Month: November 2015

Blog Banquet: Guest Post with A Library Mama

On By cherylmahoneyIn Novel NewsLeave a comment

PFF Orange Grove Cover - SmallToday we’re on the final course of my blog banquet, celebrating the release of The People the Fairies Forget.  Today I have a guest post on A Library Mama, blog of Katy, “public librarian, bookworm and mother of two, among other things.”  Katy and I share a love of retold fairy tales, which is exactly what my book series is all about.

Katy suggested I write a post for her blog about either the inspirations behind the novel, or other retold fairy tales I recommend.  And I realized…those are kind of the same thing!  So check out my guest post for a few favorite books and stories that helped inspire my particular retelling.

 

Book Review: Home, a Memoir by Julie Andrews

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

I’ve been making my way through (what I’ve been calling) the random-criteria-reading-challenge this year, and have been getting down towards the criteria I have to deliberately seek out to fulfill. Which is all to explain why I read a memoir. “Memoir” was on the list, so I set about to think what memoir I might actually enjoy. I may be unreasonably prejudiced, but I tend to expect memoirs to be terribly dark and grim and depressing (because people with happy lives don’t tend to write memoirs…) So when I remembered Julie Andrews had written a memoir, that seemed perfect—a happy life, right? Well, Home, a Memoir of My Early Years turned out to have some darker notes than I expected, but I still found it much more readable than most memoirs I’ve heard of.

Julie begins with the stories of her parents and grandparents (in true classic novel fashion), but moves relatively quickly on to her own life. Her family life is turbulent, with her parents’ bitter divorce and a possibly dangerous stepfather (who never got quite as horrible as I was briefly afraid he might). Next to her family story, though, we also have the story of her beginnings in singing and show business, first in vaudeville and British pantos, and then on to plays. Her career is challenging at times but overall on a positive strain, and the book goes on through her first marriage and two famous roles on Broadway: in My Fair Lady and Camelot. Continue reading “Book Review: Home, a Memoir by Julie Andrews” →

NaNoWriMo Day 8: I Have No Clever Title Today

On By cherylmahoneyIn NaNoWriMo4 Comments

We are just past the one week mark on NaNoWriMo…and I’m going to blame my utter inability to think of  title for this post on the NaNo novel taking all my creative energy (incidentally, it has no clever title yet either…)

But all that creative energy is going good places!  I was knocking along pretty close to the word count goal as of Friday night.  Then yesterday was Double-Up Day in the NaNo world–the official goal was either double your total word count, or double your daily word count.  I luckily (seriously, unplanned) had the day marked off for pretty much nothing but writing (and meeting a writing friend to write and discuss story ideas–so helpful, I recommend it).  SO…I successfully doubled my average-to-date daily word count yesterday for a grand 3,450 words on Saturday.  And today I’ve managed another 2,800. 🙂

Since I will be out of town all next weekend (not so good planning), this is not only good, but probably extremely necessary…

But word count aside, how are things going?  Well, I still have no idea how long this will ultimately be, I’m infodumping quite a lot, and I’m having a little trouble getting a read on Leilathya, my POV character (she’s more enthusiastic than I expected)…but I’m just running with it!  We’re moving forward in the plot–Leilathya and Aza have so far bounced into two alternate universes, and I think my next scene will probably reveal just what Aza’s looking for.  Which is exciting!  And even if I have to smooth out or make consistent the characters later, it’s all part of the process of figuring out who they are, so it’s all good.

And I do feel that something must be going right if I’m in a place where I can write the line, “calm down and stop turning green,” and it’s not even metaphorical or exaggerated.  On that note, have an excerpt. 🙂

“Oh, that’s funny.”

“What is?” I asked, quite sure that there had not been any recent jokes.

“The chronometer,” Aza said, jerking her chin toward some of the numbers on one display panel. “That’s not what time it is at home right now.”

I stared at the numbers, even though they didn’t mean anything to me. “But that’s not possible. We can’t have traveled time. Time travel is completely, mathematically, proven to be—”

“Calm down and stop turning green,” Aza said, “it’s just the local ship time. We reset it if we’re on a planet long enough for it to make sense. That’s a good sign, that must mean things are more different in this universe, if something made Mum give the order to change the clocks.”

Blog Banquet: Interview on Little Lion Lynnet’s

On By cherylmahoneyIn Novel News1 Comment

PFF Orange Grove Cover - SmallToday we’re heading to my third stop on my blog tour for The People the Fairies Forget, with an interview on Little Lion Lynnet’s.  That’s the online home of Lynn E. O’Connacht, who you will have seen on here a few times with interviews about her awesome writing releases.

The interview today explores some inspirations for the novel and discusses major characters…and Lynn asked after her favorite character of the series too!  I won’t give away who that is, but will tell you that he’d no doubt consider it his due. 🙂

So head on over to Lynn’s blog for the interview!

NaNoWriMo Day 4: Word Sprints

On By cherylmahoneyIn NaNoWriMo2 Comments

Four days into NaNoWriMo, and my word count stands at almost 8,000 words, nicely above the official goal of 6,668.  But I haven’t had a really rough day for finding writing time (or inspiration) yet, and I know at least the first issue is coming soon.  Tomorrow, in fact, when I have a work event in the evening, so I’ve been building up a cushion consciously.

And I’ve mostly done it with Word Sprints.  They’re a thing in the NaNo world–taking a set amount of time to write as much as you can.  No distractions, no wandering off to check the NaNo forums, just write as many words as you can until the time is up.  I like 15-Minute Word Sprints, and I literally set the timer on my phone.  Something about the timer makes it feel official, and I do better at sticking to it.  And I always check my word count afterwards, to see how it went.

I have to say, it makes such a difference trying to write in a set period of time.  If I have an hour, I can easily find myself writing a few sentences, drifting off to something else, drifting back to the writing eventually, drifting away again…you get the idea.  But if I take it in 15 minute chunks, I’ve been averaging about 400 words per sprint.  And I like it especially because it’s not (too) hard to fit 15 minutes in before work, on my lunch hour, into the evening…it gets words written in short periods of time, and that’s a big win.

And not just random words–in that almost 8,000 words I’ve introduced three major characters, explained the concept of Observing and even traveling into other universes, crash-landed one spaceship, invented several alien species names (just don’t ask me for details about said-aliens) and dropped in a reference to Shakespeare.  Because if I feel confident about anything being true of the galaxy of 2,000 years from now, it’s that we will all still be reading Shakespeare.  🙂

Now, have an excerpt, from a scene with my two major Terran characters.

“Come on, let’s see if we can find another pirate coat.” Lark handed the leather coat off to Aza and went burrowing into the depths of the tightly-packed racks of clothes.

Come on, let’s… Aza wondered how many times Lark had said that to her over the years. She folded the coat over one arm and flicked through the clothes hanging on the outer edges of the stall. ‘Come on, let’s’ usually got her into the kind of trouble she never would have found on her own. But it was always worth it.