INSECURITY: I HAZ IT

And just in case the blog title didn't clue you in to what I'm talking about today, here's a lolarious poster.


Okay, so on Friday I was reading the Road Trip posts on YA Highway when I came across this section:

Hannah Moskowitz wrote a thought-provoking post: "Has the internet community changed YA?" Amy Lukavits responded directly with some arguments for both sides. Natalie Whipple and Ally Carter posted on similar topics, both saying you can worry about the online YA community all you want, but in the end, it's the book that matters.

And I realised that this is exactly the stuff that turns me into the B*tSh*t Crazy Lady. Exactly. This. Stuff.

When I submitted The Swan Kingdom to Walker Books they didn't really know what to do with it. But they liked it, and I had all these convincing arguments about how the popularity of Harry Potter, Meg Cabot and Dr Who was paving the way for fantasy aimed at girls and where my book fitted into the market. I talked to them passionately and at length and I think my knowledge of and love for writing really came through because, after some re-writes, they decided to publish it. And somehow...somehow...it did not sink without trace.

I remember promising myself that if I just managed to sell 5,000 copies, I would never ask for anything again, and I can safely say that it surpassed that number long ago. I mean, don't run away with the idea that The Swan Kingdom was a bestseller. Or even a big seller. It wasn't. It sold unexpectedly well, got some good reviews, and my publisher was happy about it. So was I.

Then Daughter of the Flames came out. We sold that to Walker before The Swan Kingdom was even in copy-edits, so it was the same story. And it did okay. Not as well as The Swan Kingdom, but all right. It was a modest success. Again, the publisher was happy with it. So was I.

And then came The Dark Ages. We shall not speak of them in depth. Suffice it to say that during this period of about eighteen months, many not-nice things happened in my life. My house was flooded. My editor turned down my third book. Family members became ill. *I* became ill. And while I kept writing through this, it was to very little effect. I didn't finish anything, and every time that I nearly did, my agent or my publisher didn't like it.

During this period I discovered Teh Interwebz. I don't mean this was the first time I ever surfed the net - I mean it's the first time I was ever captivated by it. And what captivated me was not internet shopping or YouTube, but the corner of the net devoted to YA writing. It was like a whole other world for me, a world where YA writers weren't working all alone in their tiny boxroom in their damp, building-site houses, with a permanent cough (I was later diagnosed as asthmatic) and going days without speaking to anyone but their dog or people who had phoned their work to shout and verbally abuse them. A world where YA writers were slap in the middle of a community that seemed full of kindred spirits and dear friends. I watched their vlogs, I read their reviews on Goodreads, I laughed at their funny blog stories about the time they all rented a castle and got chased by a cow. I told myself that I found their success inspiring and that they helped me to keep positive and keep working.

But that wasn't the whole story.

I didn't want to feel envious of this group of people, but the simple fact was that they all had things I wanted desperately for myself. Not just their success, but their LIVES. So different from mine. So full and rich and FUN. Book tours and writing retreats, twitters, mutual book blurbs, blogs where a dozen people answered each tiny post as if it really mattered. I looked at my life and found it sadly wanting in comparison. I was working a full-time office job where I was miserable and squeezing writing into every other gap there was. I didn't know a single other YA writer well enough to call them a friend and what was more I had no way to change that.

I couldn't go to the conventions where these guys all met and hung out, or share tour dates with them. I live in the UK. They live in the US. Besides, their circle was already formed - they knew each other through writing fanfic or being critique partners or because they shared agents. They didn't know me from Adam. The occasional 'LOL' reply to my comment on one of their blogs didn't mean that they knew me or cared about me.

I began to feel like my entire writing career was, basically, pointless. I began looking at The Swan Kingdom and Daughter of the Flames and thinking 'Why did I even bother? No one likes them. No one's ever heard of me. I wrote high fantasy when I should have written urban fantasy/paranormal romance and I didn't promote enough or connect with the right people and I flushed my chance down the toilet. My life is exactly the same now as it would have been if both those books had never been written. I'm the scum at the bottom of the writing barrel. I ought to just. Give. Up'.

See? B*tsh*t Crazy Lady.

Because...what the HELL? Since when does who I know, or whether or not famous-name-writer follows my blog, or if I got to go to BigDealBookExpo have anything to do with the value of my work? Thankfully, at the point where I really felt the lowest, the lightbulb went on. I realised I had gotten totally caught up in this imaginary fantasy world I wanted to be part of and forgotten the important thing - the most important thing in the world - which is:

I'm a writer.

That's what I am, what I've always been, and what I will be until I die. I love stories. I love books. I love crafting imaginary worlds and living within them, I love bringing characters to life and laughing and crying with them. I love words. I love the spaces between words. I love commas and semicolons and fullstops and even the occasional exclamation mark. Exposition, description, dialogue, action; I adore them. And NOTHING and NO ONE can ever take that love, that passion, away from me...except me.

I think the reason this snuck up on me so easily was that I never WANTED to 'fit in' before. I was determinedly, stubbornly, proudly the odd one out at school. Even when I was picked on and bullied at every turn, I continued to be me, refusing to wear the fashionable clothes, talk the 'in' talk or act like one of the popular kids in any way. I carried on reading books in public, putting my hand up in class and getting A's no matter what anyone did to me. That aloneness, that knowledge of who I wanted to be and how I wanted to act got me through a lot of hard times, but it was based on the fact that those people who tried to make me miserable at school weren't worth imitating or fitting in with, and I knew it. But the authors I admire are admirable and worthy of my respect, and it turns out that I'm vulnerable to that in just the same way that some kids at my school were vulnerable to wanting to be popular.

It's so silly. No doubt that group of writers all have their sorrows and troubles and periods of insecurity and depression too. Being part of them wouldn't fix that about me. And yearning to be something I wasn't and can't ever be - a bestselling American urban fantasy author who goes on fabulous adventures with other trendy American urban fantasy authors - was making me hurt myself and, more significantly, my writing. And my writing is the Number One Thing in my life that I should always protect and nuture and make time for, because so long that as I do that, I will be happy.

Guys...if any of you are freaking out right now about how you don't fit into Whatever Group, about how your whole life/your writing/your hobby is pointless or how you should do/be something else than what you are...stop it. Okay? You are so much more special and strong and wonderful than you realise, and even if no one else in the world knows that I DO.

I might never have met you. I might never meet you. But I know that you are wonderful and you don't need to change in any way that doesn't make you happy. So the next time YOU feel the B*tSh*t Crazy Lady taking you over? Remember that. Preserve and protect the special thing that makes you who you are, no matter what. And be happy.

THE BIGTIME FIVE

I saw a vlog by a writing hero of mine called Jackson Pearce a little while ago. In it, she pondered the question:

If my books hit the bigtime and I became one of those NYT Bestselling authors....what would I do?

This, I'm sure you'll agree, is an intriguing subject. I mean, yeah, in my case it's about as likely to happen as getting struck my lightning. Five times. On a Tuesday. While wearing yellow. But still, it's fun to imagine, right? So here is my illustrated list of the Five Things I Would Do If I Hit The Bigtime.

Get a tattoo. The phoenix has always been a special symbol to me - so much so that when the US hardcover of Daughter of the Flames came out, and it had a phoenix on that back, I actually cried. I would love to get a beautiful tattoo like the one above. The problem is, I live in a small town, and I've seen some famously dodgy and messed up tattoos. I'd want to make sure I had it done by a real artist. And if I hit the bigtime, I could definitely afford the time (and the cash) to do that. Yay!


Build one of these houses. They are bespoke designed for you so you can chose exactly how many rooms you want, the size of them and their layout. They cost around 40% less than a similar brickbuilt property, and are made from hand-carved, sustainably resourced oak. But more important than all that LOOK HOW PRETTY! *Snuggles catalogue*

Send a massive bunch of flowers to my ex-boss for making me redundant. Even though I was completely devastated at the time, and was filled with anxiety about my future, clearly it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I would also send a card, and the card would say 'Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!' Not mature perhaps, but very satisfying.


Give a massive cheque to some of these guys. They do amazing work with no funding from the government in most cases, and are usually staffed only by volunteers. I salute you, Sirs.


Buy my entire Amazon wishlist and THEN READ IT. Oh, if only... The ironic thing about being a writer is that the reason you decide you want to write in the first place is because you love, love, love reading and books. Yet the more committed and disciplined you are about your work, the less time you seem to have for reading. Not just because of writing itself, but because of the business of being a writer - talking to agents and editors, answering business and fan emails, visiting schools and libraries, going to bookshops to talk up your new release and try to arrange signings. Writing blogs sucks up reading time too. A couple of weeks living in a luxury hotel with room service and the internet firmly turned off would work wonders on most writer's frazzled nerves, and reduce their TBR pile to zero.

And that is my Top Five. Although there's a few other things I'd do first, like throw a massive party for all my friends to thank them for being awesome, buy my mum and dad a house and put my dad into a private health scheme so that he could have treatment at home. But there were no cool pictures for those.

So, fellow writers...what is your Bigtime Five list?

PLOTTING: AN EVOLUTION

So, further to my post the other day, where I revealed how very much I suck at creating non-standalone stories, I spent much of Tuesday making an extremely detailed, colour-coded and highlighted 'Plot Shape' for FrostFire. Because I now know that I HAVE to fit all the story's events into one book (which I would very much like to complete in less than 100,000 words), it became imperative to compress the story where I could and cut anything that didn't seem completely necessary.

My Plot Shape sounds extremely pretty, and you would like to see what it looks like? Well, your wish is my command:

You may notice that it's not at all like the diamond-shaped plot diagram I showed you before. That's because I use those diamond diagrams to ensure there's an even distribution of events in my story, to make sure the action and emotional content peak at regular intervals, to keep track of story time, seasons and character ages.

A Plot Shape is the way I work out, at the basic level, what should be happening, in what order, and what events can be cut or combined. I made this using MS OneNote, which I find exceedingly useful, since it lets me put arrows in and move notes about when I change my mind.

Luckily I have my lovely editor's suggestions to go on in this endeavor. She won't be sending me her detailed notes for another couple of weeks, but she did pinpoint a few areas that immediately made me go 'Uh-oh - busted'. Those are the areas I've tried to think about with my new Plot Shape.

One of the things my editor noticed was some hand-waving. 'Er...Hand-waving?' You ask. 'What is that?' Let me 'splain. This is where something - a character's actions, their level of knowledge, or their choices - don't quite make sense in terms of what has gone before. But you, as the writer, need them to do, think or decide a certain something for the sake of your plot. So you 'hand-wave' over the awkward place, trying to distract the reader with some lovely description, or an explosion, or by pretending that the thing that's just happened isn't important. A good editor will catch you at it nearly everytime, but it never stops you from trying!

Another thing my editor put her finger on was an unnecessary journey my character was supposed to take in the middle of the story. Thinking about this as I was walking my dog this morning, I realised that all my main characters seem to go on a journey somewhere in the story, during which time they have a transformation mentally or emotionally. For Alexa in The Swan Kingdom, she goes off into the forest and learns to become confident and self-reliant. For Zira in Daughter of the Flames, she takes her people to Mesgao and struggles with her new identity and the challenges of leadership. Suzume also has a journey in Shadows on the Moon, during which she reaches her lowest ebb emotionally. All those journeys were vital.

But it seems to have become a bit of a habit for me, because there was really no need for Frost, the main character of FrostFire, to go anywhere - and yet I sent her off anyway. I didn't see it until my editor pointed it out. What's more, writing in this journey was going to take a lot of words, so cutting it ought to be really helpful in keeping the book to a reasonable length.

Finally, my editor put her foot down about the fanservice in this story. I really wanted to include Sorin and Zira from Daughter of the Flames as secondary characters in FrostFire. So I kind of shoe-horned them in; that was part of the reason for the unnecessary journey. I think I knew deep down that it all felt a little self-conscious - in fact, one of my very first blog posts was about how I had actually forgotten about Sorin and forgotten to include his scene, leading to me having to delete a day's work. That should have been a sign to me that Zira and Sorin needed to go. Much as I'm sure fans of Daughter of the Flames would have loved to see them again, it's not worth messing the book up to do it. I'm hoping readers will enjoy this story and these characters enough not to hold it against me. And the minute I cut those scenes from my Story Shape I found myself looking at a much leaner and more intense story, where there was room for more development of the characters who really matter - the ones whose stories have yet to be told.

Unfortunately, having worked myself up to plunge right into this work, I spent the whole of today locked in mortal combat with my new printer, which refuses to be part of my wireless network no matter how nicely I talk to it, how carefully I follow the instructions, or how hard I bang my head against the wall. *Le Sigh*

But tomorrow. TOMORROW. Yes, tomorrow, I shall begin...

THE BEST LAID PLANS...

How it feels in my heart right now...

Ah, how foolish we are, both mice and men...

Loyal blog readers may remember my Superspecialawesome Plan about how I was going to turn the sequel to Daughter of the Flames (tentatively titled FrostFire) into two books and make it all the Sacred Flame Trilogy or something like that?

Superspecialawesome Plan = fail. My lovely, lovely editor emailed me today to tell me (in the kindest possible way, with lots of praise to cushion the blow) that the first book of this proposed two book series just doesn't work on its own. She said it felt like everything was underdeveloped, that I was holding all the good stuff back for the second book. Which is fair enough: I was.

There are some authors who just naturally seem to think in trilogies and series, who can take one story and split it into multiple volumes effortlessly, creating in each book a satisfying plot-arc and developing their characters just enough, yet leaving further questions to be answered in the next installment.

I am not one of them.

In fact, I am in awe of those guys. How do they do it? Everytime I try, the whole thing goes wrong. It seems I am Standalone Only.

*Sigh*

So, the final, absolutely-MUST-deliver-by-this-date deadline on this book is the end of December, leaving me fifteen weeks (I can't count the first week of October, I'm doing day-long school workshops the whole week and the following monday too) to revise the first half of the manuscript according to my editor's suggestions, write the second half, put them together, put the ms away to mature for at least a week, and then revise them as a whole.

My schedule until Christmas looks a tad cramped.

I'm sure I'll live. Absolutely. Ha ha. Ha.

Ahem.

I just have to keep reminding myself: no matter what, it's better than my old job.

Anyway, this is all just a symptom of something I often tell readers who email me asking me How To Write A Book. Which is: No one knows. Seriously, you never figure it out. Most of the time you don't even know how to write the book you're writing, let alone the one coming next. You make it up as you go along, God help you.

For those of you who were looking for more constructive advice, I refer you to Patricia C Wrede. She always says it all better anyway.

BUILD YOUR VERY OWN CHARACTER

Today, by popular request, I'm going to show you the stages I go through to get to know a character. I - like many writers - sometimes have this weird feeling that all my characters actually already exist out there in some alternate dimension, and that I'm not so much inventing them as, through the process of writing about them, gradually tuning in my aerial until I can see/hear clearly who they already are. And if anyone here is secretly thinking 'Is this the B*tsh*t Crazy Lady thing she was on about before?' - I'm aware that not all writers feel this way. Just take whatever you find useful from my process (and also, Ursula Le Guin and Robin McKinley agree with me, so nyer!).

The problem with the gradual tuning method is that you often get nearly halfway through your book before you really feel that you're inside the character's skin. That can lead to stress early on - getting blocked because things don't feel right but you're not sure why, writing a lot of words that later have to be deleted because you realise your character would never do that. So it's best to try and get to know your imaginary people as well as you can before you actually start writing.

I don't make character collages - writing High Fantasy, I find it difficult to gather images that seem right - but I do like to sketch my characters. And I enjoy filling my notebooks with clippings and cuttings of images that evoke their thoughts or who they are inside. Anything you can do to make yourself feel close to a character is good. Below is my own checklist.

1. What are they like physically, and how does this affect them?

I've seen character surveys on the internet where they basically expect you to list every freckle on a character's back, and some people find it useful to be specific about this. I don't go that far myself, but I do like to have a think about the way a character is percieved by others and by themselves. Often physical details will be the first thing you describe to your reader about a character, so you need to be aware of:

• How a reader will react to the traits you pick. I've learned that red hair and green eyes will make many readers brand your character a Mary-Sue automatically, no matter how flawed and complex they are. Bear this sort of knee-jerk reaction in mind.
• How do other characters within the story react to those traits. For example, if they are very attractive, are other people kinder to them because of it, or have they often encountered jealousy? If they have a disability, how have they adapted to this, and how do they feel about it - not just on the surface, but deep inside?
  
• How these traits will effect the development of the character into the person they are. If the character has encountered special treatment due to their beauty, does this make them big-headed about it, or so ashamed that they play down their appearance? If they have suffered abuse or neglect due to a disfigurement or unusual appearance has that made them bitter about it, or defiant, or do they suffer it all with grace?

Quite often your first thoughts about a character's physicality will unconsciously lead you to create a cast of characters who are very like you, or who resemble the characters you have read about and seen on TV and in films. Many writers never question this, which is why, especially in Fantasy and SF, the majority of characters are white, subscribe to traditional gender roles, and don't suffer with any significant disability or disfigurement. When you realise this, you might feel tempted to add token characters, like a fiesty black or gay 'best friend', whose background and experiences don't really impact the story of the main character that much. But if you open your mind to the stories of people from different ethnicities, cultures and life experiences than you, and you'll write richer, truer and more interesting stories.

2. Who are they?

At the basic level these are usually the second details that will come out about a character:

• Name. Again, be aware of reader reactions - people will instinctively feel differently about an Augustus than they do about a Billy, or even a Jenny vs a Genevieve. Nicknames, or the refusal to accept nicknames, are a good way to show how a person reacts to their own name. I personally own many baby-name books, and use Behind the Name,because I like to pick names according to their meanings. In The Swan Kingdom, everyone's names have hidden meanings - for example, Branwen is the name of a doomed queen in Welsh mythology.
• Age. This one is self explanatory, I think! For children's and YA you need to make sure that at least the main character is a child or young person, just because publishers will give you a hard time otherwise.
  
• Occupation. What they do for a living or with most of their time. The eighteen year old character who left school at thirteen to work at a garage is a different person than the eighteen year old who is doing a degree at a prestigious university is different to the eighteen year old who never went to school at all and herds camels for his father in the desert. I love to incorporate the unique skills and strengths brought about by a character's occupation into their story, and give them a chance to shine.

But of course, who they are is more than these details. Are they impulsive or cautious? Loud or quiet? Vibrant and well-liked or introverted and a little lonely? Kind? Sadistic? Misunderstood? These details aren't as easily established in a book, even once you yourself are sure who the character is. Characters display these traits through their actions and dialogue. You can establish who a character is with a big splashy display on their first appearance, but this can also work against you - if they make a big impression of being a jerk you'll need to work overtime to change readers (as well as the other characters) minds.

People don't always act according to their natural inclinations. A kind, loving girl could become hardened and ruthless in her quest for revenge - but she will still chose to go about that quest in a different way than a naturally sadistic person. A naturally quiet person may force themselves to act outgoing to hide their vulnerabilities. Again, over the course of a book, it's your job to show readers who the character REALLY is, not just who they seem to be.

3. What do they want?

This is where we start getting down to the real crux of a character, the stuff that will affect the course of the story the most. Your first instinct here might be to state what they want materially. For example, in The Swan Kingdom, you might say 'Alexandra wants her brothers back and to save her Kingdom from her stepmother'. But that's only the most obvious answer, and if you stick to that, you will find it hard to get to know your character really well.

Ask yourself: WHY does my character want this, this particular thing, more than anything else? Why is Alexandra so desperate to find and save her brothers, even if it means horrible pain and sacrifice? That's an easy question - because she loves them and misses them. But why is she so determined to save a Kingdom that was never really hers, even if it means facing her most deadly enemy? Why doesn't she, like the heroine in the original fairytale, leave her past and her father's land behind and dedicate herself only to freeing her brothers? There are a million possibilities as to what desires and instincts might drive your character to make the choices they do, to have the priorities they do. Go deeper. Figure out what drives your character at the core.

For Alexandra, WHO SHE IS - her deep loyalty to her family and her sense of responsibility - drive her on her quest. But underlying those traits is a deeper need: a need to get back what was taken from her. What Alexandra wants more than anything is to go home again. Alexandra wants this enough that she is willing to risk anything to accomplish it, despite her general lack of confidence and the fact that she isn't sure she can ever defeat the evil Zella.

Find out what your character truly wants, deep down, more than anything, and you're well on the way to knowing them.

4. How do they go about getting what they want?
This intersects with all the traits and characteristics you've already laid down - but it takes them further.

Remember, we're talking about what the characters want deep down at the well of their soul. Now, for some people, they might go about getting a takeaway chicken sandwich in exactly the same way as they go about getting their heart's desire. For others though, when faced with achieving or losing something important, they sometimes start to act in ways which go against their normal behaviour and even against their own best interests. A person who has always seemed easy-going and even a little weak might display an unexpected backbone of steel when faced with losing someone they love. This could be great - or the new stubbornness could endanger their beloved. A cool, calm and collected person could completely go to pieces when she thinks she might be publically humilated. This could cause the character threatening her to rejoice - or feel unexpected pity. Thus, the course of the story would be changed.

Both these reactions would be linked not only to the character's deepest desire - WHAT THEY WANT - but also to their surface traits - WHAT ARE THEY LIKE PHYSICALLY - and their life experiences, instincts, and deepest characteristics - WHO THEY ARE.

How a character goes about getting what they deeply and desperately desire tells the reader - and you - everything about them. If you know that your character is a person with no confidence, who is normally crippled by self-doubt and fear, who is young and not physically very strong but who does have excellent healing skills and wildcraft, and that they will do anything to get home again, working towards that goal with utter dedication and disregard for their own well-being...you suddenly know everything you need to know to tell their story. Plot becomes character, the events of your story revealing new layers to the character with each twist and turn of the story.

And that is how I go about building characters. I ask myself:

1. What are they like physically?
2. Who are they?
3. What do they want?
4. How do they go about getting it?

At the end of that process I still may not know everything is there is know about the character. For example, lately I realised that a character of mind was a complete neat freak - but this didn't come out of the blue. It came from knowing about how his physical appearance affected his childhood, which formed who he is, what he wants and how he goes about getting it. It's amazing how often 'inspiration' is exactly the same thing as 'working really hard'!

How do you guys go about building characters?

THE WINNER OF CLOCKWORK ANGEL IS...

And the competition is CLOSED.

Thank you to everyone who entered! You all spread the word so well - you guys rock.

Now for the news you're all waiting for - the name of the winner. I used a random number generator based on the number of entries recieved and it picked (drumroll please)...

Cass (Words on Paper)

Congratulations, Cass! Email me with your address as soon as you can. The quicker I get your address, the quicker you get your prize, which includes the aforementioned copy of Clockwork Angel and random other surprises from my writing cave.

And then I felt guilty because I only gave away one prize. So I used the random generator again and this time it picked...

Alex Mullarkey

I don't have a copy of Clockwork Angel for you, but I will send you your choice of either a signed copy of Daughter of the Flames, or a signed copy of The Swan Kingdom, and some bookplates. Again, email me ASAP to give me your address so I can send this stuff out to you.

OK folks - back to your regularly scheduled programming.

AIMLESS BURBLING

I'm just going to admit it straight up - I have no idea what to blog about today. I am drifting about my house like the lost wraith of an abandoned milkmaid (I don't know why a milkmaid, okay? shut up), making weebling noises under my breath and sighing long, melancholy sighs.

Why?

Turns out that despite my good intentions, it's not so easy to get to work on Book Two of your two book series if you have no idea whether it will ACTUALLY BE Book Two of a two book series, or if it might turn out to only be the second part of the book you thought you just finished. Confused yet? I am. Mrrghh.

So anyway, I decided to put the second book/part of FrostFire aside for a bit. I don't want to spend weeks working on a brilliant opening to a new book if it's all going to get deleted because there is no new book. But that means I have nothing to do. And I...don't do so well with the forced inactivity, kids. It turns me into the b*tsh*t crazy lady. If you thought I was the b*tsh*t crazy lady before? Yeah, no. That was me being normal.

I read seven books over the weekend, and now there's nothing left on my TBR pile that I really want to dive into. Celebrity MasterChef being finished, there's nothing on TV that I want to see (MasterChef rules, all right? Shut up). I did make an effort to be productive. I printed out an unfinished manuscript I was working on a few years ago, before Shadows on the Moon. Anyone who used to check the writing journal on my website (a short-lived and ill-fated idea on my part) may recall that I was working on a book I fondly referred to as the giant killer clockwork praying mantis death robot book. It's cool, and I think I'm definitely going to finish it, but there's nearly 70,000 words of it and I can already see that it needs a LOT of work. Is it wise to plunge into this when FrostFire isn't finished yet? Probably not.

I've been for two long walks in the countryside, but I do that every day anyway. I baked, and now I'm going to have to palm several pounds of baked goods off on family and friends. I did some sketching, but I'm really out of practise and it's not fun if everything turns out kind of looking like a donkey, especially if you were trying to draw one of your own characters (it can happen to any artist, all right? Shut up). Much more of the sighing and the weebling and my dog is going to run away, folks. The cats are already hiding under the bed.

I may be waiting another week or two or three before I get any feedback on FrostFire. I CANNOT WAIT THAT LONG doing nothing without losing it and going completely nuts. And like I said, if you thought I was nuts before? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Give me suggestions. What should I do to take my mind off the writing that I want to do but can't? What books should I read that I haven't already (most of my recent reads are on my GoodReads page)? What hobby should I try out? What film or TV show, anime, manga, funny singing yak clip on YouTube should I check out? Or, failing that, what blog post topic would you like me to write on?

I NEED HELP, YOU GUYS! DO NOT FAIL ME!