I think this is the last place I need to update. :) I sent in a story of mine to a publisher. I was super nervous about doing it, but it's something that had to be done. I've felt frustrated with my writing life for the past several weeks because I have all these first, second and so on drafts and nothing going out for publication. There's this hurdle where I don't have a first reader or a critique partner and I've let that hold me back. I have my writer's group and that's been helpful for some things, but I can't expect them to be available for the consistent feedback I need. Ditto with nice friends that offer to read my books. So I'm going to move ahead with or without someone else reading my stuff before I send it out.

Since I decided I was really, really going to send out a story, I've felt so much better. (except for the near panic about actually sending it, quadruple checking submission guidelines and things like that) That trapped, frustrated feeling is gone.

In slightly different news, I've run out of story ideas. I have a few vague thoughts floating around that might come together, but nothing that has a spark to it. I know I don't want to start a novel, with NaNoWriMo coming up. I'll write a novel then. I think, for now, I'll spend some time watching movies and interesting TV shows and reading, and have a little "down time" while I wait for something to spark. I know something will come along, it always does. Movies/TV/books are great sources of inspiration.

Oh, hey. On that note, how about some recommendations from my Flist? I'm already building a to be read pile, so how about movie and TV show recs? What should I watch? If you're not familiar with my tastes, take a glance at my profile.

Speaking of movies, I'm off to the video store! :)

Romance, generally speaking, is just Not My Thing. I don’t go to the Romance section of the book store, or the video store. If the back of a book I pick up talks about unyielding desires or some such, I put it back down. Telling me how hot a character is doesn’t interest me in the story. And that’s fine. We all have our different tastes. The problem, though, the really big problem, is that I keep writing it.

Let me explain that I have no problem with romance as an idea. People falling in (and out) of love can make for a very interesting story. I like plenty of stories with romantic elements in them, and root for certain characters to get together (I flat out fanboy squeed when Buffy and Spike kissed the first time). And I like honest to goodness romances like Princess Bride and Beauty and the Beast. Every single one of my novels has some romance in it. That I’m not surprised about.

What surprised me was that last year I found myself writing a full on Paranormal Romance. There was just no pretending it was anything else. Then I wrote a Paranormal Romance short story, and another, and now I’m writing another. Which brings me to another weird thing: when I try to write romance, I fail. I wrote a story for a contest a while back. Got it critiqued, edited, had it ready to go weeks before the deadline. But I didn’t send it in, because I just didn’t like the story. That’s why I put down Chains, my current story, a while back. I was trying to write a romance, to fit it into this narrow, wrong view I had of romance, and it only took a few pages before I didn’t like it. When I try to write romance, I think too much about the market, where it might fit, whether a publisher might not like it because of this little part, and that’s besides worrying if my writing is any good at all.

So how do I end up with all these romance stories? I take two interesting characters, usually put them in an interesting setting, and have them fall in lurrve. “But, Devin!” you say, “You just described a romance story!” Yes, I did. But I need to trick my brain into thinking about it as a story, and letting the story be what it wants to be instead of hemming it in with all these wacky ideas of what I think “romance” as a genre is.

The story needs to be written first, the labels can come later. If it happens to be about people falling in love, so be it. I like writing those stories. And I probably like Romance more than I think I do. It wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong about something.

Originally posted at www.devinharnois.com

I went to a little, tiny con over the weekend. For the most part, I had a good time.

Several times, I felt way out of my league. Clearly, I had not read nearly as much SF/F as these people, nor had I watched as wide a variety of movies. I spent a lot of time sitting and listening, because I had nothing to add to the conversation.

I am way, way more versed in horror. When topics involving horror movies came up, I finally felt like I could contribute. I even brought up tidbits that other people didn't know. Friday night, there was a good conversation about Frankenstein, the novel and the Universal movie, and that was something I felt comfortable with.

Oh, and Poe. He was a postmortem guest of honor, and I could talk intelligently (er, somewhat) about his work.

I think I should try a horror convention next.

I might go to Diversicon tomorrow. Like, just show up and hope they let me in. ;)

Won't be able to make it until evening, though. I still have to work.

I finished the story I've been working on lately, Darkness at Dawn. I do all sorts of things to avoid writing, but when I'm not actively working on something, I feel restless. I think my brain needs to have a story to mull over or it feels like there's something missing. Today I picked up a story I started a while ago. It's going to be a short one, and I don't know what I'm going to do after that.

I dug up story from last year and put it up on my website: "One Day at a Time" It's not my usual fare, but it didn't turn out too bad.

I bought an iPod nano a few weeks ago, and I'm really liking it. I even like iTunes.

My printer went to shit over the weekend, and I bought a new one. It's a Kodak, so there's a lot of emphasis on photo printing, which I don't plan to use much. The few test pages of text I printed look GREAT, though. So maybe I did pick a good printer.

Went to the eye doctor, and finally decided to get new glasses after many years (I wear contacts all the time except to bed). The glasses I picked out are funky and cool.

So, I've been spending a lot of money, and I put off buying a Sony e-reader. I've decided on the 700, which has a touch screen. Not sure when I'll get around to actually getting it.

I know things like Critters and Online Writer's Workshop exists, but they don't strike me as the best way to get a whole novel critiqued.

So, dear F-list, does anyone out there want to beta read one of my novels? I have two urban fantasies that are ready for the next level, as well as completed first drafts that need another draft before they reach the beta reading stage: another urban fantasy (sequel), a YA fantasy, a sci-fi with fantasy elements, and yes, I admit it, a paranormal romance.

And if you are a fellow writer in similar genres, I would be happy to beta read for you as well.

Oh, and if you'd like an idea of my writing style, I have a few bits up on my website: www.devinharnois.com

My hope for today is to finish the second draft of Shattered. Knowing my own laziness, though, that might not happen. I still have hope, though.

Watched Robocob last night. It is still made of awesome. Now I need to get part 2. The "vampire" movie we watched afterwards ... not made of awesome. Not even made of good.

I'm halfway through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. That book keeps cracking me up. Strangely, some of the plot points make MORE sense with zombies involved. Darcy initially tries to break up Jane and Bingly because after she comes down with a bad cold, he thinks she might turn into a zombie, and he doesn't want his friend to fall in love with her and suffer through that. All the Bennet girls are kick-ass zombie killers, although not all of them take it seriously. And Lady Catherine has ninjas!

... Is me, actually getting some work done. Shattered is still coming along. It's now at 71,000 words and I should easily make my goal of 80k.

I started the survival-horror-meets-romance story, and although I've only done little bits at a time, it hasn't fallen apart yet so I'm taking that as a good sign.

I woke up Sunday with a story idea buzzing in my head. Which is cool, except my dreams almost never work out as stories. Once I sit down and start writing, I realize dream logic is too far from waking logic and the story falls apart. The one thing that did work was a dream that eventually became Rising Storm. The essence of that dream got worked around in my head enough that I could build on it and turn it into a story -- well, novel.

The dream I had Sunday, though. That one is wacky enough that it might be worth a little extra effort. The basic idea of it is:

Wait for it ...




Resident Evil meets Romeo and Juliet.

That's a very loose interpretation, but I can imagine a Hollywood agent pitching it like that. The dream was very survival horror, and then romance took over it. It could be really fun to write.

I owe the Fed money this year. :P I got a tiny little bit back from the state. My property tax refund, though, is pretty fair. I'm tempted to blow it on a Kindle 2. When the K1 came out, I wasn't interested, but I made the mistake one day of reading over the info page, reading the reviews, watching the ad videos ... and now I want one. I love the idea of being able to carry around a bunch of books in this tiny little thing, having it save where I'm at, looking like paper, being easy to use. I could never give up physical books, I love the feel and smell of them, but this would be an expansion of reading materials. It would be even easier to carry around than a paperback.

But can I justify such an expensive toy? A useful toy, but still.

My batch of dreams last night included both LOST and Avatar. Thank you, brain!

The Avatar one was much cooler.

Writing about crazy people makes me happy. Is that fucked up? Probably.

Oh, well. :)

2008 was a good year for me. I finally got a permanent job at the place I'd been trying to get into for almost 3 years.

I won NaNoWriMo for the second year in a row and had a lot of fun doing it.

I branched out just a bit in my writing. I finished a sci-fi novel, wrote a paranormal romance, and my NaNo novel is YA. I got more writing done than I have in any other year. I learned more about the craft of writing (at least I hope so!)

I bought a laptop with my stimulus check, which seemed like a treat at the time, but has turned out to be very handy. During Nano, it was a blessing.

I have hopes for 2009, even if the news makes it sound scary. I'm concentrating on editing this year, but I hope to start a few new things, too. Maybe just short stories, but something. And I plan on doing NaNo again. I'll start thinking about that around September.

December is The Month of Nothing, where I get the whole month off, guilt free, from writing. It didn't work so well last year because I picked up Rising Storm again near the end of the month. I'd left it hanging so I could do NaNo, and I really wanted to finish it. This year, I have nothing new in progress. I might make it the whole month.

Except for RPG posts ... those don't count. I need those.

I plan on renting lots of movies, and I think I'll re-play Kingdom Hearts, maybe 2 as well.

Then when January comes ... I have five books to edit. Ouch. I have to get at least ONE of them ready to go out before the end of next year. Crossbreed will become two books, so that makes it six ...

But that's NEXT month. This month is all about being lazy. :)

50,140 words and that means I WIN NaNoWriMo for the second year!

*Happy Dance*

I'm sitting her drinking champagne by myself like the complete dork I am. :) I did celebrate my win with other people, though. I got to 50K at a write in at the Loft tonight and got a nice round of applause.

There's still some tying up at the end stuff, so I'll keep writing until the end of the month like I did last year.

I missed it last year, but this year I decided to go on the twin cities write-in tour. I started at stop #2, Uncommon Grounds in Uptown. It was dark in there, but cozy, and my screen was bright enough. I got a good number of words in, too. Then we moved on to Blue Moon, which I was only at for around 45 mins. I left to go to Karen's party, and honestly, I wish I would have skipped most of it. The part where we went back to her house and played Rock Band 2 was fun, but Dave & Buster's mostly sucked. After dropping Charles off and stopping off at home for a bathroom break, I went to Perkins to continue the tour. I got there at around 3am and realized that I was completely insane. :)

I chugged a couple cherry cokes, did a word war and a half, and crossed the 30k mark before I had to give up and go home. That was at 5:30am. I went home and got about 4 hours of sleep, then got up and went to Barnes and Noble at the Mall for the end of the tour. I got there around noon and by the end of the tour at 2pm, I got 2000 more words written. All told, I got 6000 words over the whole tour and my word count looks mighty good.

Once the tour ended, I figured I could look around the Mall since I hadn't been there in a while. Plus I wanted a 30k word prize. I had to go to every fucking gift shop at the Nickelodeon park, buuuut ....

SCORE!! haha! You have no idea how happy I was to find this. :D

Half way there!

Tenai, my antagonist, keeps burning things. ;) He's way too much fun.

I have a little over 22,000 words, and might reach the half way point before the weekend.

Here's a few short excerpts. Remember, this is raw and unedited.
( Reap&Burn )

Broke 8000 words today, which makes me a little behind where I should be. I have a write-in tomorrow at the downtown library. Hopefully I can catch up and maybe get a little ahead. The write-in on Monday at the Loft was pretty productive. And I've done better over lunch, since now I can type on my laptop instead of having to write longhand in a notebook (although I do kinda miss my Pirates of the Caribbean notebook).