A Medley of Recent Events

What have I been up to lately? I’ve been up to a decent amount of this and that. So strap in and be ready for a nice long post of… everything really. Pictures, Music, and lots of words!


First things first I’d like to rant on and on about...

the Coast Guard. I got my ASVAB scores back. I scored an 87!! Turns out that means I can do any job in the Coast Guard that I want. I’m going to stick with Operation Specialist because I think I’d never get bored. Each case would be different and just as exciting as the last. What does an OS do? Well on my sheet it says “The primary duties range from search and rescue and law enforcement execution to combat information canter and intelligence operations.” Pretty cool right? My recruiter is also an OS so he’s been able to tell me a lot about the job. He also told me I get to go to Petaluma California for my OS A School. That’s super exciting for me, I’ve never been to the west coast. It gets even cooler, Petaluma is an hour north of San Francisco.  EPIC! And there’s a lot I’ll be able to explore out there when I have time off. Then after about 7 months of A School I get sent off to my first post! I can’t tell you how excited I am. And since my scores were really good and I don’t have medical issues it makes me pretty cool…. I think. Haha. But my recruiter wants me shipped by October which means I need to be done with basic before then sooooo since Basic Training is 8 week I’ll be leaving soon for that and oh man is that mind boggling. I’ll be done with this life style and moving onto a new path. Check out this video about basic… for some reason when I watch it it makes me inspired and even more excited about leaving.

An added bonus of going to see my recruiter is the fact that he’s in Manhattan aka New York City aka one of my most favorite places. This means when I go in to see him I get to spend that day in the city with my mum after I sign papers and what not. The first time we just did the normal wander around the city eat sushi and just enjoy our selves. Oh and take a lot of pictures

We also went to the native American Museum.

But I suppose that should be a blog of it’s own. It’d make this one way too excessively long. But I will tell you it was pretty interesting.


The second time we went in which was last Wednesday I got to sign lots and lots of papers. A tad boring but I’m a few steps closer to being off on a new adventure. After that we grabbed a cab to Sheridan Square found some lunch and hit up a metaphysical store. I got some nifty stones… hmm maybe I should blog about my stones… maybe. Any how after that we started walking up town.


Here’s where it gets epic. My mum has been say how she want to see Jesus Christ Superstar. So we looked up the matinee times. 2:00pm. We were at 28th street and I googled the theater… we had to get to 52nd street in about 23 minutes. I look at my mum and I’m like we going for it? And she obviously said yes. So we booked it to the theater. Got there at legitimately 1:59pm walked to the ticket window asked if they still had tickets for the show. We buy our last minute tickets for a total of $175 we go in to sit and this is what we see

EPICNESS!! We were in the first row of the mezzanine. We’d barely settled into our seats when the lights went down and it started. It was so amazing. Check out some of these videos. Josh Young who plays Judas has an amazing voice!



Hopefully I’ll be going back into the city this week!


And now onto some writing stuff. Remember I had my first book published by Publish America when I was a senior? Well…. About those royalties… I never got paid. So I’m getting my rights back. I’d really like to rant on about how angry I am at Publish America but that’s childish… so I’ll just leave you with the fact that I’m super angry with them. When I’ve signed all the paperwork and I officially own my novel rights again I plan on doing more edits (as it’s a rather bland book) and I’m going to release it again as an Ebook. So good news to people who have a hard copy… it’s the only hard copy ever. Cheers!


Also on the Ebook tangent. I’m reworking Entangled Fates a bit and that too is going to come out as an Ebook soon. So stay tuned! I’m really super excited about this all! And it’s nice to be back in the swing of writing and editing. I really got kicked out of the rhythm for a while.


Plus remember Crimson Clashed with Ivory? I’ve also been doing serious work on it. I’ve just been pounding through chapters. For me the part that makes it fun is the fact that the places I’m having them Hunt in are places I’ve been. Like Limerick, Ireland. Rome, Italy. And I’ve got a few of my friends playing roles… like my Spanish Sister has a leading role in Limerick. It makes it easy to write when I base parts of my characters off friends because I simply think “What would they say in this situation?” And at da hilarious monologues.


While I write I like to listen to music. Here are a few of the songs I’ve been listening too.


^Where I Belong by Building 429^  
^Little Eye covering Katy Perry's Part of Me^
^We Are Young by Fun.^
^Walk Off The Earth preforming Little Boxes^


Cheers,

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!