First draft of query for Liar

I thought I'd post this here, mainly to give myself the encouragement to continue working on it.  This is my first draft of the query for The Gifted: Liar. 

Lies.  Everyone tells them and at seventeen, Phoebe Maddock was never very good at telling when someone was lying.  It’s supposed to be her gift.  Her sisters, Chloe and Lily have been using their gifts since birth.  But for Phoebe it just never happened.  Then her best friend, Tonya tells a fib so small it seems inconsequential.  Even if Phoebe had managed to ignored the severe cramps, there was no way she could pretend she didn’t hear the whisper of Liar in her head.

That’s when things get complicated.  Sure, it’s nice knowing that her crush is hot for her and it’s even nicer knowing that her dead mother did love her, but when Tonya’s lies continue, Phoebe begins to suspect that her friend is hiding something far worse than a date with a guy she met on line.  But in lies, intention is everything and Tonya’s lies are a cry for help that Phoebe can’t ignore.

The Gifted: Liar (Paranormal YA, 70,000 words) is the first novel in a trilogy following the Maddock sisters.  

On my iPod:

36-24-36 by Violent Femmes

Delay Tactics

The Evolution of Janie - third round of revisions in process

Songbird - first round of edits in process

The Gifted: Liar - first draft in process

The Gifted: Witness - outline in process

The Gifted: Heal Me - outline in process

Last Day - still in concept development

My final realization?  I've managed to find every delay tactic in the book or in my case the internet!  I turn on the computer with every intention of finishing something, but first I need to check FaceBook, email, tNBW, PerezHilton, TMZ and then I need to check them again.  I open a file to work and I'm suddenly aware of the fact that I also need to check out MNS Entertainment and QueryTracker and let's not forget about Agent Query Connect.  I had such great goals at the beginning of the year, heck even at the beginning of February they were still there.  So, what happened to my drive? I feel like I'm in neutral, gently rocking back and forth in the wind hoping that I'll inch forward to the edge of the hill and plummet down into overdrive.  Is today that day? Maybe.  We'll see.  I have to check my email first.

On my iPod:

She Ain't Pretty (She just Looks that Way) by The Northern Pikes

Making it a Job

So I've been reading quite a few blogs lately focusing on how to treat writing like a job, and it got me thinking about how I write.  When I first started with The Evolution of Janie, I set daily goals for myself, laid out a week in advance.  If I did more than I planned wonderful, if not oh well.  It was on a white board and I just swiped my finger through the black ink and not a trace of my failed goal remained. Well, apart for the stain on my finger.

But after finishing my first draft of Janie, my goal board collapsed.  I hemmed and hawed, until one day it drifted off my immediate radar.  November brought Nano and Janie disappeared entirely, eclipsed by Songbird and the delight of having a novel complete in a month.  I threw myself into it, writing every night and finishing my 50,000 words in 30 days.  Tha problem?  The story wasn't done and any accountability walked out the door as December came marching up.  It took me another 40 days to finish the draft of Songbird and then the editing began and I'm thinking will always be there. 

Yet I can't stagnate.

I've started my new novel (the first of a trilogy) and have rediscovered  yWriter 5 - it was free and although it doesn't do everything I want it to, it has the absolute one thing I need:  a daily word count target.  I put in my ultimate target and when I want to have it complete by and it gives me my daily target, my overall completed percentage and I have something to keep me focused. I'm competitive, even if it's only against myself.

So make it a job? Yes, but a job where I can win suits me better.

If you're interested in where my new work is going, I've updated my WIP and added in brief descriptions each book in The Gifted Trilogy

On my iPod:

Halo/Walking on Sunshine mashup by The Cast of Glee

I really should spellcheck before I post!

Researching my project

I was lying in bed last night thinking about my new character Phoebe. She's been talking to me about what's happening in her life and what exactly she's capable of doing.  And the longer I listened to her the more I realized I needed to know things that I didn't know already. She was talking about Spiritual gifts and I realized that even though I've read about them in the bible I didn't really have a true grasp of what they are.  So, I started my reasearch.  I rolled over and asked Brandon, "What are the spiritual gifts?" "Why do you want to know?" "I've got an idea for a series of books and I need to know if it'll work, but I don't know what the Spiritual gifts are and if they'll fit my idea."  His brilliant answer? "Research it." 

Didn't he understand that I was?  I was asking him!!  Usually he knows everything ;-) Needless to say, I admitted he was right.  I needed to do some research.  I figured what better place to research it than to go right to the source, so I started looking up verses in the Bible and Lord, help me it was pretty broad! Putting the good book aside, I went to the source of all knowledge, true and false - Google.  It's not as easy as all those computer nerds make it look.  You can't just type in what you're looking for and find it at the top of the this. I clicked for hours on pages upon pages before I finally managed to get a link to something that gave me exactly what I was looking for and the motivation to get started on my book, well books since Phoebe just told me about her sister Monica and brother Ross. (They're triplets and yes, their mother was obsessed with Friends - I even had to research that to make sure the ages would line up - assuming they're seventeen and it'll take me a year to finish the first one, the dates match)

I've been lucky so far that my need for research up to this point has been limited.  Fantasy gives you a lot of leeway and contemporary YA can skim the surface of somethings. So, here's to my first foray into serious research and I hope that all works the way I want it too! :)

**How scary is it the Friends came out 16 years ago??? When did I start getting old?

On my iPod:

Bullet with Butterfly Wings by The Smashing Pumpkins