In honor of its one year birthday, The Grave Winner has been reduced from $7.99 to $4.99 for a limited time!
Click here —-> Amazon
Grab your copy today! Also, stay tuned for details about the birthday bash I’m throwing with tons of prizes! And also, stay tuned for the cover reveal of What Gifts She Carried, book two of The Grave Winner series! It’s just as stunning as the first book’s cover!!!!
My poor, poor neglected blog. I still think about you sometimes, and that’s usually as far as I get. I’ve been so wrapped up in life and my characters’ lives that I’m not 100% sure where the past few months have gone.
It all started with National Novel Writing Month in November. Oh my God, that month was killer. I’ve never done NaNoWriMo before, and I’m pretty sure I left my brain somewhere between weeks three and four. But I wrote over 50,000 words. Boom! Some of them are really ugly words, more like a string of nonsense that may have more to do with my waning supply of Pop Tarts than the actual story. But still! Words!
I did learn a few things about myself as a writer through NaNoWriMo though–I can breeze through dialog with hardly a clickety-clack pause. Give me two or three characters with tons to talk about, and I’m set. But for a pantster, someone who writes with only a vague idea of where they’re going, NaNoWriMo will tear your arms off and beat you with them. I did have an outline, but the further I got into the story, the more bare-bones it got. There are many instances where I wrote *something happens here but I don’t know what*. I think I’m going to leave that in and let the reader fill in their own blanks. Just kidding!
Anyway, this book is called Sail, and it’s a New Adult sexy ghost story in space. I’m thinking it will be ready for consumption by Fall 2014.
What else? Oh, yeah! I expect to have edits back on The Grave Winner book 2 sometime this week. I’m excited to jump back into Leigh’s head.
One more thing! See the sidebar on the right where it says Subscribe to Lindsey’s Insider Newsletter? It will be a happy day if you sign up because you’ll get cover reveals (the one for Sail is going to be AH-mazing!) before anyone else, never before seen excerpts, and contests just for newsletter subscribers. It’s different from my blog in that I will actually do something with it! 😉
Now, excuse me while I continue licking dishes clean. Hey, it’s Spring Break–I can do whatever!
Two summers ago, when I should have been writing the sequel to The Grave Winner, I saw the open call from Entangled Publishing for romantic horror novellas. I was having a hard time with the sequel, and romantic horror is kind of my thing. Sequel or no, I had to write something, so around the first of July, I started what would become Haunted Chemistry. At the end of the month, I sent it in and geared up for the waiting.
Last October, I finally heard back. I remember reading that email again and again in a shock-induced fog. Entangled, publisher of fantastic, best-selling books, wanted…me? Uuuhhhhhh. And that’s when I started hearing colors, bright, happy colors that sounded kind of like a steady squeal.
So, yeah, Haunted Chemistry. Here’s the fantastic cover designed by Taria Reed, the blurb, and the buy links:
When bookish college co-ed Alexis heads to the laundry room in her new apartment, she runs into Ian Reese, the chem lab partner she crushed on all last semester. And the guy who stood her up on their first date. But she’s down for an awkward reunion, and no better place than her creepy laundry room.
Ian has every intention of making amends, but just when Alexis begins to trust him again, a new threat calls more than their future together into question. A ghost from the apartment’s past is hellbent on revenge, and if he wants to get his girl, he’ll have to get the ghost first.
I’ll be going on a blog tour all week with some other fab authors and their romantic horror novellas, too! One of the tour prizes will be a $50 gift card to the book retailer of your choice! I’ll post the tour schedule soon. Until then, happy haunting!
P.S. That sequel that was giving me trouble? It’s finished. I sent it to my publisher last week and they sent me a contract that very same day! My squeals have turned purple!!
Hey. Leigh Baxton here, the main character from Lindsey’s The Grave Winner. I’m taking over her blog today because she said she’d kill off everyone in the sequel if I didn’t. Yeah, I know. She’s been in kind of a bad mood lately. She may or may not be mad at me because I gave her the run-around on book two for so long because I didn’t want to relive all those nightmares again. Can you really blame me? Someone needs electroshock treatment on her brain or a ten gallon bucket of rainbows, unicorns, and chocolate, and her name rhymes with Pindsey.
Anyway.
She wants me to say where I’d like to go on vacation. Hello? Anyone in there, Ms. Pindsey? I don’t have time for vacation! There are bad, bad things crawling through Krapper, Kansas. Didn’t you learn anything in The Grave Winner?
Uh-oh, guys. She’s giving me that look she gives her cat when he barfs up a fur ball on her pillow. Okay fine. CODY, WYOMING. That’s where I’d go. After I checked and rechecked and checked and rechecked again that no one was trying to kill me or my family or my friends and that the dead were resting peacefully in their graves. Then and only then would I go.
Why Cody, Wyoming? That’s where Tram used to live. He just told me in book two that it’s where his parents live, too. He talked about them like he really missed them, and they sound like really great people. I guess they’d have to be to have a hot and mysterious son like Tram. Also, it’s where the sorceress named Two is from. Coincidence? I’d like to find that out.
Oh, and also? I’m finished telling Ms. Pindsey what happened in book two. She just has to make it readable or whatever. A couple songs are helping her with the flow and tying it all together. The songs are actually kind of cool. This one’s “Oh Death” by Jen Titus:
And this one’s a creepy little number called “Come, Little Children” by Erutan.
Okay, I’m leaving now. Don’t forget to leave your flowers and other gifts for your dead loved ones at home, people. And never go to the graveyard at night.
Oh, one more thing! Ms. Pindsey is giving away 2 signed print copies, 2 e-copies, and 2 signed bookmarks, all international!!! Check out the Rafflecopter below.
(This is part of PJ Blog Tours Indie Summer Group Blog Tour. For the full tour schedule, click here and don’t forget to enter to win a Kindle Fire HD and gift cards!)
Last summer when I should have been writing book two of the The Grave Winner series, I decided instead to make a book trailer. I borrowed my boyfriend’s shiny new camera/video camera and skipped out into the backyard with it and a pitcher of water. The water wasn’t for drinking, though I probably should have since it was August. Triple digit heat sucks. Did I mention I live in Hell?
Anyway, I scooped some mud up onto the porch and poured the pitcher of water on it to – you guessed it – make mud! But I had to work fast because the water was already being sucked into the hot air by that silly thing called evaporation. I mushed my hands into the mud and proceeded to slather myself with it. Because, you see, I needed to turn myself into a zombie who’s just come back from the dead. Then I had to take a picture of myself walking all zombified. Because that’s what I do on hot afternoons.
I don’t have a fence in my backyard, so it’s quite possible my neighbors wondered what the deuce I was up to. Perhaps they knew I was just some crazy, procrastinating writer. Or maybe they thought I was really a zombie. Either way, no one called the cops, so yay!
After I cleaned myself up, I came inside and started messing around with Intelli-Studio. It’s this movie making program that came with BF’s camera. He’d used it previously to produce videos of our Washington, D.C. vacation and of our cat being silly. So, since he’d already given me a one-minute tutorial, I set to work on arranging the pictures and video in the order I wanted.
It turned out I probably could’ve used more than a minute long tutorial because apparently Intelli-Studio is for intelligent people, and I can only count to monkey. But I can be crazy stubborn, so I guess that helped me kind of figure it out. The program does have some cool bells and whistles and stuff, which is why I refused to switch to an easier to use program. Did I mention I’m stubborn?
The photos and videos I’d taken weren’t going to be enough for what I envisioned, so I scoured the internet for royalty free websites. I found everything I needed at www.canstockphoto.com. Not everything is free there, but the forest chase video, the kiss, and the scary lady were so perfect, I thought it was worth it to shell out a few bucks.
Now, I knew I wanted some movement with the scary lady picture because she’s pretty important. You can download Photo Story for free, and it lets you create movement with your pictures like zooming in on scary people so it feels like they’re chasing you. It’s not terribly difficult to use either.
By the time I got to this point, school had started and my book trailer production got pushed to the back burner. Then my computer died. All the work I’d done vanished. I blame Intelli-Studio for not letting me save my project anywhere other than the actual program. Guess how many four letter words I said on that day…
Luckily, I did still have all my pictures and everything I bought from canstockphoto.com saved to my flash drive. So, I started rebuilding everything. I was almost finished, but I needed my book cover, which I didn’t have yet, and some creepy music to make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you watched the video.
That’s when I found Incompetech.com. I could spend hours at Incompetech! The catalog is giant, the music is high quality, and you can filter your search by genre or feel. I found two songs that were so perfect, I donated money to the website even though it’s all free. I also found the perfect ending sound to the video at freesound.org.
But guess what happened next? Since Intelli-Studio had it in for me from day zero, it picked up a glitch at Glitchville and threw it in my face by deleting my entire project. Oh, the words I said. The things I threw. To be honest, I probably should have called the cops on myself. BF and the kitty slinked around on top of the eggshells that spotted our floor for hours.
Then, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I started again at the beginning. You’d think I’d learn to switch programs! Give up! Have someone else do it! But no.
When I got my amazing book cover, I added it to my book trailer and was pretty much done. I declared it finally finished when I threw it up onto Youtube.
If you’re asking if I will ever make another book trailer again, the answer is NO! But I think it did turn out pretty great. Here it is in all its glory:
So NaNoWriMo is over, and while I didn’t participate, I did try to write a little every day on A Boy and Her Scratch. I didn’t succeed, and I didn’t even come close to 50,000 words. But I’m okay with that.
The story and characters have solidified in the 10,338 words I’ve written on it, which is always a plus. I keep fighting the urge to go back and “fix” things because the first draft is supposed to look like word vomit, and it does, so yay! I’ve decided to keep writing this story until December 31st, and then at midnight, instead of turning into a pumpkin, I’ll start writing like a mad woman on What Gifts She Carried.
From January onward, I won’t be staying the night at work (something I did do in November), I won’t have as many loooong work days, and I won’t be going out of town. It gets too cold in Kansas to do anything but stay home in my pajamas and write anyway!
My point to all this rambling is that I’m trying this new thing where I don’t stress about writing. I let it happen, word by word. It’s slow going, but I’ll get there.
Does word count stress you out? Does getting the book finished twist your knickers?
No no NaNoWriMo. I won’t participate in you this year or next year or never but I will cheer for participants from the sidelines.
Why? I’m a slow writer, like 1000 words in three hours slow. I try not to stress about making things look pretty in a first draft, but I do anyway. Plus, I have to stop and picture what’s happening in my head. It’s like watching a movie in painfully slow motion.
But I’m using NaNoWriMo as inspiration to learn how to not worry so much and speed up the pictures. I’m also using it to get inspired to write after I get home from school. I used to think a sleepy brain tells sleepy stories, but a sleepy brain is the norm now, and sleepy brains still have stories to tell.
The story I should be telling is the sequel to The Grave Winner, but it’s still coming together in my head. So my muse has hammered another story into my brain (ow!) while I let the sequel percolate. That’s the story I’m working on now, and I feel like I should make nice with my muse in case it flips me the bird and abandons me.
This new story has ghosts in space, in case you’re wondering. It also has some sexy times in it because it’s not YA. The title is A Boy and Her Scratch.
The sequel to The Grave Winner is coming, I promise! Please don’t hate me, Fabulous Editor Melissa and my Must Have Critique Partners and my Totally Tubular beta reader and everyone else who has made it this far through my ramblings!
Anyone else have a muse? Anyone else pet it and feed it cookies so it won’t flip you the bird?
P.S. I voted today!
There might be another post with this same title, but whatever. It’s summer, and I’m lazy. Anyway, I’ve been doing research lately on superstitions for What Gifts She Carried (book two in The Grave Winner series), specifically on the rhyme “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back” and lilacs.
For example, did you know this rhyme dates back to the late 19th century? According to The Committe for Skeptical Inquiry, it originated when racism was rampant and warned against marrying an African American. The original rhyme went “Step on a crack and your mother will turn black.” Yikes, this is offensive. The rhyme evolved into “break your mother’s back” in the 20th century, and the number of cracks stepped on equaled how many bones your mother broke. Ouch.
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Also, lilac is used for protection against evil. That actually worked out well for me since lilacs are a big part of the story. I wish I could say I’d planned it that way all along, but nope. So if evil is crouching right behind you, sighing its icy breath against your neck, break out the lilacs!
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Has anyone else run across anything especially interesting in your research?
What Gifts She Carried, book two of The Grave Winner series, is coming along. Not nicely, but it’s coming along. I’m already on page 36, so yay for that! It turns out that writing a sequel, much like writing any book, is hard. If you’re going through this too, here are some tips to keep from stabbing yourself in the eye with a french fry:
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1. Open book one on your computer for reference. You don’t want your MC’s little sister to have a potty mouth or have a sudden fascination with vampire unicorns when she didn’t in book one. Well, I guess you could as long as there’s a reason for it.
2. Sneak in bits of back story throughout the beginning chapters. Readers may have forgotten what’s happened since reading book one and could use brief reminders here and there.
3. Look back at book one and remind yourself that it was crap too at one time. Don’t let the first draft blues suck your writing confidence through a straw.
4. Keep your novel outline close, but don’t be afraid to push it away every once in awhile. If a good idea comes to you that’s not on the outline, use it. If it surprises you, it will surprise your readers.
5. Resist the urge to go back and edit. Resist, I tell you! Puke up the story first, clean it up later. Ugh, sorry about that metaphor. I hope you weren’t eating.
6. Keep writing. Yes, that’s a given, but even if you’re not feeling it some days, keep writing. Have a daily word count goal or a daily that-would-be-really-cool-if-I-got-this-many-words-written-but-whatever-goal. I do the latter ‘cuz that’s how I roll.
Anyone else have some tips?