Sadie Jay

My Headphones revision didn't get very far this week because I decided to concentrate on editing. I kind of worked on three manuscripts, but gave most of my attention to Like Cracks In The Sidewalk . It's the darkest thing I've written, considering most of my stories are lighter, slightly angsty, feel-good reads. I'm going to give it one more read-through and then start submitting it around. Here's one of the darker passages--if not the darkest. Warning: violence and NSFW I was shouting and couldn’t stop myself. “I’m not the one out all night, coming in at dawn! Where do you go after your gigs, if you aren’t pulling? Am I supposed to just wait around, be your fuckboy? That’s what Susan called me, that first day I met her!” Val didn’t reply with words; instead, he punched me in the ribs. The blow wasn’t hard. We were standing too close for him to get any power behind the punch. He wheeled back against the wall when I slapped him across the face. Val took a de...

Headphones on paper.Now to pull it all together and make something cohesive out of it!  After much consideration on where to start, this is my opening page:  Chapter 1—what the cold brought in January 2015 Reaching over the bar easily with his long arms, the lanky man helped himself to the tap, topping off his beer as he looked out at the floor. One more set and the band was calling it quits. They were two weeks away yet from the beginning of spring semester. That, combined with the colder than normal temperature, meant a quiet crowd. He chuckled to himself when he spied the local Priest and Rabbi visiting at the back table, glasses of wine in hand. Another sure sign of a slow night! A rush of cold air on his neck announced someone making a late night entrance and he turned his shaggy head towards the door. A young woman, surely not far out of her teens, made her way to the nearest table. Pulling her gloveless hands out of her pockets, she rubbed them toge...

              I have a question about flashbacks. Some time back I read a thread on Twitter that discussed the topic and up until then, I hadn't really thought about it. Some had no problem with it, some weren't fans. I read Spark by Posy Roberts last year and thought the use of flashbacks was quite effective.              When I originally wrote Headphones I used flashbacks rather liberally since each day of the story was meant to represent that day and it felt like a way to stay within that format and yet give the readers enough background to understand the characters. Now that I'm doing the rewrite (finally!) I'm wondering how to fit them in. I'm inclined to leave them; otherwise, I'm afraid there will be too much narrative and quite often, the information is for the reader, not for the other characters.                For example, when Headphones asks Mick if he a...

I spent the week doing a rough edit, finding misspelled words and deleting extra commas. My word count is 48862, which is a little short of my goal of 50K, if we ignore the fact that my original goal was 40K! I still want to go back and do the edits on Embers and Flame but I got it in my head that I need to write a synopsis and query for Like Cracks In The Sidewalk . So that is my goal this week. Then next week I am most definitely giving Ben and Cherry some attention. Poor boys; I bet they're feeling ignored! Instead of an excerpt this week, how about a mood board?

A very quick update today, just to say "I'm done!" At least with the first draft, that is. I missed a few points that I had in my notes, so I'm going to spend this week trying to see where (or if) they fit in. And then edits. Always fun doing edits. (Not!) My plans, at least at the moment, are to edit this one and then go back to Embers and Flame . I never finished the edits on that one and there was some major damage I needed to fix in the middle, but I got distracted by the July NaNo and once I got on a roll with Blind Ante , I didn't want to stop. So, yes, I see hours spent editing in my future. After that, I'm going back through When Silverfish Dance and make some tweaks there. I have a Dan/Jones fanfiction I want to write, and then it's on to the Headphones rewrites. So, apparently, I'm going to keep busy for the rest of the year.