Pottermore!

Last night the first clue for the magical quill challenge went live on pottermore.com! It was 3 in the morning (for me) and I was just about to go to bed when someone on twitter said the clue was up and I checked and it was! The clue was 'How many breeds of owls mentioned in Eeylops Owl sign x 49! Hurry!' Luckily I had the first book right next to me so I flipped to diagon alley and found the owls (there are five), got the answer and answered it.

I started to freak out a little when I was redirected to sony.com but then I realized that must be where I should be going and calmed down. Before I could register I had to click on the magical feather whilst it was floating around a bunch of other ones. Anyways, I started to register and omg it said I was magical and that was like so awesome! Then when I got to the very last step and pushed continue it said to verify the two words. There was no two words. I clicked continue again. Still no two words. I even refreshed. Nothing.

So I freaked out completely before realizing that something must not be up to date and then jumping on a different browser and doing everything over again and this time - thank goodness! - the word verification was there! So after that it said I should be receiving an email soon so I happily went to my email and found nothing there and then waited. And waited. And then I started to freak out again thinking I must have typed the email wrong and so I went through the whole verification process again and put in a different email address and went and checked that one and there was no email so I figured there was just a lot of people and waited. I waited for over half an hour with no email and I was becoming resigned to the fact that I probably didn't get in that day. But since people on twitter were still getting their emails I waited, but without much hope.

And then I got them! I got the emails and I'm registered and I totally can't wait for the beta to open!

So, I'm now SwordQuill106 and ScaleEcho47! Yee! :DD

So last night was full of excitement, overjoy, freaking out, disappointment and anticipation! And now I know I should be tired since I didn't get to bed until after 4am but I'm still excited and I think I'm only running off of adrenaline.

But at any rate, I'm glad I got in last night instead of wasting away in front of the computer for the next week and ignoring August's Camp Nano and my Row80 challenge.

So, is anyone else pumped about Pottermore and trying to get in? Or have you gotten in already? So curious friends!!

Getting More Characters/ROW80 Update

Wow. Looks like I took a bit of a break there! Well. I've no excuses.

So. . . Looks like I won't win camp nano this month. I've only written about 15k and there's no way I'm going to catch up now. But, I have been trying to keep up with my ROW80 stuff and have been plotting and planning everyday for the last couple days. I've got to admit that I didn't do a lick of planning until a couple days ago. But! It's been awesome. I've expanded my cast of characters immensely! And this is good.

You see, before, I only had the MC, his sister, his dad, his mom, and one other character. That was it. No one else. It's a bit boring only having five characters and I didn't really know where I should put another character. So yesterday I decided that I would work on a family tree. The MC's family because there wasn't any other families to be had. I've now discovered that the MC has two uncles, two aunts and three cousins on his fathers side. As well as a great aunt and uncle and a grandmother and two first cousins once removed. Almost all family on the MC's mother's side is dead except for the great grandmother, and she's nearly dead herself.

And, thank goodness, I've given my poor MC some friends! I've got parts of their families figured out but not much passed the mothers and fathers (yet anyway). I am extrememly happy with what came out of this whole family tree thing. When I first started it I didn't think much would happen but now look, family and interesting characters abound! I can't wait to write about these people! Some of them are quite strange but that just makes it more fun right?

So, I'd say things are going well, and perhaps I'll be ready for Nano next month in just a couple of days?

I'd also like to say hello to my new followers who found me through the Gearin Up to Get an Agent blogfest! I hope you like it here :)

Gearin Up to Get an Agent Blogfest Week Two

Week two of the Gearin Up to Get an Agent blogfest!

This week is a story chain! For the part before mine go here.

My assignment: Show us a serious moment
Your words are: moon, plant, fight.

The Rocky Tale of Dio Franklin

Dio could do nothing when her mother passed out while she flew towards their house. What coud she do? A slip of her concentration and they could be falling instead of flying. She just hoped that her mother would be fine. Surely she’d be fine she didn’t kill Roddern for no reason.

Her heart clenched. She’d killed him. With her own hands. She felt the blood on her hands, dry now but sticky. Her hands seemed to burn.

She remembered what Roddern had said, “Remember, I will find you again, Dio.” But she just couldn’t see how anyone could come back after that. But he wasn’t just anyone. He was Roddern and he’d come back from death already.

She quit thinking. If her thoughts kept going this way she’d brake down or something and she couldn't afford to do that right now.

She finally made it to the house. At this time the moon was already high and huge. A full moon tonight. She got into the house using the key under the potted plant and laid her mom on the couch in the living room. Her mom was still breathing and still fevered and she got a damp wash cloth and managed to get some flu medicine in her but there was nothing else she could do.

So she found the phone book and looked up the club Tony worked at and dialed the number. As she stood there, phone to her ear, she finally noticed just how miserable she felt. Her body ached her head was pounding with a head ache- she looked at her right hand which was resting on the counter, bloody. With a start she looked down at herself and saw the bloodstains all over. She looked like she’d been in a fight! But it was all Roddern’s blood. All his.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring- “Hello?”

It was Tony.



There it is! Hope you guys enjoyed it! :)

For the part after mine go here.

Gearin Up to Get an Agent Blogfest and ROW80 Round 3

Time for the Gearing Up to Get an Agent blogfest!! Find out more here.

So, for week one I'm supposed to ask the biggest, weirdest writing question I have. At first I was thinking of things like, publishing, and getting agents and stuff like that but I don't really have a question for that. Actually, the biggest question I have has to do with both writing and reading.

Why do some people seem to think that reading a 'bad' book will, like, taint you or that if you read certain books you must be just like that in real life?

Or, since you write about killers and murderers and people doing bad things then you must think about doing stuff like that in real life. Or that your just weird in head or something. You know those weirded out looks some people might give you when you tell them of something unsavory that happens in your book.

Well, I just want to know why some people do stuff like that. You remember the big thing about Harry Potter being against the bible and stuff? Well, I still know people whose parents won't let them read the books. Why?

And you know what: Why take some one else's word for how 'bad' a book is instead of investigating it yourself? In fact, you might find that the 'bad' book has some important themes in it and that it's not so 'bad' after all.

And you know that person who writes that 'dark' stuff? Well that doesn't mean they do any of it, or want to do doing any of it. It's just a book. Just a story full of made up characters that have their own personality that may be darker than yours and which tells an entertaining story for the people who enjoy it.

So. Why must some people judge us writers by what we write, or what we read? Think that reading one 'bad' book (which may not even really be 'bad') will somehow taint a person?


And now for ROW80 Round 3!

So. You guys know I'm already doing Camp Nanorwrimo, and I'll be doing it next month too so I've pretty much already got a daily wordcount goal. So, with my ROW80 goals I will:

• Work on the world building stuff for 30 minutes a day. 

• Get at least a first draft of The Chronicles this round.

 And that's it! Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the world building this time around!

Camp NaNoWriMo!!

Camp NaNoWrimo! I totally forgot to post about it cause things were happening. It was my brothers birthday yesterday and the day before was spent preparing for it so I didn't find much time to post about but anyway.

I'm so excited about this! I've written about 4k words so far. I'm getting stuff done and it's awesome! Gosh I've missed this! There's people back on the forums, there's word sprints going on at twitter (though I tend to miss most of them) and the energy's great.

For me though, Campnano seems a bit more relaxed and casual then Nano in November. I don't feel the need to push myself so far above and beyond like I did last year where for the first 11 days I wrote 5k words everyday. This time around I just feel like writing at a nice pace, making sure to keep with the minimum daily goal and not pushing myself too hard. I don't know if this sort of tactic will make for a better or worse novel but whatever, I'm going with it.

Also, I've got an outline for my story! I tried using index cards. It seemed sort of cool so I started writing down little sentences representing a scene or something on an index card. The awesome part is that I can move the cards around! Oh, that person should die later in the story? Alright then *move card* it's so easy. I used to read about people doing this sort of thing and moving their scenes around and I never imagined how anyone could possibly just move a scene. But now I get it. I didn't get it until I had some of the index outline written and was all like, 'Wait a minute. That shouldn't happen yet, it wouldn't make sense!' *move*

An odd thing is that I thought my story would be written in third person limited. There's a bit more freedom that way. But as I wrote I somehow slipped into first person without even noticing! When I noticed I was just like 'It's fine. It's a first draft. Maybe first person will be better for this story.' And then, somehow I slipped back into third person limited without noticing. It's really weird. Some parts sound awesome in first person and others in third person and I automatically just switch narrative POV. I've also noticed, reading over the first person things I wrote that sometimes things are in present tense and other times in past tense. That was really, really odd for me because I haven't hardly read any books in present tense except for the Hunger Games. And one time I thought about trying to write it and couldn't really figure it out properly. So. . . That's weird.

Anyway's I'm just going to go with it at this point since I don't really know what POV to use. Hopefully one of them will stick by the time July's over.

And now, I've got to get writing! Is anyone else doing Camp NaNoWriMo?