Denver NaNos at Fan Expo!

My last post was all about my plans for Camp NaNoWriMo, which starts SATURDAY.  In addition, all weekend the Denver region of NaNoWriMo has a community table at Fan Expo, and on Saturday, we'll be doing an Introduction to NaNoWriMo panel!

Most years we have a community table at Denver's Fan Expo (previously Denver Pop Culture Con, and before that, Denver Comic Con), and we usually try to do a panel as well.  This is your chance to meet your Denver Municipal Liaisons (basically, Denver region coordinators) in person, find out a little more about National Novel Writing Month, find out if you're interested in participating, and (hopefully) get excited to start your project for July's session of Camp.

Our panel is called Introduction to NaNoWriMo, and is currently scheduled for 4:30pm on Saturday, July 1st.  It'll be a 45-minute overview and Q&A about NaNoWriMo and Camp.  Knowing cons the way I do, though, I recommend double checking the schedule that morning in case of any last-minute changes.

Hope to see you there!

Camp NaNoWriMo Plans

The July session of Camp NaNoWriMo starts Saturday and I am not ready!

Originally my plan was to get to work on my novel near the beginning of June, so that I could get some more done and be back in the habit of writing by July.  June has been one big thing after another, however, so up until this week, I hadn't had a chance to refamiliarize myself with where I'm at in the novel and start working on it again.

I've had a hard time setting aside some time to get back to work on the novel.  Right now I need to focus on getting caught up so I know where I'm at and don't introduce any new continuity errors.  I want this draft to be as clean as possible when I'm done with it.  I may have some extra stuff to cut when I'm done, but I'd rather write too much than not enough (which was the problem the first time around, besides the plot issues).

My original timeline for finishing and publishing the novel is shot at this point, of course.  Right now I'm planning on a release in the fall, which I suspect won't be as good for sales as a spring/early summer release, but that's okay.  I'm hoping to finish the draft by the end of August, then do revisions and cover and formatting and hopefully release the book in late fall or by Christmas.  After that I have a few short stories that I can release through the winter and early spring while I work on the next novel.

This is all getting a bit ahead of myself, though.  First things first: I need to get this draft finished, hopefully in the next 1-2 months!

Book Review: We Were Liars

I don't normally do this, but this book is worth recommending.  Not only did it keep me up late reading last night (a fairly common occurrence for me when I'm engrossed in a good book), but it also had me starting the book completely over the instant I finished it.

I am not usually a re-reader, so this is a big deal.  I have too many books I want to read, so rereading is usually saved for a few select favorites.

In this case, the book is We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.  It's a fairly short, quick read, too, so it's not a big deal to reread it.  And the plot twist is so compelling, so huge, that I wanted to know what clues I'd missed in the first reading.

The story is about a teenage girl who spends every summer on her wealthy grandfather's island, hanging out with her cousins that are the same age as her.  They're close and enough trouble when they're together that the family has nicknamed them the Liars.  The summer she was 15, however, something traumatic happened, and she has no memories of what.  All she knows is that she's absolutely destroyed by whatever it was, so when she has the opportunity to go back to the island the summer she's 17, she goes to try to figure it out.

There's only so much I can say without giving it away, but there's a plot twist that erupts like a bomb and completely changes everything.

I'm about 17% through my re-read, and I have already noticed a few things I didn't pick up on the first time.  I expect it'll be just as wild a ride the second time through!

Advertising Update

I decided to try Amazon's affiliate program again, partly because I found out I did get one sale last time I tried it.  I have a plan this time to hopefully make more sales, so we'll see how that goes.  But just so my readers know, this blog is now running Amazon affiliate links as well as Google AdSense ads.

What it boils down to is that since I'm not freelancing anymore, I need some more income streams.  I'd like to be able to write more and focus on that, but I need ways to make money with it.  While ultimately my goal is to make money by selling books, monetizing my blogs a little better now sounds like a good idea.

I'll have much more to blog about soon, since I'm picking Ruby back up this week and into July, which is Camp NaNoWriMo (more on that later).  But I hope to also drop some recommendations and links of interest into my blog posts.  I promise my recommendations will always be genuine!

New Writing Goals

I blogged a while back about how I'd lost the habit of writing daily, and created a new goal for spring.  I didn't actually get any writing done during that time frame though (I'd set the end of writing for May 31st).

Now, with Camp NaNoWriMo's July session coming up, and with a new weekly push on my regular habit to track my progress on various projects each week, I decided I need to get a move on.  I have a marker in my calendar to start working on Ruby daily again next week, and I set up a new writing goal on the NaNoWriMo website ending June 30th.  I'm planning on working on Ruby during July too, and hope to finish the draft by the end of Camp, so that means I have just shy of two months to get through the rest of the novel.

Hopefully I can get a few things done this week to free up some time to write, next week and moving forward!