Day 2 of JNoWriMo.

February 2012's JNoWriMo started off with a bang when I exceeded my daily word goal both yesterday and today. Unfortunately, it was all for the wrong story. I want--no, I need--to finish "Kray" before I do anything else, or I'm going to wind up writing myself in circles and getting horribly frustrated in the process.

What I've been writing in these past few days is another of the kids: Kaven's son, Leviticus Vaughn. Another sweet story of a highborn prince falling for someone below his station. Very Cinderella-esque, but without all that evil stepmother and fairy godmother bullshit.

The other thing I worked on yesterday: the post-its and posterboards. The family tree is a very nicely organized series of columns of post-its, with spaces reserved for those who have no names yet (a few of the kids, and both Kaven and Kane's spouses.) We're getting there.

Here's the fantasy family tree, post-it style:


A bit harder to read, I know, but this is my bedroom door with ideas for planet names and the regions/continents/countries/kingdoms that go with each one. A serious work in progress. Thank god I don't have children yet.



JLH

An update.

I've officially given up on JMoWriMo for this month, mostly because I wanted to wind down a bit more from the holidays. This February is a shorter month, true (though, not too short with the Leap Year and all), and already promising to be a bit more low-key. I'll pick up my monthly challenge again in a couple weeks.

I haven't written in "Kray" since NaNoWriMo because I've sort of reached a wall and can't figure out the next step in the story. I don't know what I want her and Rok to find in the compound after eradicating the Ratiri, but we're damn close to climax right now.

I also wrote myself into a bit of a corner: this book not only introduces Kayt and Kailyynn--Books 2 and 4--but it also introduces the oldest of the two brothers, Kaven, whom as of yet has no timeline, no story and no heroine. I had always planned the five sisters to have two brothers, but they have never--never--played a role in the sisters' stories until now.

And now as I sneak my way into pre-planning for the series after this one, the one that focuses on all of their children, I'm pissed that I not only have the sisters' eleven children to write stories for--that's right: eleven--but what roles do brothers Kaven and Kane and their wives play in the stories and on the island? And their children?

Since I started writing tidbits of "Luciana", Sebastyan and Kailyynn's daughter's story, I've planned out a bit for a few more, including two of Rowan and Kayt's sons, Darwin Alexander and Marshall Maximillian, and Dagibyr and Karyi's second son, Arick.

(Incidentally, "Arick" shook out a few juicy scenes [and by "juicy" I don't necessarily mean sexy, although there was a scene or two of that] at the end of last week. And I became a writing fiend in the desperate need to get all the dialogue and plot points down. From Friday the 13th to Monday the 16th, I wrote over 12,000 words.)

I figured that second brother Kane and his wife would have twin daughters, and then I thought it would be cute to give them an A-name and a Z-name, so there you go--Ava and Zoë.

As the royal family tree started turning into the family Great Banyan Tree, an idea occurred...

Posterboard and post-its.

A do believe tacking a posterboard with people, plot points and planets will not only keep me sane and my thoughts on track, but it will inspire me more each day to see my ideas come to fruition. I will wake up seeing that posterboard glaring me in the face, and I will smile and think, Yes, indeed, I am quite pleased with the name "Leviticus Vaughn" and my choice for his journey towards love and passion.

Which brings me to another point: geography. I had already decided long ago that this takes place in our Universe when other livable planets have been discovered. I never had any names or descriptions of these planets until very recently. Pretty soon I fear my entire bedroom will be masked in posterboard with poorly-drawn maps of fake planets, along with the biospheres that encompass them and the groups of people who inhabit them. I'm no cartographer, geographer or sociologist, and yet this makes me giddy with anticipation.

Hold your horses there, J. Leigh. You still have a series of five (actually seven) books to finish.

And thus is my problem. I get so damn excited about future and beyond-future projects that I forget about the stuff that I'm working on currently, the stuff that has the best chance of being done because it's almost done.

JNoWriMo will be all about that: completion. Every other month will be editing, research and dabbling in other stories.

Sounds like a good plan.

JLH

...And what fuels me to finish my fantasy series sooner...

...Is the idea of a new series.

The other day I had the audacity to consider the end of the series when one or two of my heroines could possibly admit to being pregnant. What the hell am I doing to myself? What does this all mean??

It means that I spent a good amount of--i.e. "too much"--thought the few days following on a NEW series focusing on the offspring of the original five couples from the fantasy quinary. I drew out family trees. I contemplated villains and plot points. I settled on genders and names...names!!

And not only that, but I had already started writing a bit about one of the children, the only daughter of Sebastyan and Kailyynn--golden-haired, golden-skinned Luciana. She's tied to her Italian roots, and she just so happened to have stepped into her daddy's old role.

I'm so bad. I'm so in trouble. This world will consume me, and the only thing I can do to control it is write everything down and leave it be.

So, anyway, I look to JNoWriMo with hope that I can finish my first book and move on to the second. Slowly and surely I will find my way to the end, and then planning out the series of 10+ children would make sense.

JLH

JNoWriMo coming up.

As NaNoWriMo was a success (sorry I forgot to post... At 11:59 p.m. on November 30, I succeeded in realizing the 50,000 word goal, but without actually finishing the story), JNoWriMo is set to commence at midnight on January 1st.

What could easily be considered "January" Novel Writing Month is actually "Jen's" Novel Writing Month, and my goals are the same as the standard NaNoWriMo competition--50,000 words and/or finishing a novel. Only this time I will finish my novel. And I intend to have a JNoWriMo every two or three months each year. I can afford to be antisocial for 3-6 months out of the year, can't I? If it means I can realize my dream one finished novel at a time?

Book 1 of the fantasy romance quinary I had started went very well, but I am trying hard to NOT to write in any story besides Book 1 in order to finish it and move on.

So I need to finish Book 1 and move on.

My head is swollen with new ideas for new or existing stories, and while I write them down, I can't very well expound upon them without having another finished tome under my belt. NO GODDAMN EXCUSES.

JLH

NaNoWriMo--Day 1.

As my husband is working on NaNoWriMo as well, he's alerted me to a few things I was not aware of. First of all, I did not know there were some actual specifics or guidelines to follow when completing this task. Naturally, gauging your writing is up to the individual based on their time and commitment level; I figure writing 1-5 pages a day is pretty darn good.

Apparently, the goal is to write at least 50,000 words...~1,667 words a day. That's about three pages.

I can't remember my daily/weekly goes last year, if I had any. I just have one goal: finish a novel by December 1. We'll see if I set and stick to any smaller goals within that one.

JLH

The Month of November, 2011.

Well, it’s been awhile since my last post, all thanks to Twitter for keeping me from posting 140-character-max drivel on individual blog postings.

Does anybody know what tomorrow is? Yes, tomorrow is the day after Halloween, which makes me quite sad that the holiday is over and the “big” holidays are upon us. If you said Dia de los Muertos, you’d also be correct, but as I am not Hispanic or Catholic, this means little to me. No, tomorrow marks the beginning of NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month.

Last year was the first year I discovered and partook in the movement, the final product being my first ever completed novel at ~8:36 a.m. on November 30, 2010. The feeling of holding a finished tome at 136,000+ words is exhilarating, and my interest in maintaining this high is bloated and piqued…so we’re going to do it again!

I believe some of you are familiar and involved—ahem…some of you intimately—with a fantasy erotica romance quinary I have been developing for quite some time. In the last 12 months specifically the stories have developed in and around themselves, and every day I’m tending to the stories with new plot points, characters and what I hope is scintillating dialogue. These stories have occupied my thoughts day and night for several years; it is these stories that have curbed my appetite from any other stories I have in the works, including the very one I (barely) finished last November, the one I’m struggling through (for the same reasons) to draft #2. It is this keen interest that will hopefully propel me into finishing at least one of the five books…maybe even two.

The difficult thing about this is that it’s not one solitary story that has only itself to rely on for a conclusive story. My quinary, which has yet to have a title, is much like any serial out there; each book has the same set of characters, the end of each book encompassing a climax that together build into a larger one at the end of the series. Consider Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Because each separate tale relies on each other to make a complete story, consistency is key… It weighs heavily on my mind and worries me incessantly.

Also, much like the aforementioned titles, this is a fantasy series. So while I do not have to worry so much about researching actual events or places to avoid anachronisms, I have to make a ton of shit up. I look forward to this with relish (really, that’s a lot of the appeal of being a wordsmith), but it’s a lot of pressure to take on to make the stories both interesting and believable.

Not to mention the fact that this is a romance series, which means the principle plot points revolve around the budding relationship of a different couple in each story. Writing about sex and love is my passion (no pun…), but I don’t want these stories to be all sex and emotion; I want action, fighting and anger; I want intellect, deception and espionage; I want death, destruction and war.

This is a HELLUVA project to take on, and it will take an EXORBITANT amount of organization, patience and research to complete. If publication is the final goal (and it is), then I must wait for the full five-book story to be complete, consistent and whole before even contemplating contests, agents and publishers (and consequential directors, actors and Oscar acceptance speeches…I dream big).

One month; one novel. I can do it—I’ve done it before.

The writing community on Twitter is aflutter at the starting gates, and I’m psyched to start another typing marathon. I am also excited to say that my enthusiasm has bubbled over, and some of my friends, coworkers and loved ones have also decided to take on the challenge of finishing a novel this month as well. Huzzah!

So wish me a hearty good luck as I embark on another writing journey!

JLH

I'm writing erotica; thoughts on orgies.

As I'm getting more and more excited about my five-sisters quinary, I've realized over the months that it has turned into a story that isn't exactly romance quality. As a romance novel typically runs as the story of two characters finding love--with a few sex scenes interspersed--mine, it seems, is fashioned the other way around. Not only do I tend to write a lot of sex scenes, but after a couple f-bombs and some choice synonyms for "vagina", I've found myself waking up in the technicolor world of erotica.

Holy cajones, is that a load off my mind!

I'm going to play ignoramus when it comes to the business and feasibility of selling a romance novel over erotica (something tells me it's drastically different and maybe even harder to do), but writing no bars, no censored sex is so beautifully liberating.

How frustrating is it to read a sex scene and just know the author is deliberately tip-toeing around a word or phrase? Dammit, just call it what it is! Would your hero really be whispering, "I want to make love to you" if, in the heat of passion, with his eyes dark with hunger, his words would more likely be on a more vulgar path?

Certain rules must be followed when writing a romance. Well, they should be followed, and I've seen isolated cases where those rules are broken. Like rape, for example. The heroine should never be raped in the story, because that makes for a broken heroine. Broken women are weak, emotionally raw and destitute, and it's hard to see her happily sexified by a hardened male when she really doesn't want sex (and who would after that??)

Incest is another one, and I'm not a fan of it, so I won't even go there.

In romances, the couples need to end up together. It can't be vague--they need to spend the rest of their lives together. My erotica is no different.

The wonderful thing about writing is that your stories evolve, your characters develop, and things just change before your eyes--really! It was just by accident that Dagibyr Holst of Brekken, my strong, silent type in book #3, became a total fiend in the bedroom, becoming utterly relentless not only in taking his pleasure but delivering pleasure to his mate--and always with a sound orgasm. It's gritty, it's sweaty, and I absolutely love it when he's cock-deep inside her and he bellows to the heavens, "Gods, how I love to fuck you."

Graphic? Yes. Appropriate? Definitely! Why would I want my character to shy away from his true feelings of physical appeasement by saying something lame and just plain ol' romantic?

So then I had a thought today: would my future readers enjoy reading about my characters in an orgy?

Each of the five books in this series focus on one sister and her quest for her mate. Shit happens along the way, there's strife, treason, jealousy and heartache. There's dancing, swordplay, war and love. Quite unsurprisingly, all my characters are beautiful and handsome and perfect in every way. (Well... not every way. That would make for very boring characters...) And these characters are all loyal to their spouses, so there's no chance of any cheating taking place.

Some of my characters show up in the other books. The other sisters, for example, make appearances in nearly all the books. But two of my heroes--Rowan (book two) and Sebastyan (book four)--were friends for years before the stories take place, and they each end up with a sister.

So, here's my question to you: is there any repulsion incited by having Rowan and Sebastyan and their two sister-wives having sex together?

And let's break that down further into specific instances, just to avoid confusion--1) having sex together as a group; 2) wife swapping; 3) having sex with their own spouse in the same room at the same time, and 4) taking turns while the other couple watches.

I really want to hear your thoughts!

JLH