edits and new books

Quick side note- a followup to my post about snow here- We got hammered Thursday night into Friday morning. Woke up to almost two feet of heavy wet snow. :P

Anyway...

I LOVE collecting books about the Vietnam War. (Somehow that sounds very creepy...) My newest one came today and it's beautiful. Thank you, Half.com, because I got this very expensive hardcover for a third of the cover price.

It's a stunning book. It's also a very detailed timeline of Vietnam and the Vietnam War, filled with amazing pictures. (I'm a Huey junkie, I admit it- this has some excellent pictures of them.)

Okay, moving on now.

My first round of edits came in from my sweet editor Cyn. I've got my work cut out for me as I've got only until March 12th to get those back to her and well, they are rather daunting. I've got a plan of attack though so that I can juggle those and two jobs. (oh, and a new webpage design job.) Unfortunately, something's gotta give so VN2, I'm sorry, back you go for a couple of weeks. If worse comes to worse, I'll pull a day of vacation. I'm gonna get them done.

Oh, apparently I'm a massive abuser of the word "and". Shamefully abusive. (hangs head.)

The blub came in too so I signed off on that.

I'm also looking at wedging an evening class in there as well. Because apparently I'm not busy enough it would appear.

Snow bunny I am not

Sorry this isn't much to do with writing but well, with all the snow going on here, I figured it was worth a word or two. LOL. If you've seen my biography at my website or at Lyrical Press, you know I'm an upstate New Yorker. (And no, that's NOT West Chester County!) Technically, I'm really a central New Yorker, right smack in between Buffalo and Albany on the New York State Thruway. Yeah, I know, everyone's yawning here so I'll move this along.

Anyway, it's been snowing. A lot. We're a hardy bunch here- six inches this time of year is considered a dusting. Eighteen in 24 hours, well it's annoying to most. To me it's a royal butt pain. I'm not a snow bunny, I don't think it's pretty, I don't like to ski or skate or even walk in it, let alone drive in it. If I had my way, we'd have a green Christmas and 70s starting on January 1st.

*sigh* Now if I could stay home and write on my various projects here, then rah! Let it snow! But I juggle two jobs, both a sizable commute for me and by the end of February, I've had more than enough of snow. :P

So Gwenna here is waving her white flag in surrender- (okay, I've been since December 1st!) and concede to Mother Nature she's won. Now can we please move onto spring here? Pretty please? With daisies on top?

Good website

I'm between my two day jobs here and killing time at the local Barnes and Noble. Gotta love free WiFi!

Anyway, a good friend of mine sent me this link which I thought I'd post here as it's a good one for ways to use blogging as a marketing tool for selling your books.

Selling Books.com

I'll be adding it to my Gwenna Links page this weekend.

Gwenna Project updates

Gwenna Project: VN2 (Nate and Ian)- word count 32,024. I spent the better part of the last two weeks cleaning up a real mess of a scene I had made. But I finished it and added over a 1000 words in the word count, but more importantly, I'm much happier with it. Still not the best action scene I've ever written but it won't hold me back now. That's all I care about, being able to move this forward. It's my goal to complete chapter 7 this week, despite working two nights on top of my regular job. I'm still aiming for mid April to complete the last draft.

Gwenna Project: Lost and Found (Mark and Josh)- This one is still in edits and still on track for a June release with Lyrical Press. :)

Gwenna Project: Then and Now (Mark and Josh)- Word count 1,534. I wasn't able to work on this one this weekend but I did get one of the books I ordered about Key West and a detailed map of Old Town, Key West which I really needed. I knew the Outer Banks as I'd been there over a dozen times over the years. But I've never been to Key West so all the research I can get my hands on here is important. Right now I don't have a date in mind to finish the first draft as my efforts are really for VN2.

No other Gwenna projects to up date on at this point. I'll probably pick up a few new books off of Half.com but not until the end of the month.

cover art on my author's page

My cover art is now on my author's page at Lyrical. :) Made my whole evening. LOL.

Gwenna Project updates

For some reason, Mark and Josh are being quite pushy with me again. Gotta go with what's screaming at you I guess. I'm not complaining.

Gwenna Project: Lost and Found (Mark and Josh)- As far as I know, it's still on track for release in June. It's still in edits and of course I got my beautiful cover art so I'm very happy there. I'm going to a convention the weekend before it's release and I'm gonna have postcards and bookmarks with the cover art to hand out. One of my room mates/fellow author wants to have a book party.

Gwenna Project: Then and Now (Mark and Josh 2)- Word count 1,534. I've got a solid start with five pages. I also ordered a couple of books about Key West and the Florida Keys since that's where this story will be staged. And a detailed map of Key West. So I hope to have those shortly since I got them off of Amazon.com.

Gwenna Project: VN2 (Nate and Ian)- Word count: 29,360. I've been rewriting the hot mess I made out of a large action scene that involved several characters in a crowded area. I'm pretty satisfied with the first 2/3rds, but now I'm in the thick of it and it's going to take me some sorting out. I know I can do this, I've always been proud of being able to pull together a large action scene. Because of that I haven't been able to move it forward. I'm still aiming for mid April for a completed first draft.

My other two Gwenna Projects are still in the research and hold stage. I've got at least one new book about Vietnam on order for Imperial City. I've got my eye on a couple for WWII Army Airforce in England. I did pick up one in a bargin bin (I love bargin bins at bookstores!) that is photos and specs for every plane used in WWII. Aircraft of World War II. Considering this is an a $90 book I picked up for $14.98, you could say I'm more than pleased with myself.

And what few people actually read this blog may note that I'm trying to write in here more often. Trying to. I often feel I don't have a lot to say but I'm going to do my best to post every couple of days if at all possible on advise from my very sweet editor.

Notes about Vietnam

Interesting article in Vietnam magazine about dog tags. They are sold all over Vietnam today to tourists with the claim they are the real thing. My friend and military advisor shrugged them off as being fakes as most people believed them to be. But this article says not necessarily and it was an interesting read. They are still being dug up and found all over the country to this day. The fact was, they were easily lost and my friend once told me a cute story where he had several that were not his own. When you were assigned to work details, they read your dog tags and marked you down according to that. He said he would simply show them a dog tag not his own then when the work detail came up, he was somewhere else, lazing around. (He was a combat engineer btw, in Vietnam from 1967-1968.) It's little fun details like this that I love to use and the fact that they are authentic is everything to me.

Vietnamdogtags.com works to get as many authentic dog tags recovered and then matched to the GI who lost them. Or is often the case, a surviving family member.

In other research, I just ordered this book- The Timeline of the Vietnam War. I love Half.com btw. :)

Books that are NOT about Vietnam but I still want for reference and resource:

Ultimate Gay Sex- this is a pretty pricy book but I found it on Half. com much cheaper. For now I'm just going to wish list it.
Gay Sex- A Manual for Men who Love Men- I may pick this one up this week off of Half.com. I'm thinking about it for now. I write this stuff, I like knowing what I'm writing about.

Cover Art!

I got the cover art for Mark and Josh yesterday! So of course I must share! Renee at Lyrical Press did a fabulous job and got most of the elements I wanted in including the Vietnam Wall, Josh wearing his dog tags and even a Huey helicopter. So what's not to like?

You can appreciate it a helluva a lot better on my website, I promise! Seriously, I'm very happy with it. It's starting to feel more real now!

Gwenna project updates

Gwenna Project: Lost and Found (Mark and Josh)- This still in edits where it should be. We are still looking at a June 21st release date at this point. I'm looking forward to seeing the edits come back and how the cover art is going to look of course. :)

Gwenna Project: VN2 (Nate and Ian)- Current word count- 29160. I was able to break my block and get a complicated confrontation/fight scene completed. Am I happy with it? No. But I got the bones of it down. There are a lot of characters involved and I'm usually a lot better at weaving them all into the scene so no one gets forgotten. I did a lousy job of that this go around so I printed off the scene and I will work on notes edits on paper while I try to move forward with the next chapter- which is Chapter 7 btw.

So no other Gwenna projects at this point. I get a break in my teaching, have the week off from it next week so maybe I can get something done on both VN2 and Then and Now (Mark and Josh's sequel.) I'm also going to look into more research on both WWII/ The Army Air Force and period England in the mid 1940s. And I need to get more info on the Battle of Hue- so I'm looking into a some books. Damn but I wish my military advisor who served in Vietnam was still alive. I miss his details. He was Army, not Marines, but he had a lot of information on Hue. What I wouldn't give to find a Marine who is also a Vietnam veteran. Who would talk to me.

Well, time for the Super Bowl or close to it. And yes, I watch it for the commercials. LOL

500 words a day

Ideally, if we write, we should try to write everyday. I admit, much as I would love to do that, I'm not able to. What I do try (and I admit, I'm not always successful), is to make the best use of time I can when I do have time to write. Anyway, some interesting new links to check out in that endevour to write every day.

500 Words a Day

Too much of a challenge? Why not try the 250 Words a Day.

Not enough of a challenge? Well there's always 1000 Words a Day.

So why wait for November and NaNoWriMo, right?

A few links and a few random thoughts on Facebook

I found a couple of interesting links over the last few days, so I thought I'd share.

Daily Writing Tips There is a lot of interesting and usable stuff on there. A lot of their ads are for self publishing, so that distresses me a bit. There is a great page on pen names- what they are, why an author should or shouldn't use one. A friend of mine and I have been going back and forth on it as I'm one of those people who feels you should have a pen name- and not just because I write gay erotica. But I digress a little here. Anyway, this looks like a nice site and so I'm going to add it to Gwenna's links on the web page.

The Write Game Blog- the friend mentioned above nudged me to this blog. Very well done. I'd friend this one but not sure how they would feel about a writer of gay smut being listed on their blog. But I will put a link on Gwenna's links page anyway.

Romance Writers United has had a complete overhaul and it looks very nice. Be sure to check it out if you haven't been there. They have free advertising, btw, in return for posting their icon on your website.

My editor at Lyrical- CD Yates, is also an author. Her newest release In the Cards came out a few days ago. Be sure to check it out!

Now on to Facebook and the other evil stepsister- Twitter. I teach a medical reimbursement class in the evenings and the topic of ethics came up. With that came that wonderful world of social networks, including Facebook and Twitter and there are others of course. I have ten students in this class and when I asked, all of them said they had a Facebook page. Not surprising I guess in this day and age.

I don't. Not a personal one, and so far, not one for Gwenna either. In all honesty, I see Facebook as something that should be treated like a live grenade and I'm holding off on dealing with it and the evil stepsister- Twitter, until I absolutely have to. I have all I can do to keep up this and my Blog, adding a couple of "social networks" in my life makes me cringe. That's one issue. Here are some of the others.

Fact, one employee in my regular day job went into Facebook on her own time, mind you, when Facebook was having some huge security breech problems. Consequently, within 15 minutes to half an hour our entire network of around 200 computers, including our at home workers were nailed with a very nasty virus that took us down completely. We deal with people's medical records. Our poor IT team was in a complete panic for several hours. (I think one is still heavily drinking in an effort to get past the nightmares...)

Fact, I know of at least two employees that I worked with who have been FIRED for remarks they made on Facebook. Immediately. Also, our local news ran a report about the fact that hackers find Facebook to be this wonderful gate into your computer, your identity and a whole host of problems you do NOT want to visit your doorstep- because these people "Friend" you and you think you know who they are- when they infact are the ugly that is identity theft.

I realize that Facebook has come a long ways and has become for many, a religion. It's like those expensive 3G cellphones that everyone (but me) must have and use and they can't imagine their life BEFORE Facebook and iPhone. I get that, I do. I just wish I didn't have to play in the sandbox as well. Don't get me wrong- I'm a gadget girl myself- I personally have not only a desktop computer, but a fantastic laptop with kick ass graphics and now have a Netbook as well. I love the internet and I'm a firm believer that eBooks are the wave of the future and I was saying that TEN YEARS ago. I even design websites (Anyone here need a nice and cheap website? I'm your girl!) But Facebook and Twitter? I'll keep looking at them like a live grenade- handle with extreme care.

Having said that, my lovely editor sent this link along about how authors should be promotiing themselves and of course, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs are all part of that system. It's a great link and wonderful information and the credit goes to her as I post it here. I'll post various

Gwenna project updates later this weekend. I hope!