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A week ago, I wrote about how I’ve been using the advice of Alexandra Sokoloff on structuring my novel. Well, using the screenwriting tricks she talks about on her blog, I have planned my novel structure. It comes out to eight sequences and a total of 4 Acts (okay, so most people say 3 Acts, but I say 4 just because it makes it easier for me to figure things out). For my young adult novel, I am shooting for about 80,000 words, which works out perfectly with 8 sequences – roughly 10,000 words per sequence. Of course, the beginning…

Yesterday, I made a very big decision for myself. I went down to the local Jenny Craig center and signed up for a year! In the past, I have tried Weight Watchers, and even though it seemed to work for me pretty well when I was in Indianapolis a long time ago, I haven’t had any success on it since. On the other hand, I have heard such amazing things about Jenny Craig. Since you eat their food for almost every meal, your portions and calories are already counted out for you. Is it expensive? Absolutely. If I lose the…

I might be cheating a little bit here. I actually picked up Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth last year at the NC Literary Festival where she was speaking. I really enjoyed her and hearing what she had to say, and I was very excited about reading her book. It is one of the only YA zombie books out there that isn’t about zombies at prom or zombies in high school, etc. Instead, Ryan’s unique idea of setting a book generations after the zombie apocalypse really caught my eye. Sadly, even though I started it last year, I…

It’s nothing glamorous – not that anything called “peel and stick” every could be – but it is still something that makes me proud. Ever since I moved into G’s townhouse (which is now our townhouse :), I have wanted to do something about the front entryway. It’s a small little area when you first come through the door that has a tiny coat closet and a small half bathroom. The floor was a terrible green linoleum that was coming up on all of the edges. We even tried to tape it down at one point to make sure no…

Picking a POV for my WIP is feeling like the bane of my existence right about now. When I first started this novel, I started telling it in first person from my heroine’s point of view. Then, I decided to mix in the points of view of the other characters in the story, like Crash, Noah, and Carmen. Even the villain, perhaps. So, I added third person limited point of view for these other characters. The result, in my opinion, was a story that started to move too slowly. I had to take too much time to introduce each voice…

Yesterday, I finally got some pages written toward my novel! Yes, I realize that it’s my job to write those pages, but lately, it’s been like pulling teeth. My reticence has nothing to do with my passion for the story – I think about this story all the time! It has more to do with the fact that I’m in therapy and working through so many personal issues that there hasn’t been as much room in my heart for creative thinking. Maybe this is a sign that I’m going in the right direction, then, because I got a nice scene…