Sunday Slobber: My Mini-NaNo Experience aka Finishing My Dystopian

Welcome to another segment of Sunday Slobber....yes, I really had a segment called that, but it's just been a long time since I did one! lol

This is pupster, Duke, sacked out with exhaustion beside me on the couch. This is what I feel like today. Why? Well, because I just finished my YA Dystopian. *cue the Journey Don't Stop Believin'* Yes, I never saw myself writing a Dystopian...and when the idea for Testament came, I wrote about 6K of it and sent a synops to my agent. Even though she loved the concept, I never saw myself actually finishing it. But hey, guess what? I did!

In a way, I had my own mini-NaNO experience since I basically wrote 40K of the 60K this month. At times, I thought I would pull my hair out...others I marveled in the characters and world I was building. You know, that spark--that brief and always fleeting moment when you actually self-love, rather than self-loathe, your work? Yeah, I had it big time! And then it came time to write the end. As a total pantser, I don't use an outline or synops, and I never write it order. Well, this time I had a synops(which continously changed!), and I wrote it order. But truthfully, I think the ending was just because I was afriad of where and how to cut it off. That's never really happened to me before. Thankfully, my writer buddies and angels, Jamie and Hannah, helped me get through it and talked me down from the ledge.

So, since I really haven't talked about it on the blog, I thought I'd do a little quickie. Testament came to me last May/June. While trying to think of a way to hop on the Dystopian bandwagon(Hey, I'm being honest here!), an idea hit me with a mixture of the biblical stories of Esther and Joseph. I may post more of a summary later, but for right now, here's a little snip of the characters.

For my MC, Cadence O'Bryant, I see her as both of these versions of the lovely, Evan Rachel Wood. Why? Well, because during the course of the book she undergoes a transformation at the "pageant". She's typical teen, or typical Dystopian teen, lol, and then she's made to be something else. At her core, she is a fiery red-head. In fact, I had flashes of Maureen O'Hara in the Quiet Man when I was writing her. She loses control of her mouth on many, many occasions. There's a deeper and darker side to her since she's been through a lot of heartache and had to be strong.

If I had to have a favorite character besides my MC, it would be Malacky Greene. He's one of those characters who was never supposed to have a big story. He was simply Cadence's brother's best friend in one of the introductory scenes--and he kinda had some funny banter with her. And then suddenly, he was much, much more! He harboured a crush on Cadence and would do anything to keep her safe and happy. He's also a bit of a goofball, and he tries to hide behind his humor a lot. I seriously fell in love with him when I was writing! LOL Fortunately, he's 19 in the story, so it wasn't some pervy, underage thing! LOL

And then my cocky, but misunderstood, Cullen, which I'm sure I'll get grief for the name, but srsly, I didn't go for a Twilight knock-off. Most of the characters have names with Gaelic origins, and Cullen means "handsome" in Gaelic. I never really wanted to write a love triangle, and when Malacky wrote himself, so did the love triangle. Cullen's the rich son of the CEO who now rules the former America. While he's used to having his way, he also has a softer side, and one beta reader totally fell in love with him! LOL

And so Testament now goes off to agent reading land to see how it fares with her. *fingers crossed*

Sunday Slobber: My Trip to the Decatur Book Festival!

*Disclaimer: The reason this post goes under "Sunday Slobber" is it was supposed to happen yesterday, but blogger was being a $%#&*, so I had to wait to post until this morning.

So, I actually dehermitized yesterday, got out of the ol' writing chair for something besides teaching, to head down to the Decatur Book Festival. For those of you unfamiliar with DBF, which until this year included myself, lol, it is the largest independent book festival in the nation. It's a hodge-podge of genres and authors getting together to talk about writing. Best part: it's FREE! I had all good intentions of attending both days. However, the migraine from hades attacked me at 6am this morning, so I didn't quite make it.

I was so thrilled to get to do something again with Regan. We had an awesome time last January at our Writer's Weekend in Gatlinburg. Saturday dawned a gorgeous pre-fall day. It was a cloudless sky with a slight breeze--a thankful respite from the usual heinous Georgia humidity and heat. I met Regan for lunch at Mary Mac's Team Room--I'd never been before, and it was AWESOME! I'd highly recommend it for great Southern food, plus it is quite the celebrity hotspot. Then we headed on to the festival. Decatur is just over the Fulton County/Atlanta border.



Here's some quick facts I learned! (Props to Myra McEntire and Heather Tresse since my phone died partway through, and I'm borrowing some of their tweets! Was sooo excited to me the awesomely lovely and funny Myra McEntire! You need to mark Hourglass to read come this May! It will be teh bomb! Bummed that Heather and I were in the same room, yet we didn't manage to say hello. Argh!

Here's Alyxandra Harvey and Carrie Ryan during the Vampire Vs. Zombie smackdown!

The Method Behind the Magic panel with Saundra Mitchell, Jessica Verday, Cinda Williams Chima and Kathleen Duey.

*Colored streaks seem to be the hip thing with YA Writer's. Blue, pink, purple, green--very cool. I will have to contemplate this fact if and when I get a deal. It would be purple since purple is my favorite color. I don't suppose the cinnamon low lites I get during the winter months actually count...hmm....

*Alyxandra Harvey and I could be twins. She doesn't outline, and she doesn't like to listen to music with lyrics while writing. That's SO me.



Here's Rachel Hawkins and Nancy Werlin during the panel.

















*The guy who lead the Zombie vs. Vampire smackdown with Carrie Ryan and Alyxandra Harvey was HILARIOUS! I love how he had us answer prozombie or provampire with either zombie groans or vampire hisses! LOL

*I ducked out at the start of the Hawkins/Werlin panel to run down to Decatur High where my cousin, former Georgia Poet Laureate, David Bottoms, was on a panel of poets. I got to hear him for a bit and then run down to the end of the stage to say a quick hello since I needed to get back to the YA panel instead of his signing. *I have several of his books of poetry and his novel signed anyway, lol*


*Nancy Werlin, author of Impossible and Extraordinary, suggests that a book cover doesn't have to have anything to do with your book. It just has to make people pick it up. She showed us the two different covers for Impossible, and we automatically gravitated towards the one with more color and a mysterious girl on the cover rather than a white washed one.



*Carrie Ryan was a Debutante back in the day, and she also worked at the Coroner's Office. So, she's got real life experience describe Zombie bones poking out and all, lol. She also wrote Forest of Hands and Teeth for NaNo month.


*I made somewhat of a goof when meeting the very funny, awesome, and approachable Rachel Hawkins of Hex Hall. I thought she was the person that Myra had been looking for in the room(we were tweeting to each other), and I made a "And you are?" loser faux paus. She was very nice about it tho. :)




*Per Rachel Hawkins: Covers matter--especially when they put a cat on yours, and there's no cat in the book. She has since revisited her cat stance, and there is a cat being introduced into book three since so many people have written to her about the cat! We all had a laugh imagining people writing fan fiction about the cat.


*Jessica Verday suggests building a book bible when coming up with your fantasy world. It helps to keep yourself in check and remember what you need to about your world.


*Kathleen Duey's advice on writing fantasy is to STRETCH!


*Saundra Mitchell says with fantasy that she makes it up as she goes along, but she does stop and check in with reality as she goes along! lOL




Anyway, it was so awesome, and I wish I had gotten to see Cassie Clare, Michelle Zink, and Jackson Pearce on Sunday. Bummer!

Sunday Slobber...a day late and a dollar short!

Okay, I'm the epic of blogging suckiness lately. I'm totally feeling the summertime crunch. I have 15 days left of school, 10 real days of teaching. Our last week is finals, and we have half days for the teachers and kids. But here's the thing: I just wanna be out. I don't wanna grade. I don't wanna teach. I don't really wanna do anything, lol. But I must!

(1). REVISIONS....I HAZ THEM!

So, I'm on Part Deux of The Guardians Agent Revisons. The good news is I had a real breakthrough on what my agent wanted to me to do, so once I have more time(or once I can make myself focus for long periods of time!), I think I can tear through it!! Even though it's frustrating, I am really proud of how far TG has come since it's original revision on January 09'. It really goes to show the power

Here's just how far TG has come....it was like Chance when he was a little puppy, and then it's grown to a big, gallumping, dog! LOL It's hard to imagine he was ever that small!

(2). Household Projects: This is Chance being a couch potato on the couch in my Office...well, it used to be the Office. I'm doing some remodeling/reworking, and I've moved the couch into the bonus room where's there's another love seat. I'm also hoping to paint the office as soon is school out. I'm really excited. I'm thinking of deep red, and then I wanna paint the bonus room as well. I, uh, have never much painted, so we'll see what kinda craziness occurs!

Sunday Slobber aka My Week in Review

Here's my weekly, er sometimes bi-weekly, segment where I allow my dogs and sometimes my cats to recap the week for me.

So, why is Chance grinning you might ask? Well, he's excited b/c there's only 25 days left of school. WHOO HOO and YEE HAW! Sorry, I had to do that. Sure, I have to do the two post-planning days, but those are kid free days where most of our work is done(I enlist some kids to help pack up my room. They love candy bribes), and we get to go out to lunch and hang together. It's not that I don't love my students or love teaching. It's just it's been a really stressful year, and I'm so ready for a break. Plus, I love summer because it's a reading and writing free for all! Yeah, I'm a nerd that way. But I do have a beach trip planned for the first week in June that I'm really excited about. And who knows where the rest of the summer will take me.

So why is Little Man aka Duke hiding behind the couch and love seat at Grammy aka Big Mama's? Well, he's totally capturing how I felt Tuesday when I sent my agent the outline(well, chunky ramblings of an outline) of Book 2 of The Guardians. We're hoping to go out with TG soon, and often pitching a UF as a series helps along the way, thus you need that outline! Can we say Krista doesn't do outlines? Sure, when I first got the idea for TG back in November of 08, I saw where I wanted to story to go in Books 2 and 3. But that was before the epic revising, revising, and

REVISING I did. When you up the stakes in one book, you kind of figure you're going to have to do that in the next. And I totally added a lot of fantasy elements to TG that I'll need to keep up in the second. I also sent her the revised synops of my YA Contemporary, Nets and Lies, along with the chunky outline of my Dystopian Disaster. Thus, why I'm still cowering in fear of what she might think when she reads abut the Dystopian, lol.

And then finally, this is exactly how I will feel until school is out. That's right. I'll be a hyperactive puppy shredding a pillow when my owner turned her back to change the sheets! Okay, well, maybe not....especially on the hyperactive part(see below on that reason, lol). It's just the frustration bit I guess. The last six weeks after Spring Break are an exhausting time. We have End of Course Tests that kids have to take, thus we have to prepare for. Of course, their attention span doesn't make for a great testing environment, lol. They're ready to be out, we're ready to be out.

It's also how I feel because I'm so ready for my health to be back where it once was. Fortunately, my doctor prescribed the 2x's a week B12 shots I must take for me to give myself. It was such a pain to try to get to the doctor's office each week and get them. On Thursday, I successfully gave myself a shot, and I'm due for another today. FUN TIMES! LOL

Anyway, I hope you all have a lovely and productive next week!