Congratulations to . . .

Katrina and Terrie! Both of you submitted the winning name, Amelia. The prize is a free autographed copy of Revisit The Fire. It might be a little while before the novel's done, but don't lose heart. What I liked about this name was the fact that I could envision the charcter having a nice, polite name like this, but being very free spirited and spunky at the same time. Basically being the opposite of her 'polite' sounding name.

It wasn't an easy choice, everyone who entered submitted really good names! You all don't mind if I keep the remaining names for later use, do you? Thanks to everyone who entered, and keep checking back for more contests in the near future.

Wow! Such pretty names have been entered in this contest. So far, the name list reads as:

Roxanne "Roxy", Rowena

Arabella, Beatrice, Eleanore, Penelope, Amelia

Amelia, Aveline, Cassandra, Verona, Michaela

There's still time to post your entry. Contest ends at 11:59 EST tonight. :)

Name A Character Contest

I need a name for a main female character in my upcoming historical novel, Revisit The Fire. Here are the rules:

1) It needs to be 19th century sounding, nothing too modern

2) It's got to reflect a spunky, high spirited personality, and

3) Limit five names per entry

The contest ends Monday night, 8/19. The winner will be announced Tuesday morning, or evening. Oh, I almost forgot the most important rule of all. Have fun!

It's August!

Wow! It's already August! What are your writing plans for this month? Any specific goals you want to reach befor ethe month is over?

Characters

Characters are an essential part of the story. Sometimes, they seem to take the story down an entirely different avenue than you, the writer, had originally intended. It can either be fun, or it can be annoying. Depending on how determined you were that the story go the way you’d originally intended. My characters have taken my latest story down a totally different path than I’d originally planned. It’s kind of funny, to see them get into all sorts of mishaps and have unplanned adventures along the way. How do you create your characters? Do you center them around the plot? Or do you just let their personalities form the plot? I usually start out with a plot in mind, but once my characters personalities kick in, they don’t always stick to what I had in mind.  

Distractions

So you’ve got your day planned, and it involves writing. However, life doesn’t always seem to let us keep to the schedule we have in mind. We sit down to write, and something comes up. Whether it’s someone popping to remind us there’s still grocery shopping to be done, or something demanding our attention. So many distractions, and they seem to pop up when we sit down to write. One way to keep others from pestering you is to hang a sign on the door of the writing room, telling everyone not to disturb you while you’re writing. However, that won’t guarantee one hundred percent no-interruptions. What are some of the ways you combat the distractions?

Interview with Kate de los Conejos

A good friend, Kate de los Conejos, submitted a character description/intro for a writer's contest, and won! She let me interview her, and was even willing to share some writing advice with us.  

What gave you the inspiration for this intro?  Why did you pick a dragon to be the character you introduced?

Actually, a friend of ours had a contest on her blog. Her prompt asked us to write about a winter dragon, so I wrote a short vignette, just a scene, for that contest. When the ICL contest came up, I chose characters from three pieces I'd already written, for my three entries, and this dragon was one of them.

Can you see this being turned into a picture book, with a little bit more detail? 4 Why or why not?

No, because the voice and vocabulary are way too old for a PB... and, in the original vignette, the little dragon was destined to melt when spring came, so that would be too dark, also, I think.

Will there be more intros like this in the near future?

Who knows? If there are more contests! But I'm more likely to write a fantasy story that might include material for a similar intro.

Do you have any encouragement, advice to offer your fellow writers?

Just write. Don't limit yourself to the genre and age-range you're most comfortable with. And join the ICL Writers' Retreat, so you can enter their Monthly Write-Off contests. There are no prizes, but you'll get some useful critiques.

Thanks, Kate, for letting me interview you, and thanks for the great advice. I'm looking forward to more awesome character descriptions/intros, and even stories, in the near future.