S. K. Williams' Livejournal

I had a blast yesterday at Wimbledon. I don't normally pay attention to tennis, but I think I might be a convert. The news here is saturated with talk of Andy Murray this and Andy Murray that. The entire country is obsessed. I was starting to catch the disease too until today when I saw him:



My loyalty has totally reverted back to the good U S of A. Friday, it is on. Andy Roddick vs. Andy Murray. I so wish I could be there!

Trey and I weren't able to get into Centre Court yesterday. We spent most of our time on Court 3 watching doubles. We got to see Martina Navratilova and Nadia Petrova, who apparently are famous. When I had no clue who these two women were, Trey just about dropped dead.

We did take a few pics why we were there. I'm sorry these aren't behind a cut, but my LJ doesn't give me that option for some reason. I blame T-Mobile.



Trey and me in front of Court 3.



I liked this guy's hat.



In the States, little kids run lemonade stands. Here, apparently grown men do. :-)



That Nadia girl signing autographs.



View from the top of the hill. I think it has a name, but I think people are calling it Murray Hill now? Anyway, one of the Williams is playing on the screen.

Quick Status:

94500 / 90000 words. 105% done!
Yeah. This is a problem. The book isn't finished. It's somewhere close to the end, but I'd guess I have another 10 to 15k to go. And this word count doesn't include chapter seven, which I've been putting off writing for a while now. SKOF's first draft is looking like it's going to hit 120k. Not good.

I know, I know. It's okay for the first draft to go long. That's why there's a second draft: to cut out words. But there are so many words that need to be put INTO the story still. It's that whole 'fleshing out' thing I mentioned in a previous post.

*head desk*

Okay. Deep breath. I have six days to finish this first draft. I can do this. Focus on the good stuff, like the fact that I've written 30,000 words this month. That's pretty awesome.

I'm loving "Sometime Around Midnight" by the Airborne Toxic Event. Absolutely beautiful lyrics. Can't you see the bar, the people standing in the background, and then this one, beautiful girl who seems more colorful and full of life than all the rest? Can't you feel this guy's pain? His catch of breath at seeing his ex and how much it hurt to have his heart ripped out?

The girl’s a bitch, making sure he sees her leave with another man. That's when the song changes. The guy tries to drink her out of his mind, but he can't, so he stumbles outside under the streetlight, anguished and singing:

I just have to see her
I just have to see her
I just have to see her
Even though she’ll break me in two.

Ah, I love it. I love music like this that rips raw emotion out of me. Just fabulous. And it's the perfect theme song for the beginning of my Spacebabies*** book. *grin* I only hope I'm able to capture the emotion of this song with my words and without the help of instruments and a heart-wrenched voice.

Seriously, guys, you must listen to these lyrics.

*** I so need to find a better temporary title for that book.

Found this via agent Lucienne Diver's blog. This should be required reading for some people. *ahem* Trey *ahem*

The Significant Other's Guide to Dating a Science Fiction/Fantasy Writer by Chloe Neill

Have you noticed your significant other (let's abbreviate to "SO") wandering around, mumbling to herself about orcs or vampires? Does she spend inordinate amounts of time scribbling antiquated names on a handmade map? Is she trying to weight the relative strengths of crossbows, Glocks, and katanas?

Then, to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, you might be dating a science fiction/fantasy ("SFF") writer.

You might have some interest in SFF on your own. Maybe you enjoy a little CosPlay, a ittle Steampunk, some ST:TNG, or a little SciFi (or are we calling it SyFy?). Or maybe you might indulge your SO's ridiculously fertile imagination and her lectures on the biological imperatives of vampirekind. Whatever your position, if your SO is a writer in the SFF genre, your awareness of the life cycle of a manuscript could be the difference between the misery and happiness. Here's a handy guide:

1. Submission: At this point, your SO doesn't yet have a deal for her manuscript. She's just spent months (or years) sweating over 100,000+ words of SFF, and she's hoping for a little validation and a promising offer. These are very nervewracking days, during which your SO is probably questioning her abilities as a writer, the marketability of her product (are elves the next vampires?) and whether her query letter would spark enough interest to get the agent/editor's thumbs-up. Tread carefully.

Read the full article at Grasping for the Wind.

First, the Public Announcement:

My T-Mobile internet is screwy. Some days I get a decent connection, other days I'm kicked off every other minute. I *think* all my e-mails are getting to me, but I'm not so sure about the e-mails I send out. When my internet spazzes, I get an error message telling me my message hasn't been sent. However, a quick look at Outlook's 'sent' folder says the messages did go out. I really have no clue if they've gone or not. I've resent some messages (my apologies if you get anything twice!) but if you've been expecting an e-mail from me in the last week or so and haven't received one, it might be T-Mobile's fault. You can send me an e-mail nudge or leave a comment here if you think my message to you has been lost.

Now for the Water Wars:
(I'd put this behind an LJ cut, but my internet hates LJ; it doesn't give me any options for editing this.)

My studio's water pressure is screwy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This makes doing the dishes a major feat and taking a shower a risky endeavor. The hot water is more reliable than the cold. Problem with that is it's HOT.

The other day, the shower decided to put up a fight. I had a trickle of warm water only, but I'd gone to the gym and HAD to get clean. I managed to do this by turning on and off the water in between sudsing up. I got out of there clean-ish and without any major scalding, though it was close there at the end once the pipes *really* heated up.

I should probably tell the building caretaker, but there are nine studio flats here, including his. I find it hard to believe this water pressure thing is affecting only me. Besides, the caretaker scares me. He's not quite friendly. When I've passed him on the stairs, I've barely managed to get out a 'hello' before he trots off. I don't want to bother him, so I developed a strategy to combat the water.

I tried to take another shower today. The water worked at first, but by the time I undressed, the water pressure was gone, signaling that the trickle coming out of the showerhead was all hot water. I rolled my eyes, shut off the water, and redressed. As soon as I opened the bathroom door, the toilet ran, refilling its basin. Suspicious, I tried the shower again. Full water pressure. Full water pressure that lasted.

It's just odd. One second, I can get zero water from the faucet, the next, it's perfectly fine. I've decided now that, whenever the water throws a fit, I'm just going to flush the toilet and wait however long it takes to hear the water refill the basin. Sometimes, this is only a minute or two. Sometimes, it's half an hour.

I think I can make it two and a half more months like this.

I hear him slowly breathe in, slowly breathe out. He steps deeper into the torch’s light then drops to his knees in front of me, shoulders hunched as if he’s just lost a war.
“McKenzie.”
He says nothing else, only my name.

------------------

I don't know if they sound like much out of context, but I feel them.

Today was a very happy day!

Well, not really averted. More like muddled through. I finished The Chapter Which Would Not Be Written last night. I’m moving along at an acceptable pace today. Thank. God. Not writing for EIGHT freaking days was killing me. I don’t know where the time went. I sat in front of my laptop, staring at the screen. I wrote a paragraph, deleted a paragraph. Wrote a new one. Deleted that, too.

I know, I know. Everyone’s always saying don’t edit your first draft. Just write it and fix it later. I couldn’t do this with The Chapter Which Would Not Be Written. The things I attempted to write destroyed the story. Destroyed as in there was no possible way my heroine could be left breathing. Things are okay now. She’s still alive and kicking, though she’s not in a good place at this time. That’s always fun to write.

I reached 80,000 words today. Supposedly, this story is going to end in another 10K. Yeah. If that happens, I’m truly talented. Most likely, this draft is going to go over 90K. This is a new experience for me. I’ve never had a book be too long. Usually, they’re kind of skeletal in the beginning, and I have to give them flesh in the revision process. What worries me about SKOF is that I still feel like I have that fleshing out to do, which means words are going to be added, not taken away.

The problem: I read around the Agent Blog o’Sphere and 120K seems to be the upper range acceptable for a debut urban fantasy, but 80K to 100K is preferred. Surely I can get to the end before 100K.

I'm not the world's most awesome cook, but I'm not taking the blame for this one. I followed the instructions, I swear!

So, last night I had the brilliant idea to have breakfast for dinner. Pancakes and turkey bacon. We do that all the time back home. Since I couldn't find pancake mix at ASDA, Trey got this from Tesco:




Okay. So I should have been suspicious that they use the same batter for pancakes and Yorkshire Pudding (which isn't really "pudding" in the US). I also should have thought it odd that it asked for 300ml of water to be added. As I whisked it in, I frowned, thinking it was going to be way too liquidy. I double checked the directions. Yes, 300ml. Okay. So I poured it into the pan and waited for it to turn golden brown.

It turned pale green. Actually, it started off pale green. Then it kind of turned pale yellow. Trey aptly described it as looking like "fake rubber vomit". After a while, it looked like a tortilla. It very much was NOT a pancake. Here's a pic, though it really doesn't show how much not like a pancake it was.








So, yeah, we went out and had Indian food. What really sucked is that I still had to come home and do dishes.

Other differences in US vs UK cooking: a cup in the UK is much larger than a US cup (measuring cup, not drinking cup), and I highly suspect that "to simmer" has different meanings.
 

... going on over at devonmonk's blog. I'm hoping to find someone at a similar stage in the writing process as I am, maybe someone who can kick me in the butt and help me get through the end of this book. I don't exactly have writer's block (don't really believe in it), but I'm definitely in a rut these past few days. I keep hoping I'll wake up and be able to write Shiny New Words, but so far, bleh! I know what's supposed to happen but I'm bored. And this is an action scene! How can that be boring!?

Anyway, I want to be a beta for others, too. Trey and I are going to be in London for exactly three more months, and I can't keep buying books because they'll take up all my suitcase room! I figure reading/critting on-line will be a good use of my time and energy, and maybe I can discover some awesome future writers. :-)

So, if you're looking for a beta or would like to be a beta yourself, head on over here, read an ad, post an ad.

1. I’ve been wrestling with the internet all week. It’s won most our fights, only letting me load one new page at a time without disconnecting and reconnecting. This morning, though, my genius husband (married 4 years ago yesterday!) came up with a theory based on the fact that when everything was working in the beginning, we were listening to Sirius radio. I tackled the internet today and made it load Sirius and whoola! Perfect connection (well, most of the time). The husband is definitely a keeper.

2. I think flying bugs in the UK are smarter than flying bugs back home. Whenever one flies into our little studio, it always finds its way back out. Flies back home? Not so much. They’ll crash into the same window over and over again when there’s an open one no more than two feet away.

3. I reached the point in my manuscript today where my spell-check no longer works. Is it wrong that I always feel like that’s an accomplishment?

4. Sometimes, people here can’t understand me over the phone. When this happen, I attempt to speak in a British accent. I think this makes it worse.

5. Trey started coming over to the UK about two and a half years ago. Whenever he came back home, he always had a ziplock full of loose coins. We lug the bag back to the UK with us each trip, but it only gets heavier, not lighter. I’ve found a solution to this. I cram my pockets full of change whenever I go to the grocery store. Then, I use the handy dandy self-checkout kiosks to empty my pockets. I find this very fun. I think the people behind me find it very annoying.

Finally settled in. Got the internet, although it’s very finicky. Doing laundry today. Scary, since I couldn’t find the directions to the washing machine. We’ll see how that turns out. 
 

Our little studio is pretty nice, especially for the money. It’s newly renovated, has it’s own bathroom, a plug in stove, and a microwave/grill/oven. Yeah, not sure how that combo is going to work out, but I’m trying to cook most of our meals. Going to the grocery store is a headache, though. One, I don’t know what I want to eat. Two, everything is just slightly different here. I mean, sure, chicken is chicken, ground beef is, uh, minced beef, but the spices and such? Yeah, not so much. This trip, though, Trey and I were smart. We smuggled in five packets of Taco Seasoning (their stuff might claim to be Old El Paso, but it’s not!), a block of Velveeta (I don’t think they have cheese dip here), and some other seasonings. Tacos sound good, but I’m really trying to conserve those, seeing as though we’re gonna be here for the next three months.  

 

We went into the city and saw Jersey Boys on Saturday. It was alright. If you like the Four Seasons and Frankie Valli (Sandy says “who?”), you’d probably love it. It had the feeling of the movies Ray and Cadillac Recards, and I liked the musical about as much. Nothing beats Les Miz, though. Maybe we’ll see it a third time.
 

Other than that, I’ve been writing. I’ve been quite productive too. I think I can have this sucker “finished” in two weeks. That is, if I stop rereading portions of it. Yep, it’s vain, but I keep scrolling back through my doc to check some facts, and I get caught up in what’s happening. I guess that’s good. I like it. Don’t know if anyone else will. The only way to find out is to have a few beta readers take a look at it. I think I’ve roped in

 

kaitianafor a partial read. It looks like a won her auction over at Brenda Novak’s. ‘course, if I did, that means I’m going to have to work on my synopsis. *grumble, grumble*

Weather is absolute beautiful here. Highs in the mid 70s, cool breeze, bright blue skies that rival Texas’s in the spring. I think we’ve had more gorgeous days in this last week than we had in our two previous trips combined.

 

Anyway, need to go check the laundry, eat lunch, and finish up this scene..

 

Just stopping by real quick to say I'm going to be internet-less for an unknown number of days.  Flying to London today and have no idea how long it'll take to get internet access in our little-bitty-but-new-studio.  There's a library not too far from where we'll be staying, though, so I might break down and do a quick e-mail / facebook check.

Saw this over at Sci-Fi Guy.  I LovedLovedLoved L. J. Smith's Vampire Diaries.  I read the books back in junior high.  They were my first introduction to what I later learned was urban fantasy.  I'm not dissing Twilight or anything, but Vamp Diaries, rocks!  I'd take Damon (yes, Damon!!!) over Edward any day.  Stefan is yummy too, but I definitely prefer the bad guy.  

The MC's name is Elena.  Sound familiar to any of you?  Yes, yes, this is where I got the name for the MC in my YA sci-fi book.  It was supposed to just be a placeholder name until I came up with something better, but it stuck.   (I also had "foreignname" as a placeholder word. It stuck too.  Took me FOREVER to find an alien sounding name that worked!)




In hair news, I'm currently trying to find a stylist with "experience putting pink highlights into hair".  No takers yet.  :-(

Just had one of those moments where my book is brilliant.  Not me.  My book.  A plot piece fell into place. 

When I started writing this book and this particular character, I thought he was so minor he wouldn't even get a line of dialogue.  Now, he's integral to my MC's success on her latest crazy plan.

It feels good, having the pieces fall into place like this.  I swear sometimes I'm not really writing this book.  It's more like there are multiple dimensions in the universe, and this story has already taken place in one of them.  I just happen to have some wacky-awesome power to sense these people's lives. 

No teaser this Tuesday, just a word count meter.

I have to laugh at this.  I entered the first 250 words of my YA SF book in this month's Secret Agent contest over at Miss Snark's First Victim.  They're basically the same 250 words I entered back in November.  In November, I hooked almost every commentator and was even one of the Secret Agent's honorable mentions.  This month, I got slaughtered.

In November, 15 of 18 commentators were definitely hooked with the other three being on the fence.

This month, 4 of 16 commentators were somewhat hooked, with the rest being completely Not Hooked.

Hmm. Methinks this industry truly is subjective. 

In other news, I had a rocking good writing week, getting in about 8,000 words.  Yeah, I know some authors do this in their sleep, but this book has been tough for me.  I've finally hit the halfway point, reaching the scene that's been in my head since the beginning of the book.  It involved a kiss.  A first kiss.  And a ballroom with a clock striking midnight.  I even throw in a reference to Cinderella.  I do all this without it coming off as cheesy, I swear. 

I loved Jeri Smith-Ready's first vamp book, Wicked Game. Fabulous story-line. Fabulous characters. I can't wait for this release.

Miss Snark's First Victim is a blog I follow.  It's a great resource for writers.  Several times throughout the month, authoress - the anonymous author of the blog - asks for excerpts from writers' WIPs.  She posts them and the site's hundreds of visitors give quick crits.  Also, about once a month, authoress hosts a Secret Agent contest.  Writers send in the first 250 words of their manuscript and try to hook a literary agent. It's really a lot of fun and you can get some great feedback.

Anyway, authoress wrote a book a few months ago called AGENT: DEMYSTIFIED.  She puts together everything she's learned about agents, what they want, what they DON'T want, how to hook them, etc.  She, uh, demystifies the process of getting published.  Well, the book trailer for AGENT: DEMYSTIFIED is now out.  I think it's great!  (I especially love the picture and chocolates packed with the submission!)

Trey sent this to me. Too funny. I have to share.



Trey's trying to talk me into seeing the movie tomorrow with a bunch of friends, but I vowed I'd never go to another theater after watching State of Play a few weeks ago.  It was a great movie, but the volume was too low, someone was cracking their knuckles for half an hour, another was chomping on popcorn, and I could have sworn the guy sitting behind me and to my right was snoring the whole freaking time.  Turns out, he was just breathing.

I'd rather wait and watch Star Trek in an enjoyable atmosphere.  But then, everyone else in the world but me will have seen it.  :-(

I just read and enjoyed Kate Noble's historical romance, REVEALED.  At the end of this book, you included the first chapter of Noble's next book, THE SUMMER OF YOU (dislike that title, btw) and  the first chapter of an author named Donna MacMeans' THE SEDUCTION OF A DUKE (love that title, btw).  That's all you included. No blurbs or reviews or anything. 

How is one to know whether she wants to read either of those books without a quick summary of the plot?  I read Noble's chapter one and was happy to see Marcus there, but I presume TSOAD isn't going to be about him.  I thought maybe it would be about the mysterious Jason, but he's the heroine's, Lady Jane's, brother.  I very much hope he's not the hero!  I want to know who is.  A blurb would do that.

Yes, yes, I can go to the Internet to look up the summary***, but I'd much rather not have to.  You should use these few pages at the end of the book to truly hook me, the reader, so that I rush out immediately and by Noble's next book.  Or try out Donna MacMeans, whom I know nothing about.

A blurb next time, please, dear Berkely.  I like to know what I'm reading about (though I suppose the chapter excerpts are effective in their own way; at least I know these two other books exist).

Cheers,

Sandy


*** ETA:  Okay. I put the extra effort in and went to Amazon to look for a blurb for TSOY.  Nothing.  So I found the author's webpage.  Nothing again.  So I googled +"kate noble" +"the summer of you".  NOTHING!  I am very peeved. 

Saw this posted on watchmebe 's LJ:


I identify with the main character already! lol

Book Description: