Waiting on Wednesday #1

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted over at Breaking the Spine to showcase releases that we just can't wait to be released.

This Wednesday I'm waiting on:

Silver Shadows (Bloodlines #5) By Richelle Mead

 

I wont post the synopsis for fear of spoiling someone BUT if you haven't heard of this series I will rave about it to you now. If you have heard of this series I will rave about it to you now. Bloodlines is a spin off series of the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. You must read Vampire Academy before beginning Bloodlines. This is the 5th book in the spin off series and I will admit that I love this series more than Vampire Academy (Adrian my sweet insane,beautiful Adrian),  if you had told me you were from the future and you came back in time to tell me that I would love anything more than Vampire Academy, I would have called you a loony liar. Alas, it is true. I am obsessed. I am a fangirl. And I am proud.

We can all look forward to more thought provoking and quotable quotes from Adrian on July 29th 2014.

How to End it All?

I can begin a story like the pros. I've come very close to mastering how to start right when the story begins. I can draw you in with imagery or a conversation, a character posing a question. This is great and I understand that for alot of writers where and how to start is the hardest part.

They sit there starring at the blank document with a Kanye West- like- frown watching the cursor blink, its taunting them. I usually don't have this problem when its time to begin a story I begin. I draw you in.

My problem dear reader is the ending. After my Hero has accepted their journey and passes the point of no return, after they have exposed the bad guy and kicked his butt ( or not ) what happens to my hero and companions? Do they go back to life as normal? Has their journey changed them so much that they can't? and how can we convey this to the reader?

How can we give a satisfying conclusion to a hopefully satisfying saga? How do we keep from getting the Stephanie Myer, Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins back lash? I'm not even sure if its possible. We may be fighting a battle we can never win.

But,I plan to try. The conclusion that I have came to  is that those of us who have problems with endings, or even beginnings and middles have these problems because our characters aren't alive. We need to flesh out our characters and build up their story arc to the point that they have a life of their own. Allow them to choose their own adventure. Allow them to get the ending to this part of their lives that they deserve. Do their story justice.

Now its time for me to put this Hypothesis to the test. Let the trial and error begin.

How do you end it all? Lets discuss bellow.

The Profession Procrastinator

That's me.
The Professional Procrastinator.
See you may think you know all about how to avoid doing very important things but you haven't gotten it down to the level of craftiness that I have my friend. Trust me.

First what  I was supposed to do today:
1. Wake up at a reasonable time lets say 9 am
2.Make Breakfast, shower, wash and fold clothes
3. Work on one of my books

What I actually did
1.Wake up at a reasonabe time lets say 2 pm
2. Lay in bed tell eh about 3:30
3. Wash clothes and leave them in the dryer as I sit in the recliner and try to think of a spell that will make them magically fold and put themselves up.
4. Grab my computer. (Now you might think its time to get some work done she will stick to at least one of her goals for the day. And I very much intended to my friend but you see when I opened up the laptop it was already on you tube. :) so I made a deal with myself that I'd watch one or two videos from my favorite YouTubers "Perhaps" I said to myself out loud while doing a ridiculous french accent, "I may even get some research done " )

I am still sitting here. Procrastinating and using my blog as an excuse. Now off to have my breakfast at the reasonable time of 9:13 PM :)

#Iftherewasanawardfordoingthemostthingsinadaythatyournotsupposedtobedoing #idwin

At night I think of You (publishing and plot)*

As I sit here looking at the clock and my fingers type as fast as they can trying to get my thoughts out before they get all jumbled in there with the rest of them the time is 4:34 AM Monday morning. Why am I not asleep with thoughts of Adrian Ivashkov dancing in my head you may ask. Or maybe not but I'm going to tell you anyway.

I was on youtube,tumblr and blogspot all that same time as I seem to do with most things ( I like to call it multitasking but really I just have the attention span of a three year old :) ) and I decided to look up some information on e-publishing. Specifically this Author by the name of Amanda Hocking. You may have heard of her you know the self made millionaire who started off selling her books herself through Amazon and other self-publishing platforms.

This in turn lead me to thinking about my own stories. I have heard many authors give the advice to younger authors to work on fleshing out one story at a time and making it the best you can. Me I have about 5 stories going at the same time. All different.All needed different lengths. So then I got to thinking about how would I go about self-publishing something of my own. One of the books that I have been working on is a High Fantasy staring a female protagonist. This book will most likely take about 90,000-100,000 pages to tell. It will of course have to be revised and re-written until I am as satisfied with it I can get without a full rewrite.This is not the type of story that you would see on self-publishing platforms and if you did it wouldn't make as much money for you to live on. It just takes way to much time. Not only do you have to worry about your content but your marketing and cover and formatting for e-book as well. You have to decide if when and where your going to spend your outta pocket money if at all. A book like this is better left to the professional publishers.

Another book that I am working on his Apocalyptic it is fast paced, drama packed and has potential for sequels. This would work a lot better in the self publishing e-book format because it will be entertaining and have a faster turn over rate . Not to mention you will already have a fan base from the first book for the next one and the books can come out faster .

I'll wrap this up by saying that I may try both e-publishing and traditional . Updates to come .

*Originally published at whitneychakara.livejournal.com 

The P.O.C Character of Popular YA fiction (Or Lack There Of)*

Now I'm Not ashamed to admit it, I've read a lot of YA and a good amount of Children's Fiction in the past 6 or 7 years. All the popular ones like Twilight,City of Bones, Wicked Lovely etc. I particularly love a good Fantasy. The stories are captivating and a great escape for a young child especially one who has a lot of responsibilities of those thrice her age.

As other children played outside until the street lights came on . I would sit at my window, their laughter the soundtrack as I escaped into a magical land such as THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE or A WRINKLE IN TIME. Books I had been introduced to by my favorite Language Arts teachers who encouraged my love of reading and story telling.

Those characters of my beloved books were usually Caucasian. As a child absorbing everything as quickly as possible, devouring these stories in large gulps at a time I hardly even noticed. Now at the age of 23 reality has finally set it. After deciding that there is nothing else I would rather do than to tell magical stories to a younger generation I finally see the cold hard truth. There are very few POCs in children's/YA literature and when there are they are very minor, poorly done, card board stereotypes( More about the types of stereotypes in later posts).

How frustrating. How frustrating.

As a children's writer I face the challenge of trying to feel that gap and build more diverse and well rounded characters. I want, No I need to tell a story that children of all races and religions can see themselves in.
But...

As a Black writer I feel lost at times because if I make my main character a P.O.C is it going to be likeable? is it going to be sell-able? And I think the most embarrassing thing to admit is that I have no idea how to do it.

* Originally posted at whitneychakara.livejournal.com