I’ve been retreating into my stories whenever possible this week. Considering everything else that’s happening in the world right now, I am sure that I’m not the only one. Plus it’s the anniversary of everything going down with Boyo, and even though it’s been three years since it happened, and even though he is over all the issues that caused that – well, it’s not something you forget.

So writing has been a great distraction.

I’ve been mainly working on projects that I plan to publish under one of my pen names since I promised readers that the next installment would be out this fall. When I made that promise, I hadn’t planned on publishing The Undying Ones: Revenants yet, and getting that ready for publication ate up a lot of time I had planned to spend on the other project.

I’m going to need to work on juggling things a little better if I plan to keep up this pen name business. I think I might have to invest in a planner to help keep track of things once Boyo is enrolled in preschool.

Anywho, It’s been a bit of a shock to go from The Undying Ones to an alternative version of Victorian England, but the words are flowing. Man, are they flowing. I have five or six more chapters until I’m at the end of this particular story. Maybe eight if I try to push it. What’s also rough is that this project is a mystery, and I’ve never written a mystery before, especially one with so much romance (There’s currently a love square that’s trying to morph into a love pentagon on me…) so trying to keep the pacing while not giving away too much information at the wrong time, has been a bit of a battle.

On other fronts I have another give away going on for Revenants! This time it’s on twitter, and all you have to do is like this tweet and retweet it in order to enter. It’s for a paperback copy of The Undying Ones: Revenants and a skein of yarn from Knit Picks.

Where are my knitters at? (Hookers will love this too!) Like this post and retweet by Sunday to win! #giveaway #freebie #yalit #yartg #IARTG pic.twitter.com/eerrsSuKf2

— Christina L Olson (@ceeleeolson) August 15, 2017

I’ll probably do another one on Facebook over the weekend with some yarn from Mosaic Moon (At least I think it’s Mosaic Moon… I bought it second hand so I’m not 100% sure, but it’s pretty!). So if you don’t do twitter, keep an eye out on my facebook page for that!

And now, let’s get on to the good stuff! It’s WIPpet Wednesday time!

WIPpet Wednesday is a blog hop where writers share a snippet of whatever project that they might be working on. The only rule is that the project must something to do with the date. Like 8 sentences from chapter 16, or 16 words from chapter 8, or 24 paragraphs because 16+8=24.

Sometimes the math can get kind of crazy – but math is not my strong suit, so I try to keep it as simple as possible.

I was going to share a snippet from the short story that The Undying Ones started off as, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment. I know it’s around here somewhere, but it’s being elusive. And I can’t share anymore of Revenants without spoiling it. Same goes for Elusion. I haven’t written any more on The Broken Man, nor do I have anything new featuring Hobbie and Anagha. So, I’m going to bounce over to my Dragonriders of Pern Fanfic, Between Two Worlds. In it, Marcus is introducing Master Composer Domick to video games. There’s 11 paragraphs (16-8=8 plus three just for fun), but it’s mostly dialogue.

Then the boy introduced him to a game called Guitar Hero. Here, Domick was positive, was something he could finally excel at. Even though the guitar resembled no instrument he knew with it’s colored plastic keys, it still involved music, so how hard could it be? Domick stubbornly chose the hardest song available, despite Marcus’s advice, and was promptly booed at by an artificial crowd. He frowned, and tried again, only to be kicked off the stage. He heard a chuckle behind him and turned to find Norah leaning against another machine while she watched them. “Enjoying yourself?”

He raised an eyebrow at her, “What does it look like to you?”

“Like you’re about ready to beat the screen in.”

“It doesn’t make any sense. The notes it’s playing shouldn’t be associated with the keys that I’m hitting.”

“That’s because it’s not a real guitar.”

“I can see that.”

The dancer snorted at him, “Here, let me show you…” Instead of taking the guitar he offered her though, she came up behind him and stood so that her chest pressed into his back and her chin rested lightly on his shoulder. He stiffened in surprise at her touch and she backed away. “Sorry.”

“No… I’m… It’s… Please, continue.” He gestured helplessly, and she gave him a smile, and covered his hands with hers again, but didn’t stand nearly as close this time.

“You’re thinking like a musician and you can’t really do that with this -“

“This coming from the girl who can’t sing a note or play an instrument.”

She glared at him. “Do you want my help or not?”

To read more WIPpet Wednesday posts, go here.