Show Me Yours Blogfest

Yay! Today is the day! The day of the Show Me Yours Blogfest!

Here's a refresher of the rules:

The point of this blogfest is to share an excerpt of your NaNoWriMo novel. It can be any scene but try to keep it at 500 words so we can all get around to as many blogs as possible.

Who's with us?!

The date as you may have noticed is January 3rd, 2011. This will give you time to choose a scene and edit it, revise it, change it...whatever. Feel free to give us a little background about your story or at the very least a title and a genre. That always helps, right?

So if you participated in NaNoWriMo 2010, now's the time to show your skills or your bad writing! Excitement!


So here we are, with my entry. Picking only 500 words was a little tough, so here's a bit of background:

Title: Glimpse of Another Shore
Genre: Fantasy, YA

Pier = MC
Lani = Pier's girlfriend.
Lani's Dad = vet
Rule = sea serpent.

Pier and Rule were chased by a bigger, meaner sea serpent and Rule was hurt, forcing Pier to ask Lani to ask her dad for help.
Umm, I think that's all that's needed. I hope, anyway (if you have any questions, just ask)


Here we go!


We walked around to Rule’s injured side. When I saw the wound again, I knew I’d made the right decision in telling Lani and her father. Even if it made Lani mad at me, and judging by her cold shoulder she was more than just a little angry, I had to do right by Rule. She was only an animal after all.

Lani’s father made a few noises as he carefully probed around the wound. Rule watched all three of us before she nudged Lani with her massive head. Lani stumbled in the water and I reached out to catch her. My sudden movement sent fire along my ribs and I hissed in pain.

Lani’s dad glanced at me. “You should get a doctor to look at those ribs.”

“I’m fine sir. Nothing a little rest won’t fix.”

He grunted and turned to his patient. Lani shot me a dirty look and then occupied herself by rubbing Rule’s head.

“It looks worse than it is,” Lani’s dad announced. “As people we look at this and think there’s no way something could survive such a loss of flesh, but for them it’s not so severe. I’ll get her some medication to help with any pain but that’s about it. She’ll have to heal from the inside out.”

Relief washed over me in a cool wave. I mumbled my thanks to Lani’s dad as he walked to shore to rummage through his case. I leaned against Rule’s shoulder and patted her.

Lani snorted. “You’re unbelievable.”

“What?”

“I can’t believe you’ve been lying the whole time! When Nemmy’s over at our place, all she ever talks about is Rule, and the whole time you’re here having a blast.”

“Having a blast? I almost died today!”

“And whose fault is that? Also, not to mention, this is the second time you’ve almost died mucking about with Rule!”

“That first time is why I told Nemmy to stay away. You agreed with me!”

“I agreed with you when you said you were both keeping away! I wouldn’t have been so quick to agree if you were just going to sneak here by yourself and lie to Nemmy and me.”

Lani’s dad waded in the water towards us so I leaned closer to her.

“What do you want me to do?” I whispered. “Apologize? Fine, I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t count if you’re only saying it because I caught you in your lie.”

“You didn’t catch me, I told you!”

Lani scoffed. “Just forget it, Pier. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“Fine,” I snapped.

“Fine.”

Lani’s dad appeared with a large syringe filled with a light blue liquid. “This should help her with some of the pain. It’s also got an antibiotic to help her start the healing process. Not that she’ll need it. The waters on this side of the island are notoriously restorative and she’s young. She should be back to normal in a few weeks. Maybe less.”

He gave Rule a series of small injections around the wound. If Rule noticed, she didn’t show any signs. When he was done, he capped the needle and slipped it into his pocket before he faced me.



And that's the end of the 500 words!

I'll be around everyone else's posts throughout the day. I'm so excited to see what everyone wrote for NaNo!
And for those of you who didn't sign up, but want to read everyone else's entries, Mr Linky is over on the right (and also posted on Hannah and Summer's blogs as well)

In Which The Siblings Provide Me With Some Art

So a few weeks ago, when Hannah, Teebore and I had a NaNo write in at the Libary (I actually know someone who pronounces library like that. It's weird because he's well educated and smart, but apparently he doesn't know "library" has two "R"s) Twin and Brother came along to do some drawing.

Brother decided he would draw a cover for my novel. Back in the day he wrote a comic strip for his school newspaper. It was really good and Twin and I keep harping on him to make a webcomic, but so far, no dice.

Anyway, back to his "cover" - this was before I won the cover for 30 Covers 30 Days. Keep in mind he didn't know anything much about the story beyond "A boy and his sea serpent".

Here is his work of genius:

The text, in case you can't read it says:

"You gotta believe!"
- a touching story about a boy and his sea serpent friend and their rage-filled fight against the world
Written by Sarah Ahiers
Illustrated by Sir Patrick Ahiers

Apparently at some point Brother was knighted.


Twin also drew a (more serious) picture for the WIP. Here's the colored pencil version, though I have high hopes she will color it with her awesome art tablet on the computer (hint hint)

I'm a particular fan of the fish.

So what about you? Do you have any art created for your WIPs?

In Which We Generate Conflict

One week until NaNo! Woo Hoo!

Are you excited? I'm excited. I got my scene list/outline created yesterday. Now I just have to figure out some biological questions regarding my sea serpents. (Mostly, should they be mammals, reptiles or fish? I'm leaning towards mammals for reasons related to another character, but there are downfalls to the mammal option as well.)

OMG! This sea serpent is totally badass! I LOVES it!

Have any of you other plotters out there started your outlines yet?

OOOH check out this fun website I found!

It's a random plot point generator!


This is really helpful for me because I'm always looking for bad things to happen to my characters. When I cant' think of something off the top of my head, I always default to "a fire breaks out"

Needless to say, I think you can really only have so many fires in so many novels before you need to break away from that.

At this fun website it generates random bad things that can happen. Obviously not all of them pertain (especially since I write fantasy and there aren't things like phones or cars) but I would say a good 50% of them are usable.

For example:

"Aliens attack"

"Peer pressure is fun. Especially when it convinces your character to shoplift, trespass, or go naked"

"There is battle/conflict/fight/duel and the loser gets their ass kicked so badly it is just embarrassing for everyone involved. This conflict should upset the balance of power, with the winner walking away with all the spoils" (I really like this one)


How is everyone else's NaNo idea coming along? (for those of you who plan ahead, anyway).

In Which I Have A New Idea

The other night I had a dream. Now I know I've posted on how I have troubles writing full stories based off my dreams, but this time, the story is almost complete.

To be fair I think much of the story came up while I was sort-of half awake and trying to fall back asleep. But that doesn't matter!


This story seems like it would make a good YA trilogy. I've never overly considered doing something YA before, until now that is.


I'm actually quite excited about these stories (the dream covered books 1 and 2. But I'm a trilogy person so there would have to be a third one) and may start the first one for NaNo 2010.


What's it about? That's a closely guarded secret. The only thing I will tell you is that it involves a war.


Oh, and Sea Serpents.

Anyone else have new story ideas?