I have a list of potential blog posts in a notebook on my bedside table. I forewent them all today to instead blog about what it is like to write with kids.
Complete transparency, I live within the polar vortex and no one could leave the house today. It's three pm and my three-year-old is next to me, kicking her five-year-old brother, and my husband is on the other side. My one-year-old twins are sleeping, but should be waking up in the next fifteen minutes. And now I have a three-year-old foot in my face. So how on earth do I write romance when constantly surrounded by little feet? Honestly, I don't know. It's strange; sometimes if I'm in that portion of writing a book when the words are just flying out of me, I can sit in the basement while my children are going CRAZY around me and the soundtrack to Tangled is playing, and I can pound out 1k in an hour. It just happens. On the other hand, sometimes I will be in the exact same situation, and I can't write a sentence in an hour. The fact of the matter is I am a stay at home mom to four children under five and a half. I don't have a nanny or cleaner or even occasional babysitter and my husband is usually gone from 7:30 am until 6:30 pm. Some days are going to be better than others when it comes to writing. But, I've learned a few things about how I write. I need deadlines, hard, strict, deadlines. I need to wake up in the morning and say, I will write 2,000 words today. The reason I need to do that is because there is always something to be done. At this exact moment, I could do eight loads of laundry and not run out of things to wash. I could also wash our kitchen floor, which was probably last washed (not swept) in December. But, you know, someone's going to spill a glass of milk in the next two days, and I'll wash that portion of the floor, and really, isn't that enough? I mean, I cleaned the bathroom yesterday; I'm basically Susie Homemaker. So I guess the only advice I can give to someone trying to write surrounded by little people is that your writing has to be a priority. No, my writing doesn't take priority over my kids, and a lot of days, I get behind because someone has a fever, or an ear infection, or a bad day at school. But I'll be damned if I get behind because I'm picking up a bin of toys that will be knocked over the next day. So there's my advice: let your house go, and your writing will thank you. Hey, maybe one day I'll make enough money writing to pay someone to clean my house once a month. A girl can dream. In writing news, I'm tearing through Lydia and Everett and really liking how their characters shifted ever so slightly in the rewrite. I think I made Lydia more relatable and somehow made Everett more likable (how is that possible?). Waiting for You is back from the editor with a ton of notes, but I'm not touching it until I'm done with Only You. I don't want to mess up my flow by diving back into Lincoln and Charlotte's relationship. I have some new beta readers and am enjoying both reading their works and looking forward to hearing their critiques. And with tomorrow marking the first day of February, I'm getting closer to release dates! And Then It Was You will be out on March 15, 2019. I'm leaning towards an early April release for Dance for You. I'll be getting the cover art for that around the same time And Then It Was You comes out, so it will be a big week! The rest of this winter/ spring is set to be crazy on the writing front. I'm hoping to get 3 books finished/ written in the next four months, which will be tight. Once spring hits, I'll be releasing books once a month from March-August (if all goes to planned), which is BANANAS. But it's so exciting. I hope you don't live in the area the polar vortex is hitting like me, but if you do, I wish you a night of tea, hot chocolate, sweets, and cozy blankets. Maybe a nice romance novel and a warm body (human or animal) to curl up with. Goodbye January, Hello February! Love always, Lucy
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Hi, I'm Lucy and I'm obsessed with book series, reading and writing them.
When I really sit and think about why I enjoy reading books in a series so much, I land on the following: if you absolutely fall in love with the setting/ characters/ feel of the story, there's a whole world to explore. And on the flip side, I'm not a series purist, so if I don't enjoy a first book in a series, I feel no strong need to finish it (though I know there are readers that do). Two particular examples in the romance genre that come to mind as exemplary series are Lisa Kleypas's The Hathaways (which is also connected to the Wallflowers) and Merry Farmer's The Brides of Paradise Ranch. Both of these are historical romances, because when it comes to contemporary romance, I tend to gravitate more closely to solitary reads, or very loosely connected series that I don't feel the need to consume at a neck-breaking pace. The Hathaways series was introduced to me in the throes of grad school, when I was working full-time and going to school at night and my brain was so fried I could barely read anything (even though my masters' degree is in Library Science). One of my friends/ classmates gave me Mine Till Midnight and I was immediately hooked. I flew through the series, and immediately after, read The Wallflowers (which is technically a prequel series). I was reading for fun, even when my nights off of school usually consisted of an hour or two of intense reading for school. Fast-forward quite a few years, and I'm a mom of two, and dealing with some serious anxiety issues interfering with my sleep. Over the years, I've been able to figure out exactly what my triggers are (daylight savings is a huge one, oddly) and gotten a much better handle on it, but this particular year was the worst. I needed something relaxing that I could read on my kindle at four am when I still hadn't fallen asleep for the fifth night in a row. Enter, Merry Farmer. I'd done a loose "pioneer romance" search on Amazon, and after a few duds, found The Brides of Paradise Ranch. And it was just the ticket. Long after my anxiety had sorted itself for the season, I was still burning through these novellas and loving them more and more. I also found that there was a prequel series, Hot on the Trail, which I read afterwards. It's touching, for me, to look back on those two extremely stressful times of my life, and see how two book series did their part to get me through it. I don't think a single book could have done that in either case. I'm not knocking a solitary story, heavens no. Two of my favorite books (The Red Tent and The Dovekeepers) are stand alone novels. But, sometimes, as a reader, it's nice to lose yourself in a series. It can stand by your side during a difficult (or joyous) time, like a good friend. As a writer, I've always written series. Seriously, always. Every novel I've ever started writing, since high school, has been part of a series. Most (all?) of those series are lying by the wayside in old notebooks (showing my age) in boxes in my basement, but at one point, there were grand plans for three, four, even eight books. I think I can trace this series obsession back to my love of fantasy. I love world building, even if that world is a small Midwestern town, or a corner of a city, or a family or group of friends. It doesn't have to be Middle Earth or Dune or Hogwarts to need a handful of books to explore. As a writer, I like really fleshing out the entirety of a world when I take a reader there. It's what works for me. In concrete writing news, I'm at 7k of the rewrite of Only You and I like it so much better than my first go already. I'm getting my writing groove back after months of editing, and it feels good to commit words to paper (computer screen) instead of critiquing them. This part is just more fun! Only You will be the last book in the Falling for You series, but I'm not feeling sad about it. I think I picked the perfect amount of books for this particular series. I'm not sick of it or feeling like there is so much more left in this little world. It's feeling ready to be complete. The next two weeks here are supposed to be downright miserable with more snow, a polar vortex, and the potential to break our all time low temperature record! Yikes. Here's to cups of tea, cozy blankets, and several thousand words written. And maybe some cookies. Love always, Lucy I'm proud in myself, in a sort of sick, writer way. I restarted Only You on page 1. I didn't reread it and heavily edit, trying to save the structure of the story. I reflected upon what I wrote, and found it subpar. I came up with a pretty new plot (not completely changed) and started over.
Eek. Honestly, I've never been brave enough to do that before. I think it was easier, because though I wrote over 20k, I wrote it in about eight days. It wasn't good writing. It needed to be let go. Last night, I opened a fresh document, and wrote the first page. It's obviously got a long way to go, but it was the start. And I'm not going to throw away all those words. For starters, I worked really hard on those steamy scenes, and they will be easily transferable. I'm keeping the settings and the characters, but most everything else will change. So those 20k were not a complete waste of time. I learned a valuable lesson this Nanowrimo, and that is, don't write two novellas during the process. Next year, I'll use Nano to burn through a novella in two-ish weeks, and then I'll make my own rules and attempt to edit the hell out of that novella in the next two weeks. I think that would be a much more useful way for me to utilize November. In more specific and less vague writing news, I finished editing Waiting for You and it will be sent to the editor later this week. I really, really love this story and I hope you do too! I have a bunch of notes from betas on Dance for You, but I've been in the editing game for months now, and need to get back to some hard writing first. I'll be tackling those mid-February. And, for a random story, Santa brought my hubby and I a peloton bike this year. Yesterday I was doing a ride through the mountains, which I can now do in my basement, and I was getting so excited to write the Ex-Pats series, which I'll be starting to write this spring. I wish I could have taken notes while I was riding. I can't wait to dive into a Northern Europe setting and transport myself mentally back to the fjords, mountains, cities, and all around gorgeous scenery. My husband and I honeymooned (almost 8 years ago!) in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Russia, and Estonia over the course of seventeen days and it was an amazing whirlwind. We're hoping to do a much smaller version of that trip for our ten year anniversary now that we have four kids that need attending to stateside. If you are in the US, I hope you are enjoying your long weekend (if you have one). It's a chilly 5 degrees Fahrenheit here, so even though we have ten inches of beautiful snow, we will be staying in the house today. My agenda is beta-reading some fiction and non-fiction, finishing the first chapter of Only You, and enjoying my husband home for the day watching the children so I can do all of these things. Happy Monday! Love always, Lucy My cover art for And Then It Was You is complete and gorgeous. I am beyond satisfied, and am already excited for the future covers this amazing artist is going to create for me!
So, I spent my "writing" time tonight creating my table of contents. Sigh. It's not all glamour and pictures of sexy models. No, a lot of preparing a manuscript to become an ebook is a bunch of little things. I had never created a legitimate table of contents before, and it wasn't too difficult. Now that I know how to do it, I imagine it will go much more quickly for future projects, as I can do it during one of my initial edits. Next up: how to link my author page the end of my books. Still looking for an easy how-to on that, and if I find one, I'll let you know. In other news, I finished reading And Then It Was You for the final time (final? We'll see.). Tomorrow, I'll be back to editing Waiting for You. I have a couple more weeks of work on Waiting for You before I hop back to do a reread/ edit of Dance for You. I actually really like bouncing between editing, rewriting, and writing different projects. It keeps my mind sharp and enthusiastic. It's been a while since I did any straight writing, and I'm looking forward to getting back into it. I am 80% sure on the new plot I will be writing for Only You after deciding my Nanowrimo sprint was just not up to par. It's the final book in the Seabrooke series, and I want it to go out with a bang (in more ways than one, wink wink). A few hours ago we were forecasted to have five inches of snow tomorrow night, but now the guess is closer to fourteen. I'll be cozy inside, hopefully getting a lot of work done over the long weekend. Happy January! Love always, Lucy Let's talk about choosing a cover artist.
It's a lot. Especially when it's your first book. A few years ago, I published a short fantasy series under another pen name (I'll never tell), but I wasn't ready to really jump into indie publishing at the time. I was still figuring out who I was as a writer, but wanted to stick my feet in the water and test the temperature. Because of this, I designed my own covers. Now, while I don't have any graphic design experience, I do have a MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Science). It is required to take media courses, and I had a fantastic professor who taught me a lot about designing websites, flyers, newsletters, etc. I used what I learned in that class to make very simple covers for those novels, and they turned out fine. They weren't particularly eye-catching, but I wasn't really looking to jump into being a writer at the time. For this go, I'm ready and I'm serious. I reached out to some indie authors I am in different writing or reading groups with and got a few recommendations. I feel like I spent hours looking at covers, trying to decide who would be the perfect fit. I went with someone, sent in my proposal, and freaked out about whether or not I made the right choice for the next twelve hours, which was when she sent me her preliminary mock up. OH MY WORD. Now, of course, there are a few things here or there I would like to change but my initial feeling when I opened up the file was, "I can't believe my book is going to be that professional and beautiful and hot looking." It was an amazing feeling. My confidence is high, I'm feeling elated, and I can't wait to release And Then It Was You on March 15. As soon as it's all done and I'm free to share, I'll be posting this cover all over my website, twitter, and facebook. Happy Tuesday, everyone! Love, Lucy Hi everyone!
Just stopped in to give you a quick update on the writing front. I'm doing my first edits on Waiting for You and they aren't going as horribly as I imagined. It seems while writing during Nano, my biggest mistakes are punctuation-related, and those are very easy fixes. I have one scene I want to rework in And Then It Was You, which I plan to do tonight and tomorrow. Then I will do one last read through (yikes) and put together my proposal for the cover artist! Eeek! It's all very exciting. Dance for You is going to beta readers this weekend and I'm looking forward to the critiques. And lastly, I am considering completely rewriting Only You. I'm not sure I like the plot at all anymore, and am considering starting from scratch. Ugh. I'll give myself until February 1st before I make a hard decision on that. I'm also having fun doing very preliminary outlines for the Ex-Pat series, and may have written a chapter of Let Freedom Ring, due to be the first out in the Happy Holidays series. So, busy, busy! Hope you are having a nice week! Love always, Lucy Hello, January. The weather here in the Midwest is never great. Even now, we are having very mild days, but it's still 35 and overcast, with no snow to play in. But, I am glad in a way, that we are approaching the quiet time of the year. With birthdays and holidays, November and December are a crazy whirlwind, so January feels like a much needed exhale.
On the book front, I've been busy busy busy. And Then It Was You is in its final stages. I've gotten it back from a couple beta readers, and only have one more I am waiting to hear from. I think I've settled on a cover designer, who was recommended by another author. A few hours ago, I finished an editing of Dance for You and in a week or so, I'll be sending it to beta readers as well. If you are interested in beta reading (basically reading an advanced copy of a book and giving feedback), contact me on twitter or through the contact me portion of this site. Because I released books in a series so close to each other, I need a large handful of enthusiastic readers! And, if you are a writer, I'm am happy to look at works-in-progress as well! Today was my last real "easy" day for a while. Now that Dance for You is 80% to the finish line, it's time to spend some real time on Waiting for You. I've been so nervous to look at it. Writing during Nanowrimo was such a cluster-you-know-what, that I am imagining huge plots holes, glaring grammatical mistakes, and I know for a fact I forgot to write one of the subplots. Ugh. But. I will muscle through. My plan is to spend a hard three weeks rewriting/ editing like a madwoman. Right now, I'm looking at March 15 as the release date for And Then It Was You and May 31-ish for Dance for You. Waiting for You and Only You will hopefully come out in July and August, if all goes to planned. I hope you are basking in the post-holiday glow and relaxing as much as possible. Love always, Lucy |
Lucy HudsonMy thoughts on the writing and indie publishing process, as well as life occasionally Archives
April 2020
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