Diana's Writing Blog

Okay, I went back and worked on the synopsis for about four hours, and I’m still not completely happy with it. It’s good though, to work out what exactly I want the book to be about before I go back and start editing it. Anyway, the names are probably going to change, but here’s the rough draft of the synopsis. Pretend you’re reading it on the back of a book at the bookstore, would you want to read it?

The land of Dara has unicorns, ogres, griffins, harpies, and every other creature imaginable, except humans. Unfortunately, only someone with human blood can rule the kingdom. In the years since the ability to bring humans from Earth to Dara was lost, interbreeding has thinned the human blood of Dara’s inhabitants to the point where there is noone left who can trigger the Fairy Star that deems them suitable to take the throne.

Dara’s aging queen has spent years searching for a way to open a portal and bring through a human to begin a new ruling line for Dara. Unfortunately, Prince Egil, embittered by the fact that he will never rule, has schemed to bring his own human across in a bid for the throne. Both mother and son succeed, bringing two humans to Dara.

Elle Harris suddenly finds herself transported from her quiet Chicago apartment into a dark forest full of danger. Unbeknownst to Elle, her estranged sister, Jenna, is also transported from her home in California to a small town on the outskirts of the kingdom.

While Jen is welcomed as a savior by the townspeople, Elle must rely on the help of a group of giant talking spiders to survive in the forest. With their help, Elle finds her way into town and learns of the presence of another human. She also gets a better picture of the unfair prejudices that the townspeople hold: the spiders who saved her and similar “dark creatures” are exiled to the barren lands to the west.

Eventually, the girls find each other and agree that they must work together to get back home. However, their past disagreements quickly begin to surface. And when Jen sets her sights on a man Elle has a crush on, tensions run high. To complicate matters, the queen’s soldiers arrive with the captured prince and declare that they must take both girls to see the queen. But on the way, Elle begins to question whether Jen even wants to go home. And she soon has to decide whether to keep her promise to stay whith her sister, or to free the prince and aid him in his quest to bring about a fairer system of rule.

But Elle doesn’t realize exactly what the unicorn prince has planned, or what part he intends her to play….

Aw, it’s too long, isn’t it? I’m definitely going to have to tighten it up and punch up the language before shopping it around to publishers/agents.

ETA: Oh, and check out my icon. It’s what I hope my book cover will look like someday. You’d totes fall for his evil plans, right?

It’s done! It’s done! Sweet merciful Jesus and his sainted minions, it’s done. The novel is finished. It’s pretty sticky in some parts, and it’s about a month overdue and 30,000 words over what I thought it would be, but I don’t care. I typed “The End” and it feels good.

Expect a longer post with my basic synopsis of it and my little “pitch” for when(if!) I send it to an agent/editor. But for now, the final tally:

And just in time for all my victory purchases to come out of next month’s discretionary fund. Yay! ^^

Okay, so at about 1 a.m. the dog decided she HAD to use the bathroom. So, I rolled out of bed and put on my boots and walked out into the rain (Rain! What the hell?). And she did her business, but I didn’t feel like running to the dumpster to properly dispose of her doggy bag. So, I just threw the bag into the box by the door that I keep the extra bags and the dog’s leash and stuff in.

Because at 1 in the morning, bringing a bag full of poo and snow into the house seems like a good thing to do.

At 8 in the morning, it doesn’t seem like such a smart thing. Especially when the snow has melted and leaked poo water all over everything (including me because I didn’t notice it was leaking until I got to the dumpster).

So, on top of waking up 20 minutes late (my own fault this time), I had to stain stick the whole left side of my pants and part of my coat, find new pants, empty out the dog box and dump the poo water outside, clean the carpet, clean the contents of the box, and get ready for work.

I consider it a minor miracle that I was only ten minutes late.

Anyway, despite the trauma, the story’s coming along nicely. I can see the finish line people.

And because it’s Monday and I don’t feel like working on my novel or my work work, here are text icons from the novel I’ve been writing. Yeah, I know I’m the only one who’ll understand them, but I don’t care. It’s my journal and I do what I want.

1	2	3
4	5	6

And I mean that. Sorta. I was pretty productive this weekend. I cleaned the apartment and baked and did dishes. Plus, I was out of bed before noon both days. Oh, and I worked on my story.

It’s kind of begrudgingly dragging to a close. I just have to break the protagonist out of the castle dungeon and get her to the climactic battle between the two armies. Then it’s all denouement from there. I’m not even going to hazard a guess on how many words it’ll take me to do all this. I’d guess somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 but I’ve been way off before.

Okay, I love my alarm clock. It docks with my iPod video and charges it while playing my sleep mix all night and it has this special LED light to project the time onto the ceiling, so I don’t even have to roll over to see what time it is.

But for some reason the alarm part will just not go off every once in a while. Today, I woke up at 8:30 (right about when I should be arriving at work) to the dog doing the potty dance. Also, my iPod was frozen. I made this face: >< and kicked it into high gear. I made it at 9, so all I have to do is skip lunch and it’s all good, but man that’s annoying.

I got my iPod unfrozen, too, finally. It’s been making worrisome clicking noises periodically which lead me to believe that its hard drive is slowly unseating itself. I may have dropped it a few times, which probably didn’t help. I know how to fix it, I just don’t want to have to crack open my iPod and do surgery until it’s really necessary.

Or, I could just get a new one, I guess. I kind of want the iPod touch, but I really like my 60GBs of storage. Plus, I like not paying $400 for what’s essentially an iPod nano with a cool screen and a web browser. I don’t need a web browser. There’s only like 30 minutes in an average day where I’m conscious and not in front of a computer. But I like the touch screen…

Anyway, I slacked about on my writing again last night, but some progress was made. Namely, the main character is in the city in which the climactic ending will take place. So, maybe another 20 pages to go? Or more. Oh, who the hell knows anymore? Not me.

I kind of dropped out of contact for a while. Last weekend was hectic. I came home expecting to babysit Grandma and my bro Saturday while Mom and Dad ran my sister down to college (in Milwaukee). Instead, I ended up going with my dad and sister while Mom stayed home and caught up on house work.

It was pretty fun. The drive is about 4 hours long each way, so we had a lot of time to talk. Okay, I slept most of the way up, but I talked on the way home. And when we got there I got to see my sister’s kick ass dorm building. She’s so spoiled. She has a store, coffee shop, cafeteria, gym, and theater all IN her dorm building. Also, she’s got one of those suite setups where she and two other girls have their own tiny rooms and share a bathroom. Boy in my day…

Then we braved the Milwaukee streets and went to Nooldes & Co. to eat. It was the best thing ever. You pick from like 15 different kinds of noodles, then you pick what meat you want on top. I sure don’t want to live in the big city (not a fan of large crowds of people or the way they drive), but could we just have all the restaurants they do up here?

Anyway, Sunday it was like 20 below 0 so we didn’t go to church and I got to sleep in. But I figured because of the weather I’d better get an early start. I went out to start up my car around 2 and he was like, “You’re kidding right? Have you experienced how COLD it is?” So, I had to hold down on the starter and flood the engine, but he finally started and sat there trying to idle while I loaded up. Fun times.

It’s been anywhere between 0 and 5 up here this week (it’s warmer here cause of the lake), but with the windchill it’s about 10 below. Plus, as far as I know it hasn’t stopped snowing since…I don’t know, December? But the car has been doing pretty good. I put the dry gas in every time I fill up now and it seems to help.

So, to make a long rambling story short, I’m behind on my story big time, but I’m still making progress. Also, yesterday we got a Mardi Gras cake delivered to the office from our Louisiana sales reps. It was soooo good. And I got the piece with the plastic baby, so lucky me. Anyway, here goes: