Wow

A whole year has went by and I haven't posted once! Terrible. To be fair, 2012 was a terrible year. Let's not talk about it.

I have been busy. I have been editing my novel religiously, although I did miss my deadline of 1/31/13 to have it finished. I was stuck on Chapter 13, an unlucky number, true. I just could not get over the direction one of the male characters took. But, after talking to my husband about male behavior, I left it in. So, I am now on Chapter 15 out of 23 chapters. I am going to market it as a transformative tale wherein a young woman learns to trust herself.

I have also made several resolutions for the new year:

-Sell Tomorrow's June, the novel mentioned above.
-Write and sell two short stories. I already have one that needs tweaking but I have a great idea for another one.
-Make writing and editing a habit.
-Get my other romance novel ready for sale. This is more of a traditional romance set in modern times. It needs tweaking.
-Develop new projects. My husband and I have several ideas for books and screenplays we want to develop.
-Finish Buy Here, Pay Here, my screenplay about the car lot.

Last year was not a total loss. I started reading novels voraciously, particularly romance novels because I have to know what the market is like. I found a few great ones: the Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning rocked; I loved Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark; and last, but not least, The Fallen Angels from J.R. Ward, which brings me to my next topic. I was so taken by the male lead in the Fallen Angels series, Jim Heron, that I devoted NaNoWriMo 12 to writing a fanfic novel about how the series ends. Ward is positioning Heron to have a happily ever after (HEA) with a 19-year-old virgin named Sissy. This won't do. I didn't want my poor mom to continue to listen to my outrage over this blasphemy, so I wrote an alternate series-ending novel where he ends up with someone more suited to him. Like me. The exercise accomplished three things: first to show that I can pound out a novel in a month, like old times, and have it be good with just a bit of mild tweaking needed; second, to get me back into a writing habit; and third, to show that I could write fanfiction. I won't offer it for sale because the characters are Ward's and it would be nearly impossible to change the particulars, but at least I know I can do it.

I also transferred my domain name to a new web host and I bought www.carolinefuller.com. Caroline Fuller is the name I am going use to write. Caroline Fritz is too tied up with work. Although I am working on a romance novel writing name like Anastasia Caldwell. I don't know. The new website is not up and running yet. I am going to work on it in between everything else. I will keep you posted as to when it is up and running, again.

I  envision 2013 being a productive, successful year. I also was just promoted to editor of my own magazine, so I will be busy, but it is a good busy.

End of year

Well, I will start this off by not apologizing for not writing because it only calls attention to it!

I took classes again this semester, a non-fiction workshop and a capstone class for seniors in the writing program. I read a lot of really great books and some that were disturbing. Good ones were Carrie by Stephen King, You Believers by Jane Bradley, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and poetry by Tim Geiger and Ashley McHugh. The reading was helpful to me in learning about structure. I think I knew about structure without actually knowing I knew it.

I have also come to the conclusion that I don't read enough. And I have not been writing at all. I really suck. I am reading The Cider House Rules by John Irving right now and I wanted to save this passage because it is really beautiful:

"Spring in St. Cloud's meant trouble; drinking trouble, brawling trouble, whoring and raping trouble. Spring was the suicide season. In spring, the seeds for an orphanage were planted and overplanted."

Very nice.

Because I was so busy with school, I did not do Nanowrimo this year. I thought I would feel bad for missing it, but come to find out I didn't miss it at all. Probably because I have so many novels in various states of flux that I can't possibly be burdened with another one.

That being said, I am taking classes again next semester with the promise to read even more and work on my novel. I think "A Middle Distance" because that one has the most promise and seems pretty grown up to me.

Oh, and I moving to Colorado in the next couple of months. Should be interesting.

Long time, no hear

Even though I haven't updated my blog lately, I have been busy writing, mainly informative articles for both GardenGuides.com and eHow.com. I have also been setting up accounts so I can write for other websites as well. I will include URLs when these are up and running. For many of the sites, I can write my own articles on any topic.

So the question is, Is there something you would like to read about? My mom had a good idea about wanting to read an article on kitchen hints. Maybe, The Top 10 Kitchen Hints. How about you? Anything you are interested in reading about but not interested in wading through the pages of websites to get there? Let me know.

Along with this non-traditional writing, I have been working on the edits of my book and my day job. You can say that I am a writing fool!

Play

I just wrote a 15-page stage play (don't ask). It sucks I am sure, but it is gratifying to be able to pound out the pulp fiction.