New Kelly Adventure

Monday evening I was chatting with one of my editors, who is busy working on finishing several drafts of projects she has started before she delivers her third child in August, and she was nudging, okay more like nagging me, to write.  I tried the nudging part with her before to get her inspired to complete some projects but she tended to shut down and disappear for a while and not write much.  I guess I'm kind of the same way.  I went to the store Wednesday evening because I had the munchies and ran into a lady whom I met at the laundromat a few months ago and had given her daughter, age 10, a copy of Finally Home and we got to talking and I was told that her daughter really enjoyed it and kept telling her mom that she couldn't put it down until she had finished reading it.  So, that inspired me some and got me thinking more on the new story since I had a base for it from chatting with Lana.

So, since the state books are on hold for now and I tried putting the karma out to the kids for new stories for Kelly and Emma and that didn't work too well, I know I need to write something else, either a short story or another Kelly story.  I was looking over some story lines from previous winners of kids stories (the kids actually wrote the stories) on Mysterynet.com and some other information about writing mysteries that I had printed off. 

One of the pages I had printed off was a "Mystery Story Starter Ideas: DIY Guide for Children and Adults" by Marilisa Sachteleben.  One of the prompts is titled "The Book Seller's Enigma" and the prompt reads as:  "I hadn't remembered seeing the musty old book shop on that street before, but the old peddler bechoned me.  When I returned the next day with my brother, shop and shopkeeper had gone.  We asked an old-timer passing by.  "That shop?" he declared, "why it ain't been around for 50 years."  (Doesn't that just beckon you to write a story about the store, the shopkeeper or the something else mysterious about the contents of the bookstore?)

When I shared that prompt with Lana, before I actually could get the whole prompt typed into the chat window, she said I could write about a mysterious book from the bookstore.  I mulled it over a day or so, and have now come up with a second adventure for Kelly.  I don't know what I will call it yet, but I've written 2 pages so far and I feel I need to write a couple of pages before I even get to Kelly and Emma's conversation about the bookstore.  I feel I almost have to have an istant message between Kelly and Judy, Kelly's long-time, bestest friend who is blind and from whom Kelly had to move when they moved to the small town where she found the house that actually belonged to her father.  I will play around with it a bit and see what is working and hopefully I will have a new story soon.  When I get a bit further in to the story, I may start sharing some excerpts from the story and may even run a contest for the title of the story.  I will keep you all posted as I progress.  See you all in the postings - E :)

AFGHAN DRAWING:  Don't forget to leave a comment with a valid email to be contacted so that you can be entered in the drawing for the red, white and blue afghan drawing, which will be held around December 1 or so. 

"The Look" Blog Challenge

I've been tagged, not once but twice this week to participate in two different blog hops.  The first challenge is from my friend, Lana Voynich, author of Alaskan Healing and upcoming hockey romance story, Faceoff of the Heart.  For the challenge and to see Lana's posting, you can find it here
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Here are the rules:  "The Look" is a writing prompt, a game, another tagging event. This is how U Got “The Look” works: you take your current manuscript, search for the word “look”, and post the surrounding paragraphs. Lastly, you tag 5 blogging authors who you think will be a good choice for the game.


So here is the beginning of Imogene:  Innocense Lost with the understanding that even though this story is really rough I'm about to revamp it next month when I participate in NaNo (gave up on BIW as previously challenged for myself).  I hope to release this story next summer or fall. 

Jacob watched his mother move her mashed potatoes around on the plate. He knew that this was a big trip for her. He couldn't help but wonder if he would ever measure up to Imogene. Even at his young age of almost eight years, he knew that Imogene was the love of his parents' lives. They always told him that he was special too and that they loved him just as much, but he had seen his mother holding the photograph, talking to the doll and crying herself to sleep so many nights. The photo. It wasn't anything spectacular, just the last time they were a family, and that was even before Jacob had been born. The photo was that of a smiling, young, dark-haired girl. So full of life and bubbling at the brims. Her long, straight hair and slightly slanted eyes gave her the appearance of having been of a different nationality, almost giving her an Asian look. His parents had been happy then too, but in pictures of Jacob and his parents it was very noticeable that the smiles had faded. People always said if Jacob had been older that he and Imogene could have been twins, and they could have; they had very similar features and shared more than just their parents as Jacob shared the same birth date with Imogene


The conversation lacked words but the emotions spoke loud and clear. Sarah Beth had decided that she would make one last trip to find her daughter. Daniel didn't want her to go; Sarah Beth fought and screamed and cried until there were no words left. She felt this trip was going to be different than previous trips where they had tried to make it a family vacation, all the while searching for their lost daughter. This year, something was different. She couldn't quite put her finger on what was bothering her but she had to try. It was find Imogene or die trying and with that thought, Sarah Beth decided this had to be done on her own as she really didn't want to lose the rest of her family.

UPDATE:  10/28/2012 - I was supposed to post this a couple of weeks ago and I don't have anyone to tag so I apologize to Lana for being so late in posting this - See you all in the postings

Revisions

Today I promised myself I would sit at my desk sans distractions and just revise until the end of the day. I started late - waking up after 11 AM, showering and doing the distraction things first (email, plurk, et cetera) and then started revising. Of my friends who sent comments back on Finally Home only one was a fully commented return but those comments are expansive. The other two were Chapters 1 & 2 and Chapters 1-3, respectively.

It looks like I am going to have to push back my publication date to November, about Thanksgiving time. These revisions should have been done months ago for me to have a publication date this month, but alas, I've been putting it off. The writing is okay but it needs punching up (needs to be stronger in places, more action, development of the characters a bit).

So are the revisions going like I planned? No. I need someone to read through Chapters 4 through 16 to comment and markup the ms so that I can finish the revisions. Anyone out there who would like to read an almost 200 page manuscript and make comments to help me revise? Drop me an email at eeldering at gmail dot com and let me know if you have time to read and make comments (not just things like changing a word or adding or deleting but things like intense comments - needs some action here, needs to be reworded, that type of thing) so that I can finish the revisions. Thanks to all of you out there who read my blog and who are willing to help. - E :)


UPDATE (Sunday, 10/02/2011): I found a copy of a friend's comments (from when I first thought I'd submit the story and get it published with a traditionally publisher) that I'm going to use for my revisions. I feel this will at least get me to the point of almost having a final draft. Lana is pretty right on with her comments - so going to revise some tonight and hopefully will finish this tomorrow between work that is left in my pool tonight and work that comes in tomorrow afternoon. Hoping by end of week to be announcing that Finally Home is revision completed - lol - see you in the postings - E :)