The Lucky 7 Game!

So I got tagged in this Lucky 7 game by the cantankerously hilarious Daniel Marks – most likely because he wants me to suffer.  A challenge I am gladly up for.  One I would throw down the gauntlet for, if my parents would have let me have gauntlets growing up.  (Can you imagine?  My mother would have gotten phone calls all the time: “Your son hit mine with that gauntlet of his again, challenging him to a duel!  You know Little Jack just got braces!”)

Anyway, the rules are simple:

Open your most recent novel or work-in-progress.
Turn to page 7 or page 77.
Count 7 lines down.
Copy (or read aloud in a vlog post) the next 7 sentences…in their entirety. No cheating or editing!!!
Then tag 7 more authors!

I actually had to shift this from Scrivener to Word to figure out where the 7th page began, and the formatting ended up a little wonky, so this might not be entirely accurate.  This is from my oft-abandoned WIP codenamed HACKYSACK:

 

All he wants is the reaction.

“Talk about a dream worth remembering,” he chuckles. Arc is a bit full of himself. No actually, his defining feature is that he’s full of himself. I’m not sure he can fit an actual personality in there, with his ego taking up all the room. Then again, he’s an incubus, so maybe all that arrogance is hard-wired. It’s hard to be humble when you’re a one-man panty-dropper.

 

And now, because I’m evil, I must tag others and make them suffer the way that I suffer!

Tiffany Schmidt
Emily Hainsworth
Leah Clifford
Kathleen Peacock
Kiersten White
Courtney Allison Moulton
Mr. Karsten Knight

Also, let’s just pretend I haven’t basically let this blog suffer over the last few months.  I’ll try to be more entertaining in the future, I swear. Or at least I’ll be better at pretending I haven’t been ignoring you all. 🙂

Birthright – A Witch Eyes Short Story

So, awhile back, when Witch Eyes was nominated for the 2011 Debuts awards, I said that if it won, I’d write a short story and gave you guys the options to suggest what you wanted to see.  Now, along with all this craziness, there were edits and drafts, and all kinds of real life stuff.  But! I did not forget that I owed you all a story.  So here it is, as a thank you to you all.

The prompt I selected was something that struck me the moment I read it.  I knew it was  different story than what the request had in mind, but I also knew that it was right. So here it is, all about how a teenage Catherine Lansing fell in love, and what that meant for Jason Thorpe and Belle Dam itself.

BIRTHRIGHT

Love and death had always been entwined in my life.

New Book Deal!

So that news I was talking about finally went up late last night. 🙂

Moonset will tentatively be released Spring of 2013, so it’s not a horrific wait, either! 😉

This is  a special book to me, because its one of those books that sprung up from literally one line of dialogue (though that line is sadly not in the book any more).  Concept, setting, plot, all of it came out of one line of dialogue, just fully formed.  I wrote the first draft like a crazy person, pretty much pulling a Kiersten White (though it took me 6 weeks, not 1). 😉

Unlike the world of Witch Eyes, in Moonset, witches are far more plentiful, though just as secretive.  Witches are divided into Covens (the magical upper class) and the Solitaries (the lower/middle class), and the Moonset kids are stuck in the middle. You can find out more by clicking on the Moonset tab above.

And because inevitably someone will ask me, there IS a gay character in Moonset, but he’s not the main character.

Major thanks to Mr. Karsten Knight, who helped me turn the pitch from drab to fab.

I’m super excited to keep working with Flux, and my editor Brian, and definitely couldn’t have done ANY of this without rock star agent Ginger Clark!  Seriously, you guys, she’s amazing.

And don’t worry, this news doesn’t mean that the wait for Demon Eyes/Phantom Eyes will be any longer than normal. The Moonset series will be coming out in between those books.

The DEMON EYES cover!

I thought about making this a long, drawn out process.  Arranging something with book bloggers, or making a game out of it, but let’s face it.  It’s a lot more fun if I’m like BOOK COVER and you’re all like AHHHH.

Can we just talk about how in love with this cover I am? Seriously.  It’s EVERYTHING.  I thought I loved the WITCH EYES cover, and now I’m like “WITCH who?”  Yeah, it’s like that.

So….what do you guys think?  Creepy, right?  I love it!

Edit: If you click on the book cover, it’ll take you to the Witch Eyes series Facebook page.  You should like it for all the latest news about Witch/Demon/Phantom Eyes. 😉

Calling All Witch Eyes Fans!

Okay, I’m shamelessly piggy backing off of other posts, but in the event that you HAVEN’T seen one of the other ones around, here’s the skinny.

WITCH EYES is nominated for Best LGBT debut in the Best of 2011 Debuts (Hint: you can vote here).  And in one of their many bids to get extra content, Rachel from Fiktshun and Erica from the The Book Cellar, kept pestering me for more spoilers and things from book 2. So what I ended up agreeing to, after AGES of nudging, was that if Witch Eyes wins in its category, then I’ll write up some kind of short snippet featuring some of the characters, or a blog post).

So think about it.  Ever wanted to see:

• one of John and Lucien’s secret phone conversations
• Lucien and Jason scheming
• the event that caused Drew to flee Belle Dam
• the time that Trey tried to kill Drew
• sibling rivalry between Trey and Jade
• Riley in full on investigation mode
• Lucien’s last conversation with Grace
• Catherine and Jason in high school
• Catherine and Jason now
• throw me a random pairing, like Jason/Drew or Lucien/Gregory. Like Tim Gunn says, I’ll make it work
• one of the many, many attempted murders that have gone on before

Or you can suggest I write a blog post.  That works too. 😉 Or maybe we can do some sort of spoiler chat, that’s also an option.

Either way! Don’t post your ideas here; head on over to either Fiktshun’s blog, or The Book Cellar’s, and post on their entries!  And also let them know that you vote.

Witch Eyes on Amazon’s Best Books of 2011

So my day started off rather normally.  An unexpected shipment of bagels arrived on our door last night, which is always a good sign.  (Translation: roommate brought lots of bagels home from work).  Increased presence of bagels in the house translates to increased productivity in Scotts during the daylight hours.

So I’m at my computer, bemoaning the fact that I have no coffee (because I forgot to turn the coffee maker on).  I couldn’t even SPELL my bemoaning tweet correctly, that’s how bad it was.

I opened up my word document, remembering that I was so tired last night I started writing a new scene in third person present (and in a really weird sort of omniscient third person, at that), instead of first person past.  It’s not like it conflicts with the other 85,000 words of the manuscript or anything.  So I set about changing everything to fit.

And then I get a tweet, asking if I’ve seen the Amazon Best of lists.  I of course go and look, see a bunch of books I love on the Teen list, and don’t think anything of it.  Then I realize they were talking about the LGBT portion of the list.  The list that WITCH EYES was on.

I may or may not have literally emailed my agent and editor with the following:

I’m pretty sure this is a mistake, right?

…….

RIGHT?

You can see the list over here, but apparently it’s all official and such.  WITCH EYES is listed as one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2011 in the Gay and Lesbian category.

Revising and Writerly Changes

So I’m in the middle of my revision for DEMON EYES, and I’m currently struggling with an important question for this particular scene, so I thought I would blog.  (In case you were wondering, I’m trying to decide which came first, the SPOILER or the SPOILER). Because nothing says productive author like “hey, I should blog as a form of procrastination!”

It’s been interesting to go back through DEMON EYES, which was written in stops and starts, and finally finished while I was in the middle of moving.  One of the things I’ve noticed is that this draft was all about EXTREMES.  Every emotion was overstated, every argument was huge and life-altering.  Apparently the theme was “go big or go home.”  It’s good for me, because at least it’s THERE.  Now as I prune and polish, I can pull it back to lessen the drama and keep it from going too far.

I think it’s interesting how writing processes change for writers the more they get into a routine and lifestyle.  Every book I’ve written has been a completely different process than the one before.  I’ve had books that were a struggle to write (hi, HACKYSACK), and books that I spit out in six weeks.  And now we’ve got the drama of DEMON EYES to add to the fire.

Even the way I’ve been editing is different.  Normally, I write to music and revise to soundtracks.  I go through at least 2-3 different playlists when I’m drafting, and flip between the same 5-6 soundtracks for revision.  (I’m not a huge fan of the movies, but the Transformers 3 score is FANTASTIC to write to).  But now, I have 3 playlists for my revision, and they’re all songs.  And when I’ve been writing new chapters, I’ve listened to the Inception and The Social Network soundtracks. So the process has gotten reversed somewhere along the way.

Also, I’m switching my author stuff on Facebook over to an author page, which I actually promise to update more often than I do my REAL Facebook.  So if you want to add me, you can do that here.

 

 

 

Contest Winner!

First off, thanks to everyone who entered, tweeted, retweeted and all that fun stuff!

Congrats to the winner of A TOUCH MORBID, THE GODDESS TEST, and SIRENZ!

Cait H.

Feel free to email me at scottshouldbewriting at gmail dot com with your mailing address, Cait!

Less than a week left!

To enter the Morbid kind of Magic contest!  All the information can be found here.  And trust me, you WANT a copy of A TOUCH MORBID – it’s so good! All you have to do is take a picture with a copy of WITCH EYES and you’re entered!

And I promise to do real blog entries again soon.  I’ve been rather uninspired lately.

New Deal Announcement!

So I woke up a little morbid and bloodthirsty this morning, and then this happened:

I’m super excited to keep working with Flux, and to get to keep telling Braden’s story.  I can’t tell you too much about PHANTOM EYES yet, but I’m definitely stoked to write it.  And you can tell that that’s the truth, because I used the word “stoked.”  Serious writer business, people.

Super, mega, HUGE thanks to my rockstar agent, Ginger Clark, who did all the hard work while I just lounged around doing…well, something, I’m sure. 😉

So this means you’ll get DEMON EYES next fall (probably September) and then PHANTOM EYES the year after that! 🙂