Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Novels”
I’m probably the last to the “Year in Review” party, but I have a good excuse! The mountain behind my house was on fire. Literally. See, where we live is very dry and fireworks are banned in the entire municipality. But, someone decided to celebrate the new year with a flare. It landed on the mountain. And spread. 11,000 hectares …
It’s nearly that time again: National Novel Writing Month. Every November I and thousands of other writers challenge ourselves to write 50,000 words in just 30 days. It’s a big goal, and it’s really hard, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s also the way I draft best. I first learned about NaNo in 2004, which I failed miserably at. …
Things haven’t exactly gone as predicted this year. My habit, in years past, has been to spend the whole summer before NaNo preparing. I outline the hell out of it, which frees my mind up from worrying about plot to concentrate on prose. This year I couldn’t settle on a project to do it justice. I came closest with UNCHURCHED, …
I’m impatient to get going this year. I mean, there’s always some impatience going in, but this year feels stronger than in the past. It’s a mixture of excitement and anxiety. And just plain, “But I wanna!” I realize that I didn’t actually blog about NaNo at all last year. 2016 was, as I’ve said before, a very weird year. …
All day I’ve been on tenterhooks. The last week has had an element of the surreal. The last month even more so. Today the winners and finalists for the Young Adult Romance Writers of America’s 2017 Rosemary contest were announced. My manuscript, IN HER OWN SKIN, won second place! (I’m sorry if you’ve never seen the Yatta video before. You …
It’s time for #PimpMyBio! Every year Pitch Wars hopefuls post fun profiles of themselves to share with the community. Pitch Wars is a contest where the prize is a mentor to help you revise your book. Learn more about Pitch Wars at organizer Brenda Drake’s website. About Me …this is the hardest part, can’t I leave it blank? I could …
This is the second major good news of the last couple of weeks. I actually learned about it around the same time I got into #QueryKombat (Round 2 Entry), but didn’t want to say anything until finalists were announced. The Rosemary is an award given by the Young Adult Special Interest Chapter of Romance Writers of America (YARWA), “for excellence …
I was selected for QueryKombat! QK is a contest where queries and novel excerpts are pitted against each other, bracket-style, until the strongest query is reached. I’m on Laura Heffernan’s team, competing with the query for IN HER OWN SKIN, my YA selkie novel. As of last night I officially survived Round 1 and made it to the stage where …
Hello mentors and aspiring mentees! I’m Bronwen, host of this-here blog. I write YA that typically falls in the realms of contemporary, fantasy or historical, nearly always centering around a strong female lead. I volunteer with my local writing communities as an organizer because I believe in giving back, and in creating the things you want rather than waiting for …
The #WIPjoy hashtag and prompts were started by writer Bethany Jennings. It made for a really nice little community of people encouraging one another. The writing community at large is very supportive, and #WIPjoy was all about the love. The featured image above is the Father’s Day gift I gave to my dad this year. I commissioned a cover purely …
Or rather, an ode to Bridget. BRIDGET JONESÂ helped keep my sanity intact on a very long flight. (Johannesburg to JFK is about 17+ hours.) I had bought it and THE EDGE OF REASONÂ at the airport and I’m so glad I did. Every minute accounting of fat cells lost and gained reflected the tedious hours in the air. I fell in …
Well, it took me until almost the 11th hour, but I made it. This year I managed to stay above par almost the entire month. I built up a four day buffer. I lost it over the Thanksgiving break. Pies (from scratch, mind you) Turkey Day Very Challenging Homework My Best Friend’s Wedding (in reality, not the movie) If I …
Today I broke 44k, which means my win is within the week. According to the official site calculations, I’ll finish on the 25, which is a very comfortable win and right on target for my goal of 55k by the end of the month. Oh yes, I may finish early but I will still be writing. In fact, I’ll be …
Whaddaya know? 14 chapters and approximately 100 pages in, I hit a slump. There’s this theory that says that about 100 pages into a novel, most people hit a wall. It’s around the 20-25k mark. Coincidentally, this is typically in the second week of NaNoWriMo, when things start to get Hard. A lot of people quit around this point. They …
So, I might be cheating just a little bit. The official rules for NaNoWriMo state: Just be sure to only count words written during the month. Now, I have about 15k of a previous draft of GISELLE sitting on my hard drive. It covers quite a bit of the same material in this draft, with differences. And I really like …
So, how’s that fancy graph thing working out? Not. So. Hot. As you can see, I’m well below the plan. But, Days 1 and 2 both managed to beat the daily minimums, so there’s that. Day 1 was a blast. We held a midnight KOP at a diner and I wrote over a thousand in less than an hour of …
I first heard about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2003. It was my senior year of high school and I was game to try. I was, after all, preparing for a career as a novelist. The project I started, still known as UNTITLED MOBSTER CAPER, has never gone anywhere. Why? Because I did almost no pre-work. I didn’t know …
Scrivener does a lot of nifty things. I think most people are aware by now that it has a cork board/index card function. Each text file has an accompanying information card, where you can put things like a description of what the file contains. These cards can then be displayed en mass and drag-and-dropped to reorder them. This is, as …
I’ve been tagged for the 7/7/7/ #PitchWars Challenge by Verna Austen. Here are the rules: Go to page 7 of your WIP. Scroll down to Line 7. Share the next 7 sentences in a blog post. After the excerpt, tag 7 other writers to continue the challenge. Here we see Janine facing off against Constance, leader of the Youth Group. …
This post is inspired by the #PitchWars mentors, who have said time and again that this contest is about community. Finding friends, CPs, commiserators, etc. And it occurred to me, “Why am I not talking DIRECTLY to the other wannabe mentees? We’re hopping to each other’s blogs, we want to get to know each other!” So, this is me talking …
This is too good. I’m bookmarking it for research.
Final thoughts on Giselle before I switch back to Unchurched. A playlist! https://rd.io/i/Rl4WzlAvlVZs/ Giselle’s playlist is dreamy, ethereal. It’s a mix of Florence + the Machine, Oh Land, Lana Del Ray, and Lorde with some Mumford & Sons, Norah Jones, and Ellie Goulding. Enjoy.
Janine is a fairly common name. Were there any songs with “Janine” in the lyrics? I wondered. HELLS YEAH. David Bowie lyrics! This has been your 5-minute distraction moment.