Congratulations to Kate Sparkes for winning Coraline by Neil Gaiman! I had a good amount of entrants for this book, and I was very pleased with the turnout. Because the turnout was so good, as you all should know by now, I’m going to do one book giveaway each week. You must be a follower of me to get considered, and there will be different stipulations with each book.
Tomorrow I will reveal what the next book will be, along with its stipulations.
How does a weekly book giveaway sound to all of you? Good, right, because that’s exactly what I’m doing. Each week I will be giving away a young adult novel along the veins of When Stars Die and Stolentime. All of you might as well start following my blog now because that is going to be a consistent stipulation to get into these drawings. You might as well share this post too with others. Since I pick up about 10-13 followers per day, I figure it’s just best to do a weekly one where I draw every Sunday instead of waiting for me to hit a certain number of followers.
The books I’m giving away I’ve already read, so I’m not depriving myself of reading material. And my demo money (extra money I make at my job) will pretty much be going toward buying a book a week, so, no, this will not be squeezing me dry. I’m more than happy to do this especially because, hey, free book. Fun. Fun. Fun.
I will be drawing for Coraline this Sunday and will reveal the next book prize then.
Also, I really want to start doing more guest posts and would love for you guys to e-mail me any of your ideas at thedancingwriter@gmail.com. It can be about whatever you want, so long as it is helpful or relatable (I know these terms are vague, but use them to your discretion). If I have enough, I’d love to do a guest post a day, along with my regularly scheduled blog posts. You can also e-mail me if you want to collaborate on a book giveaway.
I hate the concept of the rough draft. I hate that rough drafts are, by nature, rough and prone to innate crappiness. I love writing, but I hate writing rough drafts because revision ideas are already floating through my brain by the time I’m done with a chapter. I’m able to move on, but it doesn’t take away the fact that I really want to get to the revisions because that’s when things really become fun for me.
What exactly do I do to prepare for a first draft? Well, first I get the idea and let it stew for a week, pretty much being the character and playing out various scenarios in my head. If I can’t let go of the idea, I start to outline each chapter with a rough summary. I never used to outline. I’d just go by the seat of my pants; however, outlines keep everything in order for me and make revision notes that much easier to come up with. And as I’ve said before, outlines prevent writer’s block for me.
Then I just start writing. As I’m writing Stolentime, I’ve been very surprised with what I’ve naturally come up with that isn’t in the outline. The outline is guiding me, my story is going in the direction that the outline has it going in, but I’ve invented scenes I didn’t plan out, and that has been incredibly fun and surprising for me. It makes the drafting process more bearable, but still, I really want to get to the revisions. This story has a lot of promise and doing the revision outline will really bring everything together.
So I have been drafting a chapter a day, or have been trying to. In fact, I should probably be doing two since there is still daylight left to burn when I finish with one. I’ll get that much closer to revisions. I plan to finish the draft some time next month and hopefully have it revised before school starts. Then I’ll give it to my beta reader and see what happens from there. I know I’ve only mentioned Stolentime and haven’t really spoken of what it’s about. Well, this is the post where I’ll finally do that.
I have a vanity charm necklace that I will be using on the cover. Not this one though.
Gene White is a suicidal teen with treatment-resistant depression. Believing he is untreatable, his attempts to drown himself fail when Claude, a puppeteer and doll maker, rescues him from his suicide attempt. He decides to take Gene on as an apprentice and teaches him through bizarre and terrifying adventures that there is value to all life, including Gene’s.
So this is the story that I am working on at the moment. While the draft sucks (because don’t they all?), the story is coming together rather nicely, even though there are elements of it that will need major tweaks, like obvious inconsistencies I haven’t cared to fix.
Also, don’t forget to check out the Coraline book giveaway going on! The post is here. You must leave a comment to be entered and be a follower. Simply liking the post will not put you in the raffle. This will go on until I have my 230th follower, and then I will draw a name from the comments’ section. If you want this drawing to happen soon, share, Tweet, reblog, whatever.
As promised in a previous post, I am going to start doing giveaways now! So here is the first giveaway prize that I will gift:
I chose this book because the current novel I’m working on, Stolentime, has a similar eerie, quirky, bizarre atmosphere, and so I figured Coraline would make an excellent first book giveaway.
Here is the description from Amazon:
The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring….
In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.
The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
Only it’s different.
At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter…
As promised in a previous post, I am going to start doing giveaways now! So here is the first giveaway prize that I will gift:
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
I chose this book because the current novel I’m working on, Stolentime, has a similar eerie, quirky, bizarre atmosphere, and so I figured Coraline would make an excellent first book giveaway.
Here is the description from Amazon:
The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring….
In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.
The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
Only it’s different.
At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there’s another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.
Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.
Some of the stipulations are that you must be following me, you must comment below to get entered, and on the 230th follower, I will draw, so if you want this to go ASAP, start reblogging and sharing this post in whatever way you can. Also, you must own either a Kindle or some reading device that has a Kindle app. It is the quickest way for me to give the giveaway prize to you through e-mail that doesn’t involve mailing it. How this will work is that on the 230th follower, I will enter all your names in a raffle and choose one winner. All others not chosen will get put into the next book drawing.
Congratulations to Kate Sparkes for winning Coraline by Neil Gaiman! I had a good amount of entrants for this book, and I was very pleased with the turnout. Because the turnout was so good, as you all should know by now, I’m going to do one book giveaway each week. You must be a follower of me to get considered, and there will be different stipulations with each book.
How does a weekly book giveaway sound to all of you? Good, right, because that’s exactly what I’m doing. Each week I will be giving away a young adult novel along the veins of When Stars Die and Stolentime. All of you might as well start following my blog now because that is going to be a consistent stipulation to get into these drawings. You might as well share this post too with others. Since I pick up about 10-13 followers per day, I figure it’s just best to do a weekly one where I draw every Sunday instead of waiting for me to hit a certain number of followers. 
amberskyeforbes.wordpress.com 