I finished going over my rough draft this weekend and realized that, once again, I have major issues with staying in the same tense. So, I have to go back and correct all the verbs that are just wrong. Darn!

Bonus: Even after a week of marination, I don’t hate it. Always a good sign.

I also did some light weekend reading on the social, psychological, and cultural aspects of terrorism. I have a terrorist cell of werewolves in my manuscript and part of my hang up with the action chapter was the motivation/reasoning of these characters. The action chapter is now going so well.

Welcome PC Cast to my author’s blog links. In my effort to research other mermaid romances, I picked up her book, Goddess of the Sea. Very nice. I may have to purchase the rest of her “Goddess Summoning” series.

Okay, since I did promise last week to post a picture of me with straight hair and a good color job, I will. The picture is muy, muy bad though! I look like I have a major triple chin. Ick. I do look a bit better than this is real life, I swear!

I kinda like the black and white version better, but not much!

Earlier this week I talked about how all superheroines are super-skinny. I have further proof. I’m having my step-mom sketch a fat supergirl for me, since all fat people in comic books tend to be stupid and/or villainous. (blech!) I like to have something to go on when I write; that way I don’t forget who looks like what. Inconsistent descriptions drive me nutty when I’m reading, so I try not to make this particular mistake when I write. Unfortunately, my other mistakes are just as bad or worse, I’m sure.

On to the proof!

**stage whisper** I see skinny people.

Exhibit B: (See earlier postings for Exhibit A)

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D:

I started writing both “Supersize Girl” and my mermaid story today, which I’m tentatively titling “The Siren’s Song.” I’ve decided to make “Siren’s Song” a bit more traditional fantasy than my other manuscripts. Of course, it will still be a romance — I can’t abandon my first love — just with a bit more fantasy than the usual love story. I haven’t quite finished with the outline; the end still needs…something. I just don’t know what, yet. I’ll have to sit down this weekend and just think, which, sadly, takes a lot more work than one would hope. ((sigh))

“Supersize Girl,” also a tentative title, is going swimmingly. I love Mindy as a character–she’s sarcastic and funny and real. At least in my head. She really has a thing for frilly underwear and the varsity wrestling captain — in that order. In the beginning of the book, anyway. She’ll probably change her mind later.

But, fear not! I have not abandoned “Silver Bullet” (is anyone else noticing all the S’s in my titles? Sheesh!) I printed out the rough draft. Holding it in my hands was a terrifying thrill! I’m currently reading it over, correcting this, tweaking that, expanding here, trimming there. You get the idea. Fun, fun! Working on all of this is my weekend plan. Yeay!

Closing thought: My best friend–let’s call her M– phoned yesterday to inform me my fish sex post cracked her up — and that the idea was still tweaking her melon. ((shudder)) I think she’s gonna bust a gear loose over this one. Everybody STAND BACK! For your own safety, of course. She’s calmer about the mermaids than she was about a certain idea I had for lizard people romance (I called them dragon people, but M’s a stubborn wretch sometimes). And no, I’m not even gonna start trying to explain that story-that-wasn’t.

Have a lovely weekend!

So, my best friend and I talked over the phone yesterday evening (something we do almost daily) and we discussed my new story idea. The one about the mermaids — she already knows about Supersize Girl and is as supportive as she can be for someone 2,000 miles away and totally uninterested in my kind of stories. (i.e. contemporary paranormal romance)

Anyway, I mentioned that I had no idea how my merpeople would have sex, because, well, it is a romance and characters usually have sex at least once during the story. She suggested I find a way to make the merpeople human for a night and then they have sex the two-legged way. I vetoed that I idea immediately — what’s the fun of having merpeople if they don’t have mer-sex? I mean, really! This is such an opportunity; I can’t waste it! She got seriously freaked out by the thought of bizarre fish sex, which totally grossed me out after only a few seconds of deep thought. Ick!

So, now what? How do merpeople do the nasty, bump uglies, bone down, boink, (insert favored metaphor)? I have sort of an inkling, but don’t know how well it will transfer from my head to the paper. Wish me luck!

So, I had another story epiphany. In the shower, of course. This one was about a mermaid romance. The details aren’t 100% yet, but I’m going to research mermaid/man/people mythology, sea mythology, Atlantean mythology, etc. I’ll also check out who else has written in this area and try not to overlap too much. Originality is kind of important, right? Right.

It looks like I’ll be working on this and Supergirl at the same time; so, we’ll see how double-booking my brain goes. Could go well — could cause a psychotic break. ((shrugs)) Good luck to me.

I got the outline for Supergirl done yesterday and I thought I should probably talk about my writing style. Specifically, if I’m a plotter or a pantzer.

As in most instances, I simply cannot pick a side. I like to plot out my story at first; I want to know generally where I’m going and how I intend to get there. After that, I’m a total pantzer (write by the seat of my pants, fly with no radar, scribble what scenes come to me). If I’m ever feeling lost or uninspired, I can always go back to my outline for ideas, like “ah-ha! that’s where I meant to go!” So, I find an outline is a useful tool, but I’m not married to it. Characters get added/deleted/edited, motivations change, plot twists emerge–I go with the epiphanies as they come to me.

This may change as I mature as a writer, of course. We’ll see.

Yeay! I finished typing in the rough draft. Woo-hoo! **does a little happy dance** I still have a lot more to do, but I FINISHED something important. I think I deserve a strawberry smoothie for this. Yes, I do. Definitely.

I’m going to let this story marinate for a few days and write down all my ideas for Fat Supergirl. I don’t want to lose them in the shuffle.

Meanwhile, WHY is every picture of Supergirl, and every other female superhero for that matter, a size 0 stick-insect with huge breasts, toned thighs, and lots of hair? Talk about wind-tunnel hair after you’ve flown around for a while — fighting bad guys mid-air, no less. And yet, they always look perfectly coiffed, with like, one strand of hair out of place, which is easily pushed back for maximum sexy effect! Skinny, gorgeous, superpowered, and perfect hair?

So not fair.

And so not my Supergirl.

Exhibit A:

Okay, so I have no title for my witch romance. It started out as “The Witches of Greenwich;” sort of a play on the movie “Witches of Eastwick,” but then I moved the location to Manhattan’s Upper East Side. So, that title is gone. My current working title is “Magic Bullet” or “Silver Bullet,” which, if you read the manuscript, makes sense. However, this is SO not a romancy novel title.

As for “Fat Girl Saves the World,” this title is way too close to a Prinz Award winner/honorable from a few years ago called “Fat Kid Rules the World.” You can see why the similarities might confuse a reader. Must scrap this title as well…

Why do I care? Because I always like to come up with wicked cool titles when I write. It’s part of the writing fun and I enjoy it immensely.

I found out that most publishing companies/editors name books for the authors! That’s a bit upsetting. Tragic, even. What if they give the book a lame title? An author would have to live with putting their name on that crap forever. AARRRGGHH!!!

If a publisher drags your work from the deep quagmire of manuscripts they look at daily AND you’re getting published, you hardly have room to whine, I realize, but someone as anal about titles as me might just have a mental breakdown. Very sad.

P.S. Hit the 20,000 word mark. Yeay! Only 80 bazillion more to go. Ah, well, back to the trenches…

So, I’m totally jazzed about the Super Fat Girl (that came out so wrong) story and I have all these ideas and I want to write them down, but I’m afraid if I do I’ll just never finish my witch romance. Should I really work on two different stories as a spankin’ new writer? Is this me just avoiding my first book? I’m still typing and all, but it’s pretty tedious right now. Am I subconsciously getting bored with the manuscript? Or am I like the ADD of romance?

(If you’re just tuning in, the Fat Girl Saves the World idea is on on Wednesday Sept. 28th, called “Shower Power.”)

When my brother was in the Marines, he brought back some pictures of Iraq. Some were disturbing and some were just plain funny. I guess you do what you have to to stay sane in a war zone. But I digress…some of the pictures were of nude or bathing suit model posters and calendars. These he simply labelled “motivation.”

So, what’s my motivation for completing this book? Here is how I picture my hero and secondary male character. Who wouldn’t want to contemplate this to “the end”? And in my mind, I’ve had them both, repeatedly (Slutty me!). For the sake of artistic creation , of course. Now, that’s what I call “motivation.”

Back at work. I had a very productive weekend on the writing front. I have maybe one chapter left to write in the rough rough draft. Not one complete chapter, though. I hit a snag in my action chapter. I have to deal with how to get my heroine to the dum-dum-DUM scary/suspenseful part without it being ridiculous or drama-queenish. I slammed into this problem and got totally stumped.

Soooo, I skipped it. Yes, I took the mature way out and went into complete denial that I was having a brain-cramp in the writing department. I made an awe-inspiring mental leap to the next chapter and then things moved along nicely. Now I have to finish the last half of my action chapter and the last half of my final chapter.

Not a bad weekend of work, eh?