The fabulous Marcia Richards tagged me with this puppy a few weeks ago. Good thing, cause the brain is mush this morning.
Here’s the way it works: You take your current manuscript and find the first instance of the word “look”. Then you post the surrounding paragraphs as an excerpt of the book on your blog. Lastly, you tag five more blogging authors who you think might be a good choice for the game.
I’m not sure if this is the first “look” in this WiP but it’s what was open. First draft, subject heavy revisions, the cutting room floor, yada, yada.
Archie must have been changing when the paperboy knocked because he only wore jeans. Unsnapped jeans. She’d forgotten what a nice body Archie had, a runner’s body, all lean muscle. His chest and arms had a golden hue implying he spent time outdoors. The skin peaking out at his waist pale in comparison.
“Keep looking at me like that and I’m apt to forget ye are me best mate’s girl.”
Myra’s gaze snapped to his. The laughter replaced by a heat so elemental she jumped back lest she got singed. She tried not to look. Really she did. But she couldn’t miss the bulge behind the zipper of Archie’s jeans.
“I mean it,” Archie ground out.
Myra slammed the door shut between them and turned the lock. Leaning against the door, memories haunted her. She had carnal knowledge of that body and just how well Archie used it. Moist warmth flooded her. She rushed to the bathroom, locking the door. As if two flimsy locks would protect her.
She turned the shower on, as cold as she thought she could handle and stepped under the water. What was she going to do? Gerry was all that stayed Archie’s hand. Hell, Gerry was all that stayed her hand. She would not come between them any more than she already had.
And I’m not going to play by the rules
Writers…Tag you’re it!
Readers…Share the first “look” excerpt from the book you’re currently reading in the comments.
Marcia Richards had a fun post in which she shared her top 10 favorite things starting with the letter L. She had an awesome list. Marcia offered to assign a letter to anyone who wanted to play along.
She gave me “C”
Without further ado, and in no particular order, here are my top 10 favorite things beginning with “C”
Christmas
(Yep, Christmas morning at our house after the boys attacked the presents.)
Celts
(You knew this had to be here somewhere, right?)
The Writing: I’m still working on my Margie Lawson Writer’s Academy class though I’m feeling more like a lurker than a participant, LOL, but I’m learning a lot.
The Reading: I’ve had quite a bit of stand around and wait periods this week which equals reading. I’ll be chatting about a couple of them on the next Tuesday Book Talk post.
The Blogging: I haven’t kept track this week. My gut says it was a fail in the comment department. It was definitely a fail in adding any posts to my queue. Thank goodness for a cushion!
The Social Media: Again, I haven’t kept track this week, and I have no idea how to call it.
Roni Loren had an interesting discussion on her Follow at Your Own Risk post. I can see both sides of the argument. I guess, for me, following on social media is like TV or movie ratings. If I know what I’m getting, it’s on me whether I follow or not. How about you?
On Friday I had a blast connecting up with Melanie Macek while she was traveling through the area. Squee! So awesome being able to meet and chat in person after months of getting to know each other online.
The Health: Oy. It has been one of those weeks. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail.
To support the awesomeness that is ROW80 you can go HERE
Congrats to Kait Nolan! Her YA Red was the only indie title nominated for DABWAHA.
A great showing Kait!
How many of you picked up Scrivener after NaNoWriMo last year? Are you using it to the fullest? If not, perhaps Gwen Hernandez’s Scrivener class can help.
The writing: hmm…well, I was struck with a new shiny. I tried just writing the bit that came to me so the idea was captured but not taking over. :snort: Then I spent a D&E writing on it. Trial and error has shown me that D&E is best for new words. I’m far enough from the fantasy piece that I’ll need to do a complete reread before continuing it. So on one hand I’m not surprised. Yet it has distracted me enough that forward progress on the SF piece has stalled. We almost to the end of this round and, while I’m not calling it a change in goals, I think I’m just going to continue “cleaning house” so all my ducks are in a row for the start of the next round.
The blogging: still holding a week grace of scheduled posts. I think I’m ready for my blogiversary next month, just need to finalize one giveaway. Details coming soon.
Taking a page from Fabio Bueno’s Blog Comments Log and Marcia Richards’ Streamlining Blogs posts, I’ve been cleaning out my Google Reader this week. I listed them. Noted the days each blog posted. Evaluated whether it was an info blog, a friend blog, or just a blog I enjoyed reading. And while it shouldn’t matter, I also noted who was supportive of my blog. Just like a good spring cleaning I feel like a weight has be lifted off my shoulders and my reader is much more manageable.
The social media: I continued to meet my retweet and sharing goals thanks to Triberr and StumbleUpon this week. Even had a bit of a conversation with @Ali__Dent
The health: Sigh. I fell off the wagon a bit this week. I think that time change mucked with me more than usual. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it
Oh where, oh where, has the time gone? Right. Wee beasties were out of school for two days this last week.
Then Friday was a wasted day with repair people in and out. Really, from 11:30 am to 7:30 pm! Poor Roxy got way too much sun as I needed to keep her outside much of the day. Do they make sunscreen for dogs?
The writing: still working my way through notes from betas, revamping the MC, solidifying the SF elements, and nailing down conflict. It’s very doubtful this will be ready for the sub call. But I’m okay with that. The sub call pushed some limits. The betas pushed craft. I’m learning and growing so it is all good. I want to keep pushing those deadlines and limits so I’m continuing to work on this as if I’m going to submit it for the call.
I have a love/hate relationship with deadlines and August McLaughlin had a great post, Deadlines: Lifelines for Writers. How are you with deadlines?
The blogging: still holding to a week cushion by the skin of my teeth. Seriously, can there be an odder saying?
The social media: still failing miserably with commenting and taking part on the different sites. However, I AM getting around to them all every day without killing myself. I have no idea what switched and that is my social media goal for this week. Once I have that figured, get the commenting back up to par.
The health: I am back on the wagon completely with the water and slowly working in those dog walks. The Beastie Girl and I got out twice this last week. Additionally, for March I’m cutting out some of the extra sugars. I started implementing that by substituting Truvia for sugar in my morning coffee. My goal is to slowly reduce the Truvia until I’m down to just taking cream in said morning coffee. I’m such a tea person, LOL.
Angela Wallace really hit the nail on the head with her Squeezing Time post!
The reading: yep, been doing some of that too. Sloan Parker highlighted a number of free reads Don’t Read in the Closet Collections that can be download from Goodreads. A little M/M romance in the evening
The lovely Claire Hennessy nominated me for this award. Thanks so much Claire
The rules are to share ten facts about oneself and pass the award on to six fab bloggers. It is hard to come up with interesting facts about yourself. And if you’re really curious I’ll point you to my Versatile Blogger posts here and here plus the 7 X 7 Link post.
Instead, I offer up to you, my Top 10 Sexy Men
(alphabetically so no one feels slighted of course)
Adrian Paul
Christopher Eccleston
Clive Owen
Eric Etebari
Gerard Butler
Hugh Jackman
Mark Dacascos
Oded Fehr
Sendhil Ramamurthy
Shemar Moore
Will Smith
Oops. Miscounted.
Who is in your top 10?
Okay, on with the nominations…
So many of you have been beyond awesome, especially over the last few weeks when I haven’t been as good about getting to your blogs, and I’d love to name you all. In the end, I looked at my stats and picked the top visitors without this award.
And we’re back to normal, well, as normal as it gets with four wild and crazy wee beasties, one faithful but bored dog, and a schedule no sane person would volunteer for!
The writing: somehow I managed to get through the first round of rewrites. Cutting the MS down from 45+ K to 37,500…goal was closer to 30K but I’ll take it. In doing these rewrites I have realized a number of scenes need to be moved and a lot more summary type passages need to be cut or rewritten into action scenes. That is my next hurtle. I probably need to tighten up the timeline too. So I’ve printed this bad boy out and am playing around with the plot, because I’m on a deadline, I’m only giving myself this weekend to complete this step in the process. Gasp. Then for full-on revisions. I’m hoping to be ready for critique and/or beta readers in a week to 10 days so if you’re interested drop me an email at BuriedNWords [at] gmail [dot] com.
Stating I’m hoping for critique and/or beta readers just gave me heart palpitations, LOL
The blogging: somehow managed to stay on top of my posts here. Spent some time yesterday getting more scheduled so I again have about a week’s grace on posts except for these Sunday ones. Whew.
And ROW sister Marcia Richards did a fab post, Blog Better and Faster, on how to improve what I’ve already been doing. :high five: Marcia
The social media: I’m slowly climbing back on that horse. I got around to a few blogs, made comments on some, even retweeted a couple. The other aspects of social media were so-so. But at least I opened them up.
The health: oy, fail this last week. No dog walking. Even the water intake dropped. Tomorrow is a new day
August McLaughlin gave me a nice kick in the arse with her Groovy Moving post. Thanks August
And my fantastic mentor, Joely Sue Burkhart, brought up an interesting point in her Dressing for Success post. What do you think?
I apologize. Blogger is not playing nice for me. For some reason, perhaps my Google profile is set up wrong, Blogger asks me to set up a Blogger blog whenever I try to comment with my Google account. Sorry, not doing that. Normally, I’ve posted under the OpenID WordPress option, however that hasn’t been working consistently since December. If your blog offers the Name/URL option I’ve been able to post comments. If not, it’s hit and miss. So I apologize if I’ve missed you.
The Writing: Went real well this week and I’m ahead of where I hoped to be.
The Blogging: Met my posting goal but need to spend some time restocking the scheduled queue
The Social Media: My biggest challenge, sigh. The blog commenting went well and I think I met my goal of 3 a day plus at least 2 new for the week. I didn’t keep track of the Twitter or the Facebook stuff and know it was another retweet fail week. It’s only the second week, it can only get better, right?
The Health: Doing well with the water, most days getting in an extra two glasses over my three glass baseline. The dog walking, yay, hit it this week though not up to our usual length. I had to cut them short because my toe still hurts when I wear closed toe shoes and it is too cold for flip-flops, LOL, but still got in a half hour each time.
Have you ever reported a drunk driver? Were you afraid to get involved or just not sure you recognized the signs? Natalie Hartford has an excellent post on reporting drunk drivers.
Holy crap! 50,048 NaNoWriMo wordage!
Admittedly, I discovered 1608 words that I’d forgotten to record earlier in the month that helped push me over the 50K mark. Either way, that’s two years in a row for a NaNo win. Yep, in shock.
Thank the universe NaNoWriMo is over! Now my family can stop staring at me like I’m crazy, LOL. I’m not crazy enough to say “never” but…not tackling it again any time soon, and yes, November 2012 would be TOO SOON.
I had a blast with Ciara Knight’s blog hop Thursday and added quite a few new blogs to the ol’ Google Reader. The author found my book Actually, most of the authors found their books. You can stop by Ciara’s blog to find out how others did.
Blog: Sent off a guest post this weekend, I’ll let you know the details of when it’ll go live when I have it. Still need to sit down to finalize and schedule a chunk of blog posts, crossing fingers that’ll happen later today. Even with the craziness of the last days of NaNo, I managed to comment on at least 3 blogs per day, except maybe yesterday.
Social Media: Another week of post and run, but I got my minimum of three updates.
Wordage: *cough* see above No, new words Thursday through Saturday though. I figure I’m about 15k away from the end of this first draft and my goal is to get that done by the end of ROW80, or at the very least by the end of the year. So, I guess we’ll call this a goal revision
The halls, and rooms, are decked. The tree is up waiting for presents. The Santa cookie jar is full of home-baked deliciousness.
I even reclaimed my writing/crafting room yesterday. Whoot. Hopefully, that will increase productivity.
Still shopping? Check out Marcia Richards’ Buy American post. Let’s keep our dollars here this year.
We hardly ever get snow in the Vegas valley so I added it to the blog for the holidays {But be sure to let me know if it messes with your visits. If enough people have problems I’ll take it down.}
There’s this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It’s the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me.
If you’d like to play along, let me know in the comments and I’ll assign you a letter.
