I have an absolute snowball’s chance in hell. That way I’ll make me work extra hard. Pretend like if it’s the last story I ever write I better make it count. If it gets kicked out, I’m not going to fret over it and just keep trying. I’m kind of becoming a regular pro at riding the rails of the rejection train. I think my skin is getting a little bit thicker with each kickback. I’m kind of wondering if I won’t know what to do with myself should that ‘Yes’ finally come. I think it might involve lots of rolling on the floor and my cats thinking I’m having a seizure.

Anyway, once I conquer this college final paper on Cormac McCarthy it’ll be absolute smooth sailing. If I pass my classes this year it’ll be a small miracle. This semester I just didn’t care. I’ll admit it. But that’s a whole other pile of drama for another time.

Darkmore Editing

15 / 45 33.33% Done!

The melody of my greatest hit in question is ‘I’m So Far Off My Outline.’ I’m up to Chapter 15 and while events are occurring at their appointed time, I’ve made such a gigantic mess I’ve chosen to plow through and not backpedal.

In a moment of brilliance, I’ve discovered a light at the end of the tunnel. You see, Darkmore has six different outlines. And I kept all of them. The outline I have been working off is called Outline 5-A. Because Outline 5 wasn’t doing it for me. In pretty much ignoring everything Outline 5-A said at this current point in the story but remembering it sounded vaguely like another outline I had done, I went digging.

And I found the file called Outline 6. And everything I had reworked was all there as well as a road map on what to do next. Halle-freaking-lujah!

Problem: In initially keeping 60% of the book, which honestly is kind of unheard of anyway, I’m now basically keeping about 20%. But that small smidgeon I kept has been reordered and all the dialogue rewritten.

And I’m actually okay with this. I realize I’m forging it into something stronger and less… wimpy. I’ve raised the stakes exponentially for all sides because it makes no sense for a battle to be largely one sided. It makes no sense for Sevon to magically outwit the villain and the villain to accept his fate like a placid sheep. It has to be a fight. It has to leave a mark. Sevon, Jack, and everyone else that assists them have to be forever changed by the enormity of what they’ve done. They can’t just pull out a roll of Mentos, smile, and that makes everything All Okay™.

Editing is not about playing it safe. It’s not about correcting the spelling, adding a comma, and calling it a day. It’s about killing your darlings and forging their corpses in the literary bellows into a weapon that cleaves the imagination into thousands of possibilities.

I have Ace of Cakes Rock Star Duff Goldman in my head that says “Never play it carefully and safe. Dumb and dangerous is the way to go.”

Let’s get dangerous. Rock on.

Darkmore Editing

11 / 45 24.44% Done!

I had forgotten I used to post progress meters of editing as well. It’s back! And I like that I can actually see some honest to goodness progress instead of the bleak grind of my Word Doc. When all is said and done, 45 chapters of Darkmore’s first round of revision is only an estimate. I have 36 planned but it depends what I split up, what I combine, and what I cut all together.

I’ve made myself the goal to edit 7k a week, 1k a day. Similar to my writing habits of writing 7k a week from scratch. I haven’t been able to write consistently for about a month and it’s been making me pretty batshit. I’ve decided that if I’m going to keep the pace I need to get up earlier before my day gets bogged down with other necessities like school, homework, and going to the gym. Because at the end of the day, my brain is too scattered to concentrate. Monday through Friday I’m up at 8:30 and my butt is in my chair till noon. Saturday and Sunday I ‘sleep in’ until 9 and pretty much play things by ear. I still have time for all prior commitments and it’s done wonders for the cantankerous mood that had me by the throat for the last month.

Considering with Darkmore, I had to redraft the first quarter of the book and it was a hell of a grind. I’m finally at the chapters of the story that I’m keeping largely intact and just editing for context to fit into the revamped beginning. A lot of dialogue’s been cut, rewritten, or had other characters say a different character’s lines. A lot of Sevon’s opinions or decisions were flopped around at this point in the story to make sense with the whole.

The best part about it is I don’t hate it anymore. When I was writing the beginning I was like ‘My God! I’m such a useless hack! I don’t know what I’m doing! I need a tub of Haggen-Daz STAT.‘ Now… Thanks to my beloved crit group of The Traveling Gypsy Writers on Facebook, I realize no really I don’t suck that bad. Hurray!

And NaNoWriMo is only nine days away aaaaauuuugh. I’ve decided to suck it up and just edit Darkmore for it. Cheating? No. Why do you say that? I’m not cheating. Noooooo… But I’m going to vow to myself next book I’m doing is Grow. That bastard is getting written one way or another!

You heard it here first! Tune in next time!

NaNoWriMo is six weeks away and I am the first to admit I am completely unprepared. I have notes on a dry erase board of telling me to check into X, Y, and Z that have been there since the summer. The book I’m doing this time called Grow, is an idea I’ve had in my head for four years, and it was initially meant as a gift for my mother. I had a false start with it back then, well, in all fairness I had come up with the idea two hours before NaNoWriMo 2008 kicked off at midnight November 1st.  I was full of false bravado of “Oh hey, I can do that!” A little easier said than done back then.
My mother and I still once in a while discuss Grow. It’s kind of a once in a blue moon thing. When I had started school this semester she said to me point-blank “When are you going to finish Grow?” and I said confidently “This Fall.”

Grow is similar to 10-9 in the years from Conception to Completion. 10-9 was the famous six years of false starts, rewrites, lack of confidence, and then just finally getting down to it. 10-9′s completion was also fueled by a friend’s comment that said “Let’s face it. You’ll never finish it. It’s your life.” Filled with righteous indignation I immediately thought, “Oh I’ll show you, Mr. Smarty Pants!”

I spit out 10-9 from December 2009 to May 2010. I held up the box of the draft to my friend and he grinned. “Gotcha,” he said. And thus began my long history of writing things on dares. Because I can do it. And I will win.
Grow began humbly, but it was the first flash of my mother discovering I could tell stories. In a way, Grow molded into something that brought us together. Somehow, the impetus of wanting to share this with my mother should be the thing that makes me bust ass on it. But it isn’t. I have yet to be dared to finish it. I have yet to have the gauntlet thrown in my direction.

Thus, I’m unprepared. But isn’t that how NaNo goes anyway? It’s like surfing. You body surf the waves to learn the tides. Polite company calls that drowning. So NaNo you pretty much drown for a while until you figure out how to get on your surfboard of plot and claim the half-pipe.

As for 10-9, who’s still sitting on a shelf after Awesome Rejection Critique… I know what must be done. I was struck with a fit of temporary insanity and just sending it on to the next publishing house without any revisions suggested by the critique made hoping they would take it as-is. Here’s the kicker. The Awesome Rejection Critique came from a company I had sent it to them twice. They did express that they could be interested in 10-9 down the road once I had clarified some bits and they had another look at it. Key word is could. Not a promise of acceptance.

So my master plan is to do the edits, and ship it back in for three times the charm. Maybe lucky number three will be what does it.

On top of that… I’m creeping bit by bit through editing Darkmore which is also for the same company. I’ve revised nearly 20k. That’s progress I suppose. I need a magical Time Management Fairy. Or 100-hour days would be spiffy.

Originally posted by at SIGNAL BOOST: SAY YES TO GAY YA