Hello all! I've had a productive week this time around!

First of all, I submitted to the PNWA contest like I said I would! (Half an hour before the deadline at almost eleven-thirty at night on the last day, but still. Before the deadline.) I had been working on the first four chapters of The House on the Rocks, but decided on only the first three because they were strongest. Now I suppose I just wait.

I also got to meet Ally Condie, Margaret Stohl, and Brendan Riechs for a book event at my favorite place in the world, Third Place Books! It was for the release of Ally Condie's new book The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe, which is a revenge story that sounds right up my alley. Margaret Stohl is the writer of the Red Widow and Red Vengeance novels, which I really love, but I didn't know she was going to be there until the last second so I didn't get those signed, which was a bummer. I'll just have to go to another event with her soon. Oh darn. ;) And Brendan was super nice and let me in on some great pacing, action, and plot twist tips that I can't wait to use! The most helpful one was this: If you're stuck on what should happen next and it doesn't feel exciting enough, ask yourself what the worst thing is that could happen right now in your story. Then do it.

Next time I update, it will be on my next big project: Camp NaNoWriMo! One of my three favorite months on the year! I'm doing a complete rework of Rush book one, tentatively called The Pawns now, and piecing in the parts I've originally written that I still like to make a whole new draft. It'll be my first time doing NaNoWriMo with a full-time job, so it promises to be interesting.

Until next time!

Let's get this experiment started!

I'm just going to say right off the bat that this is going to be a work in progress blog- a place to put my thoughts as I have them, the steps toward getting published as I take them, and the pieces I'm proud of and want to share. I'm going to try to post once a week, because that (hopefully) means I'm making some form of measurable progress once a week. I can live with that pace.

A little about me- I'm twenty-five, I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I've been writing seriously for over ten years and for fun even longer than that. I mostly write science fiction and fantasy (the real world is boring, why write real stuff when you can put aliens and dragons in it?), but I dabble in a little of everything. My kryptonite is always starting new projects because I get inspiration at the drop of a hat, so one of my main goals this year is to practice focusing on one piece. I also have pretty much only written fiction in the past, so this year I'm practicing branching out to nonfiction and personal. My favorite place to write is with my cat Fuzzy, who has nearly deleted several documents and woke me at four this morning to sit on the pillow next to my face. I love him.

Currently, I'm working on The House on the Rocks- which you'll definitely learn all about soon, so stay tuned- to submit it to the PNWA contest for unpublished works, and also getting this website put together. (If you're here in the early stages, I commend you. It's still mostly lorem ipsum at this point.) I've had a blog before but nothing that I really liked, so wish me luck figuring this out.

I'll see you next week to let you know the status of submitting to the PNWA contest and what I'm working on next!

-Alexa