Archive for the 'Revision Heaven' Category

July 31, 2009 | A Royale Pain,Book One,Book Stuff,Draven Atreides,Life in General,Revision Heaven,The 4-1-1 on Me

I am done and done with revisions for Book One! I plan to send this off to have it edited professionally, but I’m also looking for beta readers.

Back Cover Blurb:

A day at the spa can be a “royale” pain.

Sixteen-year-old Draven Atreides has just started a new gig as an FBI informant. Her To Do list includes: adjust to new life, make new friends, and try not to tell said new friends about her secret job.

A French chemist is peddling his “specially formulated” products to high class spas and his latest target is celeb favorite, The Royale Treatment Day Spa. Unfortunately, his products cause some nasty side effects and the results are so not pretty. Just when Draven’s first assignment seems to be heading south, she receives unwanted assistance in the form of Rader Deschanel. What does he want with Draven? Will she be able to solve her first official case without blowing her cover?

WHO I’M LOOKING FOR:

~ YA critique group members
~ YA writers (teens and adults)
~ Book reviewers who review YA novels (teens and adults)

WHAT I NEED:

~ Detailed feedback on what’s not working, what needs improvement, suggestions, etc.

WHAT YOU’LL GET:

~ A complete 42,000 word YA fiction novel to read in MS Word format

~ Your name in the Acknowledgements section

~ A free copy of the book whenever it gets published

~ A chance to beta read the whole series

~ The knowledge that you helped edit a novel

~ Eternal thanks from the author

Contact me at celise[at]celisedowns[dot]com if you’re interested.

Technorati Tags: beta readers

July 29, 2009 | A Royale Pain,Book One,Book Stuff,Draven Atreides,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Revision Heaven,Revision Report

I’m up to Chapter 9 in typing up revisions. In the process, I realized that Chapter 5 had only 5 pages within the chapter. 5 double-spaced pages, that is. Single-spaced would’ve probably been, like, 2-3 pages. LOL.

Nice. Not.

I ended up combining Chapter 5 and 6, so now the rest of the chapter headings are off by one.

Which could be a good thing. The Psych Eval section could be a whole chapter by itself, it’s that long. Well, it seems like it on paper. I could be wrong, but we’ll see.

July 27, 2009 | A Royale Pain,Book One,Book Stuff,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Life in General,Movie Queue,Revision Heaven,The 4-1-1 on Me,Weekend Wrap-Up,Writing Movements,contests

YOU HAVE THREE MORE DAYS TO VOTE! Enter to win either a $50 or $25 gift card to an independent bookstore in your area. Should I change Draven’s last name? Head over to my FUN STUFF page and give your two cents. For teens only, ages 13-18. Deadline is July 31st, MST.

Saturday, I saw THE UGLY TRUTH twice in one day. It wasn’t a hardship, really, seeing Gerard Butler for a couple of hours. It’s interesting to see how well he can hide that Scottish accent of his. In 300 and ROCKNROLLA, he let it all hang out. But in this movie, P.S. I LOVE YOU and NIM’S ISLAND, he Americanized it a little bit, but the accent still slipped through. I didn’t think Mr. Maul would want to see it, but he surprised me by suggesting it.

Sunday, we went to breakfast at U.S. Egg. My co-worker and sometimes go there for lunch. It used to be called the Blue Plate Brunchery, but now they’re under new management. With a completely different menu. That’s one of the places I like to go that serves breakfast all day long. Sometimes, a burger or a sandwich just doesn’t cut it. We weren’t too impressed with the coffee, but the food we ordered was pretty good. Mr. Maul liked their protein pancakes (blueberries, cinnamon and slivers of almonds are baked into the pancake batter).

We also watched QUANTUM OF SOLACE on Blu-Ray later that night. I think he bought the regular version for me, but of course, this one looks a lot better.
Surprisingly, I have yet to finish typing up the revisions, but I had good writing movement last week: 12 new pages in The Lesson segment. Yeah, it had already been written, but when I was going back through it—and trying to find a place in the novel to put it—I realized I needed to add a little more detail. 12 new pages emerged. Yay me.

So, how was weekend?

Technorati Tags: THE UGLY TRUTH, Gerard Butler, 300, ROCKNROLLA, P.S. I LOVE YOU, NIM’S ISLAND, U.S. Egg, QUANTUM OF SOLACE

July 21, 2009 | A Royale Pain,Book One,Book Stuff,Draven Atreides,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Life in General,Movie Queue,Revision Heaven,The 4-1-1 on Me,Weekend Wrap-Up,contests

YOU STILL HAVE TIME TO VOTE! Enter to win either a $50 or $25 gift card to an independent bookstore in your area (yes, I changed my mind. We need to support local bookstores more). Should I change Draven’s last name? Head over to my FUN STUFF page and give your two cents. For teens only, ages 13-18. Deadline is July 31st, MST.

Friday after work, I went to see HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. I liked it. It amazes me how much the characters have grown. Literally and figuratively. I mean, when these kids were tapped to play Harry, Hermione and Ron, they were 10-11. We’ve watched them grow up. Rupert’s 20 yrs old and Emma will be attending Brown University. How wild is that? I’ve never read the books, but I’ve seen all the movies. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. So unlike the extensive review I read over at Horserider’s blog, I can honestly say that I never have any expectations going in when I see these movies. I don’t know what’s missing, what’s been added or how important those deletions/additions are to the story. I just like the movies, so I go see them. Plain and simple. One thing for all you HP fans to keep in mind, and it’s also something Daniel Radcliffe mentioned in an interview, is that they can’t put everything from the books into the movie. It’s just not possible. Just be glad they’re making the movies.

Saturday, I spent the better part of the morning in the heat at the The Arizona Rod & Classic Car Club Annual Backpack Giveaway. My Dad is a member of this car club and this is their second year doing this backpack giveaway for ChildHelp and Keys. It was my second time volunteering as well and this time, I was manning the Book Booth. Not by myself though, because that would’ve been a freakin’ nightmare. Each booth had something different. Backpacks, school supplies (puzzles and notebooks), children’s books, free hot dogs and drinks, raffle tickets, etc. Once kids got their backpacks, they could visit the other booths and pick up stuff.

Last year, I was giving away stuffed animals—this year it was children’s books. Kohl’s donated over 1000 books. Me and 5 other people gave away 9 different titles, one of which was Kung Fu Panda (that one was a big hit, needless to say). The one thing I discovered at this event this year was that a couple of volunteers felt “entitled.” During the course of handing out books, a volunteer from another booth (and I really wish I could remember from what company, because I would’ve called them out in this post) came over and helped herself to two books saying that “her daughter would really like these.”

(more…)

Technorati Tags: HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, Brown University, Daniel Radcliffe, The Arizona Rod & Classic Car Club Annual Backpack Giveaway, ChildHelp, Keys, Kohl’s, Kung Fu Panda

July 13, 2009 | A Royale Pain,Book One,Book Stuff,Draven Atreides, Teenage Informant Series,Life in General,Movie Queue,Revision Heaven,The 4-1-1 on Me,Weekend Wrap-Up,Writing Movements

Seriously. A whole lotta nothin’. Mr. Maul and I went to see PUBLIC ENEMIES on Saturday. Really liked it. Here I was all excited to see Channing Tatum and SPOILER AHEAD he bites it within the first 20 mins of the friggin’ movie! Gah! I was highly disappointed. OT: Congratz on your recent nuptials, Channing. Hope you and Jenna are happy. Billy Crudup (THE WATCHMEN) played J. Edgar Hoover and I don’t know if it was the make-up or how he was carrying himself, but his face looked really weird. Like he had no neck or something. Mr. Maul and I liked the movie, though. The previews were unimpressive, though. Which is surprising. I like to get there early for the previews and the ones they showed were ones I’ve already seen.

Sunday, we ate Ron’s Place (aka The Original Pancake House) as kind of a last minute thing. They serve breakfast until 2pm on Saturdays and Sundays, and we got there a little after 1, I think. And the place was nearly packed. But if you’ve ever eaten there, then you know that the food is ALWAYS worth the wait. Then we checked out Luci’s Healthy Marketplace on the way home. We went just to check it out and ended up buying stuff because we were given a $10 off $50 or more coupon. We plan to go back to try out the omelette bar…and possibly to get cat food. Sweet Pea seemed to like the sample of dry kibble and the canned food we got her. We even met one of the owner’s (Luci is his wife) and talked to him for a few minutes. I think it’s so cool to be able to interact with the owner of a business and know that they’re actually there, running the business, and not leaving it to someone else. He was very nice and thanked us–several times, LOl–for coming in.

Writing Movement – Last week was a good revision week. I started incorporating the sections I wrote into Book One. It’s a good thing I’m reading through the whole thing again because I’m finding typos and having to write additional content. Which is good. The word count was close to 40,000. I’m thinking this might be a little bit over by the time I’m done integrating everything.

THERE’S STILL TIME TO VOTE! Enter for a chance to win a $25 gift card or a $50 gift card to either Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com by voting on whether or not I should change Draven’s last name. Deadline is July 31st, MST. Only teens, ages 13-18, can vote, so hop on over to my FUN STUFF page and give your two cents.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of continuing the series after Draven, by way of using the name of the program she was recruited into; Only because I had planned for 6 books in this series and think that it would be hard to try to write standalones after doing a series for so long. Maybe once the 6 books are done, and I see what the reception has been like for Draven, I’ll pull the idea to the surface again. I also have another idea for a series, but I’m not going to speak on that yet. I dunno.

So, how was your weekend?

Technorati Tags: PUBLIC ENEMIES, Channing Tatum, Billy Crudup, THE WATCHMEN, J. Edgar Hoover, The Original Pancake House, Luci’s Healthy Marketplace