Deep Embrace update

I finally finished writing that sex scene in Deep Embrace. It ended up being a bit over ten pages long (not the actual sex bit there was alot of talking leading up to it) I spent a few weeks on the love making scene and then suddenly, the other night, I wrote the rest of it in a big finish! It just came rushing out of me! LOL I'm glad its done. I'm a little over 23,000 words into the whole book now. Deep Embrace will be the last novella I will be doing for a while. I'm going to switch back to novels next year. I hate the period between projects when I'm editing or world building or writing outlines. I get so irritable and bored. Having to write an outline for a whole novel will exhaust me. I can see why some writers just dive in and start without a second thought. I'm not a fan of doing too much planning but I'm sensible enough to know its worth it. I've had too many novels go rearing off track in a completely different direction in the past....hello Atlantis Reborn...weren't you a bloody waste of time?

I had a great Christmas. I got heaps of wonderful new books to read and DVDs to watch. I've been a bit bored these past few days being stuck at home alone. I've actually found that going to work is good for my writing. I'm usually so bored there all I can think about is my writing so when I get home I'm full of ideas.


It's going to be a big year for me in 2011. In a few days I'll be able to say that I am getting married this year!! And Jaylani wants us to try for a baby real soon after the wedding so who knows what little surprises might come next christmas!


It's going to be a very exciting year. I'm going to continue to try and find a publisher for Echoes, I want to finish Deep Embrace and start a new novel, and finish planning my wedding and honeymoon. I'm finally going to be able to see Japan!! I hope I can find some awesome Sailor Moon things or nice art to bring home. I love Asian art. Some prints for the walls would be great!

Happy Rejection

I'm not worried about Echoes in the Wind's marketability anymore. I got an email the other week from a publisher requesting a full copy of the manuscript. I was thrilled. I hadn't heard a word from them in over a month and had assumed that it was a rejection in the form of a no response. I thought it was my query letter. Instead of sending one with a short paragraph describing the book, I did something different and wrote one line describing the book and I attached a blurb and a synopsis. I was so happy when I got the request for a full. I had spent weeks agonizing over Echoes, wondering if it was marketable, and then out of the blue comes a publisher who I had written off wanting to see more. A publisher WHO DID NOT CARE that I had made Echo black, or that the ending was sad, or any of the other changes I made to the myth.

I got a rejection today, but I don't care. I'm happy. I have my confidence back. I just spent a good hour researching more publishers and I have already sent Echoes off to another one. If Echoes cannot find a publisher before I finish Deep Embrace, I will go through and edit it again, before sending it back out into traffic.

I've also decided to try and write a novel after Deep Embrace. If I can get it over 50,000 I'll be happy. I've learnt alot about writing over the past three years. I feel like I'm ready to go back to novels and write one that will not go rambling on for hundreds of pages like Atlantis Reborn and the Secret World did.

Happy endings and sex scenes...are these needed?

I finished a novella earlier this year called "Echoes in the Wind" that had a sad ending and romantic elements but no actual sex scene. I started marketing it in July and noticed something interesting. Alot of web sites state in their submission guidelines that "happy endings" are a MUST and stories must also include sex scenes that are important to the plot and hot, hot, hot.

I asked myself..."Do books need sex scenes and happy endings to be marketable?" I can think of heaps of popular stories that don't include sex scenes or happy endings and are quite successful. At the same time though I think my chances of success would probably increase if I DID include happy endings and sex scenes.

Romance is the most successful and popular genre in the world and let's face it most readers want a happy ending when they read a book. This irritates me because if I had slapped a happy ending onto the end of "Echoes in the Wind" I would've ended up pissing off alot of Greek God fans for changing the story of Narcissus and Echo. I decided to go with the original version with Echo disappearing into the wind and becoming an echoing voice.

I was pretty annoyed when I first realised the ending might make Echoes unmarketable. I can't change it because it would ruin the whole point of the novella. It's called ECHOES IN THE WIND because she fades away and leaves Narcissus heartbroken! I don't know if Echoes will get published. It's annoying that I spent so long working on something that I only realised when I was done was probably unmarketable. It wasn't a waste of time though. Writing it helped me grow as a writer but at the same time I wish, wish, wish it was more marketable!!

I've been thinking about adding a sex scene to Deep Embrace. I'm a bit nervous about writing one cause I've never done it before. I'm embarrassed it will be really dumb!! LOL I'll have a crack at it though. Why am I adding one? Because if I want to market it as a romance publishers and most readers would expect one. So I'm going to experiment with one. If it doesn't work I'll rip it out but to be honest I like the idea of including one because I really do think it will help me market it.

What a year!!

I can't believe I haven't updated this blog in so long. It's been a busy year for me. My job contrac fizzled out so I got flung into unemployment limbo for a few stressful weeks, crawled out of that hole and into another job, I finished writing Echoes in the Wind and had the joy of it being rejected by a few publishers and I am halfway through a rewrite of my 2008 fantasy short story Deep Embrace. I am loving the rewrite of Deep Embrace. I've fleshed the story out to a novella and I'm having so much fun writing about mermaids. I'm channelling my childhood love for the Little Mermaid into Perse who is a butt kicking Oceanid Sea Goddess determined to rescue her fella from the God and Goddess of Darkness.

I've got plans to do some more editing on Echoes. I'm not totally convinced it will get published. It's in this terrible limbo area. It's too big to be a short story, barely big enough to be an e-book but too short to be a novel so that leaves me not alot of options. I think it's highly possible the story will just rot on my hard drive which is a little sad to me but at the same time I'm just glad I finished it. I had such a busy, stressful, weird year when I was writing it. The fact that I finished it at all is awesome to me.

Now what has next year got in store? I have decided to go back to writing novels. I am going to compress what was going to be a 7 book series into a one book series. I was going to write my own version of the Orpheus Greek myth but I have not made up my mind if it will be worth it or not. It will have a sad ending and my experiences with Echoes have got me wondering...are sad endings unmarketable? Do readers always want a happy ending?

Man, I'm Bad

God, I haven't posted in this blog for a long time, have I? Sorry!! Its been a busy couple of months. I have an important update this morning: I have finished Echoes in the Wind, the project I have been working on for the past 13 months. It clocked in at 30,497 words and 106 pages long which is awesome because that means it is a decent length. When it gets published it will hopefully, I'm crossing my fingers, be sold for above $5 a pop. LOL. Ah, the joys of writing. Months and months of hard work....only for the stories to be sold for a couple of bucks. Ah well. Its about the joys of getting published and marketing and getting a front cover and exposure. You know what's funny? I got the idea for Whispers and Echoes at the same time. Not only did I manage to write and edit Whispers before I even started Echoes, I got it PUBLISHED as well. That's how long Echoes has taken me. I'm very proud with Echoes in the Wind. Its my first unhappily ever after. I think its a very good little novella. I have big plans for the marketing.

As for future projects, I am torn between rewriting an old story called Deep Embrace (I want to update it to mesh with my other projects and give the heroine a make over) and doing a Japanese soul mate story (something I've wanted to do for a long time) at the moment I am in the limbo phase between projects where I find myself with an unnatural amount of free time. Its good in a way. I can go out to pubs, go for a swim, visit family, or just vege out on the couch with my boyfriend without feeling stressed or guilty that I'm not writing. I've gotta say, Echoes in the Wind was a frigging BITCH to write. It was like giving birth to a watermellon. It had so many fight scenes and emotional scenes....I knew it would be hard to write, but I never knew it would take me that long or drive me so insane. I got struck with writers block so many times I would spend weeks, yes WEEKS, on a single paragraph sometimes. So when it gets published and you read it think of all of the blood, sweat and tears that when into the paragraphs you take two seconds to read, kay? LOL

I'm going shopping today cause I have a day off (one of my last for a long time. After university starts again I can only have a day off once every six weeks. Sigh) after I come home from shopping I am going to begin work on the query letter for Echoes and maybe take a crack at the synopssis (God I hate writing those things)


As for my goals for this year, I want to get out of my low-paying, dead-end, I'm-going-insane-there-office job, lose five kilos, go to Japan, publish Echoes and finish another project. I will try to remember to update this blog more. Hopefully, my next project will not drive me so nuts. Man, I was so stressed towards the end of Echoes. Being a full time office worker and a university student makes it hard to find the time!! At least now that its done when university starts up again it won't matter if I have little time to work on my new project cause it will be new. After 13 months of hard work, you just wanna finish, you know?


Thank God its over with!! I love ya, Echoes in the Wind!! But you were a bitch.