So I Finished It

I was just getting in to the swing of blogging and then I was side swipped by inspiration and suddenly my book was finished!

It was a crazy fest of writing and staying up late and skipping the gym and it all paid off. Like holy shit almost 148,000 words! Go me!

After finishing and reading it through I wrote a query letter and a summary.  Did some cyber stalking on a few agents. And I sent out my query materials to Prospect Agency. I'm crossing my fingers and giving that a weeks head start before I query 2 more agents.

So now that I've finished and I feel confident and bad ass I have a ton of free time. Over the last 2 days I keep convincing myself that I need to add just one more chapter.  I've done this about 4 times now and it needed to stop. I moved my manuscript off my computers desk top away into it's own folder of cuteness. Now I can't look at it till I have an agent!

Which means I'll be catching up on all my blogs. I still have all the fun bits of my trip to get too. I'll also be picking up one of my old book projects and starting that up... I just don't know which one yet. 

So strap yourself in for some epic blogs... in the near future. 

Cheers,

Taylor

Done!!!

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything about my writing so I’ll kick a whole new round of writing related posts off with some awesome news. I finished the last round of edits on Entangled Fates yesterday. July 4th at 8:24pm.



Now this is quite a few years in the making. I started writing my series when I was in 7th grade which is 7 years ago now. As I read the last line of my book I thought about everything that I’d put into this to get to the point where I’m so much in love with it that I’m confident to send it out into the world. I don’t know how many hours I spent writing and editing it but I’d be willing to guess it’s been a couple hundred hours. There were a few times that I didn’t think it was going to be worth it but now… now it’s totally worth it!


I’m also quite tired of it… I hate to say it but I’m ready to stop reading it over and over. How could I possibly be tired of my precious book? Well it’s changed a lot and taken a lot of my brain power to work everything straight.


When I first started writing it all out in notebooks it was really going to be straightforward and rather cliché. It was also going to be one book. They were going to get all fours pieces and have a happy ending to boot all in one book. Back then it seemed like a brilliant idea to me. So I kept writing all through the 8th grade finishing a few notebooks in the process. Somewhere along the way I’d changed my mind and decided I wanted a series. I finished writing the first draft in notebooks and felt triumphant.


Then I realized that hand written material wasn’t acceptable to send to publishers. So I started typing it all up. When I reopened my first notebook I realized what I’d written was complete crap so I scanned the rest of the notebooks and realized the whole plot was shit.


That’s when I outlined a new series to write. I set aside my very first draft and kept in mind a few of my favorite parts as I started a new first draft. I don’t remember when I first started it but I finished it freshman year in college.


I started reading from the beginning and realized that once again it was shitty. I’d changed characters and the eventual ending so much that the beginning made no sense. So the first half of the book underwent extensive changes.


And now after three more rounds of edits I look at the finished manuscript and I picked out the things that were the same as my very first original story from 7th grade. Here’s the dismal list:


1) Neal’s name


2) Jamie’s name


3) Billy/Tantin’s name


4) Reuniting the Armlet


5) Exyel and Lawrence names and cities


And that’s all I could pin. It’s under gone a lot of work to get to the shinning gem it now is. Another thing that I love is the word count. I’ve done three rounds of edits from what’s saved on my laptop as the original. I had older copies but switching between computers they slipped between cracks somewhere never to be found. But check this out.


Original - 143.551 words


1st round - 127.792 words


2nd round - 129.808 words


Final - 123.823 words


I love that I cut so much. Most of it from the original to 1st round was plot lines I didn’t need, characters that were useless, and fluffy scenes that wasted time. And from the 2nd round to the final was simply word smithing, that’s a whole other post. In short I simply took out useless words and sentences and picked one word to replace two. Hard work but it makes everything flow easier and read faster which makes the effort worth it.


Now all that’s left is to write my cover letter and send the whole lot off to DAW books. Everyone cross your fingers that DAW picks me up. They’re pretty much my dream publishing house as the publish most of my favorite authors (like Pat Rothfuss).


Cheers,

Entangled Fates

I’m so fickle sometimes. So The Snowy Waste has had it’s title for seven years now. And this morning as I was doing my life coaching assignment for the week (which is to set goals) I realized as I was typing The Snowy Waste completion as one of my short term goals that the title no longer fits. Basically I’ve changed the plot so much that the title no longer fits with the whole story. I brainstormed two new titles. 1- Threads of Time and 2-Entangled Fates. Then I went to google books and googled to see if there were any books by the same or similar titles. This threw Threads of Time out the door. So The Snowy Waste is now entitled Entangled Fates. Cool right? And it’s not even one o’clock and I’m making such big changes!!



Laters,

P.S. Pat Rothfuss now has NOTW shirts! yay!

Teaser

So as part of my writing class final portfolio i wrote a tesaer for The Snowy Waste and i thought i'd post it here!! Enjoy

The thriving country of Exyel slips into civil war after their national treasure The Armlet of Exyel is broken apart. It’s only hope of ever finding peace again lays in the hands of the prophesized Quest Quartet. In the first decades after the outbreak of war people were hopeful that these Questers would arise. But after 30,000 years of bloody battles the Quest Quartet is nothing but a child’s tale. Yet this does not faze three motley friends from taking up the task. Jamie Stean of Vanton, Nealock Jordan of Flar and Billy Bones set out from the small vineyard town of Flar to seek the only thing that will save their dying country. Although each has their own motive Billy’s is the purist because he, Sir Tantin Exyel, will remain in the form of a skeleton until his country once again resides in peace. So he joins up in hopes of bringing Exyel back to the magnificence it knew when he was king. The three leave in hopes that the tale of The Quest Quartet will be like the ones told by bards where they fought valiantly and conquered evil with no effort. What they never expected was for them to get swept up into a power struggle between Darkness and Queen Zayden'Ash of the Dragons. They did not foresee one them leaving to accomplish good for the quest and giving her life for it. Zayden'Ash is the savior of the motley group but also the puppeteer of it. She has the power to make the search for The Armlet an easy task yet she with holds her power in hopes of making The Quest Quartet a story to be told for an eternity. When the Quest Quartet threatens to fall to pieces will someone step up and push them toward finding the second piece? Or will they all fall to Darkness?

Laters,

St. Patricks Day Shenanigans

Happy St. Patricks Day!



Guess who sent in their NYU application? ME!! My for that I needed filled out by school took me about 45 minutes to do. I would have had it done a lot sooner had I been told to go to the right place. Thank you very much Dr. Banit for misguiding me…. Grr. Anyhow I got all my teachers to sign off on my grades and I’m doing very good, I’ve got B’s one A. yay! And I just sent my transcript out after a huge clown operation with tuition payments and what not. I really can’t wait to transfer! So I officially have everything submitted or in the process of being submitted. Can’t wait!


And I was very productive yesterday. I picked out titles for my second quartet and typed more of the outline. AND I redid my webpage. So you should totally check that out. I fixed The Cycle of Zantor page so it’s all up to date and the book summaries for The Final Thread Quartet are all current now. I also updated the About The Author section! It looks way cool.


Let’s see I’m still plugging along in edits. I’m still working on the rewrite part of the whole summarize, throw out, rewrite deal. I typed about three pages yesterday I think. Also I’m on chapter 18 of my fanfiction and I have 190 reviews! Yay! It makes me happy. And I’m going to post the first chapter of another fanfiction I’m starting! Yay for me and my dorkyness.


I cut my hair Friday! It’s this sort of long fo-hawk deal and I just redyed my colors today so it looks way kick ass. Also I ordered my business cards today!

Way cool right! So I’m already for my signing! I’m nearly done with the arrangements! Whoot! Also I’ll be going back to my middle school to spend the day and do a talk. And it’s finally feeling like spring now. this makes me ever so happy.

Laters,

Write, Summarize, Throw out, Rewrite

First off I finished my outline for my second series. Instead of it going Quest Quartet, Final thread Trilogy, Saga of Resurrected Blood… it shall now go Quest Quartet, Final Thread Quartet. At least that’s the plan now. If the books get too long then it may be a quintet or a six book saga. We’ll see. So this now means my dorm wall is back to normal. It took two hours but I did it! The reason it took so long was I had to think things through sort of prewrote scenes in my head and so on so I could come up with the best and most epic series! And I did. It’s going to be beyond AMAZING! Really it is.



Anyhow on to my main reason for posting. In my writing class we’ve been reading some of Peter Elbow’s work. And he had talked about writing something through, summarizing it, throwing it out, and writing it again. It sounded beyond ridiculous to me when my teacher was talking about it cause it seemed like a waste of time to write something then throw it out just to rewrite it again. So to sort of tangent up to this point I’ve been stuck in editing cause I’m still at the beginning where there is a lot of boring traveling and its gross. So I’ve been trying figure out how to fix this. Then it snapped in my head… summarize it… throw it out… rewrite it!!! So that’s my project for tonight. Which means no Uno tonight. Haha.


Okay so I’ve played Uno with the guys that dorm next door to me cause Whiteman is a coed dorm! Whoot! And at the beginning of the year I totally thought they were annoying… nope turns out they’re just like my older brother and his friends…. Wait… that does make them annoying and lots of fun to hang out with. Which is fun. I have more friends on campus! Yay!






Laters,

Behold My Outline!

Remember how I said that I was going to post my outline on my wall. Hahaha ya I spent my weekend on that. It looks pretty spiffy… don’t you think?

And it’s totally helping me although it’s still going to be tough for me to decide what I’m using as the final and what’s combining. Because right now I have about six way that I can write out the second series. So… ya. But I’m finally getting back to editing. I just took out a scene and started adding that information other places in the book cause it was took history booky in the old scene. Yup yup. And writing my fanfic is still helping me. I’ve been writing out a couple scenes for various spots in The Cycle. And I’m playing around with a few names so it may no longer be The Cycle of Zantor… but I’ll keep you up date.

Laters,

Not all my writing is shoddy..... right?

Good Evening,



So I’ve got a major task of rearranging, adding, merging, and deleting ahead of me. Why you ask? Because I came up with a FANTASTIC idea for the Final Thread Trilogy which in fact will merge the Saga of Resurrected Blood with it. On the upside I will have fewer books to write…. On another upside it’s no longer a trilogy as of this second it’s a six book series and still under recreation. Just thought I’d share cause I was excited. Oh! Oh! Oh! And I got a little peek at my own writing process… as you might remember I was frustrated with moi in the last post. But when I got this fantastic idea I started doing what I normally do with great ideas and realized…. BAM! This is part of my writing process. So I filed that info away and continued outlining. I’ve started writing a few scenes from the new series and I’m soooo happy with the way it’s going to turn out and the ending is even more epic then it was originally going to be! muhahaha. And guess what the best part about the ending is… the reader gets to use their own imagination for the true ending. Hehehehehehehe I’m so evil. But it’s so fun! And on another not so fun note…. I realized my narrative that I thought was so amazing for writing was actually very shoddy…. So I must work on it… funny cause this is the first academic writing piece I’ve actually cared about since…. Creative writing…. How sad…. So I must work on it…. But I don’t know what I’m going to do with it… deleting it and starting over is a very tempting idea I must say. I read some other people’s in class on their blogs and I was like “damn mine’s shit.” Cause they had theirs all nice and flowy and focused…. So I’m going to email my teacher to set up an appointment and have her help me out with said shoddy essay. Hopefully she can set me on the right track. So cross your finger for my narrative.


Laters,

100,000 Words

Hello,

Okay so FANTASTIC news!!!! I’m over 100,00 words for The Snowy Waste!!! PARTY TIME!!! so ya I’m soo totally excited! And I’m in such a perfect mood now that I thought I would share a scene that leads up to a big scene in the first book of The Final Thread Trilogy.

It’s during the campaign for The Dragon Empire…..

Fury built up inside Samjedabar’s chest till she couldn’t take it any longer and she charged into battle. Her blades swung in. Feron cauterized wounds on contact while Wreden slashed hot blood onto her with it’s ice-sharp blade. The blood only fueled her anger. Her Fa’Dor side relished in the blood and she felt her fangs coming out. She snarled and decapitated another enemy. Alone Samjedabar was turning the tide of the battle but her Elites were cutting a wide path of destruction alongside of her. Hot blood soon soaked her some was her own but most of it was from her dead enemies. Wreden came down and cleaved a daemon’s head like a melon. Blood and brain matter sprayed onto her face. A laugh broke from her lips. The exhilaration of the battle thronged in her veins. Today was the day she was going to die, but she as not leaving without making a name for herself in this fight. An enemies’ sword slipped by her defenses and into her lung collapsing it in one painful move.
Samjedabar looked at the blade in her side. She knew that she should be feeling the sting and burn of pain but she felt empty. As the blood poured out and stained her shirt the Drasdon took a shuttering breath. It was all pointless… everything was pointless. Why had she wasted so much time in this place where so many people hated her? At least she was at the end now. The end of everything that had ever meant anything. Blackness began to creep in to her vision. Then she remembered that there was a war raging around her and that she had a task to do. Even though she wanted to give into the enticing arms of death she shook her head and fell to the ground. Her hand wrapped around the blade’s hilt and she pulled it from her side. She could not leave this hate filled life yet.
Samjedabar looked around at the battlefield, her Elites were cutting a wide path of destruction. Out of the corner of his eye Faust saw Samjedabar pull the sword from her side. He stabbed his opponent in the neck and turned to run to Samjedabar’s side. “Milady.” He grabbed her under the armpit and hoisted her to her feet. “Are you alright?”
“I am fine Faust. Thank you.” Samjedabar said through the haze in her head.
“We can continue to fight if you need to make a retreat.” he said looking into Samjedabar’s eyes. He saw pain there. But there was also a fire burning there that told him she would not leave till she had killed The Herald, even if it was the end of her.
“No. I NEED to do this.” She said through gritted teeth.
“We can always assault tomorrow. You need not kill yourself when you can rest and be ready to go tomorrow.” He tried to pled with his Queen.
“No. It ends today or it doesn’t end at all.” she pulled away from Faust. “Best of luck Faust. It has been an honor to fight by your side.” she grasped his wrist and he grasped hers. “May Luck be with you.” she said before launching herself into the air.
Faust looked down at his blood covered wrist. Shock sank into every bone as he realized that he would not see Samjedabar again. Then he shook his head. He had to fight on. He could do this. So the Dragostean let out a cry and charged back into the melee that was raging.
Samjedabar flew slowly toward The Herald’s castle. Her vision swam and it was often hard for her to see if she was going in the right direction or not. Crimson dropped from her boot as the blood leaked from her wound and down her leg. Lifeblood was fleeing from her body. Yet it was not her time to go. Not yet. Just a little longer. After many long minutes of flying Samjedabar was on The Herald’s Plateau. She folded her wings and stumbled and fell to all fours as she hit the ground. Get up! she yelled to herself. Heal yourself. Now. A voice in her head said. No get up and go fight. You are as good as dead either way. Another argued. The first one won out for Samjedabar dropped a blue orb on her wound and healed it just enough to stop the bleeding. “And now I go to face my death.” she said aloud. And as soon as the words left her mouth a sense of calm settled over her and she was unafraid of what was to come.
The Drasdon got slowly and unsteadily to her feet. Then she started toward the front doors of the castle. Darkness greeted her when she hobbled into the empty entrance hall. Samjedabar staggered as all her sense seemed to fall silent, The Herald‘s magic was strong. She dropped another healing orb on her wound, her vision cleared and her sense of balance came back. Now she was ready to find Clewween.

I hope you enjoyed it…..

Laters,
T.V.

New Exyel

Hey guys,

Okay so I have some exciting news. I spent about five or six hours remaking the map of Exyel. And I finally finished. I did it all in paint. Whoot for me. Now here’s the wicked sweet part of the map. I took a blank world map and manipulated it. I cut, pasted, rotated, enlarged, flipped, you name it I did it to the map to get Exyel so see how many places you can pick out in the map. I’ll give you one to start with. The peninsula below The Pleuteken Manor is the bottom of South America. Cool right?

Laters,
T.V.

oops... long time no post...

Hi All,

So I’m bored in philosophy class and I thought I’d blog because I’m not learning anything new…. I never do in this class… haha. Okay so being sick really dampened my whole typing this week I only got five pages typed….. ugh.But at least I’m typing. So I can’t complain too much. Anyhow… I’m still very close to 100,000 words in The Snowy Waste and I’m so freaking anxious to get there yet I seem to be making such slow progress and angers me.

I wrote a few good scenes for Crimson Clashed With Ivory and they pretty much hint at some big happenings yet you have to be well versed in Vampireness to pick up on them. So I’m way proud of me cause I’ve had a friend read them and not pick up on it at all. So it’ll be good because die hard vampire fans will get it and maybe put it together while others will have to wait for the epic OMG scene.

Oh and also more big news on Zayden’Ash (formally Samjedabar). I changed her appearance. So she’s even more exotic and mysterious. Okay so here is a bit of her character profile sheet that I have typed up…..

Basic Statistics
Full Name: Zayden’Ash Celestial Exyel
Preferred Nickname: Ash or Zay
Age: 52,487 Elsons
Date Of Birth: Shay’Dor 13, 33770 After Founding
Place Of Birth: Twin Talons
Current Residence: Twin Talons
Occupation: Queen Birth order: First Born of twins

Physical Characteristics
Height: 5’ 8”
Weight: 136 lbs
Eye Color: Left: Green Right: Blue
Hair Color: Silver (red and blue glint in it if the light catches it right when it’s long. if it’s cut short the red and blue are very bright)
Skin color: paleShape of
Distinguishing features: Black and red wings
Dress: prefers black leather pants and crimson linen shirt with a red tattered cape
Mannerisms: withdrawn, very proud
Habits: chews lip when she thinks
Health: very fit and in good health
Favorite Sayings: “Buggar off”
Speech patterns: speaks without contractions
Greatest flaw: her power and anger
Best quality: here loyalty

so there you go…. And sorry again for the long time without a post. I'll try to do better....

Laters,
T.V.

oh and p.s. whoot for 25 posts!!

HUGE NEWS!!!!!

Hi again,

So I have HUGE news!! So today a grand idea came into my head. And it went something like this…. Samjedabar is way too much of a mouth full to say and it totally interrupts scenes when you throw in her huge long name in and it won’t do to use her informal nickname. Soo I decided to throw out Samjedabar’s name which mind you she’s had for almost four years now. Then I had to come up with a name that would rival the epicness of her old name. so I came up with Zayda. Then that didn’t fit because it was too short and I didn’t like it much. So I racked Ash on the end to make it Zayda’Ash. Then I was like eh cool but too girly. So I made it Zayden’Ash. Whoot! And I really like it plus it has great potential for nicknames because everyone knows that nearly all of my characters get nicknames. So yup yup Samjedabar is now Zayden’Ash! Yay!

Laters,
T.V.

Writer's Block

Sup,

So I’ve run into a little bit of a problem…. I’ve got a slight case of writers block. I wrote so much that I’ve run out of good stuff it seems. I don’t feel like typing from my notebooks because the whole Vayger scene is changed now so it’s nothing like the notebooks anymore… I want to change it more but I don’t quite know where I want to take it. But on the up side I’ve got over 75,000 words typed! Yay! So I’m not to miffed that I’m blocking up right now. Besides I’m about half way though the events in the book….. And since I’ve got an over abundance of time now at college I have to do something…. So I’m trying to type new snippets of the epic plot twist. And they’re coming out okay… not the best but okay. So anyway this is just a short post cause I had two really long ones yesterday.

Aaaand I was going to put up the map… but it turns out I don’t have it scanned to my laptop. Awesome! So instead here’s the Exyel and Dar family tree. Each row is a generation… red lines are children and blue lines mean they’re married…. Yup well that’s also in the key. Enjoy!
Laters,
T.V.

The Realms

Hey all,

Sorry it’s taken me a while to post again. I’ve been busy with college stuff and I’ve been reoutlining The Quartet. It seemed to boring to me so I changed the ending on the second book and redid the last two books. So it’s pretty much going to kick more butt now. And I’m so happy I just introduced Raven into the series. He’s going to be such a nice addition to the Questers. Plus I just came up with a huge plot twist that involves Darkness (which is evil in every way shape and form) and Samjedabar. It’s going to be good, like betrayal, love, battles, and death good. I also recently redid the 15 Realms.
Before it looked like this. Basically one realm for the seven first born races (the 7th realm through the 13th realm), fluff realms that I thought would be awesome to have (the 2nd realm through the 6th realm and the 14th realm), then essential realms such as the Material and Death realms.
1st Realm:: Material
2nd Realm:: Vampire
3rd Realm:: Assassin
4th Realm:: Guardian
5th Realm:: Particles
6th Realm:: A’Dor
7th Realm:: Earth
8th Realm:: Water
9th Realm:: Air/Wind
10th Realm:: Fire
11th Realm:: Time
12th Realm:: Ether
13th Realm:: Blood
14th Realm:: The Lost
15th Realm:: Death
And now it looks like this. There is still one real for the seven first born (the 5th through 11th realm),now the Assassins and Vampires share, there are only there are five fluff realms (the 2nd through 4th, the 12th, and the 14th) I put them in because they make the story much better. And I also added a realm for Zantor (he’s the God of all gods in the cycle).
Zantor’s Realm:: Sanctum
1st Realm:: Material
2nd Realm:: Assassin and Vampire
3rd Realm:: Guardian
4th Realm:: Particles
5th Realm:: Earth
6th Realm:: Water
7h Realm:: Air/Wind
8th Realm:: Fire
9th Realm:: Time
10th Realm:: Ether
11th Realm:: Blood
12th Realm:: The Lost
13th Realm:: Death
14th Realm:: Daemon or Darkness
I’m totally proud of myself for reworking it all. Now it’ll be easier to fit in twists and shocker and heads up there are a lot of them! So until next time!

Laters,
T.V.

The Quest Quartet

Welcome back friends!

So here’s the post where I’m putting everything out there basically concerning my series. The Cycle of Zantor is actually a collection of series, four to be exact plus four books that tag along with tit. My series I mostly refer to is The Quest Quartet it’s going to be the first one published and it’s four books. I have the first book written all out in five notebooks and I’m only 220 pages into typing it. Sometimes I get quite sidetracked and start working on the second series I want published The Final Thread Trilogy, which is where all the Sh** goes down! Seriously soooo much happens and I’m in love with it as much as I’m in love with the quartet. Anywho…. Okay lets see I’ve been working on the Quartet since I was in seventh grade so I’ve got loads of information on the world I’ve created and the people who run it. I’ll be putting up some of that here. A few character profiles, maps, myths, and so on.
And here’s my two minute plug for The Quest Quartet::
Exyel has been plagued for thirty thousand years of civil war. But it’s all about to end now. A group of three unlikely friends leave Flar in search of The Armlet Of Exyel. The Armlet was the reason for the whole war and once it is reunited and worn by the true heir of Exyel then the land will be at peace again. But can these friends do it. A Human, Neal, tags along for the opportunity to leave the small vineyard town. A walking talking living skeleton Billy Bones goes to reclaim all his former glory that he had as King Tantin Exyel. As for Jamie she is not all that she appears to be and hides more then she shares. Yet she goes with her friends to find The Armlet. But how long will she be with the quest? On their path to reuniting Exyel the three find new allies and enemies that would see Exyel at war forever. With the saving hand of Samjedabar and Clewween the questers might just save their breaking land. But if they fail Darkness will sweep in and claim the land forever.

I’m quite picky about my names, because it takes a while to come up with proper ones to suit the characters so here’s some help with them…
Pronunciations::
Clewween ~ Clew (Rhymes with drew) - en
Exyel ~ x-yel (yel rhymes with peal)
Flar ~ fl-are
Neal ~ rhymes with peal
Samjedabar ~ some-jade-a-bar
Tantin ~ t-on-tin

I think that’ll be all for now…. Till next time!
Laters,
T.V.