Catch us now on Wattpad! The first 5 chapters are up now, and we’re updating on Fridays. Follow along for all the action!
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Category Archives: Writing
New Collab Project Coming Soonish
Why have I been quiet lately? I know, it’s been a hot minute since I posted. I’m sorry.
Well… I’ve been working on a secret collab with a new collab partner–Arlo Adams–in the LitRPG genre. Yeah, it’s not my cozy place, but it’s coming along. I can’t tell you any more about it in terms of theme or anything, but it’s quite different for me and has been taking up a lot of brain space outside of my regular work.
And yeah, there’s a kitty girl character involved, because I can’t live without cat people. I’m working on a quicky watercolor portrait of her, of course.
More details to come once I’m allowed to announce it. 🙂
What else? Well, I’ve become obsessed with Pasteloween. I blame my character, Jaymi, for this entirely. Working on crafts related to that theme in my down time. Suddenly I’m collecting digital papers and ephemera for this, and making all kinds of crazy things. Love it!
~Heather Hallow
And… done!
Ding ding, done! 76k words. Probably more after beta reads. I know there’s got to be plenty that needs fluffing out to those who don’t know what’s going on, but I’m flagging this one for a time out. lol To think I imagined there was just one chapter to go… Ha!
It’s the first story I started and the 4th finished, and I’ve had enough by now. Time to work on L2 for Camp NaNo starting Monday. Making notes for that one now.
And I grabbed this sign from Dollarama to celebrate by officially designating my studio as the Lupercalia Town Limits!
Almost There!
The first book in the main Lupercalia series is almost done! I’m at 67k words, and one chapter left!
Between editing for clients and working to get this book done, I haven’t really thought to update things here. But I am working on it, I promise. Among the things to do are adding the newsletter sign up, and organizing what materials I can show to readers (character art, maps, etc), as well as world building materials for myself and my writing partner.
In any case, I just need to do that final chapter, then skim through again for anything I’ve missed before I send it to my beta reader. I write in a circular style*, so the bulk of the story has already been through a couple drafts, so it won’t be too much longer now. I just need to make sure the fall out from certain events is handled properly. While my beta reader looks it over, I’ll work on the basic outline for book 2.
Next on the docket: What the hell do I name this thing? I look through the top 100 songs of the year where this takes place didn’t really help. I’ll have to think on it a bit more.
*Circular writing goes by a couple names. Basically, you just keep writing until you can’t progress any more, then you circle back to revise what you already have and then keep going again until you get stuck. It works for me.
Longest Night Thoughts
So, recently I was asked yet again about what I’ve been working on in my writing, and naturally I mentioned NaNoWriMo and how I’d managed the bones of my 3rd Sanctuary book. And then I of course had to explain that that it’s not actually the main series, and that I can’t publish it until the main series starts getting out there. SPOILERS, darling. It takes place after the first several books in the main series, and I don’t want to ruin some of the fun. So. Yeah.
I DO have a bunch of the first main book done. Or at least written down. This all began as a role play between myself and my partner, Phrixy (who writes and arts as Phrixion online). So we do have some of the logs to go from, buuuuut… that’s actually really hard to convert into a novel format. No really, maybe worse than having the bare plot bones.
Why?
Because the point of views are all over the place, for one. Horribly tangled and awful. The info dumps are hardcore. The explaining goes WAY overboard. You know, as it does for role plays, especially when others are hanging around and aren’t as familiar with your characters.
So when I started putting this all into a novel, I hadn’t begun editing others’ work. Now that I’ve been doing editing for almost a year, looking at that first attempt makes me wither at how much work I have to cut and rearrange and smooth out into a more professional story. But even though that’s hard, and kinda sad, it’s also something I’m grateful to know more about now so that I can actually do this.
My goal for the next few weeks is to get “L1” into shape so that I can continue writing, and get it ready for my reader so that I can eventually start with publishing this main series. Because it’s the point of it all, and I want to see this dream rev up and take off! I have so many ideas not only for the stories, but also for fun side projects that readers will love. But until there’s something to read, there won’t be any readers. Funny that.