Greetings from Montana!

Check out the view from my brother's patio - not bad, eh? What you don't see is the 360 degree panorama that surrounds this beautiful plateau on which his house is perched in the hills outside of Missoula. If you ever think about running away to the country - run here. (Although at the moment there is a mountain lion alert as one has been spotted in the area and appears to be habituated to people and therefore a possible threat...so now I've got a new excuse not to jog... ;-)

Anyway, back to writing as a topic: Though in real life my brother is a world-renowned avian evolutionary ecologist, he is also one of my beta readers for my YA novels, as well as my number one cheerleader throughout my pursuit of a writing career. My husband and daughter and I are here, along with my parents, to celebrate my brother's birthday - so yay! for Tommy!

Speaking of beta reading, he has just finished reading DARK SHADOWS, the sequel to my debut novel, THE FAERIE RING and shared some great comments. I've got a little bit of work to do on that before I ship it off to my agent and editor to read and then I'm back to work on my newest novel.

I love starting a new WIP, discovering my characters, their personalities and imagining the worlds in which they live. There's a great article over on The Enchanted Inkpot about the X factor in characers. Read it here, or catch up on debut author Michelle Zink's new release PROPHECY OF THE SISTERS, which sounds totally awesome.

What traits do you like to see in a hero or heroine? Who is your favorite main character that as the X factor?

Progress! I'm halfway...

As I mentioned last month, on December 7th I started writing DARK SHADOWS, the sequel to THE FAERIE RING, which is currently out on submission. My goal was to have the first draft completed by the end of January and today, I've reached the halfway mark - YAY!

Of course, I've got some serious writing to do between now and the end of the month, but I'm in Montana at the moment helping my brother after eye surgery, so I'm away from the normal distractions: work (though I am tethered by that electronic leash), kids, dogs, husbands, cooking, going to the grocery store, (am I the only one that ends up at the grocery store every other day??) cleaning, laundry etc. etc. I'm hoping to make some serious headway in the next few days and still think I can have that first draft done by the 31st. So I guess I better stop chatting and get back to London, 1872. I think there's a ball I need to attend....

The start of the sequel to TFR

I've got several books fighting to get out of my brain and I really want to write ALL of them simultaneously, but that's not the way it works for me. I have to pick one, immerse myself (before work, after work, occasionally during work... whenever I can squeeze in the time) and gut my way through it and then go on to the next one.

Since we have officially launched THE FAERIE RING into the editorial abyss, I've decided that I will focus on writing the sequel to TFR first. So, I've seen these cool little measuring devices on other blogs that show how many words you've written relative to the goal, so I'm going to snoop around and see if I can figure out how to put one of those things up. But regardless, this is the start! The working title is DARK SHADOWS and the story is set in London in 1872. I wrote TFR in 30 days (plus a few more weeks for polishing) so I'm going to shoot for a completed first draft by 31 Jan. The manuscript will probably run 80-90,000 words so I'm afraid to even figure out how many words a day that is. Probably better not to know right at this moment.

How about you? Any goals, writing or otherwise you'd like share?