Progress! Heart of Mercy

Yeah! Made it through a pivotal and tense scene in Heart of Mercy. Only 7,690 words in, but making progress. Hope to make it to 10,000 words tonight.

It took two things. One: my new technique of listing the action in a scene and mentally checking off as I write a particular bit of it. And two: employing my tried and true, "I'll just write for ten minutes,"  technique. One of two things always happens when I do this. Either I write for ten minutes and get a little further (every little bit counts), or I keep going past the ten minutes and kick writing butt. It's not fool-proof, but it works for me.

Excuse my ADD moment, but I also found an interesting discussion written in March 2012 about why the boom in YA fiction recently. The writer shares,

"Why are so many adults reading young adult books? No need to page Dr. Freud. This isn’t about the guilty pleasures of communing with one’s inner child. It doesn’t signify a huge baby boomer regression. It isn’t even about nostalgia. 

It’s because adults are discovering one of publishing’s best-kept secrets: that young adult authors are doing some of the most daring work out there. Authors who write for young adults are taking creative risks -- with narrative structure, voice and social commentary -- that you just don’t see as often in the more rarefied world of adult fiction."

I rather like the idea of YA taking those creative risks. How fun and fantastic! Is YA fiction where the daring ideas are?

If you'd like to see more, the entire article can be found here.

Happy Reading and Writing!

C. C. Marks

Six Sunday--Edge of Mercy

It's been an awesome couple of weeks around here. I'm having such a great time sharing Charlie's story with readers. It's been a little distracting (see my previous post), but I wouldn't change any of it.  Thank you to those who have been so very, very supportive.  Your excitement keeps me going.  

Let's get to the good stuff.  In this scene, the monstrous Draghoul are fighting to get to the people hiding inside and Charlie dreams of someplace safe from it all:

In my mind, I combined the known with the unknown and escaped, away from the community and away from the Draghoul forever. If only it were that simple.

As far as I knew, the whole world struggled to survive just like we did, but there were rumors…well…one rumor, by someone who’d been there and come back…a rumor of a city that was safe. The city stood free of the Draghoul plague and offered its citizens food and shelter and a place where going out at night wasn’t a death sentence. Even the name of the city filled me with longing—Mercy.

Read more Six Sentence Sundays here, or sign up to participate next week. Hope you have an enjoyable Sunday.

Happy Writing and Reading,

C. C.

Charlie hides her true identity, but her very presence places everyone around her in danger. With no other choice but to remain where she is, she stays with a community that might not be as benevolent as it appears. In this post-apocalyptic romance where a friend might be an enemy and an enemy might be a friend, seventeen-year-old Charlie protects her baby sister and herself from grotesque monsters outside the community as well as human ones inside. Will the truth she discovers about her protectors save her or ultimately doom her to a fate worse than death?

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