Monthly Archives: April 2013

Under Pressure

Posted on April 29, 2013 by A.L. Katherine

Not the David Bowie song… Although it seems to be stuck in my head now… Anyways, moving on…

So I have this bad habit of finishing stuff and asking myself “what now?” I’ve been thinking a lot about book 2 recently, and talking with my husband. He’s really great to bounce ideas off of, and I’m starting to think he should have some kind of title for book 2 because most of my really awesome ideas are from talking with him. But the closer I get to finishing book 1 the more pressure I feel for book 2 and I wonder is this a common thing? Do other author’s also feel pressure when they sit down to write book 2? I’ve got about 7000 words of it, and 3 or more pages of notes of things I want to do, could do, or don’t want to forget JUST in case it fits in somewhere. I’m not writing it seriously, because I’m too focused on finishing book 1, but the more I edit book 1 the more I think “Is this good enough?”

Logically I know my story is too big for 1 book, therefore it makes total sense when I think of book 1 as a total whirlwind affair, that Alice gets swept up in. There is obviously character fleshing and development, because any character SHOULD grow with her experiences, but I feel like the real background and serious character development won’t even happen until book 2 because frankly, I just don’t have the space to do it in book 1. Too much other stuff happens in book 1, I don’t have time to do chapter long background stories on every character. And I feel like people want that in book 1, so I’m starting to feel all this pressure to add stuff to book 1 and then make up for everything in book 2 because god forbid my characters should be one dimensional and hated. I know its virtually impossible to please everybody. There are going to be people who give my book 1 star because they didn’t like it for whatever reason, I know this, logically, but that doesn’t mean I won’t sit here and freak out about the possibility that my book doesn’t have enough of something.

I know that’s not true, LOGICALLY. I’m sure I will write the draft for book 2 and it will be similar to book 1, and I’ll read it a whole bunch of times to make sure its sensical and then I’ll re-edit it seriously, line by line to make sure all my grammar, syntax and details are there. Logically I know this, but emotionally I’m still freaking out slightly. So is this normal? I feel like book 2 has to be EVEN BETTER than book 1. I don’t want to be one of those authors who you read the first book and its amazing and then you read the second book and are disappointed. I want the whole story to flow, so that in reality you could read the books one after the other and the story would flow and continue exactly where it left off (to a certain extent) because it is one continuous story and the only reason why I have to separate it into multiple books is because most people find books that are 800 pages to be a little daunting. I’m no Stephen King.

Am I totally off my rocker?

~Kat

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The Frustrating Parts

Posted on April 27, 2013 by A.L. Katherine

Good Morning all,

Sometimes I feel like editing my book is the most tedious thing. In 39 days I had the first draft written, but it’s been 50 days since then and I’ve edited 10 chapters. And I haven’t even reached the higher up chapters that I plan on giving complete and total makeovers! I find editing frustrating sometimes because it never seems good enough. Every time I read it I feel like I should change something and I know that’s common, but it doesn’t make it suck any less. Today I will be reviewing chapters 9 & 10 to make sure the past two days of edits are good enough to leave as is and then I’ll move on, because I’m slowly learning that once you’ve edited something, you can’t go back to it, otherwise you will be there forever.

Something else that’s frustrating is how long it takes to edit. In 3hrs I had 1.5 pages edited. Yesterday I spent 2hrs in the morning and then edited straight from 3-10pm and then again from 12-1:30am and I got somewhere around 7.5 pages (or one and a half chapters to be precise). Sometimes it feels like I’m just re-writing the whole goddamn book, and maybe I am. When I think of my first draft, the story line didn’t even make sense because I was still fleshing out most of the plot and characters. As I wrote, the story changed, so by the time I got to the end of the book the characters themselves contradicted each other. So I guess in a sense I have been re-writing things now that I know people better. And it’s easier to know what they would do… most of the time at least.

I’m excited to finish the book and I guess what is frustrating the most is I can’t just edit for 30min. If I want to edit I need to allot a large block of time because, well frankly if I only got 1.5 pages in 3hrs, I’ll be lucky if I get 2 sentences in 30min and its hard to constantly be interrupted like that. It messes with my train of thoughts and then I get half way through writing something and when I finally get back to it I have no idea what I was trying to say. I know I need to still have a life, but I honestly don’t think I would be upset if 90% of my days were spent on the book and then I had 10% of people time. I know that sounds sooooo bad, but it’s hard having all this stuff locked inside you with no time to get it out.

~Kat

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Official Book Preview

Posted on April 26, 2013 by A.L. Katherine

The moment you have all been waiting for is here!! Here is the first 3 chapters of my book, I can’t say its the official published version, but I think it’s pretty close. Please follow the link to read it. If you’d like to leave me feedback or if you find any typos please let me know what you think in the comments! So far I’ve received positive comments so I hope you all enjoy it!! It’s a YA sci-fi/fantasy novel.

Thanks to some awesome feedback from a fellow author I was able to re-vamp the book description, so without further ado, here is my preview of The Becoming, first book in the Oblivion series.

After spending her whole life moving around, Alice Heatherly is looking forward to a fresh start. When she moves to a new city for her first year of university she wants nothing more than to put down some roots and make friends but instead she meets Dawson. With one word from him — Ignea — her whole life is upended. When she is attacked by a red-eyed shadow and finds herself caught in an ancient battle between two warring realms — one that consumes worlds, and one trying to defend them — she begins to question her own sanity. Soon her whole existence comes into question, and she is faced with a decision she doesn’t have an answer to. Her one salvation is Dawson, the only person she can trust, but when he is pitted against the very forces he works for Alice can’t be sure she’ll make it out alive.

~Kat

***UPDATE Feb 3, 2014***

Chapter 2 is undergoing some restructuring so I am taking down this version temporarily. I’m hoping to have the re-vamped preview available by the end of the week. If you’ve found yourself here thanks for your interest! I hope you’ll come back to see the new and improved version!

***UPDATE Mar 1, 2014***

In the off chance you’ve found yourself here, I have officially updated my book preview of chp 1-3. It is posted on my main page now. It is also available via shortlink on my Facebook and Twitter pages.

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Escapist Extraordinaire

Posted on April 22, 2013 by A.L. Katherine

I have recently become very good at hiding. Life has been more than a little stressful and busy recently and it’s started to really affect my productivity. I know its not always feasible for me to be able to work constantly on my book, but since it’s what I love to do, but haven’t been able to do I’m starting to get a little depressed about it. I feel tired all the time in my spare time and all I want to do is sit on the couch and eat crappy food to make myself feel better. I haven’t wanted to blog, or write or edit and I feel overcome with this grand lethargy I can’t seem to pull out of.

Despite all this I do still have good news. I am currently in the process of editing chapters 8, 9 & 10, which means I have my final draft up to chapter 7! If I can motivate myself, I will be able to get a preview uploaded somewhere soon. So if you are curious to read what kind of young adult fiction I’ve written, you’ll have to pester me into motivation 😛 I just need TIME!! I always just need more time in a day and more mental energy! I can have an abundance of physical energy, but sit me down to edit and after 2hrs I am drained. There have been a couple nights I’ve fallen asleep sitting on the couch with my keyboard in my lap.

So hopefully if I can get this blog post uploaded I can motivate myself to start posting more regularly again. You might just get a few “I’m posting because I need to get back in the habit of posting” posts 😛 I’ll try and add some humour and pictures or something to make it more interesting at least. I just need to stop hiding. I’ve been hiding for at least two weeks and it’s not healthy.

~Kat

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Update, Chp 1-3 preview

Posted on April 10, 2013 by A.L. Katherine

Over the past week I’ve been working really hard to get the first 3 chapters completed! I know I’m really close!! For the first time I have read through everything and not changed a single thing!! I have now sent my 3 completed chapters out for review to 4 people, to garner opinions on completeness. If all goes well I’m hoping to have them posted somewhere public so that people can actually read a preview of my book! This is a seriously exciting concept for me! Yes I feel nervous that people will be able to read and judge, but I certainly didn’t write the thing for it to sit on my shelf and collect dust. I will be moving on to chapters 4-6 this week. Since the book is so long I’m finding it much easier to edit in 3 chapter chunks. I will try and keep my posts to once a week during this time.

Between trying to keep up with people who don’t live on a computer screen, working full time and editing this book my blogger life has really been suffering. I miss coming on here and writing. When I get to the tough stuff I might post a bit more out of pure frustration (sometimes its just hard to find the words). I will let you know as soon as my preview is available though. I think the only thing greater than loving your characters, is when other people also love your characters, lol. I want to make characters that you can love, and that you care about. Characters that, when something good or bad happens, you legitimately feel something for them, whether its happy, sad or angry, I want to be able to evoke that kind of emotion with my writing!

So I’m excited and I hope you’re excited too! Someone needs to be excited with me!!

~Kat

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Major Restructuring

Posted on April 3, 2013 by A.L. Katherine

My editing process has hit a new level as I’ve started to hear back from people. I’ve deemed it the “Under severe re-construction” level. Since adding one scene and re-writing another in chapter 25, I have re-written my first paragraph of Chapter 1. I added a bit more detail and split it into two paragraphs so you get a better understanding of Alice and the whole ‘moving out’ transition. I have also added a scene in Chapter 6 I’m actually feeling pretty excited about. I’m just in the process of editing out the kinks and moving some of the dialogue around, since even though Alice is stressed out, I need to keep her witticism alive! One thing I like about Alice is that she can crack a joke about anything, even tough things, it’s like her defense mechanism. If you can’t change it, you might as well just make fun of it 😛 or something like that.

So anyways, if it’s a little quite around the blog this is why. Hearing back from people makes me think I can make my book even better than what it was. Once I can solidify the first 3 chapters I am hoping to post them for download so people can read them. I figure even if the book might not be out for a little while I can at least work out THREE chapters 🙂 In the meantime you can follow my mini-updates through Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully chat soon with more exciting news!

~Kat

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