Monthly Review: January 2019

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It took me 30 minutes just to find a photo that suited my needs, and I even edited that!

Anyway, it is the fourth Wednesday of the month, so that means I am looking on back on the month to discuss any writing I have done. I haven't really done too much writing, but I have been writing, and that's always a good thing.

I did some last minute touches on Fractured Princess, which I plan to publish this year through Amazon. The Kickstarter for its cover art goes live next Wednesday, and I am trying not to freak out that I'm actually going through with this. I started writing this story in 2004. After a couple of computer crashes, breaks for college, three or four major rewrites and too many revisions and "no thank yous" from agents to count, it's a big step for me to say this story is ready to see real light. I hope people like it.

I've also done some more writing in The Queen's Daughters (introduced here), which will be the next publication if Divided Princess isn't finished first. TQD is the first non-derivative story I've written in a LONG time. Most people start writing because of a book they read, and as I've said before, my first attempts at books were because of television, a la X-Men: The Animated Series, which I was watching as a kid. Then came my rip-off of The Outsiders, and I was heavy into Backstreet Boys fanfiction in my teen years, The Tribe fanfiction in my college years, and between them Fractured Princess (formerly Save the Queen, formerly The Crystal Bearer), which (who doesn't know by now) is based on Final Fantasy (pant, wheeze). The Queen's Daughters will to be my first original-original novel-length story. The only thing I've pulled from for it is African mythology and folklore, and loosely at that. I'm really excited about it. I know how it ends, so I just have to get there.

Speaking of sequels (huh, what?), the other night on my way home, I realized that I might have an idea for a sequel to the The Queen's Daughters, and I'm here for it. I'll start writing down the ideas, but as I'm not even halfway done the first book, I won't focus on it too hard.

February is going to be an exciting month for me (I hope), so I hope you've had a productive January and a good start to 2019!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey there this is kind of off off topic but Iwas wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or iif
you have tto manually code with HTML. I'm startfing a blog soon but
have no coding know-how so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Debra Renée Byrd said...

Hey there! On Blogger, you can do either HTML or Compose, which lets you write your posts and do all of your font changes like you would in your document software. I hope that is what a WYSIWYG editor is??