#NaNoWriMo...

...is killing me.

It's doing great but it's killing me.

That is all.

As I go on I do notice several world-building stuff that I have to add layers to later on and I'm itching to go right on it but I can't. I CAN'T.

BUT I NEED TO.

BUT I CAN'T.

LEAVE THE EDITING UNTIL AFTER, SELF!

Haven't posted in a while. Here's a review on things that happened book-wise.

I realized I haven't compile my list of books yet. 

My first book, the first book that I entered NaNo with is published in 2011. Available on MizanStore and GooglePlay in print and ebook format. 

Author: D.F.Jules

Genre: Paranormal, YA, adventure, action, romance

Summary (As seen on Goodreads)

My name is Leah Curran and my life sucks

While other people inherit boxes of junk from their relatives, my family inherits powers. And not even cool powers. I have the ability to sense Angels, Demons and most importantly the Touched; people who are graced and cursed with the power of Angels and Demons, responsible for keeping the balance between Good and Evil. When it came to them, my mother only had one rule; avoid them at all cost. I broke that rule and lost my mother because of it.

Now I try to live a quiet, careful life with my uncle’s family and my best friend, Gabe. But once in a while the universe likes to kick you in the face just to remind you that you are small and insignificant. The Touched are gathering in my small little town of nowhere, and some of them know me and know what I can do. Some of them want to hurt me, some of them want to use me, and so little few want to protect me. Avoiding them is no longer an option.

I will finally have the chance to do something that I have been hopelessly wishing for since the night my mother disappeared; a chance to fight back.

I have been waiting for this, I have trained for this. It’s time to do or die.

Available at: MizanStore  (Print. DeadTree version), GooglePlay (ebook, friendly to foreign-buyers), WayangForce (ebook).

The second book I did on NaNoWriMo.

Author: D.F.Jules

Genre: Paranormal, fantasy, YA, action, romance, adventure

Summary (as seen on Goodreads)

Lorelei Wong is a simple and ordinary girl. She fights with her mother, she goes to school, she paints and she hangs out with her friends. 

She is completely ordinary—

—in spite of the fact that her three best friends—the Lyall boys; Kai, Colin and Channing—are werewolves and that she is the only human growing up in a werewolf pack.

Other than that, she is completely normal.

Or so she, and most of the people around her, thought.

Until one day she is told that she isn’t; that she is in fact a key element that can either help or destroy the very people she calls family, the very people she calls pack. And the Packs, already dwindling in number because of The Great Pack War, responds very seriously to threats.

Suddenly, Lorelei doesn’t have the option of being just a girl, she must be smart and sneaky and strong in order to survive, because being what she is, the packs will want to either own her, use her or destroy her.

And if she dies, she knows all her three boys will follow--and that is something she will never accept. 

In order to bargain for their lives, she must learn to deal and control her powers under the tutelage of her mother, but soon she learns that power doesn't come for free and Lorelei has to figure out if the price for a life is greater than the price of her soul.

Available at: Wayang Force (ebook: PDF format)

On NaNoWriMo 2014 I'm doing Till Death Do Us (Not) Part.

I haven't a cover yet but here is the summary also seen on Goodreads:

Seth Matthews and his two siblings, Nadia and Nate, have a knack for finding trouble, or as they often protested, trouble have a way of finding them.

But with a family history like theirs, mischief-making is in their blood.

In a world of Affinity-users, Seth, Nadia and Nate have the Affinity with the dead, mainly ghosts. People like them are called Reapers, a designation that is usually treated with respect and admiration. But the black mark upon their family brought the siblings' day-to-day life under scrutiny from Affinity Elders.

Handling the burden of prejudice and suspicion in their own unique way together with their Bond-Ghosts--ghosts who are tethered to their souls whose sole job is to guard their bodies from possession--Seth, Nadia and Nate stumbles upon a mystery where Bond-Ghosts are disappearing one by one.

Now they have to work together to figure out who is behind the disappearances before accusing fingers point toward them...and before their own Bond-Ghosts, Darling, Lizzie and Vincent disappear as well.

Last year I did my book DreamWalkers but it's still not done yet because of reasons.  But you can read chapter 1 and 2 (as usual I will be periodically posting up chapters as I go along) here:

DreamWalkers is a book that I had a lot of trouble to begin with, not only because the vagueness concept but because of the characterization of my main character Medea. Medea struggles a lot with her demons and most of the time her demons wins and I'm not that person but when I write this story I have to become that person and it is hard. It became hard for me to sleep, it became hard for me to be around people, I'm anxious all the time, I focused on the negative and I'm angry and often times vindictive. It's uncomfortable. So I have to stop from time to time as I write which of course makes the book slow going. 

I will one of these days put on my big girl panties and hunker down to finish this book in the near future, the story is too interesting not too. 

BTW, I am also on Goodreads. 

#WritingAdvice

Books take time.  It’s a difficult concept to grasp until you worked on one.  Things will occur to you between the first and final draft, sometimes months later.  We just now figured out the right epilogue to Clean Sweep.  This morning.  We had finished it what, early summer?  It’s almost as if the narrative is a wine and it needs to age to reach a certain maturity level.  That’s when the structure of the story becomes apparent and suddenly you realize that you need to cut twenty thousand words because the book is better for it.  So my advice is, don’t put artificial direction on your story.  Go wild.  Write what makes you happy, finish it, and then, once done, step back and evaluate it.

-Ilona Andrews

So, I'm moving again.

This will be the third time I'll be moving in a year. Geez.

Glad for the move though, finally I would have time to write full time.

Speaking of writing, guess what? It's NOVEMBER which means NANOWRIMO.

Gah, I'm such a masochist.

To make matters worst I decided to pull out DreamWalkers from the idea book and though I have some idea about what it's about, I'm pretty much winging it at this point. I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad one.

Well, at least I'm writing.

There were things that happened which brought several questions to the front of my mind, certain doubts if you will, that made me rethink about the big decisions that I made in the last 10 years. 

And though I don't regret that I made them, I regret the consequences that the people around me had to live with because of it. It's strange to say it, but the bottom-line is I feel guilty for not feeling guilty enough.

...only humans would be this complicated, right?

Other than a little cough and feeling a little lazy and sluggish, I'm good. I hope that things would only get better from now. 

Soooo

...yesterday I met publisher/agent and we've hashed out some details that needed to be revised from the contract. New contract will be sent on Monday.

Other than that, since I've been kind of busy meeting friends and baby sitting, I've been missing three days of writing. 

I know. Horrible. How will I ever make up for it?

BY WRITING 4K WORDS TOMORROW, DAMMIT!!

Tomorrow I would have some time to pound the keyboards because I'm meeting Bie and GB at 7 PM. I'm hoping I can make some headway for #GoV, I mean, damn, this book is kicking my ass!!!

BTW, have you guys checked out the new trailer of Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instrument: City of Bones? One word: AWESOME.

And on other news....well, family DRAMA is seriously not helping my state of mind.

Other than that, hey, this is interesting: What Bestsellers Do Differently than Everyone Else. 

Oh, and hey, chapters 1,2, and 3 of Jim Butcher's latest Dresden book Cold Days.

Where My Characters Do A Gandalf and Yelling, "YOU SHALL NOT WRITE!!"

My #GoV characters are killing me. KILLING ME. They are willful, stubborn, and being such a pain in the ass right now.

It's like TOUCHED all over again.

I thought, hey, maybe I'm just having a slow week, so as a test, I switched to WAH and, that went great, easy and practically writes itself. So, I come to the conclusion that it's #GoV that's a problem right now.

Other than that, life is good, the house is finally sold and we're dealing with that. I'm glad that my property agent is awesome sauce and they made the process way easier than I thought.

My mom will be here tomorrow and we'll leave by the 13th.

I will however, stay at Jakarta for a few days because I'm meeting editor at the 14th, possibly meet some of my friends especially Dhee who is six weeks pregnant. YEAH!!!

Other than that, I'm kind of excited to get some books.

I was feeling quite bummed about moving away from Yogya but I guessed I'm all bummed out right now. I have accepted and now I'm just blah.

Well, back to writing. Oh, and finally could figure out what the major plot of GoV is. Funny though, there's not much of a romance to this book, which I'm kind of worried about. But then again, WATD was like that but suddenly, ha, Lei and Kai happened.

Oh well, let's see.

I'll let my characters guide me. Muse, imbue my hands with magical powers.

Updates on Guardians of Volk

Wohoo, writing is going GREAT...and I'm hoping I'm not jinxing myself for later. But anyway, here are snippets, yes, snippet with an s, there are 2 snippets for you read!!!!

GUARDIANS OF VOLK SNIPPETS

The awesome thing is, I've finally figured out what to write on the 2nd and 3rd book, well, actually I just merged some ideas for books together and voila, awesomeness!!! It's really going to be GREAT!!!

Have updated Dreamcast of The Guardians and The Companions.

*wipes brow*, evidently when you have 18 sort of Main Characters, you really have to do a dreamcast whether you want to or not. It helps to get them straight and when you want to describe how they look.

Have finally finished with the dreamcast, had a hard time in finding Indian/Middle Eastern Actors/Models to dreamcast. Anyway, you find it here.

And 1st snippet Guardians of Volk could be found here!

NaNoWriMo is here!!!!

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!

Okay, here I am at Dunkin's writing and waiting for a friend. Have started on Guardians of Volk, and shall be known from now as #GoV and have ended on a high note: 2015 words.

Good enough for the first day though I shall continue writing at home. I'm quite proud of myself.

Will probably post some snippet later at blog. Later. Maybe. Perhaps. Tee hee.

FAQ

Since I'm getting ready for NaNo I thought I'll answer some questions from readers, simultaneously doing an analysis of my characters so far.

Q:  Why are your MCs Asians or half Asian?

A: Um, probably because I'm Asian?

Q: Don't you think that Leah and Lei are frighteningly similar?

A: Huh. Actually, this has never occurred to me because to me the differences between them are pretty clear cut. Leah, my character from Touched is damaged by the disappearance of her mother and her part in causing that. She's spent her life containing herself, practicing self-disciplined and controlling her every reaction and her feelings. She does her very best to not attract attention, ever. Leah doesn't have a social life, she rarely goes out and more often spends her time trapped inside her home out of necessity. Outside of her family and Gabe, she doesn't have a social life. Leah is very prickly, very cynical, and no matter how much she tries to control her emotions, she is very honest with it; she gets angry when she's angry, and sad when she gets sad and tends to be very explosive with expressing her feelings. She handles violence in a very practical way and it is possible that her morals are somewhat skewed. 

There's not a lot of things in her life that she can control, even her own body, so Leah is very strict with herself and in her martial arts training. 

Lei much from WATD has a happy childhood, especially once she met the Lyall boys. She has a quick wit and has this steadiness to her that people gravitates to. She is ever polite and watchful and careful. She's also loyal and protective. Family and Pack is everything to her and she would do anything to protect it. She has a straight view of justice and right or wrong when it comes to her friends and family and Pack Protocal but when it is about herself, Lei is pretty chaotic and careless.

Her artistic bent often makes Lei the observer in every situation she was in, and raised under the tutelage of her mother, and the Alpha Pair, she can also get very cagey and manipulative although it is not in her nature. 

As the only human in a wolf pack, she has her insecurities, but she handles them pretty well. She is fairly tolerant but is able to easily adapt to every situation that comes her way. 

When Leah often fights her way to acceptance, Lei bends naturally....just as long as she could see an advantage in there somewhere. When Leah often mouths off, Lei watches and listens. When Leah uses her fist, Lei uses her words and her delicate looks. 

Both of them are intelligent and strong and fighters, but they have different strengths to them. 

Q: Why do your female MCs always knows martial arts? Do you equate their ability to kick ass to strength?

A: My MCs know martial arts because I LOVE martials, because I want my characters, being in constant danger, to be smart enough to learn some skills in order to protect themselves.

But both Leah and Lei has very different views about martial arts. For Leah,  it is her way of having control, to vent her anger and to fight the feeling of helplessness that often washes over her. It is also her way of bonding with her family and with Gabe. For her martial arts is power and a way of life. It's a mental thing for her.

For Lei, at first martial arts is just something that she had to do, it was the condition that Cana and Caleb gave, if she wanted to hang out with her, she should know how to defend herself. Then as she grew up and learn the way of the blade from Cana, she begins to like it, it was something between her and Cana, something that she could do alone, something that sets her apart from the boys. Something that gave her confidence because she was good at it. 

But, that's pretty much it. 

Update on The Three Cities dreamcast

Finally added to the dreamcast, this time it's the lead male character: Arista Dasciano.

WATD news

FINALLY DONE WITH EDITING AND REVISING MY JUNE NANO. With a total of 136.084 words and 502 pages.

Okay NaNoWriMo, what you got? #WATD

Updates

Hey, another update for you for NaNoWriMo's Guardian of Volk! Nothing really special, just more updates on dreamcast!

Background ideas for The Three Cities series

Found some artwork in deviantart that fits with some of what I imagined of the three cities to look like, and some background for the first book: Guardians of Volk!

You can read all about it here!!!

The Three Cities news!!!

Tuesday, 09 October 2012

Peeps, The Three Cities Blog is LIVE.

Blogs Moved

This is my laziness talking, since I'm starting a new story for NaNoWriMo; The Three Cities Series, and it is my habit to upload a chapter into a blog, I realized, hell, why so many blogs when I can just put it in one? Duh.

So, this is my attempt on being more organized. I can sense the impending migraine a month away. Wish me luck!!

To those who wonder why I name this blog Inside MadHatter's Hat, well, I often call the inside of my head as my very own Wonderland where I skip-a-long inside my very own world not unlike Alice...but I relate more to Mad Hatter than the blond, blue eyed girl. *shrug*