An excerpt

Due to some requests I've received, here is an excerpt from my upcoming novel The Sector, due out later this year!


"I'm fine," I insisted.
"Fine," he huffed, crossing his muscled arms over his chest. "Then prove me wrong. Get out of the rover by yourself and walk over there and explain that it was all a big misunderstanding."
I was screwed. There was no way I could make it over to the medical team, let alone get out of the rover by myself. He was calling my bluff. I sighed in defeat.
"I knew it," Rawlings gloated as he climbed out of the vehicle.
I was about to let him help me out of the rover when Sergeant Davis pulled up in another patrol rover. He hopped down and strode over to us.
"Don't tell me you're refusing help?"
"I was thinking about it," I admitted. "I'm fine, I promise."
"Really? Because that's not what it looked like out in the field," Sergeant Davis practically barked. I nodded. He growled and threw up his hands in frustration. "Fine, prove me wrong. Get out of the rover and walk yourself into the building to your dad."
"That's what I told her, Davis," Rawlings chimed in. "I almost had her admitting she needed help, too, but she must've changed her mind again. Women."
He shook his head and rolled his eyes as he walked away toward his post at the main gate. Davis nodded in agreement. He took a step back from the vehicle, his arms folded across his broad chest, waiting for me to prove that I didn't need any help. I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth. The pain would be excruciating, but I wanted to prove him wrong. I braced my hands against both sides of the open rover door and turned my body so my feet dangled out the side of the vehicle. Slowly I lowered myself onto the ground, landing with my right foot first. I babied my left ankle as I leaned as casually as I could against the rover for support.
"See?" I smiled triumphantly, daring him to contradict me.
"Walk over to the med team," Davis ordered.
I nodded as I surveyed the distance I had to walk. It was only about six feet, but I began doubting whether I could make it. I clenched my teeth and, determined to reach the waiting medical team without falling, took a step forward onto my left foot. The pain was agonizing and my ankle buckled under my weight. I started to fall forward. My arms flailed as they grasped wildly for anything to hold onto for support. Sergeant Davis rushed forward and caught me in his arms just as I was about to slam into the ground.
"Told you so," he whispered gleefully in my ear as he helped me back to my feet.

---The Sector---coming soon!

Hope you enjoyed it!! :)

Camp Nano

I've been stuck. I haven't written for days. I got so behind that I didn't think I'd be able to catch up. Okay, so maybe I was only like 4000 words behind, but when you have to write almost 2000 words per day on top of that, it seemed like a lot.

Well last night I told myself that I if I got the dishwasher started and a load of laundry going, I could write for an hour and a half while the wash was in. I ended up writing for 2 hours because I can't just leave in the middle of a chapter. But I wrote! I caught up! And then I even got a few hundred words ahead of schedule!

I had been stuck. I hit a wall last week and I just couldn't figure out how to get around it. I decided to try taking the story in a completely different direction. I changed narrators, and the story started coming. In fact, I had to stop myself from continuing or else I would have stayed up all night. (Well, that and I had to edit a chapter of The Woods so I can get that published!)

So far I'm really excited about how this is progressing. And despite how busy things have been at my day job, I really think I might actually make my goal of 50,000 words this month. Maybe I'll post an excerpt later? Or maybe I'll wait and post an excerpt from The Woods or from The Sector instead. ;)  You'll have to wait and see :)

Writing Class

In January I signed up for a writing class. It's a 2 year Novel class. It's supposed to help develop characters, themes, settings, plots, etc. and basically help develop and hone my writing skills.

It's hard! I've been so behind that I'm just barely catching up. I just finished Friday's assignment. We were supposed to list out all of the characters in our book and what they do/who they are, and if they are the protagonist, antagonist, or secondary characters. I wrote out my list. It's huge. And full of a ton of secondary characters. We just finished up developing our characters this week, so I hope that soon we'll be able to get down to writing. I cannot wait to work on this story!

Stay tuned for more updates. I'm thinking this one will either be called Lost or Broken. I haven't quite decided. We'll see how everything turns out. Who knows? Maybe it will end up with something completely different. ;)