P.A.U. 10 – NaNoWriMo Winner! End of an Era and more…

Dark Horse promotional comic cover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Greetins Lads and Lassies!

Tis I, the fearless blogger Gwendolynn back from NaNoWriMo-Space! My Novel is complete! Well – pretty much. There is one more chapter I’d like to add/insert but my muse decided to inspire and run away before I could get proper notes taken and now I’m feeling like I’m up a creek without a paddle BUT – the good news is, the novel “Operation Charlie Bravo” is pretty much done. I’m debating now on printing out a hard-copy for editing when I take my trip up to Vancouver, B.C. in the next couple weeks. My friend I’ll be visiting wants to read it but I’ve been torn to try to keep him from reading it since it is the “Raw” ugly, unedited monster that it is.

So as I was wrapping up my novel City of Heroes, the NCsoft published game, lifespan was drawing to a close. On November 29th and 30th I logged in for last screenshots, information collection and other things. One of my good friends I met through City of Heroes and I went to the place that got him hooked on the game, because he saw the sunset there and thought it was absolutely gorgeous, Siren’s Call. Our timing couldn’t have been better. As the game was down to its last few moments being online, my friend and I watched the sunset in Siren’s Call. It felt very poetic and in a way – heroically epic. What a way to go out. He came into the game because of that Sunset and he went out watching it with a friend. I’d say there’s no better way we could have spent the moment other than maybe being surrounded by a crowd of the friends we made and met in-game.

P.A.U. 9 – NaNoWriMo 2012, Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hey everyone!

Been a short while since I last checked in. I sorely apologize for that. My sleep schedule has been crazy messed up so of the time I have when I am awake, I have to run around like a chicken with my head-cut off to the stores I want to get to before they close. I have tried to make efforts to get my sleep schedule back in order but sadly to no avail.

Most of my writing time has been dedicated to either writing e-mails to friends and family. I have also been writing some rather political stuff for my Facebook vs. subjecting you all too more of my political frustrations about election years or about voting in general. You’re welcome. Those political bits however lead to some rather heated arguing and debating among friends and/or family though and that has taken up my writing time as well.

Personal Author Update 1

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I know I’m not posting as often as I was back in 2011. Quite a bit has happened in my personal life regarding myself – and my family.  My mother had surgery within the last couple of weeks for stage 1 Breast Cancer. We had a Snow and Ice Storm we had to contend with here in NW-Washington. So its been a little crazy. I’m not going to speak too much about what I’m going through personally because – it’s sacred, personal, complicated and concerns some spiritual growth aspects about myself. Just know it’s been consuming a great deal of my time since I got back home here in Washington.

Word Count Status Bar Widget Thingy!

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Some of you might have noticed I recently added a word-count meter on the right hand side and might be wondering where I found it and how I added it and, “Darn it! I want one!”. Well I’m here to answer that. See I was reading another fellow NaNo-nites blog post earlier (even linked to it in previous post at the bottom) and noticed she had one of these “word-count meters”. And I thought. “Ooo! I want one!” so I clicked on it and it took me to the source! Svenja Liv although there aren’t any instructions on how to insert it into your widget bar. I had to figure that out on my own. Luckily I found what I was looking for using the “Help” section. You’ll need to utilize your “Text Widget“. It’s made for stuff like this. And better still the blogger is also a fellow participant of NaNoWriMo. I thought that was pretty cool. They’ve even done some book covers! I thought that was neat. Which really makes me wish I had Adobe Photoshop right now because I’d be going to town with creating my cover for my novel right about now. I have the image in my head but my art style isn’t up to snuff and I don’t really have a very high end camera for photo taking either. So – gotta make due with what I got for now, which is, I’m not concerning myself with it. Well that’s all for now! Enjoy!

~Namaste~

NaNoWriMo Day 22 – Wen and Where?!

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So I realized maybe part of the reason why I’ve felt less than passionate and inspired as I usually do when I’m writing is because I’m trying to do too much at once. I’m trying to keep readers up-to-date on my blog on a regular basis since I took the “Daily Post” Challenge. However, in the wake of NaNoWriMo I now realize this has perhaps done more harm than good. Instead of my writing normally being a pleasure – I think I’m turning it into feeling more like a chore. I suppose it would help if I actually posted far more excerpts of my novel – but – CALL ME PARANOID – I just REALLY don’t want too many people knowing the story of my book before it even gets a chance to be published or much about my characters at that. Maybe if I was doing drawings of my characters might help but even then – I’d probably be just as protective of those as well (yay for deviantart artist copyright law! Mwahaha!).

NaNoWriMo Day 19 – Can We Say “Sequel”?

Awww! He's so cute!

Well I’m now up to 50 pages in word, though in book format who KNOWS how many pages these words would translate to. I typed a total of 2,279 and I am now sitting at 40,971 total. As I’m rounding the end of the first plot I’m beginning to see that perhaps that second “big twist” might actually have to be made special for a “Sequel”.  It has more to do with the fact that I’m not entirely sure the story will be done by the end of the month unless I cease and desist in hitting these “memory barriers” I keep running into, but also the fact that the story may go over 50k which I’m not worried about – but it could pose an issue if I don’t finish it on time. As I write this I have my little furbaby Loki on my lap who seems more than content in keeping his “Goddess Mama” cool, calm, and collected. His company has definitely been appreciated and I’m blessed to have him in my life with his brother for emotional and mental support.

NaNoWriMo Day 18 – Word Count of the Day

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2,125 words is what I typed up this evening. It’s not a lot but it’s better than nothing. However, I feel my eyes blurring in and out now, trying to desperately blur the words as I read them over or when I am writing them. I’ve been listening to Seabound’s Scorch the Ground which has been helping me to focus and keep writing for some reason. It’s definitely a favorite. I’ll see about trying to get more writing in once I eat a late dinner and maybe watch an episode of either Supernatural or Grimm. Lastly, yesterday I picked up a copy of “Way of the Peaceful Warrior“. After I finish “Azal” I will most likely start reading it since, from the movie trailer I saw of it, I should hopefully enjoy and learn something from the book.

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NaNoWriMo Day 18 – Playing Catch Up

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So if anyone noticed I’m rather 4 days behind on my “Daily Post”. Now if I could have I would have – but our Hotel I do not believe had internet and I needed a break from writing in general as it was since I’m doing NaNoWriMo. Sadly, concerning NaNoWriMo I am also 4 days behind on my writing. This means I will need to quadruple my efforts of trying to make our deadline. @_@ The good news is? Going to the Goth Club was EXACTLY the medicine the doctor ordered. Yes; my legs are still sore from dancing the night away – but I was in good company and despite we were some of the few “Goths” actually there at the NocNoc we had fun! I guess I didn’t realize how overwhelmed I felt about NaNoWriMo and trying to keep you guys up-to-date to boot. It does take a small toll.

So – before I get to my writing of the day I’m sure some of you want to know about my first Goth Club experience? It – was – AWESOME! Loved the bar/club! No Pina Coladas though, that made me a sad – but the bartender made an alternative which was a nice try on her part. They also were showing movies there such as Willow! The music the DJ played was pretty good despite he wasn’t really playing what I would have constituted as Brit-Pop Techno. Would have loved to have heard a few more of my favorite songs played, but he did play at least songs by a couple of artists I DID know. Eventually he did play one of my favorites toward the end by Seabound called “Scorch the Ground“.

NaNoWriMo Day 14 – Rebooting System – ERROR – Failed!

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So I’m not even going to try to probably write tonight. My eyes actually feel sore and tired. I wish I knew where my eye drops were – but I don’t so the only thing I can think of is drink some water and go to bed early tonight if possible. I made very little headway this evening while I tried writing at B&N. I think that had partially to do with the fact that my Peppermint Mocha needed about 2 or 3 more shots of espresso and that the music drastically needed to change. I would have brought my MP3 player but I’m sure it would have needed to be charged for about an hour before I left. I left late enough as it was. So – knowing I really didn’t get anywhere today, except a paragraph since I couldn’t THINK clearly – I’m going to have to work “Double Time” if I want to make up for Sunday and Mondays losses. Wish me luck and pray that the Muse of creativity strikes me tomorrow. I’m going to require all the help I can get in order to figure out this next chapter and how it should proceed.

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NaNoWriMo Day 12 – It’s DONE! Excerpt from Operation Charlie Bravo/Brown

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Fooled yah! No; I’m not done with the novel yet but what I AM done with is my hand-written manuscript. I got to the very last few pages today and have them all typed up. The last bits of it brought me to a word count of 1,557 yay! I honestly feel like the worst of it is over – but I understand I might feel that way again soon as I progress further into the story. My Bad Guy has a pretty interesting and unique name as opposed to *insert blank space here, no really I mean it* and the Council being called something completely ambiguous because I couldn’t think of something at the time. I also officially gave my Vampires the name that use for their kind. Yay!

So okay, I just realized I was right. This next part may be my next hardest. Why? Well as the Blackmore’s Night song goes, “Where are we going from here?” Oh goodie! Well I might very well introduce the Bad Guy and some of the other members of the Council so people get a good idea about who he is – what his personality is like, etc. It would give me a good opportunity to talk about one of my “Good Guy” character’s who is supposed to be spying on his butt.

As a sort of “whoopee! We’ve made it this far” I’ve decided I’ve had a change of heart and that I might like to show an excerpt from my novel I am working on. It gives you an idea of the main Protagonists personality and it includes fun bad@$$ banter. Please keep in mind what you are reading is taken from the portion that is 2 yrs old so it’s definitely rough for sure. I will be putting this on my NaNoWriMo author page as well. So you know the female is the “Good Guy” or main character of our story. Enjoy!