My Angelique Writing Process

Hello, Champions!

I’m still working my way through Angelique’s fourth book (Trial of Magic) and I can safely say that it is going to be quite bit longer then Reign of Magic as it is already past Reign of Magic’s word count and I’m STILL. NOT. FINISHED. YET.

It sometimes feels like I have to put a excessive amounts of energy into projects like this that have so many complex and interwoven plot lines going on. I want to make sure I get everything right, which sometimes means throw-away lines from the Timeless Fairy Tales series get their own dedicated scene in The Fairy Tale Enchantress series. (This happened with a line from Twelve Dancing Princesses.) I was trying to come up with a way to show a bit of my writing process to you, and then I remembered I already did something like this back when I wrote Snow White!

Watch this YouTube video to see the interesting… strange(?) conversations I have with myself!

Considering I made this video in 2018, it’s kind of comical how little things have changed. When you are listening to the video, just subsite “Trial of Magic” every time I say Snow White, and then when the pile of books shows up, mentally add a few more books to the pile to represent Snow White + the three Angelique books. 2018 Research “me” didn’t know how good she had it – I have even more books to deal with now!

Watch until the end of the video to see my bloopers reel!

I hope this made you laugh, Champions! Thanks for watching, and now I’d better get back to the slog…

The End of NaNoWriMo

I’m interrupting all of the Court of Midnight and Deception shenanigan’s to observe the final day of NaNoWriMo.

This year was so fun! I owe a huge thank you to Vin because this is the first year our community really made the push to complete it together, and it wouldn’t have happened without her organization skills, and all the writing sprint sessions she scheduled. And, of course, this wouldn’t have been nearly as awesome if not for all the Champions who joined in. Thanks everyone!

Whether your successfully wrote 50,000 words or not, I really feel like as a community, we won. The Spirit of NaNoWriMo is just to write your story and have fun, and we absolutely did that! Woohoo!

If you finished NaNoWriMo and now you’re wondering what to do with your story, I updated my Author Resource Guide to help you out! I am not a good teacher, and everyone’s author journey is so unique that I find my advice wouldn’t be helpful to everyone, so my guide is a list of all the resources I’ve personally used on my author journey that will hopefully be useful to you as well. I have lists of my favorite podcasts, the reference books that have had the greatest impact on me, as well as the names of all my cover artists, the kinds of software I use, and more!

Once again–and no matter how many words you completed–congratulations! You rock, Champions! Now–with December beginning tomorrow and Crown of Shadows launching soon–may the holiday fun and games begin!

NaNoWriMo

It’s November, which means NaNoWriMo–or National Novel Writing Month–has begun!

National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. The event is run by an official NaNoWriMo nonprofit organization–which is where I got the description from. 😉 It’s free to sign up and join in the fun–you get a nifty tracker and some fun discounts if you “win” and write 50,000 words by the end of November. But you don’t have to sign up to officially participate–and you don’t even have to write 50,000 words of a novel to join! Some participants are writing D&D campaigns, journaling, or writing/planning out a comic book, so you can put your own unique spin on the month!

This year, Vin is hosting some NaNoWriMo fun on our discord server. There will be special writing sprints every Tuesday and Thursday from 2 pm to 3:30 pm central timezone, and she’s created a few special channels so participants can talk shop at all hours of the day! If you’re a member of our server, click the above link to learn how to sign up!

There’s also an active NaNoWriMo thread on our Facebook Group , so if Facebook is more your style come join us over there!

Both the discord server and the Facebook Group will have some NaNoWriMo themed Vintertainment segments too! And I fully intend to join a writing sprint or two, and chat with the Facebook Group as well!

To all of Champions who are participating, good luck! I know you can do it–and to keep encouraging you, Vin and I have a few more fun things coming your way so stay tuned!