Author: Shara

Progress Report: 3/3/2013

~ Shara ~ 8 Comments

So I promised my two readers that I would start some sort of project in March. I decided on Space Vampires. Unlike last year, where I was writing Magic Eaters by the seat of my pants and sending them at least a page daily, I’m going for a more prepared focus. Instead of a page-a-day, I’m going to send them chapters. Ideally, I’d like to do a chapter a week at minimum, so we’ll see how it goes.

Every Sunday, I’ll do my best to post some kind of progress report on whatever writing-related activities I’m doing.

Project: Space Vampires
Word Count: 1,545 words
Completed: started the prologue on Friday, finished on Saturday, but let it sit before sending it out. Was in a hurry on Saturday to write, and thinking things over is a good thing: a minor, technical detail that was alluding me on Saturday became clear, so I was able to iron out a few things before sending it to my readers.

And that’s that! Hopefully, this coming week will have more to talk about, perhaps even on multiple projects!

Once Upon a Vine

~ Shara ~ 5 Comments

Tonight, a friend of mine is hosting a wine-tasting party. Each person/couple is to pick up a two bottles of one wine they’ve never had before, and those two bottles will be used for the tasting (the point of the two bottles, I think, is to make sure there’s enough to go around).

I drink wine, but I’m no connoisseur. I’ve ordered white zinfandel at restaurants and have had people cringe, because I’m not sophisticated to drink reds or some kind of white. It’s a good thing those same people don’t see me picking up strawberry wine: it’d probably give them a heart attack! But short of a chardonnay or a moscato, I haven’t yet developed a taste for many whites or reds, and while I like something sweet, experience has taught me if it’s too sweet, I won’t touch it.

Last night, the hubby and I went to the liquor store to figure out what to bring. I wanted to find something that I wouldn’t necessarily try on my own, and then I discovered Once Upon A Vine. I’d heard of them before, simply because of their delightful labels. You’ve got The Big Bad Red Blend, the Lost Slipper Sauvignon Blanc, the The Fairest Chardonnay, and then lastly, the Charming Pinot. The liquor store I went to didn’t have the blanc: I think I would’ve gone for that if they had. Instead, I decided on the pinot. The guy working there said it’d be a good red to try for someone like me, someone’s whose trying to develop a taste for reds and doesn’t want to be overwhelmed.

Label-wise, I prefer the Big Bad Red Blend, but I’m gonna hold off and see what develops. The Fairest Chardonnay is definitely one I’ll probably like, but that’s something I can safely pick up the next time I need to get wine for a meal.

Has anyone ever tried any of these? If anything, these bottles are worth picking up for the labels, because they’re so delightfully designed. 🙂

But I do want to say:

Dear Once Upon a Vine:

Your labels are utterly wonderful. Your website is utterly boring. Please hire the designer who did your labels and have them redesign your website. Your wines deserve better!

Sincerely, Calico

Beautiful Lie

~ Shara ~ 4 Comments

When I finally finished the very first draft of Telepathic Soulmates in 2007, I was in trouble and lots of it. The sucker needed WORK, and in order to graduate, it required an extensive rewrite. The good thing is, sometimes you don’t really understand how to write a book until you’re already finished with it, so I knew what I needed to do.

One of my biggest weaknesses was (and still is, generally speaking) setting. I had a vague, generic setting for the first draft, and I needed something to fix that. Honestly, I don’t remember if I was leaning towards what I settled on before I saw the below video, but I do know that once I saw this video, I knew my setting couldn’t be anything different.

Continue reading →

You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours…

~ Shara ~ 9 Comments

In 2012, I got back on the writing saddle. Independent of one another (they didn’t even KNOW each other), two friends of mine challenged me to write a page-a-day to get back on track. Jen, the first person who approached me, did it out of love: she’s been a fabulous voice in the past when it came to giving me feedback, and she really wanted to see me put my work out there. The page-a-day project was something she’d done the year before, and she knew how beneficial it could be. Alicia, the second friend, was also wanting to get back into the writing saddle, and she wanted a partner in crime. I figured, hey, two people are basically feeding me the same idea, so I should take them up on it. So I did. Magic Elves was the result.

Every night, I uploaded my page (or two) to Google Docs, which allowed both Jen and Alicia to read at their leisure and cheer me on. It was a very informal process: Jen knew that in order to get me back in the saddle, I couldn’t take what I was writing too seriously, so the rule was general support in terms of feedback, to show that they were reading. It morphed into something else over the year, though: they were able to ask questions about what was happening and draw my attention to things I might’ve forgotten about. They also became a sounding board for ideas. It was mightily useful.

Alicia had her own project, so what she did for me, I did for her. Jen, however, was on a different playing field, sending out queries for her YA fantasy World Maker and hoping an agent would bite. Fortunately, one did, and last weekend, I spent my time reading her “getting-it-ready-for-an-editor” draft. I’d only read the first chapter of the project before, and the premise interested me enough that I was curious to see what the book was about (spoiler alert: it’s awesome. It beats the pants of a lot of published YA that came out last year).

Here’s the thing: Jen is one of those people that I’ll read anything for. She’s been a tremendously huge support for me and my writing, and better still, I really love reading her fiction. That she’s not published yet makes me want to cry, so I really, really hope it happens for her.

This sentiment of “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine,” is what I want to talk about when it comes to critiquing, because believe me, just because someone’s willing to read your work and vise-versa doesn’t mean it’s going to be a pleasant experience on either side. Continue reading →

Movie Ramblings, with a Side of Headaches

~ Shara ~ 4 Comments

Currently, my husband and my cat are getting more sleep than I am. Admittedly, this is my fault, because it’s hard to say no to a good margarita, and then you really, really wish you’d said no after you wake up in the wee hours of the morning to worship the great porcelain goddess.

That, and stealth headaches. These are headaches I’ve dubbed stealth because I wake up, and there’s pain, so I get up to take something, realize the headache isn’t bad at all, really, but when I lay down again? PAIN! Stealth headaches: you don’t know they’re there unless you’re horizontal, which puts you in the unfortunate position of trying to figure out how to sleep vertically, because those headaches always how up in the middle of the night.

ANYWAY. It’s been a productive weekend so far: Friday, the hubby and I watched Argo, which I really liked, but I find myself disappointed now that I’ve learned that Ben Affleck’s character, Tony Mendez, was actually latino. It’s especially painful since, in the credits, the film makes a big deal to compare the real life counterparts to the actors, and honestly, the resemblance was uncanny for most of them. Except they didn’t do it for Mendez/Affleck. The Book Smugglers, in their post devoted to the Oscars, have the comparison picture here.

The more I think about it, the more it frustrates me. I didn’t have a problem with Affleck in this role or his acting before I learned this. I left the movie feeling great, warm, fuzzy feelings for the man he was portraying, and now that I know the man he was portraying was latino, I’m pissed, because so many people who watch the movie are going to think a white guy saved the day. And even though I’m a white woman, it pisses me off: race relations can be so tense in the US that we need to see heroes of all shapes and sizes and colors. Having a latino hero in a movie that’s based on a real latino hero who did a great service to the US? Who was one of the most important operatives in CIA history? That would’ve been beyond awesome.

Anyway. Argo was still really good, a really tense movie, but that just bugs me to no end.

We also watched Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. I’m pro-Steve Carrell, but not a huge fan of Keira Knightly lately. She’s a good actress, and I’ve liked her work in the past, it’s just that I can’t look at her now without wishing she looked healthier. She’s so thin it’s frightening, so I tend to avoid her films. Shallow of me, I know, and it’s not like I have a vendetta against skinny people (when I was growing up, my mother had a whacked-out metabolism that kept her super-skinny, the kind of super-skinny that made you realize being super-skinny wasn’t awesome. To get jeans, she had to get them from the boy’s department — not men’s, boy’s — and then hem them in using a sewing machine). Anyway, I still really wanted to see this movie, so that was Saturday’s entertainment. And it was good. It was really, really good. I was surprised by the end, and I loved seeing an alternate take on the apocalypse. We always assume sheer anarchy and mutiny, but seeing other ways of coping was a fascinating study of human character.

And while I’m babbling about movies, I did watch Battleship last weekend. It was no where near as bad as I thought, and I thought I’d have to be drunk to enjoy it. I wasn’t drunk, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Going in with low expectations really helped, but it’s quite entertaining for a big, dumb action movie with dubious source material. Also, I admire Battleship utilized a super-diverse cast without it seeming contrived. At any rate, it was fun to watch. It was also free to watch (via HBO, so it’s not FREE, but I didn’t pay extra just to watch that particular movie), so that helped too.

Tonight is Oscar-night, which I’ll be watching despite not having yet watched as many of the nominees as I would’ve liked. There was a time when I was in college when I’d make a point to see every film nominated for Best Picture. Of course, that was back when only five films were nominated for the category, but still: I wish I had that time now. Yesterday, it was super-tempting to go to the theater and do a marathon of The Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty. Maybe even Life of Pi. Oh well, I’ll get to them eventually.

Happy Friday! Celebrate with Bacon!

~ Shara ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been craving bacon since Monday. Specifically, my sandwich-of-choice at Subway: turkey, bacon, cheese & ranch (and some lettuce thrown in to be healthy) on wheat. I’ve been good all week, but today’s Friday, and I’m in the mood to celebrate, so bacon it is! Erm, I mean, Subway it is!

Celebrate what, you may ask? Today was my annual review for my day job, and it went well. My raise goes into affect on April 1st, so that’s a good thing. It’s also a constant thing. I’ve complained a bit about certain things being uncertain at the day job, but this wasn’t one of them. The uncertain things seem to be fading, yet they have a bad habit of popping up out of nowhere and saying, “SURPRISE! Your life is UNCERTAIN again!” We’ll see. Right now, I’m quite happy for the raise.

I’m also taking a half day today, so I shall be spending the afternoon with my cat (did you know, cats can literally make you crazy? There’s no hope for me; I’ve been living with cats since I was a baby!) and catching up on a few projects. I’ll leave you with this story: Continue reading →

What’s in a Name?

~ Shara ~ 15 Comments

So before I start really blogging in earnest, I wanted to get some technical things out of the way. While I’ve talked about how my identity will be Calico and nothing but Calico until I decide what to name my bad-ass author self, I need to talk about the names of other things.

Namely, the books I’m working on.

I don’t always have a title when I start on a project. Also, because I don’t know what name I want to publish under, I don’t want to give away the titles willy-nilly, simply because one day, an agent will Google me, discover the title of the manuscript in question on this blog and will start browsing on this blog, and while I have no intention of being grossly inappropriate, still, you know? Also, I know I don’t come up with the most original or ground-breaking titles in the world (seriously, I don’t. I envy writers with poetic titles), I’m paranoid about finally getting something and there being onslaught of other books under the same name.

Also, if I do get published, my editor might veto the original title and make me change it anyway. So there’s that.

However, when I want to talk about my writing and various projects, I need something to refer to them by, right? So here’s the deal:

I’m going to use generic descriptors. The descriptors will be SO generic that you can probably think of a dozen books that my descriptor would also describe. The descriptors might be so generic that it turns you off of the project, but I’ll make you a deal: should said manuscript get picked up and I’m allowed to make the announcement (or if I give up and go self-published), I’ll reveal the real title and the REAL blurb, and I promise, the blurb of the novel will be far more interesting. 🙂

Now that I’ve bored you with all this talk of generic descriptors, would you like to know what I’ll be talking about?

Continue reading →

Transitioning Into What?

~ Shara ~ 11 Comments

I’ve had this idea for a while now, but it really got stuck in my head last year when I was thisclose to a publishing deal. See, I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll write under my real name (which is associated with my book blog and has been for some time), or if I want to write under a pen name (you’d think naming yourself would be easy. You would be wrong). And because my book blog has a rather large following, I always knew that I’d want to promote whatever I publish professionally to those readers. I’m not going to kid myself: I know that many of those readers won’t give a fig if I publish a book, and those that do may not like my genre. That’s cool. But there will be those who WILL want to follow my career, and I wanted to find a way to promote myself as a writer to THEM while also distancing myself from the book blog (in the event I publish under a pen name).

The idea, then, was simple: to create a blog that would transition me from book blogger to full-time author (whatever name I decide to publish under). Hence, “Calico in Transition.” If you know my book blog, the title makes sense. If you don’t, a few minutes on Google will tell you everything you need to know.

So for now, I’m in transition: not just from book blogger to professional writer, but in life in general. Trying to figure out if my Day!Job is the Forever!Job. Trying to figure out if I even want to become a professional writer, because I’ve been following the field for a long time, and there’s a lot out there that scares me. I’ll talk about anything and everything, including some of the topics I’d discuss at my book blog.

But one thing I won’t talk about: the book blog by name. I also won’t name myself because as I said before, this blog is meant to be a cushion between one thing and another, and I still haven’t decided what I want to name myself yet. I ask those that know me personally (or from the book blog) to refrain from calling me anything but Calico. It may be a futile gesture (and really, there’s no such thing as anonymity on the internet), but if possible, I’d like to dissociate my real name from this blog, so that if I one day launch an author blog, I can promote it HERE my real name being attached to the pen name.

Clear as mud? Good. This in and of itself is an experiment, a way to get me writing about other things that book reviews, a chance to loosen up, have fun, or be serious and reflect. If you’re on board, I’m glad to have you. If you’re not, that’s cool too.