Rinda Elliott's Blog, page 25

There are so many books I've been looking forward to and quite a few are releasing today! Instead of sharing them here, I'm linking to Devon Monk's Deadline Dames post today–which is truly awesome. Covers and Blurbs Galore!!!

Follow the Dame!

Lots of family stuff going on this holiday weekend. We also redid all our flower beds in front yard. In over 100 degrees. Because we're so smart.

I'm also working on critiques for Rachel Vincent and working on some side writing projects, so I'm crazy busy.

Be back soon!

You can totally laugh at a picture of me in public for the chance to win a great paranormal YA novel by P. T. Michelle today…

Follow the DAME!

Been pretty busy. I'm revising one manuscript, finished another and I've been taking care of more day job things. Combine that with summer activities and you get busy Rinda. But stick around, there is movement on some writing and you never know… maybe this time, that movement will reach a better destination.

Until then, enjoy Simon's Cat.

My kids are the critters.   They get bored and come in to chat, so the writing gets interrupted. But that's okay. I'm still getting a lot done and I love them like crazy.

I broke my cave rule though to share that I LOVE MY KINDLE.

Yeah, I recently got one and oh man, is it the coolest thing.  It's hardly ever out of my sight. I'm buying a LOT of books-way more than I have in the past couple of years. Sometimes daily. I'm not only buying from Amazon, but they are getting a lot of business from me right now. (Which is why I'll eventually get a Nook and Sony to spread the support around. )

But I buy or pre-order and the books arrive on my reader like magic. (I'm charged the day they're delivered, so I'm thinking these have to count toward first week sale numbers.) I can make the print bigger when my eyes are tired from writing on a screen all day. I can shut it down, turn it on and it's on the page I left it. It weighs next to nothing. I can put books into different categories. OH! I can email my own work to it for free and read my stuff like it's a book. (Love that part!)

The only downside so far is I do miss the pretty book covers and I won't read on it in the bathtub. Too clumsy. So, I'll still be buying print books from my favorite authors, but I'm a fan of ebooks too. I kind of feel the need to share that because there have been a lot of recent blow-ups on the Internet about them.  I have so many favorite authors and I believe 100 percent in supporting them, but I do hope ebook sales count because it's hard to beat the convenience.

Revision Cave was interrupted. I mentioned to my husband that I needed some sort of workout boot camp and he came up with a brilliant idea. I'd go to work with him a few days. (He's also working alone on a job in the country and was feeling lonely.) My husband remodels homes now–he used to be in land development but that's a long story that can be explained away with one word really-economy. So, he's doing what he used to do and he's seriously good at it.

BUT OMG, IT'S HARD WORK!

I understand why he's so thin now. He's building a monster deck onto a 1600 square foot garage he just built from ground up onto a house. Yes, you heard me right. 1600 square foot garage. The woman collects cars and needed a roomy place for them. He also turned the old garage into a wonderful family room with a fireplace.

This is just part of this deck.

Anyway, it's been around 100 degrees and the sun beats down on that deck like it has an agenda. You have to cut each board to fit, then glue, drill holes and screw it down. Onto EVERY SINGLE JOIST so the boards don't warp. The part with the stairs over there didn't offer easy access to the "walking parts" of the deck for a long time, so we had this two huge step access. I named this area the butt master because I carried boards, tools, etc up and down those huge steps over and over. We worked from 8 in the morning until 7:30 and 8 at night both nights.

I am walking pain.

But I decided to go in with him a couple of days a week while he's on this job. For the company and for the exercise. I will be revisiting my revision cave on the days I'm home.

Funny thing… I was so hot and so exhausted, I almost didn't think about the books on submission. Almost. 

I was going to post the entire first half of chapter one of Unnatural Selection, but honestly, I worry about sharing that much of the book on a public website.

What happened to this book you ask? I kept seeing editors talk about getting too many dystopian YA submissions, so I set it to the side to bring it back out at a later date. Plus, I finished the first draft and started in on critiques with Rachel Vincent, and she quickly confirmed what I knew in my gut–I'd made things tooooo easy for my Scavs.

But I really want to get this book right. I love Rae and Kerr so much! So, I'm going into deep revision mode and carving a main character out of the story. His presence offered too many answers to problems. And I LOVE him, so I have to find him a new role. This is gonna take some work, but "too much dystopian or not" I love this book and want to do it justice.  

I also plan to polish up a couple of other finished projects, so my blog posts will once again be a bit sporadic over the next couple of weeks.

As for my Norse trilogy…I've been working on that again, too. I know, I said I wouldn't write book two until book one sold, but I'm finding it hard to resist the call. Taran, the boy with Thor's soul, is one of my most intriguing characters so I want to learn more about him.

This is actually more than a couple of weeks of planned work here. Obviously.   The finished projects are novellas that are pretty much done and just need final touches. The other two YA books will be done one at a time. I like to crawl into one story at a time for this sort of revision work.

I'll still post and still be on Twitter and occasionally Facebook. I also have the Readers on Deadline to post this Wednesday at The Deadline Dames. See you there hopefully! Cool prize coming up this month.

Don't forget, there's a fun snippet of the second book in my Norse YA trilogy just a couple of posts down.

Remember, there's an exclusive snippet of a work in progress right below this post. It's from Forecast-book two in my Norse YA trilogy.

But I had to share my unexpected side project!

My husband's brother and stepfather cleaned out the grandfather's old storage and they found this vintage 40s or 50s model Frigidaire. They asked if we wanted it and when they dropped it off, it was filthy. Several hours of cleaning later, it's a gem. How cute is this??

It's in fantastic shape. And um, we were supposed to let it sit some time before plugging it in so I don't know if it works. I used that time to clean.   (Update: plugged it in and everything fired up, including light–so we'll see if it gets cold.)

I have all the inside stuff pulled out and drying. Metal racks–the glass shelves are fantastic–still intact except for one tiny chip in a corner.  The freezer area is tiny. See the drop down metal area? And there's a huge pull out "hydrator".

And check out this heavy, glass monster. Seriously, this took forever to clean because it had layers of grime and all those grooves. It has the emblem.

Here's the outside emblem. I'm researching to find the year of this refrigerator, so if anyone can tell from the emblem, let me know. It's an early one.

BTW, it got cold! Very cold! This little guy is great!

I haven't written FORECAST entirely, but I miss writing my Sisters of Fate so much, I write on it as a reward when I hit word count on other manuscripts. Turns out I've got pieces of this book all over the place. I've been gathering all the work on it and stumbled across a cool scene. I wrote this when I wrote a corresponding scene in book one, FORETOLD. Raven, the oldest sister is actually on the phone with this sister, Rowan, right after this part, so you get two different views of this scary happening. (Oh, I'm not after critiques, btw. This is rough draft stuff.)

           The roar, like something from my worst nightmare, nearly drowned out the crashing of glass windows below us. Hotel walls below creaked so loudly, I could hear them over the terrified cries of the people racing up the stairs behind us.

            Images of the wave rushing through the stairwell and scooping us up hit me so hard, I stumbled.

            Taran gripped my hand tighter. He pushed through the crowd that suddenly swarmed aound us. We spilled into the hallway and ran to the window at the end. I could no longer see the pool, the gray lounge chairs, bushes… the water covered the windows and small balconies of the ground level. It was moving toward the second level fast.

            I met Taran's worried gaze. "One more floor?"

            He nodded. We waded back through the people. Hotel guests had opened their rooms to the stranded. Some had started crying but most were still in shock, glued to windows, mouths slack.

            I met the gaze of a small, blackheaded boy, his chin on his father's shoulder, his arms wrapped tight around the thick neck. Fear clouded his brown eyes making them dark, closer to black. 

            Taran tugged on my hand and we skipped two more floors. There weren't as many people on this one. He let go of my hand and ran for one of the doors, slamming his shoulder into it twice before it crashed open. He turned to find me and the swarm of emotions in his eyes stabbed into my gut.

            He took control of a situation, but he was just as terrfied as the rest of us.

            My body picked that moment to feel the cold again. The shivers came like they rode the end of a two by four. My knees buckled. He walked toward me and slid his arm around my waist. "Lean on me. We need to get you warm."

            His skin was icy. "You, too."

            I jumped when a door to my right opened and a man who had to be over six and half feet stepped through. "I heard." He handed Taran a gray sweatsuit. "My extra clothes. Don't have anything for the little thing."

            "Thank you." I tried to smile but my lips hurt. "I can use the top and he can use the bottoms. It'll give us time to let our clothes dry." That's the way the words were supposed to sound, they came out clackety from the slamming of my teeth.

          "Appreciate it," Taran nodded at the man and pulled me toward the open hotel room.

          I immediately went to the window. The water hadn't receded yet, but it didn't look higher. A red lounge chair bobbed through a broken window into one of the rooms below me.

            "Here." Taran handed me the sweatshirt. "you can wear this and wrap up in the comforter on the bed."

            Shivering, I took the shirt into the bathroom. I wanted to be dry more than I wanted air. Water and snow from my fall had seeped under the waterproof coat. My fingers were so cold they hurt and getting a grip on wet clothes was so hard, it took me five minutes to remove my coat, sweater and the turtleneck. Bra? I thought about being braless with Taran and actually felt real warmth spread in my stomach. Knowing full well the risk, I unhooked the soggy, yellow thing and dropped it on the floor.

            Fighting with the frozen jeans made me forget the warmth, the bra, everything. I thought about running hot water over them to loosen them up, but was scared about the water on my icy feet.

            "You okay in there, Rowan? Still awake?"

            "Yeah," I breathed. My shivers were starting to hurt, my muscle aching. I gritted my teeth and sat on the edge of the tub to tug the bottom of the jeans. "My fingers are cold. Having trouble with my jeans.'

            "Let me help." The door rattled.

            "Wait!" I tugged the sweatshirt over my head, moaning with the small bit of warmth it provided. It fell to my knees. "Okay, come in."

            Taran had already shed his wet clothes and he wore only the pants. He'd had to cinch the string tight around his waist. He laughed when he saw the shirt. "It could be a dress on you." He knelt in front of me. The smooth, brown skin of his shoulders made my fingers itch to touch. He was built long and lean and had looked skinny in his clothes, but he was anything but. Muscle definition rippled over his chest and stomach. His arms were well defined, looked strong.

            My sisters thought I'd messed around with the one boyfriend I'd had but they were wrong. I'd never even seen him without his shirt. He'd kissed me and I'd felt nothing—in fact, it was kind of nasty, like kissing a fish.

            Somehow, I knew kissing Taran would be nothing like that.

Please do not think we were making light of what was happening yesterday. Having that many people stuffed in a basement when you can hear the storm and sirens is terrifying. I tweeted to amuse myself and them. I had driven to Guthrie Oklahoma because my parents have a basement. Guthrie was hit along with other towns–the news is still trickling in.

I feel so bad for the people who lost their family members and their homes.