Multitasking or Aimless Wandering?

Last Friday afternoon, at precisely 4:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time, the alarm on my iPhone sounded, indicating the moratorium on Cooking Athanasia was over. I did not officially start editing until Saturday morning because I had finally wrapped m head around the new project, Echoes of Enchantment, and had built up a full head of steam by Friday, which resulted in the completion of Chapter 3.

So I blew three weeks of dust from the manuscript Saturday morning and, armed with a purple pen, started the markup process on the manuscript. Because splitting my time between two projects felt odd, on Sunday, during confessional, I asked my support group if any of them had ever written on one project while editing another. The overwhelming answer was to the negative, that they had never split their time between projects in such a manner. That answer was somewhat of a relief to me because it validated my instinct that I should probably commit to editing or writing. Sadly, that means Echoes goes to the back burner once again while I try to get through editing as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Just as a reminder for people who don’t know, Echoes of Enchantment is the second book in the Athanasia Trilogy, and the back story to Cooking Athanasia. The tale is already written, but in screenplay format as per the rules for Script Frenzy, which I won last year. If you would like a taste of Echoes, I invite to take a peek at one of my old blogs introducing the story that I wrote last year during the throes of Screnzy.

Link to old Slayer blog:

http://slayer--of--bs.blogspot.com/2012/04/update-from-enchantment.html

Thanks for reading!

~K

Other Projects

This week finds me in a period of transition. Cooking Athanasia is presently on ice, waiting for editing. Despite trying to distance myself from the story for more objective editing, I still find myself ‘what if-ing’ various scenes in the book and Jonesing for some Jenna interaction. In effort to shift gears, I have started the second book in the Athanasia Trilogy, Echoes of Enchantment.

The really big news for this week however, is the upcoming release of Reflections of the End, which is an anthology of short stories and poems contributed by writers in the Author’s Choice – Select Anthologies groups of Facebook and Google+. The anthology is themed ‘Apocalypse’ and should be available in a few short weeks.

Although the contributing to the book, and its imminent release is exciting, the truly enriching experience for me is belonging to these communities. The icing on the magic whichever flavor you wish for cake is interacting with a multinational group of people on a daily basis who share my same passion for writing. Aside from collaborating on the anthology, members of the group share their successes and challenges on other projects with each other as well as just having fun with writing. I hope all the members of these communities who read this know how much they mean to me and how much they have helped with some of my challenges, which makes me happy to celebrate my successes with them.

Now for the shameless plug: We are putting on a book launch event for Reflections of the End this coming Saturday, which is open to the public. Links for the two events are pasted below so please take a look and feel free to attend. I have also posted a link to both of the groups if you just want to poke around. Just FYI: The groups’ consensus for the theme of the next anthology was 'Secrets', and you have at least two months to prepare you short story and poem submissions.

Google+ Launch Event:

 https://plus.google.com/events/cclluq8qnvvfbgoth0r7n0649s0

Facebook Launch Event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/146434792197675/

Author’s Choice – Select Anthologies Groups:

G+   https://plus.google.com/communities/117516168918522615304

FB   https://www.facebook.com/groups/454640414592387/

Thanks for reading!

~K

Now What?

I missed posting anything to my blog for the past two weeks because I had nothing to report. Since this blog is dedicated to my work-in-progress, Cooking Athanasia, writing that I had not finished yet but was still very close, did not seem like a newsworthy piece. However, I have finished writing the book is most definitely newsworthy.

Last Friday, March 5^th, 2013, I wrote the final words in the final chapter during my lunch break. As I approached the end, I could feel it. My pulse literally increased and when I got to the final sentence, I was juiced with a shot of adrenaline. That was very surprising. I was also astonished with the mixed emotions that followed. On one hand, I was ecstatic that I had completed the writing portion of a project started over a year ago. This was contrasted by the sadness of parting with the characters I have thought about all the time for over a year. Getting to know them and watching them grow, and then one day I am suddenly done with them (for the time being).

I say for the time being because Jenna and crew will be back for the third volume of the series. The second book is the back story to Cooking Athanasia and has already been written in screenplay format. I have started work on converting it to a novel and plan to work on it for about a month while letting the just completed novel cool off. After the waiting period, I plan to start the editing process, which is daunting because I once again find myself in uncharted waters.

I have grown comfortable with writing the story a little bit at a time and all I had to do was move the story forward. It was somewhat intimidating when I started, but I developed a process and I think my writing was strengthened during the process. But now I have a manuscript that needs to be edited and that process is new to me. I’m sure I will do just fine, and I know I am not alone if help is needed during this part of the journey.