Katie Runyon

I quickly went through my first chapter and added it to the queue on Critique Circle. According to the site it will up on the “Newbie Queue” Wednesday, December 6th – Wednesday, December 13th. My screen name on there is “katier”. I will post a reminder closer to the date and you can at least stop on by and check out the whole first chapter.

So Friday is my birthday and first I will be celebrating with my grandmother and grandfather, then after I pick up my brother we will go out for ice cream. Then later we will be having cake and so on. Saturday I have to stop at the mall and pick out some presents and then hurry back to get ready and head out to a Christmas party.

It is strange to have things planned, usually I am hanging out all by my lonesome.

We are moving closer to the BIG update and I am hopefully ready.

Well I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. My sister and her son came up from Florida for a few days. My family drove down from NJ to the bottom of Virginia to meet her. So we were in the car for almost 24 hours between the drive there and back. We had left at 5am on Wednesday and of course I didn’t sleep any Tuesday night. I got about an hour of sleep during the drive (about 10 minutes at a time). So we got back after 2am Thursday and then it took me about two hours to get to bed. So the last few days I have been trying to make up for the lost hours of sleep. Needless to say, I have not had time to do anymore writing but I hope to be able to do a little this week.

My birthday is coming up on Friday and then Saturday I have a Christmas party to attend. I also have to start working on getting some Christmas decorations up in the coming weeks. I was only slightly surprised to see houses decked out even before Thanksgiving. I am waiting until it is at least December for that.

If you haven’t heard, there is a new chat room, hopefully better than the last. I will not be upgrading it until I see that more people are using it, otherwise there is no point. So use the chat room, tell others about it and you can come and use it to talk about anything you want. Any traffic to the site is good and the more interest shown in my site or my work will cause more to be added. So if you want to see a little more or have any other ideas, feel free to leave your ideas on here or in the forum. My email address is also on the “About Me” page.

Well I finally am moving on to writing the beginning of the second story. After working out a few key details that I needed to begin, I am now working on how to start it off. I don’t have too much yet and I don’t think it is how I want to start. It isn’t really catchy to me, so I think I might need to go back to the drawing board (or in this case, writing board). Here is the first little passage for you to read anyway:

The sound of applause reached their ears and Bryna rolled her eyes. She returned her concentration to what she was doing and dodged left. The distraction bought her a smack across the arm.
“Pay attention. You can’t afford to be so easily distracted.” Daemyn warned her.
Bryna ignored her Brother’s comment and took a jab at his open side. She put all her anger and shame into the blow.
As Daemyn stepped back she swung around and fell to the ground, landing hard on her back. She laid there, eyes blinking up at the sky, not wanting to get up.
“Come on, get up.” Daemyn gently prodded her in the side with his foot.
“Do I have to?” She groaned.
“Yes. Everyone will be home soon and you need to get cleaned up for your birthday dinner.”

I’ll have to post again when/if I try again.

Well my brain storming isn’t coming along too well. I’ve been making a list of some powers, but none seem to be what I am looking for. I want something unique, but not too powerful. It also needs something that can end up being useful somehow and has room to advance. I will probably be stuck on this for a while. I started trying to think of ways to start off and am not too sure, but have a vague idea. I need to come up with some kind of power or something to begin writing though. It’s not fun being stuck when you are ready to move on. I guess I will just have to do a lot more thinking and a little less getting angry at Texas Hold’em, which by the way I really suck at.

Alright. In the two minutes or so that I left to feed my cats, an idea came to me. I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet, but it might work. Either way, I have a lot more thinking to do. This needs to be unique and interesting. I really need to push my creativity to the limit if I want this to be as great as I think it can.

I should get to sleep so my mind can recharge. I usually have some interesting dreams, so maybe something will come to me as I sleep.

I figured I would let everyone into my thought process and see how I am working on ideas and so on. So here is what I have written in my notes so far for my second novel:

1. Past:
a. Kari’s grandmother.
b. Kari’s mother.
c. An Elementi from long ago.

3. Other:
a. A woman appears/wakes up not remembering anything.
b. A woman with a rocky history is thrust into the role of hero.
c. A girl who has been taught magic since she was a baby runs away to keep from shaming her family because she always falls short.

Those are some starting points at least. I have decided to delve into one of them a little deeper to see where it goes (3c). So the first thing I do is try for a name. I personally like to have my names mean something, so I use babynames.com to look up names and meanings to find the ones that fit what I am looking for. Some of my minor characters are chosen at random, but my main characters’ names usually have a lot of thought involved. Here are some names I have sifted out so far:

Nadia – “Hope” – Slavic
Nala – “Successful” – African
Nailah – “Successful” – Arabic
Nickan – “Victory” – American
Nika – “Bringing Victory” – Slavic
Bryna – “Strong One” – Celtic/Gaelic

The “N” names seemed to be popular with my choices tonight, but with all those “N” names I am leaning towards the one that isn’t.

I have started a bio of sort to try and get a feel for my character. Here is what I have so far. Much of this is subject to change.

17 years old. Dark brown hair past her shoulders. Brown eyes. Scar in her hairline on the left side of her forehead from a childhood mishap. Low self-esteem. Short and skinny, runt of the family. Youngest of three children. Older brother is 21 and member of the town council. Sister is 19 and married to a wealthy man in a neighboring town. Father is also part of the city council and mother is active in charities and teaches at the school. Family is one of the richest in the town of Abarow. Has weak magical abilities. Smart, but not strong or fast, etc.

That is only the beginning of this all, but maybe it gives you a hint of how I work. I don’t even know if this is the story for me, but I will work on it a little father and see how it goes. I should be getting to bed now. ‘Night.

I have re-thought my decision to try contemporary fantasy and have decided against it. Why my sudden change of mind? Well I just couldn’t think of anything to write. I chose the genre that I read and have a passion for, so why mess with it? The only easy way out of this than, is to use the world I have already created, but use different characters and events. I have not had adequate time to think into this much, so my ideas are limited for now. I could go into the past, maybe using Kari’s mother, grandmother, or someone yet unknown. Or I could choose an unknown/lesser known character that is around the time of the book I am writing now. I will have to write all my ideas down and make sure I branch off each idea so I have plenty to choose from.

Last night my younger brother, now a senior in High School, wanted to me take a look a short horror story he wrote for his English class and I willingly obliged. I remember having to do the same thing, for the same teacher and took a look. I ended up doing an adequate revision, making sure not to change too much because he didn’t want to have the teacher thinking someone else wrote it. After going through it, I realized how much I have learned. Everything from POV and realism (now I know research is always needed to check facts) to the flow of words and tense. I won’t go into too much detail, wouldn’t want to bore you. It was good exercise for my mind and when I need to go over my own work. I know I won’t be able to be ruthless, it is my work after all and I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t like it that way.

Well, time is wasting and I have plenty to do. Maybe I will be able to get some writing done in these next few days. I have plenty to do around the house, especially to get everything ready for my older sister and her son to stay here for awhile. I’ve also been plenty busy trying to add more to make the LARGE update as bountiful as can be. There is no telling when it will happen, but I am hoping for sooner rather than later.

Well I did post a nice long post last night… Of course the first time I don’t actually check to make sure it actually showed up, it doesn’t. So now my beautiful post is gone. I really don’t want to try and remember everything I wrote and repeat it. But I will give you a quick recap.

It doesn’t apply now, but happy belated Halloween. Some of my decorations were stolen and I am still a little peeved about that.

Also, if I remember correctly, I stated that I was thinking about doing a little work on another novel. I haven’t even really thought much about it, but am hoping it helps me easily move back into writing my current one. I was thinking of making my next one a contemporary fantasy. After finding out how much work needs to be put into the one I am doing now, I figured it would be easier. Since most of what is in your story; creatures, cities, lakes, world, needs to be created from scratch it seems more time consuming. Of course, I can’t really say, since that is all I have done.

Well, since I don’t remember much else I had posted, I will leave it at that. Hopefully this post and all others after are actually posted.