Kalayna Price

It's been a while since I posted a 'what I'm reading' post, so I thought I'd do that today. I've been a bit more sporadic in my reading habits this year--probably due to several time consuming reasons, but I'm going to pretend I'm writing during what used to be some of my reading time. ^_^ I've also been pickier this year, and more of the books I read didn't make it to my 'great reads' list. I find the more I write, the more I pick apart books while I'm reading them, which annoyingly makes them less enjoyable. So, I'm going to highlight three books I enjoyed immensely (not to belittle other books on my great reads books for this year, but I had to narrow it down to a reasonable number, so these are the three that stand out the most in my mind.) Without further ado --and in no particular order--my top picks out of winter 2008 books. I think I mentioned Halfway to the Grave , by Jeaniene Frost , once before when writing on hooklin...

My work has a squirrel. Actually at first they thought it was a rat, then a squirrel, then a rat AND a squirrel, then they decided it was just a rat, and now it's a squirrel again. Confused yet? I'll back up. Several weeks ago, one of the bigwig guys in my office discovered he'd had a nighttime visitor who hit his secret stash of junk food and left little droppings behind. The assumption was that a rat crawled under the door and squeezed into the drawer full of food. The pest control people were called. Traps were baited and set. No rat. In fact, not only did the traps not catch a rat, but there was evidence that something had been sitting ON TOP of the traps (they were enclosed). Also, foot prints were found on pipes in the room, indicating the perpetrator was coming from the ceiling. Okay, not a rat, a squirrel. More traps were brought in--bigger, 'live' traps. Still nothing. At this point, the guy was getting pretty upset with the lack of results, and the fact h...

Last week, one of my fellow Tri Ms (Modern Myth Makers, the writing group that formed following NaNo last year) challenged me to write a short story targeted at a very specific line. I knew this would be something totally new for me, but as I had just finished my latest WIP, decided it would be a fun change of pace. I think that was Wednesday. At that point, I had no idea what I would write about in specifics, but I had lots of ideas that had been on the back burner. Some were obviously not a good fit for the paramaters of what I was trying to write, but over the last part of the week, I knocked enough ideas together to start a spark, worldbuild a little, and get some idea who my characters were. I did not write a full outline, but I did jot down some very basic notes of what had to happen in the story for it to be, well, a story. With that, Saturday I began writing. The word count goal of this story is 10-15k words. Now, as far as short stories go, 10k isn't that short. But, for...

I'm neck deep in plotting a short story, but I'm not ready to say much about it, so I thought I'd share some of the Comments from the MS I just finished. Rachel posts her comments to her blog once in a while, and they always fascinate/amuse me, so I hope you find mine just as interesting. The MS, which ended just under 80k, had a total of 158 comments. (For those unfamiliar with comments, they are a feature in word that highlights a section of text and puts a little bubble on the side of the page where additional text/notes can be written.) Some random comments from the first couple chapters: -"Find out the legal term for (place)" -"When talking about (deleted) is (deleted) capitalized?" -"Clunky" (referring to a paragraph I didn't like) -"Look up shoes" -"Did I give him a name earlier?" -"This is the idea. Now rewrite it to make it work." -"Long meandering description. Figure out what you want to say....

Well, after a very busy week and weekend, I finally got out those last few words and wrote, you guessed it THE END on my WIP. Granted, the word count came out a little lower than I expected for a first draft, (though only about 700 words less than I was projecting) but I know with the way I write, the second draft will flesh out what I wrote in this one. I also realized during the middle of the climax that I sort of forgot to kill someone (I know...how could I have forgotten something like that? But I did) so there are two scenes or so I didn't write, but I'll catch them in the second draft. Final wordcount: 79,287 / 79,287 (100%) Now, I will commence in a little happy dancing, and then put this MS in the drawer a couple weeks while I work on something else. There are a lot of projects I've been thinking about, so I'm not sparse on ideas. The question is what to work on next? Isn't that a great dilemma? ^_^ Happy Monday everyone!

Let me start this by going ahead and splashing the progress meter up: Current Progress: GW 74,824 / 80,000 (94.8%) As you can see, I'm just an inch above 5k from hitting the goal. Now I'll be honest, at this point I'm not sure if the first draft will end up a little over or a little under that 80k goal, but I'm thrilled to see such a tiny sliver left. I'm even more thrilled that I reached the climax scene while writing at lunch today. I was neck deep in the final confrontation between the MC and the 'bad guy' when the little 'ding' sounded reminding me to run (no time left for a casual stroll) back to work. So, I know it won't be long now until I'll be writing those two little, elusive words at the bottom of the MS. I can't wait! Have a great day everyone!