A Place Between Places

Once there was an angel named James with large black wings and colorful eyes. He watched over a magical girl on Earth. Over time he fell in love with her. One day the girl was drowning so James went down from heaven to save her. He brought her to his secret place between Heaven and Earth, a place between places, so that he can keep a close eye on her. The angel's friend, Ryan, who's angel wings shimmer in silver, showed the girl the beautiful place between places. Ryan fell in love with the girl and when James found out the girl loves Ryan back, his heart breaks. Both angels fight until Ryan falls from the place between places breaking his silver wings.

Pull is kind of like that. I'd continue but I'd only spoil the story.

 

Climax

What have I been doing? Writing of course! I've complete book two of the Sanctuary novels. It's taken me a while because I've been looking at houses. My husband and I finally found one we love, so we've moved out of our apartment and are now living with my in-laws. It's been stressful because we can't just buy the house, can you believe it? It's a short sale so the process is longer because there's more stuff than usual to approve. All I know is I want to move in and blast my music up to eleven! <--(This is Spinal Tap reference, just so you know).
I work retail incase you didn't know, so not only were we moving, but I have to prepare for Christmas at work right after Halloween. Just so you know, from Halloween to January... yes January is Christmas time in retail... it doesn't stop on December 24 people. So, I'm tired and I haven't written much.

My sister Jess had been proof reading and found one doosie of an error. I was always unsure about a certain scene near the end of Gravity. As a writer, every page seems to need work so my thoughts on that particular scene didn't seem to stand out. Jess had called me out on it and I had to agree. It was lacking where it was suppose to be most climactic. I failed. I went back to my writing desk and had to fix it. I was moving and it was Christmas time in retail so I was tired. I hadn't even downloaded music in weeks. I was just exhausted. Christmas is now almost over and I finally sorted out that last scene. I'm waiting to hear back from my mom and Jess. I have my fingers crossed. I'm pretty sure they'll like it.

Bulking the book

Life happens while writing book two of my Sanctuary series. Between the gallstones, laziness, being removed from my current position at work to a less pleasing one, and excessive manga reading, I've layed out the order of events I've written for book Two. Like needing dough, I smoothed out the lumps and bumps and cut out unnecessaries but i know I'm not done. I'm far from it, but it doesn't mean I'll be doing it forever. My story is there. It's solid. It just needs filling. The word count is low and my chapters need definition; diving lines from beginning to end. The POV (point of view is scattered. My tense is wrong. I have alot to do. Bulking my book takes layer after layer of reading and re-reading over and over and over.... you get the idea. When the fuels there, it's no problem. When the fuels low, my Nook HD+ comes out for mangahere reading, my bottom hits the sofa and I chow on Goldfish crackers for the evening.  I like to call it studying because when I read or watch movies I try to apply emotions, plots, taboos and other interesting things to my series.
I've written today for eight hours today and I'm going on break to study before I'm to tired for my day job.

Pull: A Sanctuary Novel book one is NOW AVAILABLE at Smashwords

I love crows. Today there were alot of squawking ones. At one point four of them circled above me. There was an extremely loud one that demanded my attention when I went for a walk with my mom. Funny enough the crow was in an evergreen right in front of a house I was admiring, hoping to one day live in one day. Maybe these crows were trying to tell me something. Maybe there just being crows. My protagonist turns into a crow and of course when I see them I can't help but think about Red. So I decided today was the day I'd upload my book into Smashwords to get the ball rolling. You can check it out here. Also my author profile here.
I'll have the ebook available on Barnes& Noble, Sony, Kobo, and the iBookstore soon!

Mission Ebook Cover Completed

I got my ebook cover created. It doesn't look like some cheap cover neither. I held a contest at 99designs.com as suggested a blog comment. What was cool about the experience is I held a contest and the designers submit art according to my "design brief". At first I was waiting and getting nervous because I wasn't getting very many designs but then after two days all these professional looking designs pop up. I get to give the designers feed back, like "I hate this font" or "can you make the crow's eyes blue." These designers take the feedback and make multiples of designs. I ended up with 162 designs to choose from. the last three days you pick the finalists. I picked two. Of course it was the hardest decision but I had to keep in mind my story and my characters, not just based on "how pretty" the cover was.

Here it is! The cover to my first ebook in the Sanctuary series. I awarded the finalist Soheil Toosi. I hope to work with him on my next cover. The great part is I now have the copyrights to this image. Hooray!
My protagonist, Red is a crow but not an ordinary crow. His eyes are blue and he emminates a red aura. He's torn in "Pull", (his heart and mind fight), he hurting and this cover I feel best shows this. The contrast to me is important; the extreme light and the dark because like the cover, Red has a light side and a dark side. If you look closely, there's red heart to his chest because Red has a heart even though this "stylistic", "scary", "weak" crow looks out of the ordinary; this character knows love.
As an ebook the cover must stand out among other's so the negative space around Red (the crow) and the contrast between light and dark were a must. On a tablet device, this image is detailed and will add to the reading experience. This ebook will be selling on Barnes & Noble, Amazon and the iBookstork just to mention the major retailers. The ebook will launch as soon as I'm done formatting my files and pass those retailer standards. Notification of this will be tweeted and posted here on this Blog.

 

Is there a foggy area between YA and adult fiction, ' cause that's where my novel is?

The teen genre is tricky because it's always changing. Since the 70's taboos like drugs, sex, rape, incest are not instant rejections when it comes to YA fiction. In  fact, YA fiction has gained a broader audience with adult women. Mom's are reading their daughters books.  Books like Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, City of Bones and Beautiful Creatures are series read by children and adults alike, this may have paved a way for each of these to become movies as well. But what makes a story YA?
For my book I've been asking this question since my plot came together. Who is my audience?
My answer every time to that question was people like me. I read YA and I'm thirty-four year old female. But does my story meet the criteria for a YA novel?

My protagonist isn't a teen, he's twenty-three which already breaks a YA rule.  Teen novels have teen protagonists. My protagonist has a relationship with a young girl. (statutory rape) My book takes place when the protagonists love interests is sixteen. there's suppressive feelings involved between them another love interest( another adult).

Questionable content:
there's swear words. Fuck shouldn't mean sex though, oops!
the relationship with the girl is between a sixteen year old and two twenty three year old. A love triangle. Naughty!
there's no sex but there are sexual situations. Still graphic is bad I guess.
there is hinting that the protagonist had feeling for the girl when she was just a child, but there maybe indication of sexual attraction depending on the readers perception. That I understand is a No No. I get that but again I'm vague where it maybe safe to read. Hopefully my beta readers will see that clearly. Pedophiles,hmm.
attempted rape by a boyfriend.

I've read that I may have a teen crossover, a novel that stretches over to adult fiction. I'm still not 100% on that definition. YA's boarders are so vague.

I do know that I intend make my series in ebooks and the genres are set by the author, not an agent telling you, you can' t have the word "fuck" meaning sex in a YA novel.  There's more control on my part what I think my book is. I won't have to cut away "the good stuff" just so my audience won't be offended. The thing is teens want this. Adults shopping for YA want this. I want this!

To lazy to come up with a good title

It's the middle of winter and I find myself watching Netflix, reading, playing apps on my devices r just surfing the Internet because I just don't feel like doing anything else. As a writer I feel like I'm wasting valuable time but a writer needs to stop and take a coffee break--even if the coffee break seems lasts weeks with minimal writing and brain storming on your part. You need to rest from your work. Don't feel bad. Time away from your work proves to be good for you and your writing.  You can wear yourself out quickly, especially when your trying to write your material and you are not ready to write it. There's nothing like a refreshed mind to rev the imagination.
I reviewed a piece of writing I had done a while back. I remember it was I pushed myself too hard to finish it only to rewrite the whole thing. Not only should I have rested my brain, but it was a complete waste of time. Time I could have had to recuperate. So if you're feeling you need a break, take it. Winter time is my lazy time. I found that out from tracking my work by date. I wrote the most in spring when my energy up and summer when it's too hot to go outside. So hibernate for as while if you need to, you might find inspiration in a movie but please, rest when you're tired.