June 2016 #WIPJoy

I am having a great time on Twitter!
That little birdy has me hopping.

The month of June was extremely happy for me. The brainchild of Bethany A. Jennings @simmeringmind had the great idea to challenge the #WIPJOY community to a month long tweet fest celebration of our works-in-progress. I want to thank her for her hard work on this.

I just loved this. It made me think on "NIGHTS AROSE" in more detail. I got into Arose's head in more ways than I had before. Not only with her but even down to minor characters and head canons I associate with them.

Head canons are back stories on characters that are not written into the story but the writer thinks them. (I have plenty of those.)

So I compiled a list for the month with the question of the day and my response. If it got any ❤  I will say how many and what were comments made. Some questions I missed posting because I was traveling and too busy helping daddy move. They have * next to them, I will put the answers in here!

ONE: Intro Week-

D1-Tell us about your WIP!
 18yo seer, Arose, must find the pirate who stole her powerful amulet before a sorceress espies it and unleashes hell's demons.  3 ❤ 

D2-Introduce your protagonists awesomeness.
 Arose draws her powers from the Fire Opal, after it has been stolen she sets off on a path of self discovery to get it back. 2 ❤ 

D3-Share a line showing your WIP's atmosphere.
Her shoes sank into the primordial ooze. Rotting leaves and still water made the air thick and hard to breathe.  8 ❤  !!!

D4-Share a line about one of your WIP's main emotions.
Dropping his weapons he grabbed her arms to stop the deluge of fists. She kicked until he fell to his knees holding his crotch. 1 ❤ 

Two:  Character Week-

D5-The character you relate to most, and why.
My MC Arose, sure and confident at the start, isolated when life threw her & I a curve, at the end I hope I will turn out as ok--as she. 3 ❤ 

D6- A character who shares a flaw with you.

1. Blaze and I both think we are helping but actually end up hurting them instead. 1 ❤ 
2. Liam the youngest brother who is innocent and follows along with his brothers to be accepted. It didn't work for me either. 10 ❤  !!!!!

D7- Did you base anyone off a real person.

Yes, all my character's are based on real people, of course I added and tweaked them until they fit the story just right. 4 ❤ 

D8-Share a line that shows your characters sense of humor.
"Ten pence."
"Seven," he bargained
"Nine and no less." Knowing his resolve reached its limit.
"Done."  14 ❤  !!!!!!!

D9-Which character would you want to be roommates with?
I would bunk with my MC's bestie, Simon. He is a hoot and knows where to get the best eats. 8 ❤  !

D10-Share a line that makes you want to hug a character.
Jessup sat up when she entered, a Sunday best hat atop his head and on his lap were toys, "You leavin', Rosie? Can I go wif' you?" 5 ❤ 

D11-A minor character with author -headcanon you adore.

1. most minor character headcanon. Leon knows that Evan is really Arose dressed as a man.  There are more!  6 ❤ !
2. another headcanon Uncle Edmund and antagaonist Morel were lovers and the product of that was Liam, who is killed by Blaze. 2 ❤ 
3. headcanon 3 Harold tried to molest Arose when she was a child but Blaze stopped him. Hero much? 2 ❤ 

Three: Beginnings and Endings Week-

D12- Share a chapter beginning you love.

1. "St. James. Captain St. James." The voice echoes in a dream. A shaded face approached, her body lifted, cradled deep in strong arms.  3 ❤ 
2. (to top that off a #MuseMon  tweet)   She drawled his name low, uttering it like his ear was near her lips again, a titillating thought, but it only happened in her dream. 11 ❤  !!!

D13- How do you want readers to view the protagonist in the beginning? -and at the end?
At the beginning my MC is a kick ass loaner, by the end she learns to let people help her and love her.

D14- Share a line where the characters tries something new.
Wind ripped through her hair, a connection lost with anything solid. Looking down, at herself she laughed, drunk in her elation. 5 ❤ 

D15- What grabs you about your premise?
What I love of my premise is how everyne changes, even the antagonists go through some kind of cathartic change.  12 ❤ !!!!

D16- What sticks with you about the ending?  *
How I felt when I finished it.  I felt the woosh, like I had been pregnant for the 6 years that I wrote it. and when it was done I had given birth.

D17- At the end, how has your protagonist made you proud? *
How much in love she was, how she had taken down her guards and let him in, most courageous thing she can do.

D18-Share a chapter end you love.*

Four:Random Fun Week!

D19- Does your WIP have a contagonist? *
Yes, Blaze, he is on her side but he seems to work against her most of the time.

D20- Share a line that mentions food.*
She went to the creek behind the house and vomited out the breakfast she had earlier on the ship.

D21- Does the weather or nature act as antagonist at any point?*
Yes the earthquake and following tidal wave is a big part of the story and happened in Jamaica in the 1600's.

D22- Share a line about a smell.*
Anne pointed her nose toward Arose and sniffed the air. "Rosie! You Stink!"

D23- Is this a kissing book? ;)
Yes, there is kissing, good kissing, bad kissing, happy kissing, good bye kissing, and my favorite...first kiss kissing 7 ❤  !

D24-Tell us something your character would hate us to know (mwahaha)
She sung in the church choir when she was a child.

D25-Do your characters feel like your...Friends? Kids? Both? Something else entirely?

Five: Encouragement Week

D26- What keeps you working on this WIP?
The feeling I get when I read something I wrote that makes me cry or laugh out loud, also my muse may come after me if I don't.  8 ❤  !

D27- What threatens your writing joy? How do you combat it?
Unconstructive criticism, it weakens me but at least it doesn't shut me down like it used to. 6 ❤ 


D28- Whats so you want the future book cover to be like?
I want something similar to my page banner, with a dragon banking around the sails of the ship and my couple in a back embrace. Too much?  6 ❤ 

D29- What's the best thing people can say to you about this WIP?
If people would say "I laughed, I cried, I fell in love, and I wanted to read it all over again."  That would be great. 12 ❤  !!!!

D30- What are you planning for your next WIP after this one?
Working on a second installment so that is already WIP, so after that I will start working on a prequel I think the story (will be based on) the Gypsy. 5 ❤ 

Nights Arose- From Chapter 6 - La Bruja

 I am going to add bits of from Nights Arose hoping to whet your appetite for more:

    A makeshift dummy hung from a low beam, a smile curved her lip after she cleaved it through. Picking a coal out of the dead kiln she wrote Cap'm St. James across its chest. She gave it a good shove, it swung to and fro like a corpse on the business end of a hangman's noose. She wrapped her knuckles in burlap and balled up her fists. Her strikes on the heavy bag, thumped in triplicate. Relief poured over her when she cracked her stiff neck, bouncing lightly on her toes.  She planted her feet to add more power to her punches. Her next round landed square, punctuated with a high kick, hard enough to knock the effigies head off, if it had one. She limped away on a sore leg.

Link to my Facebook account

Tweet attack!!

I am doing some pitches on Twitter.
Using that little hashtaggy thing # a feed,  before a word  140 character tweet that may sell my book to an interested agent or publisher.

I really do not have my hopes set on being picked up on this Pitchmad twitter round. As of now there are upwards of 7200 tweets. And some of those Pitches sound AWESOME! So I'm really just going to wait for the right person to see Nights Arose as something they would want to work with.

This is going to be a tough sale:

 "Who in God's green Earth is this Andrea person any way?"

I hope no one says.

But it just takes one, and I am incredibly stoked about this story. It will get the right representation and who knows maybe the right person to respresent the story will be ME at the end of all this. After all I do rock the world.

So here are some of the pitches I have tried out with varing degrees of success.

#Pitchmad A Cinderella rewrite where a seer loses her mystical amulet one fateful night, the prince is a pirate and the fairy Godmother is a dragon.

I thought is was rather tongue in cheek.

Another is:
#Pitchmad 18 yo seer must find the pirate who stole her powerful amulet before a sorceress espies it and unleashes hell's demons

I have one more to do & I have to make it count!

It's gotta be bam pow, hey everyone check this out! 

I got nothing, or as Bess would say "No ting"

Gotta 

 

"She crouched on the ledge of a dune, ready to catch a glimpse of the last moments of the dying sun before the night arose."   

This is the first line in my story - "Nights Arose" 

     I have a particular reason for wanting it to start out this way.
First is to connect the name of the story to the action and the mood of the story. Another reason is to be sure everyone knew how I wanted the name Arose to be pronounced.  Some people were unsure and would read it aloud as A-rose. Which is not right.

The time where the story is sunset, but for me saying the "sun is setting" is  played out. I much rather think of it as "the night is rising," or the night arose. More creative, I dare say.

Although it had been suggested to me, I change her name to "Rose" I did not.  The reason for sticking to her original name was for the sake of my muse.  Every time I changed it I would hear "That is NOT my name." And if you know anything about my MC, you would understand why I wouldn't want to piss her off.

Other than that I am as all writers do- trying to catch the audience's attention and imagination. It's called "the hook."
I'm trying to get the reader interested in why she is where she is, what she does and think, getting them to move on to the next lines which read.

"No matter how drunk she got in the pub that night, they would remain. He would hunt her down, ready to pounce like a feral animal on his prey." 

   Are you hooked yet? I hope so.

Yours,

Andrea