I’m going to be completely honest here—because that’s what authors and readers alike want—I’m an HEA story kind of girl, which book #1—The Blood That Bonds—was not. I was a little miffed and felt somewhat let down about a certain character’s death, and I have to admit that I wasn’t all that motivated to read book #2. I’m a total dope…I COULDN’T PUT THIS DOWN! If I was flexible enough I’d kick my own arse (as Stephen would so blatantly state). I’m happy to say there were no problems with the name “Two” for me this time around; it was much easier for me to grasp as a name.

You can check out the entire review over at Day Dreaming. Thanks, Dawn!

With TBGM out of the way for now, I’m moving back to The Children of the Sun. It’s time to start draft 2, and in this case that means cutting. Lots of cutting. My goal is to slash 25,000 words out of the book (which would bring it to right around the same length as Blood Hunt). I think that will make it leaner and meaner, more fun to read, and also address some of the issues that my trusted readers brought up with the first draft, one of which is that this book about Two just spends too much time not featuring Two!

TCotS is flabby right now, as evidenced by the fact that I managed to trim more than 9,000 words off of it this weekend by hacking out some sections that just aren’t integral to the story. I liked them. I’ll miss them. But they had to go.

This is a necessary part of revision — there are bits of The Blood That Bonds and Blood Hunt that never saw the light of day, either. I’ve never had a book this long, so I’ve never had to cut this many words before, but I think it’ll be good for me and for the novel! The whole point of a first draft is to just get the damn thing out and written down. That’s done. Now it’s time to make it good!

Oh, on one other TCotS-related note: the thumbnail ideas for the cover are starting to come in. You can see one of them in this very post! More on that soon.

Making good cocktails is, like pretty much anything else, mostly a matter of practice. The problem of course is that even cheap liquor adds up after a while, and it can get frustrating to keep wasting it on stuff that’s undrinkable. Trust me, I know: I’ve been into mixology and cocktail crafting for several years now, and I still sometimes come up with something that’s just straight-up gross!

On that note, my latest article is up over on Primer Magazine — I talk about improvising cocktails and things you can keep in mind to help make sure you don’t end up crafting drinks that would be better off poured down the drain.

Here’s a clip:

As you begin building a bar and exploring the world of cocktails, at some point you will find yourself in one of two situations. Either you will be filled with the desire to create beverages of your own, or you’ll end up wanting to make a drink but not having any recipes handy. In both cases, you’re going to have to improvise, and there are a few simple practices you can follow that will help ensure that what ends up in your glass wouldn’t be better-off poured down the sink.

Here are five tips that will help you craft cocktails that amuse and delight, even if you don’t have any books on hand.

You can read the entire thing over at Primer!

It was an amusing project. The camera angle’s not perfect (I’m too low on the screen), I don’t look at the camera enough, and I do things like scratching my head too often … I guess I could have re-filmed a few more times, but I kind of like leaving it a little rough. If I do more of these, it will be interesting to see if the professionalism level evolves and improves.

Hope you find it interesting and enjoyable! Let me know what you think in the comments, or on Facebook or Twitter.

Sure, there’s more than just sentence cleanup involved — there’s a middle chapter of the book that I plan on excising in its entirety and replacing with something else, and there are chunks of description and dialog that need rethinking, not just rewording. That’s fine, though, because for much of the book I can crank through the words like crazy, cleaning and prettying and clarifying without having to engage in structural work.

Therefor, I’ve set my goal at 2,500 words a day. That would be an aggressive number even for many writers for whom their work is their full-time job. Considering that I’m rarely able to even start in on it until 9 PM or so, it’s even more difficult. Still, my first night of the challenge, last night, showed that it’s very doable; I wrote more than 3,800 words!

I’ll be posting regular status updates here, and of course tweeting and facebooking about it. Swing by and cheer me on!

The book contains talk with a whole batch of really interesting folks talking about both the business and the craft of writing, from people like me who are just starting to be recognized to people who are pretty famous in their respective areas. It’s a great collection of information if you’re an aspiring author or just interested in the world of writing.

Check it out: Secrets of Succesful Authors by Darrel Pitt on Smashwords

The Children of the Sun is the longest single work I’ve ever written, by a fairly wide margin, weighing in at 177,425 words. Blood Hunt was 154,148. Since most people think more in terms of pages than words, I’ll give my best estimate: The print edition of Blood Hunt is 516 pages long including all the extra pages like the dedication, author’s note, the TCotS sneak peek, etc. I expect that the print edition of TCotS will be close to 600 pages long.

So, let’s discuss next steps. The first thing I’m doing is taking a short break from writing. One week, to be exact, to let my brain recuperate and distance itself from the work a bit. I’m going to play some video games and relax, and then I’m going to go back to the manuscript and tweak a few things that I already know I don’t like. After that, I will send it out to several trusted readers, who will in turn read it and give me their feedback. This is hugely helpful in identifying inconsistencies, plot holes, and parts of the story that just don’t “work” for people.

Once feedback is gathered, I will begin the second draft. This involves a complete rewrite of the book in a new word processing document, with the first one open on the other side of my monitor. It usually goes much faster than the first draft, and I will be setting myself a much higher nightly word count for that reason.

After the second draft is done, I take another short break, and let my wife read it and give final comments. Then I go back to work, and produce a third draft. This one isn’t rewritten from scratch. Rather, I duplicate the second draft and then go through it making edits and tweaks as I need to. Once that draft is finished, it goes off to my editor, Lauren. She’ll read through the manuscript several times, making multiple passes for tone, consistency, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so forth. Then she’ll hand me a “marked up” document with all of her changes, thoughts and suggestions, and I’ll go back through the manuscript one more time, incorporating her edits. At that point my work as a writer ends, and my work as production designer begins — that’s how it goes when you format your own print and eBooks, design your own cover, and build your own promotional website.

But we’ll cover that process in more detail when we get to it! For now, the important part is: the first draft’s done. The story’s written. We’re still on schedule for November, 2012. I hope you’ll stick with me for the ride!

At least in the northern hemisphere, February is officially the worst month (no offense to those born during it). It’s cold and grey and dark, there aren’t any big holidays to get excited about, and spring is still so far away the it seems like it will never get here. With that in mind, I have an offering that will hopefully make your February a little less crappy!

How about two full chapters from The Children of the Sun, more than fifteen THOUSAND words, that are completely free of spoilers because they are set in ancient Egypt and tell the story of how Ashayt came to be Ashayt-Sa. Interested? I hope so, because that’s what I’ve got for you, and the best news is that it’s totally free!

Well, OK, it’s totally free if you get it through Smashwords. If you got through Amazon or Barnes & Noble it’ll cost 99 cents. Please note that Smashwords offers formats that are supported by both the Kindle and the Nook, so the ONLY reason to get it from anywhere other than Smashwords is if you feel it’s super-convenient to just go through the other website and not have to manually transfer it to your device, and you therefore find it worth a buck for that convenience.

Anyway, enough with the talking. Here is where to get Amun Sa and the Girl from the Desert:

• Get it free from Smashwords – works with Kindle, Nook, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Sony Reader, Kobo, and pretty much any other device ever.
• Get it for 99 cents from Amazon (Kindle only)
• Get it for 99 cents from Amazon UK (Kindle only)
• Get it for 99 cents from Barnes & Noble (Nook only)

That’s all there is to it! Big thanks to Karla Ortiz for providing the kickass artwork that you see above (and in the book). She comes up with amazing visuals of my characters. Thanks also to Lauren for once again helping me dot the I’s, cross the T’s, and kill about a million unnecessary commas.

Remember to drop me a line on Twitter or on my Facebook Page and let me know what you thought!

January included a trip to Long Island over a weekend, and a couple of other nights were I couldn’t be at the PC such as Jan 31st where I was at a Tool concert, but all told there were only five nights where I wrote less than a thousand words, and only three nights were I wrote zero. I more than made up the difference on the other nights, and actually surpassed 150,028 a day ahead of time, on the 30th. The final tally for the challenge: 150,419, for a total of 63,283 words written in thirty-six days — an average of 1758 per night. Here’s the spreadsheet I used to keep track:

That’s the good news. The bad news is: the book’s still not done! There are a lot of complex story threads to wrap up in The Children of the Sun, and they’re taking more words than I expected. Don’t worry, though, we’re very near the end. I’m guessing it will come in slightly longer than Blood Hunt (which was around 155,000 words). Probably 160 or 170k — and that’s likely to get whittled down a bit in the second draft.

In the meantime, though the challenge is officially over, I am holding myself to a new, slightly less-difficult challenge: 1500+ words per night, every night, until this thing is done. Can I do it?! Well … yeah, probably. We’ll see!