Tag Archives: author

Beautiful People: Favorites Edition

Posted on by under For All the Bookworms, My Books

Hello, everyone! It’s been a long time since I did a Beautiful People post. This is actually going to be the last Beautiful People post of this year, as Cait @ Paper Fury and Sky @ Further Up and Further In, who host the meme, are both super busy and unfortunately, they will be putting the meme on hiatus for the rest of this year. 😭

Fortunately, they will hopefully be able to pick it back up again sometime in the future, and they’ve put together a super special edition of the meme filled with favorite questions from past Beautiful People posts as a special farewell to this amazing blog meme! Let’s dive right in…

WHAT IS THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE MEME?

From the Beautiful People FAQ on Paper Fury:

Beautiful People is for writers. Every month, we post a list of 10 questions for you to answer about your characters. It’s designed to help you get to know your characters – their quirks, their personality, their flaws, and who they are.

DISCLAIMER: I cannot guarantee that everything here is or will be canon in the future. I have spent a fair amount of time developing these characters, but some stuff is still unclear in my own mind, so I will try to answer the questions as best I can.

Also, the character I’ll be using for today’s post is from a super-secret project that I have yet to officially announce or finish working on, so some details about the characters and plot will have to remain secret, for now…

Enjoy the post!

The Character

chalis007-189517

Once again, I’m mostly going to use Mae from the untitled sci-fi duology I’m working on, but I will be mentioning some characters from my other books throughout the post as well. Photo by 胡 卓亨 on Unsplash

The Questions

1.Favourite genre to write in?

This might come as a surprise, but I actually really enjoy writing sci-fi! I’m not sure if it’s my favorite genre to write in, but I love being able to speculate about what the world might look like in the future and writing about real locations while still being able to take some liberties with technology and setting.

2. What book (a real actual published book!) do you think your character would benefit from reading?

Um, honestly… Mae would really benefit from reading the Bible. 😅

3. Favourite piece of dialogue you’ve written?

“What, exactly, did you do to me?”

“It’s a neural enhancer,” Marta tells the opposite wall, “Developed to enhance memory retention, focus, and awareness. It’s designed for use in the military, but we needed something that would ensure you’d be back on your feet and talking some kind of sense as soon as possible, so I authorized the use of a nonconsensual injection. I should mention that side effects include temporary insomnia for at least thirty-six hours, headaches, and a temporary increase in blood pressure. On the plus side, you are seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and thinking clearer than you ever have in your life. Enjoy it well it lasts. It’s got a nice kick to it, but I hear the hangover is pretty bad.”

“Awesome,” I say, pressing my freezing hands against my buzzing forehead.

4. What did your character want to be when they grew up, and what did they actually become?

Mae has always wanted escape from her tedious life, and she found that escape in her online world, so I guess you could say that she became the hacker she always wanted to be…

5. Favourite character name(s)?

For girls, I’m really partial to Angel and Amber. For boys, my favorites are a tad esoteric: Jacamar and Marcel. (A jacamar is a kind of bird which was mentioned in The Mysterious Island, one of my favorite books, and I just love the word so much. I think it would make an awesome name!)

6. What makes your character feel loved, and who was the last person to make them feel that way?

I think Mae needs someone to really take an interest in her and her problems. She’s been dealing with everything on her own for so long, hiding all her issues from everyone (and from her parents most of all, before they left) that having someone who would actually help her carry her burdens would certainly make her feel loved. When she was young, her parents served this role for her, but gradually she began to hide more and more things from them and draw further away, and their lives became harder as well, so that they didn’t necessarily have much time or energy to help her figure things out.

7. Favourite character you’ve ever written?

This is really, really hard, because I love all of my characters. But I think I might have to say Esmeralda from Behind Her Mask was Death and Empty Little Heart. She’s fairly complex and deals with a lot of issues, both in her past and her present, and she’s honestly just a ton of fun to write. I also love writing Marta and John from Shell (the first book in the sci-fi duology I’m working on).

8. If your character were permanently leaving town, what would they easily throw out? What would they refuse to part with? (Why?)

All Mae really needs is a laptop and/or phone, some clothes, and she’s good. Her entire life is online, and she can access money from any one of her many bank accounts at any moment, so she doesn’t really need (or care to have) anything else.

9. Favourite tropes to write!

  • emotional boys
  • characters who think they don’t care, but they actually care a lot
  • ‘good’ characters who find themselves becoming more and more like somebody that they really dislike
  • characters who randomly hate some universally loved thing, like pizza

10. Which story has your heart and won’t let go?

My sci-fi duology is very near and dear to my heart, but I think the story of the Lavender family (from Behind Her Mask was Death and the the prequel/sequels I’m working on) will always be my favorite.

11. Favourite relationship between characters you’ve written?

I would probably have to say Devon’s relationship with his mother. It’s heavily featured in my untitled Behind Her Mask was Death prequel, so I won’t say too much for fear of spoiling anyone before the  book is even finished, but it’s just such a pure and enjoyable relationship to write about. ❤

12. Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” What are the books that you want to see more of, and what “holes” do you think need filling in the literary world?

This is such a great question, because it actually ties directly in with my sci-fi duology. I started writing it kind of out of frustration, because all the ‘hacker’ books I saw were always about people hacking into video games and messing around with them, and I’ve always wanted to see a book about a hacker in the real world who messes with  actual governments and stuff.

13. Favourite Pinterest board / aesthetic for a book?

Here’s a little aesthetic for Shell that I made a while ago:

Shell Aethstetic 1

14. Favourite time periods & settings to work with?

For time periods, I like writing in the near future (20-30 years ahead), and also in my semi-Victorian fantasy world (from Behind Her Mask was Death). For settings, I really enjoy writing about cities. There’s just so many different people and so many different layers of life to explore! I enjoy writing about lonely spots in the middle of nowhere as well.

15. When people are done reading your book, what feeling do you want them to come away with?

Ooh, this is another hard one… I’d like people to come away from Shell, and from my sci-fi duology as a whole, with some good ideas to think about and chew on: Is it really easier to forget the consequences of our actions when they are mediated through technology? Is it easier to manipulate people when we can pick and choose what parts of our lives they see and ‘edit’ our speech? Is technology, or are users of technology, manipulating us? Lots of heavy stuff to think about. 😛

Of course, I’d also like it to be an exciting, enjoyable experience. It’s all about finding a balance…

Thanks so much for reading this Beautiful People post! I’m a little sad that this is going to be the last one for a while, but, on the other hand, we’ve got Cait’s book to look forward to, and you can always check out Cait and Sky’s blogs in the mean time!

Be sure to check out Cait’s original post, where you’ll find links to other writers who have done this meme, as well as the list of questions and a place to link up your own Beautiful People post.

Once again, Beautiful People is hosted by the amazing Cait and Sky.

Beautiful People

Esmeralda’s Story is Out Today! (Plus Hiatus Announcement)

Posted on by under My Books

Finally, after months of teasing and promising this release, it’s finally here! Empty Little Heart: Esmeralda’s Story is live on Amazon right now! You can buy it here, or add it to your shelf on Goodreads. I’ve been working super hard on this story, and I’m so glad that you can finally get to read it! If you do give it a read, please consider leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon, wherever you review your books. I would be very grateful! 🙂

 

Esmeralda

Empty Little Heart is available only as an ebook, but if you don’t have an e-reader like me, you can read it on your phone or computer with the Kindle app! ^_^

Hiatus Announcement

As you may have gathered from the title of this post, I’m going to be on a short social media and blogging hiatus over the next week, starting Sunday. There’s been a lot going on lately, and I haven’t been getting nearly as much work done as I’d like to, and next week I have to finish up a bunch of school before our break, so I think stepping back from social media and letting go of the pressure to blog for a week will be a good change. But don’t you worry! I’ll be back starting the 25th, and hopefully have a lot more awesome stuff for you guys. If you do need to contact me for anything, please feel free to send me an email through my Contact page.

Well, that about wraps it up for this post! I hope you have an amazing day.

Thanks so much for reading, and I’ll see you again soon.

🙂

Esmeralda’s Story is Almost Here!

Posted on by under My Books

Hey, everyone! You probably forgot all about the Behind Her Mask was Death novelette I’ve been working on and teasing for a while now, but I’m finally ready to actually release it this week! This novelette is called Empty Little Heart: Esmeralda’s Story, and I do finally have a cover and blurb to show you guys. This amazing cover art was created by Jenna Paddey. Definitely make sure to check out her other beautiful art on her Tumblr or her Instagram page.

Empty Little Heart (Cover)

Ten years before the events of Behind Her Mask was Death, Princess Esmeralda discovers another life beyond the high walls of her father’s palace. Her governess is bent on keeping her under control and acting like a proper princess, but Esmeralda wants nothing more than to escape the confines of her stuffy little world. Only William, her brother and best friend, can keep her sane. But she would still do anything to be free…

 

 

This novelette will be available on Kindle starting this Saturday, and you can preorder it over on Amazon, if you like! And, in case you’re wondering, you can read Esmeralda’s Story before or after reading Behind Her Mask was Death. It doesn’t really matter which. I’m always working on more stories about these characters and their world, so if you have enjoyed Behind Her Mask was Death, or if you read and enjoy this novelette, don’t worry! You’ll definitely be hearing more about Esmeralda and her friends in the future. ^_^

Thanks for reading this little announcement. I’ll see you again very soon!

🙂

The Writer’s Tag

Posted on by under For All the Bookworms

Welp. I was supposed to do this post yesterday, but, obviously, I completely forgot, so I’m going to do it today! I was tagged a couple days ago by Susannah @ Tea with Tumness for the Writer’s Tag (not to be confused with the Writer’s Book Tag, which I was also tagged for on the same day…) So, without further ado, let’s jump into the questions, shall we?

Writer's Tag

1. What was the first story you remember writing?

When I was very, very little, I would tear out enormous sheets of sketch paper and tape them together into ‘books’. These ‘books’ were usually Super Mario of Legend of Zelda fanfiction, filled with lots of colorful (badly drawn) pictures and poorly-spelled stories. These are the very first stories I remember writing, and I still have them… somewhere.

2. Where do you gain your inspiration? 

Often when I read a new exciting book or watch a cool movie, I’ll feel really inspired to create something new. I also enjoy listening to music and making aesthetic playlists that help inspire new aspects of a story.

3. Who/What exactly encouraged you to become a writer?

When I was in elementary school my mom read me a book called The School Story by Andrew Clements, which is about a girl who publishes a book when she’s only twelve. I was super inspired by the story, and it encouraged me to try writing my own books in the hope that one day I would be published too!

4. If you had a choice between past or present tense to use, which one would you pick?

I’ve experimented a fair amount with present tense, and while I like it and enjoy writing in it, I still think I prefer past tense, at least to some extent. Present tense seems  to give the story a more modern or fast-paced feel, which is good for some stories, but past tense gives the story a slightly slower, more familiar feel, and also make it way easier to write with multiple points of view.

5. Do you have some type of “kryptonite” weakness?

I spend far too much time browsing Twitter or Instagram or doing literally anything other than writing. I honestly tend to procrastinate way too much. I also can’t write when there are people around.

6. On the flip side, do you have a type of “superman” strength?

I write best in the evenings, or during thunderstorms. The weather seems to have something to do with my moods, at least when it comes to writing.

7. Are there any guilty pleasures of yours?

I love watching YouTube videos! Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of a very science-oriented channel called Vsauce, where they talk about everything from physics to the concept of infinity to whether or not cereal can be considered a soup, all in a super engaging way. Among my other favorite channels are The Game Theorists, The Film Theorists, React, and Rosanna Pansino.

8. Is there a genre of media/entertainment you’ve not seen but want to try out one day?

I am very interested in modern (freestyle/free verse) poetry, but I haven’t really read much of it except a few pieces here and there online. I’ve asked my family to get me a copy of Smoke Signals by Ashley Dun for Christmas, which looks to be a very good collection of beautiful poetry, and I can’t wait to give it a read!

9. And finally, what is your favorite writing snack?

I don’t really have a go-to writing snack, or usually eat while writing, but I did munch on some tasty corn chips while writing this post, so I guess those will have to do. 😉

10. So, would you do more Q&A’s like this?

Yes! I love doing Q&A’s, be they interviews on other people’s blogs, tags like these, or Paper Fury’s Beautiful People Meme!

Now, it’s time to tag some bloggers! I tag…

I hope you enjoyed this post! I promise, this should be the last tag I’m doing for at least a little while… unless I get tagged again. 😛

See you again soon!

The Tangle is Here! (Plus a Special Bonus)

Posted on by under For All the Bookworms, My Books

It’s November 4th, 2017, and you know what that means! Wow. I honestly can’t believe that my second book is out today… It feels like I was drafting Behind Her Mask was Death just yesterday, and now that’s been out for over a year, and The Tangle is here as well! I can’t wait to see what happens next…

If you haven’t seen it yet, The Tangle‘s cover has been slightly updated since I last posted about the book. You can see this new, final cover below, as well as the links to find the book in both paperback and Kindle formats:

The Tangle Ebook Cover

 

Get The Tangle in paperback

Get The Tangle on Kindle

 

 

 

 

 

As promised, there’s also a little something extra in this post! I love making playlists for books and stories, and today I want to share a special playlist for The Tangle with you. These are songs that inspired aspects of the book, or that I chose because they fit the mood or the themes of the story. I hope you enjoy this playlist!

The Tangle Aesthetic Playlist:

Picture Perfect by Hidden Hospitals

Something Divine by NYVES

Still Breathing by VERIDIA

Black Honey by Thrice

Deadman by Glasslands

Chasing Fears by Graceful Closure

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the playlist, and that you like the book as well. I am so excited to finally be releasing The Tangle to the world! Don’t forget that The Tangle Blog Tour happens next week, from the 6th to the 9th.

See you again soon!

🙂

The Tangle Blog Tour: Official Announcement

Posted on by under For All the Bookworms, My Books

I’ve been talking for a bit about setting up a blog tour for The Tangle, and finally everything’s in place! Everything’s been scheduled, and I can finally let you know the official dates of the tour, and all the blogs it will be stopping at. Mark your calendars, or follow me on social media, where I’ll be providing links to all the awesome content during the tour!

The Tangle Blog Tour: Official Schedule 

Tour Dates: 6th – 9th of November, 2017

November 6th: Interview with Kyle Robert Shultz

November 7th: Book Review by S. M. Metzler

November 8th: Book Review and YouTube Interview with Hannah Heath

November 9th: Book Review by Brianna Merritt

I’m super excited about this blog tour, and I can’t wait to share this book with you! The Tangle comes out November 4th, but you can still pre-order the Kindle Edition on Amazon, and enter for a chance to win a signed paperback copy on Goodreads.

Thanks for reading this post! I’ll see you again soon.

🙂

Announcing: The Tangle!

Posted on by under For All the Bookworms, My Books

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know that I’ve been posting a novel called The Tangle on Channillo.com as a chapter-by-chapter serial. I’ve put a lot of work into this story, and I really want everyone to be able to read it. Unfortunately, nobody has been reading it on Channillo, and while I’m glad I chose to write a serial for them (if I hadn’t, I never would have written this book!), I think it’s time to move on. The Tangle will be coming down off Channillo permanently.

Don’t worry, though! Today I am officially announcing the release date of my next book, which, as you may have guessed, will be The Tangle! Here are all the details you need to know about my upcoming novel:

Genre: Paranormal Suspense

Audience: Young Adult

Release Date: November 4th, 2017

It was supposed to be River’s eleventh birthday. It turns out to be nothing but a nightmare.

When River finds herself imprisoned in a strange house, belonging to a mysterious man called Uncle, she only knows one thing: She must escape. But every power in the house, it seems, is bent on keeping her within its twisted walls. The creatures that patrol the halls may be deadly, and River may have nothing but her wit and her will, but, with the help of several unlikely allies, she just might be able to make her way out of the house before she becomes nothing more than a mindless prisoner.

I’ve also updated the cover design! Mostly, I just fixed up all the text so that it’s a lot easier to read. You can see the new cover below:

Cover (Front) For eBook and Promotional Material

I am super excited about this book, you guys! The ebook will be available for preorder within the next few days, and you can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more news. I’ll be using #TheTangleBook to share updates and info. Hopefully, there will also be an opportunity to win some cool Tangle swag, and I’m going to talk to some of my blogger friends about a blog tour!

Challenging Ourselves: Why Writing Needs to Be Difficult

Posted on by under For All the Bookworms

Here’s something that should be said more often: Writing is really, really difficult. From the outside, it looks deceivingly simple. You open up a Microsoft Word document, bang out somewhere around 40,000 words, and suddenly you have a novel. What could be easier? Why are those authors over there whining about the pitfalls of editing and the horror that is first drafts? What do they have to complain about? Writing is easy!

I used to think like that. I used to think that if it wasn’t easy for me, than I must be doing something wrong. I must not be a good enough writer. I’m procrastinating too much. My sentences are incoherent. Most the time, I fail to have an actual plot until I’m about half way through the first draft. I must not have had enough practice. I am not worthy to call myself ‘author’ unless I can write a new book every three months and have it be completely fabulous the first time around.

Here’s the thing, though: none of that is true. Writing is not easy. We don’t write because it’s easy. We don’t write so that, someday, it can be easy. We write because we have to, because it challenges us, because we are called to write. We write for the same reason that musicians make music and painters paint.

This might not sound super relevant, but stick with me for a moment: I work at a gym, a jungle gym, where kids come to learn parkour and gymnastics. Before I got a job there, I took classes. My teacher, now my boss, had a few things to say to us students about challenging ourselves. I am greatly paraphrasing, but, “If you’re doing something and it’s easy, then you’re not learning anything,” he told us, “Pick something difficult, something that you can’t do, and do that until it’s easy. Then pick the next difficult thing.”

So when we write, and it seems impossible to get it just right even on the third or fourth of fifth draft, let’s not complain (not too much, anyway). In that moment, you are learning something entirely new. You are learning the ten thousand ways that don’t work in order to find the way that does. You are mastering something difficult. You are improving your writing, even if in the moment it looks like absolute rubbish. Writing is not easy. It’s not supposed to be. If we wanted to do something easy, we would be shuffling papers in an office somewhere. Writing has to be difficult so that we can learn to write better.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this post. What do you think? What are some things you find difficult, or some difficult things you’ve mastered or learned from in the past? Let me know in the comments.

🙂

Challenging Ourselves

Beautiful People #27 ~ August Edition

Posted on by under My Books

Hey, everyone! Guess what? It’s time for another Beautiful People post! This awesome meme is hosted by Cait @ Paper Fury and Sky @ Further Up and Further In. These are some of my favorite posts to do on the blog, so I hope you enjoy today’s. 🙂

What is the Beautiful People meme?

From the Beautiful People FAQ on Paper Fury:

Beautiful People is for writers. Every month, we post a list of 10 questions for you to answer about your characters. It’s designed to help you get to know your characters – their quirks, their personality, their flaws, and who they are.

DISCLAIMER: I cannot guarantee that everything here is or will be canon in the future. I have spent a fair amount of time developing these characters, but some stuff is still unclear in my own mind, so I will try to answer the questions as best I can.

Also, the character I’ll be using for today’s post is from a super-secret project that I have yet to officially announce, so some details about the characters and plot will have to remain secret, for now…

Enjoy the post!

The Character

chalis007-189517

Mae Ki-Nari from my super secret sci-fi project. Photo by 胡 卓亨 on Unsplash

The Question

1.What are they addicted to/can’t live without?

Mae loves listening to music. It helps her focus and drown out the crazy world around her. She also likes to have a piece of technology by her side at all times. She’d be lost without her laptop or phone!

2. Name 3 positive and 3 negative qualities about your character.

Positive: She’s smart, straightforward, and very persistent. She likes to see things through to the end.

Negative: She is very snarky and sarcastic, she doesn’t relate well to people, and she tends to completely overthink everything.

3. Are they holding onto something they should get rid of?

She’s definitely holding on to her resentment (and also her idealism) of her past life and her fear of the future.

4. If 10 is completely organized and 1 is completely messy, where do they fall on the scale?

I think Mae would probably fall somewhere in the middle, maybe somewhere around 5 or 6. She doesn’t actually try to be super organized, but she owns so little that her living space is rarely ever messy. Most of her life is online, so that’s where she spends the bulk of her time. There’s not a lot in the real world for her to mess up or disorganize.

5. What most frustrates them about the world they live in?

Mae hates surveillance. She’s lived for most of her life in a place where you can never be sure if you’re being watched or not. She wants online information to be free and uncensored, and she wants to be free herself from always looking over her shoulder to make sure no one’s watching.

6. How would they dress for a night out? How would they dress for a night in?

For a night out, Mae would probably dress up as little as possible. She doesn’t like going out anyway. Maybe she would put on a dress (if she owned one) and brush her hair a bit, but that would probably be all. Unless she was going out with that special somebody, and then she would be looking up makeup tutorials online and she might actually care about if her shoes match her outfit, and get really stressed out about how she looks.

For a night in, it would be just whatever she was wearing; probably old jean shorts and a t-shirt from the secondhand store. She literally does not care about anything most of the time. 😂

7. How many shoes do they own, and what kind?

I would hazard a guess that she owns like one pair of sneakers, and that’s it. Maybe some boots too, but even that is probably stretching it.

8. Do they have any pets? What pet do they WISH they had?

Mae has never owned a pet in her life, and she probably never will. If she had to own a pet, though, she’d probably get a cat.

9. Is there something or someone that they resent? Why and what happened?

Mae resents a lot of people. It’s hard to really explain why and what happened without spoiling some of the story, but she definitely does resent both her parents. She never really had a good childhood.

10. What’s usually in their fridge or pantry?

Soda, energy drinks, synthetic food that provides all her daily vitamin and protein needs. She’s not a fan of ‘real’ (non-processed) food.

Thanks so much for reading this month’s Beautiful People post! I hope you enjoyed it, and I can’t wait to share more of this story with you as soon as possible. Right now, I’m in the middle of rewriting a bunch of it (I just got an amazing new idea today!) but hopefully I’ll be publishing the first book sometime next year.

Be sure to check out Cait’s original post, where you’ll find links to other writers who have done this meme, as well as the list of questions and a place to link up your own Beautiful People post.

Once again, Beautiful People is hosted by the amazing Cait and Sky.

Beautiful People

Beautiful People #26 ~ Author Writing Process

Posted on by under For All the Bookworms, My Books

Hey everyone! Today I’ll be doing another Beautiful People post. This awesome meme is hosted by Cait @ Paper Fury and Sky @ Further Up and Further In. I’ve had so much fun doing these posts over the last two months, and this month’s theme is pretty awesome, so I thought I’d continue…

WHAT IS THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE MEME?

From the Beautiful People FAQ on Paper Fury:

Beautiful People is for writers. Every month, we post a list of 10 questions for you to answer about your characters. It’s designed to help you get to know your characters – their quirks, their personality, their flaws, and who they are.

This month, the theme is a little bit different. It’s Camp NaNoWriMo Month, and although I’m not directly participating in the camp, I really wanted to join in this month’s meme. It’s all about an author’s writing process, which I haven’t really talked about much on this blog, so… here we go!

The Questions:

1. How do you decide which project to work on?

Hm… I don’t know. It kind of just happens. For a while, I would have about ten million projects happening at basically the same time, but then I discovered that if I just choose one and stick to it, the likelihood of me actually finishing anything increases by somewhere around 100%. So, I kind of just pick the thing I’d like to finish up first, and then chip away at it.

2.How long does it usually take you to finish a project?

It varies, like, a lot. For example, I wrote the first draft of my first book in less than two months, and then spent an excruciatingly long time editing it (about nine months, or more). I wrote the first draft of my second book in somewhere around three months. My latest project took me six months to complete the first draft, and that was only because I squeezed the last 30,000 words of work into just under one month. There will probably also be tons of editing for that project as well, so, yeah… *stress intensifies*

3.Do you have any routines to put you in the writing mood?

It depends. Some days, I listen to music. Sometimes I just want to write in silence. It really just depends on the day. Sometimes I listen to whole albums straight through while I write, and sometimes it’s just one song on repeat.

4.What time of day do you write best?

At night. Right before I’m supposed to go to bed. No, seriously. This is a legitimate problem that I have. I always get tons of inspiration (and time) to write at around nine in the evening, which is bad because if I don’t turn off all my screens at least a half-hour before I sleep, I don’t sleep very well at all (and I don’t sleep well anyway), and I write on a computer, so yeah.

#authorfail

Also, completely random bursts of inspiration in the middle of the night are really, really annoying. 😅

5.Are there any authors you think you have a similar style to?

A person (my dad) has actually compared my style to “something like a cross between Terry Pratchett and N. D. Wilson”. I think for some things, I would probably have to agree to this comparison (like description and sometimes dialogue) but for other things… I don’t know.

6.Why did you start writing, and why do you keep writing?

I started writing because I had stories to tell (mostly Super Mario Bros. fanfiction, at least at first). I keep writing because it’s just what I do. I can’t imagine not writing.

7.What’s the hardest thing you’ve written?

I hate writing romance. But I like shipping characters, both my own and other peoples’ (The Doctor and River Song! I will go down with this ship!!!!). And my characters apparently like being shipped with each other, so… yeah. It makes it pretty hard for me sometimes. Unrelated, but I also had a very tough time with the climax chapter of Behind Her Mask was Death. I had to totally rewrite it from scratch so that it wasn’t awful.

8.Is there a project you want to tackle someday but you don’t feel ready yet?

Lots. There are lots of projects like this. One that comes to mind is my Middle Grade urban fantasy trilogy, with a magical house and maybe some time-travel and wizards and stuff. I also have an idea for a stand-alone contemporary graphic novel, a nonfiction book about videogames (what even), and a paranormal novel about a haunted library. And a lot of other things. I will never, ever run out of projects to not work on.

9.What writing goals did you make for 2017 and how are they going?

I’m currently working on a sci-fi duology. I’ve finished the first draft of the first book, and I’m working on the second book now. I want to have the first book ready for publication by mid-2018, and the second book done for 2019. So, very long-term goals. But they’re going okay. I actually finished the first draft! You have no idea how rare that is for me.

10.Describe your writing process in 3 words or a gif!

Write, procrastinate, repeat.

Or, to use a GIF:

smash the keyboard

*authorish flailing intensifies*

(Small note: That is the first ever GIF I’ve used on this blog. What??? The internet must be getting to me…)

Thanks so much for reading this post! I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out Cait’s original post, where you’ll find links to other writers who have done this meme, as well as the list of questions and a place to link up your own Beautiful People post.

Once again, Beautiful People is hosted by the amazing Cait and Sky.

Beautiful People