Resurgence

My first novel is out live on Amazon Kindle! Earlier today I uploaded it to both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. This is the book description I added:


Brielle Marshall's life completely changes on a random Tuesday in high school, during a five-minute encounter with a gorgeous stranger. On her way to an assembly, a boy grabs her hand and asks if she remembers him. While she doesn't, there is something about him that reminds her of long ago. He tells her she needs to skip the meeting; that their lives depend on it.

Attracted to the mysterious boy, Brielle does as she is told—she escapes high school, with her head filled with him. He leaves, but it isn't long before he returns and she finds out the truth: that when she was an adult she traveled through time, and is now reliving her life. That she had supernatural abilities before, which she must regain. But most importantly, she needs to remember her previous life, if she wishes to avoid a devastating future…

Resurgence is tailored for a young adult audience and contains language, mild violence, and sexual situations, not recommended for readers under the age of 17.


Check it out on Amazon Kindle here!
(edit) and B&N's Nook here! (opens in a new window)

Self publishing

It's time to get my first book published! I had to come up with a cover, which has been surprisingly the hardest part so far. What the hell do I know about covers anyway? How do self-published authors do it (without paying someone to do it)?

Luckily for me, the hubs has an Adobe programs bundle that includes Illustrator. I had zero experience with it, but it seemed like the thing for me, so I've started watching videos on YouTube. Hopefully I'll finish soon and get this thing published.

It's simple enough: a photo, some lines, and text. Why is it sooo hard?? The photo's not even complicated; it's something like this one here: rising above the clouds.

Thanks, NaNoWriMo!

If it weren't for this amazing program, my second book would still be just notes in my cellphone. But today it's a 50K-word novel (more to come) and I want to know where it goes.

But I need to take a break from typing. My brain hurts.

Johi
50519 words

Halfway there!

I'm slowly but surely catching up in NaNoWriMo (actually, I don't know about surely). But I made the halfway mark, 25,000! And it's only the 16th, so that means I can totally do it. I'm only a day off. In fact I could catch up for real if I kept working instead of posting a blog, but I feel like I had to mention the halfway mark, because it's almost epic. It's like, epi.

So I looked up a picture to share with you that expressed my feelings exactly, but saw Regretful Kitty and decided he'd do for today.

10,000 words

I'm 10 days into NaNoWriMo and I'm not exactly a third of the way there as I should (since I only have 30 days total). But yesterday I hit 10,000 words, and it felt great. 10,000 words is not much, but it's something. And it's early Saturday; I'm counting on catching up with my goal during the weekend.

Unfortunately I keep getting interrupted by my evil anti-writer self who desperately wants to know what happens in the last season of Gilmore Girls, which I never saw, and which came in the mail two days ago.

And this!! My BFF back home went to visit my mother today. She's saying hi to my small army of cats. She keeps sending pictures and I keep not writing, only thinking about how much I want to pet my cats.

It seems that my cat James has become friends with Winnie the dog. That or they're plotting against my mom.

NaNoWriMo and the Great Frantic Novel

NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, is a "fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing". Supposedly. I signed up and now must write 50,000 words in a month in order to not feel like a total loser. We begin writing tomorrow, November 1 and finish (hopefully a 50K-word novel) by 11:59:59 PM on November 30. Can I do it? We'll see. At least I'll have something.

I'm excited to start writing a story about... Uh, vampires. Lame? Possibly. Don't judge me! Everybody and their mom seem to be writing about mermaids nowadays, and a witch book here or there, but I don't see a huge number of vampyrs anymore (I like to say vampyr). At least, not in my shopping world, which is what Amazon recommends for me.

But even if everybody and their moms were writing about vampires, I'd still write about vampires. Why?

My all-time favorite paranormal class is vampires. In my teenage years my favorite books were the Vampire Diaries (the original four books – let's ignore the whole The Return thing. Don't make me talk about it! Ugh), the Last Vampire series (I think Christopher Pike wrote more books recently, but I learned from my mistake, and decided to leave the past alone. It could've been great, because he was great before, but I thought the same of LJ Smith, didn't I?? Sorry. I digress), and Anne Rice. Vampires are my thing. I always had all sorts of silly ideas, which I now want to turn into a series.

Hopefully starting tomorrow!

For more information on NaNoWriMo, go to:  http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Resurgence

I'm thrilled to see my work in a Kindle. Well, that's an iPad but you know what I mean... in the Kindle app.

So guys, here I am! Sweet victory!

The End

OMG it felt incredible to write those two little words... Now I only need friends to read my novel and give me FEEDBACK!

Final Fantasy is Inspiration

My favorite video game series of all time is Final Fantasy. My favorite of all has got to be XII, closely followed by X. However, I think XIII was the first to come out in high def—I fell in love with the graphics. And with this chick:

Her name is Lightning, and she's awesome. My main character doesn't fit Lightning's description (except for the awesome part) but still, whenever I picture my heroine, all I see is Lightning. So I'm adding her picture here to inspire me.

iPhoneless

For the third time in my life, I find myself without an iPhone. Oh the pain! I no longer fear childbirth.

The first time it happened, well, the iPhone came out, and I didn't have it. It wasn't that bad. I got one a few months later.

The second time it happened, someone stole my iPhone at a bar. iPhone 3G had just come out, but I didn't want to switch. So I found a guy on craigslist that sold me his old phone – he was one of the ones that switched. When I plugged my "new" phone to iTunes and it loaded all my old data – screen saver and all! – I experienced true happiness.

Now this. I was in Barbados, my iPhone 4 was in "airplane mode", and the screen went dead from overheating. The irony is that I had put it in my waterproof case, which didn't allow it to breathe or something. It did not go in the water. It just became really hot and the screen went black. It still works. It buzzes when I get an email. I can listen to music through headphones. I could receive calls through headphones too, I'm sure, but the airplane mode screwed that up. I took it to the Apple Store and nope, nothing they can do; it's a hardware thing. It's over two years old so it's out of warranty.

My best option is to just get the iPhone 5, which came out the day my phone broke. No, I didn't do it on purpose to get myself a new phone. I wasn't even thinking of getting the new iPhone. But alas, fate has dealt me a wicked hand. Now my problem is, ALL THESE JERKS GETTING THEIR NEW PHONES with perfectly good working phones, I'll bet! THERE ARE NO IPHONES IN STOCK ANYWHERE!! I can't live like this. Good bye.

That novel you've been working on

One of my favorite clips in Family Guy is from the episode "Brian the Bachelor". The wiki article about this episode mentions someone slamming the very scenes I love: Stewie making fun of Brian, who's been working on a novel for 3 years. Maybe it's because it speaks to me, but I love the clips (it happens twice in the episode). I'd paste a youtube link to the clip here, but years from now the links may be outdated, so I won't.

I'm writing a novel. I used to write the story just to get it out of my system, but as time goes on I think I'll actually finish it. So wait for it.... wait for it...

Welcome to my blog

This is my very first post. I should write something epic, but I'm wearing a button that says "Vote for Jimmy" and my hair is messy, it's Friday, and I'm almost out of lunch time. Obviously I can't just be all "Winter is coming... So let me speak in words of kings and dragons and fantastic cinematography..."

Off I go, to be Johi.