I'm Not HERE, I'm THERE

Okay, I'm taking a quick break from my Tuesday radio silence (seriously, it's the first week of my M/W/F routine, there were bound to be some bumps) to beam proudly, because I'm featured in my first ever guest blog!!

Chris Phillips is allowing me to take over his blog today for his Music to Make Write To weekly feature. So, if you have even the slightest curiousity as to the top three songs I listen to when I write, hop on over to his blog and check it out.

Oh, and as promised.

The Last Sacrifice Contest winner is . . . .

Janet Johnson  -- Congrats to Janet!!!

Okay, my work is done here. Feel free to go on about your lives. Thanks for giving me five minutes of it. :D

Hey Baby, What's Your Sign?

Why hello, Friday, don't you look all shiny and pretty!

This has been a busy week in Tracy World  <--- It's a little like Disney World, but without all the rides, parades & abnormally large ducks who don't wear pants. Okay, so maybe it's nothing like Disney World after all.

I'm ashamed to admit that nearly 3 weeks after Christmas, my tree still hasn't been taken down. I refuse to suggest it's due to laziness and choose to blame my busy week instead.

Monday - I announced my very first giveaway/contest. Don't forget to enter for a chance to win a signed copy of Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead!

Tuesday - Got encouraging words of praise from someone currently reading my MS. (Much needed ego boost, since I plan to launch back into the querying process on Monday!! *deep breaths* Here we go, Stina!)

Wednesday - The super cool Colene Murphy came up with a fun new way to approach the surplus of word verifications in blogger land. I've only just recently discovered Colene, but I *heart* her already!

Thursday - Decided to help do my best to give Tony the Tiger a voice and get him freed from his truck stop prison. There should be no place for animal cruelty in this world.

Friday - I've just learned that apparently the Zodiac, as we know it, may be undergoing some changes.   WHAT?!? Supposedly the change affects only those born in 2009 or later, but this is still huge news. The sanctity of tried & true pick-up lines is now endangered.

This Weekend - I'm participating in Misty's Show vs. Tell Blogfest.  I love Misty like a play-cousin, so I'm really looking forward to her blogfest. The premise is simple and should be a lot of fun . . . not to mention there's a great prize! So if you happen to be around this weekend check it out. Better yet, sign up and join in on the fun!

Alright, let's call it a wrap. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

GO RAVENS!!!

Last Sacrifice Contest

Want a signed copy of LAST SACRIFICE by Richelle Mead?

The final installment in the Vampire Academy series has been perched atop the bestsellers lists since its release on December 7th, and for good reason. It more than lives up to the expectations fans have come to expect from the award-winning series.

Thanks to Richelle Mead's generous signing policy, I not only have my own personal copy... I snagged one to giveaway to one lucky winner as well!

I'm not particularly big on contest rules, so there's only a few for entering mine -- (which runs through January 23rd):

1) Follow my blog. (Old. New. Writer. Reader. Retired Elvis Impersonator...all are welcome to join)

2) Leave me a comment in this post and share with me the name of your favorite book, movie or TV show with a supernatural element to it.  (There's no real reason for this, other than I'm  nosey & always looking for new paranormal material to check out. So, if you don't have one, I won't hold it against you.)

That's it!  That's all you gotta do. The winner will be announced on Monday, January 24th.

Please note: If you refer someone to the contest, make sure they know to mention your name in their comment/entry and I'll add an additional entry in your name for each referral. 

Good Luck!!!

Meeting Richelle Mead

I'm back!  Sort of.

My internet at home is still acting highly sketchy. The cable man confirmed yesterday that it was a problem on their end (thank you for telling me what I already knew, Mr. Cable Man).  That being said, when I tried to get on this morning I still couldn't. Thank goodness for work internet!

Anyway, on to the good stuff. 

My mood and outlook, on the week, took a drastic turn for the better when Misty Waters (yes, that's her real name) and I made a road trip to Pennsylvania to meet one of our favorite authors, Richelle Mead for the Last Sacrifice tour. (LOVED the book, btw)

I won't bore you with gushing about how much I love Richelle's books. That would just make me sound like a teenybopper wannabe . . . and just because I am one, doesn't mean I have to go making it uber obvious. Though Misty did occasionally throw the "stalker" term my way when I mentioned fun and interesting little tidbits about Richelle, I swear I know nothing she hasn't volunteered on her blog or twitter. Promise. I never went through with my plan to hire a private investigator. . . he was too expensive. ;o)

Last night turned out to be wicked cool on two levels.

First we got to meet and talk with Richelle. Who, by the way, despite her success is surprisingly down-to-earth and personable. You can tell she genuinely enjoys interacting with her fans. . .  sadly, I've heard horror stories about other authors. So, I'm highly relieved to like one of the Good Guys, er, gals.

Secondly, as future hopefuls ourselves, it was a lot of fun to see how an actual book signing is done. It was so much fun and a lot less intimidating than I thought it would be. I've decided I totally want to do one now.

Yeah, that's right. I want to do a book signing. As if trying to perfect a query letter, land an agent, secure a book deal and publish with a debut on the NYT Bestseller's list isn't enough to put on my plate of dreams. I now want to add a book signing tour to that list. 

Anyway, all of that to say. If you've never been to a book signing before and you get the chance to see a writer whose work you enjoy, do it! We drove more than 5 hours round-trip yesterday, and it was worth every minute!! Not only did I meet one of the writers I look up to, but Misty and I totally bonded. We're major BFF's now.

Also, Shannon McMahon has another Anonymous Critique up on her blog today. So if you have time, please stop by, read the brief writing sample and feel free to give your critique, words of encouragement, etc.

Adventures in Tracyland

Do you ever get the feeling that no matter what you do some weeks just aren't going to go your way?

*raises hand*  <---- That's me.

I was trying to be cutesy about my internet problems yesterday, but it's now gotten to epic pain-in-ass proportions. I've been without internet since Saturday morning & I'm about to go homicidal (I originally typed homocidal, which is an entirely different way of going about things) on the people at my cable company.

They say they'll send someone out to fix it Wednesday, which of course means Thursday or Friday. Totally screws up my blog schedule this week, and I'm not happy about it. *mean face*

So right now, I've snuck onto someone else's internet. Seriously, I feel very James Bond. Except. . . James Bond has way more dangerous things to do than steal internet access to make a blog post, but let me have my fantasy. At this point, it's all I have left.

To add insult to injury, I've finally succumbed to the germs my co-workers with small children kept bringing into the office. In fact, I have an uneasy feeling there is a massive inner-ear infection in my future. This is one instance where I will say dogs > children. They may occasionally poop on the floor, but you can't catch their germs.

Then, to put the icing on the cake, last night I downloaded LAST SACRIFICE only to find there's a programming error that B&N is trying to fix. In the meantime, I have to work my way through a novel where every apostrophe and quotation mark has been replaced with a question mark.

?Try reading a book that?s formatted like this? she said, shaking her head. ?After nine or so chapters you would think you?d get accustomed to it?

I swear, if there is a brutal snowstorm in Pennsylvania tomorrow that cancels the book signing Misty and I are driving 4-ish hours to attend, I may have a cow. I shouldn't say that, because with the way my week's been going I probably would have a cow pop out of my uterus.

Thanks for letting me vent you guys!  I'm probably not going to get around to comment on a lot of blogs, check out my new peeps, reply to contest wins and awards for the next couple of days. (stupid internet!!) Bear with me. I may have a lot of catching up to do come Friday, but I'll Get-R-Done.

Overwriting: A/K/A Exceptionally Prolific & Verbose Prose

Before I get to the actual point of my post, I want to take a second to Fan-Girl squee . . .Only 7 more days until Last Sacrifice (final chapter in the Vampire Academy series) is released.  Booyah!!  (edit: you'd think someone who was squeeing wouldn't type the wrong title)

Okay, I swear, it’s out of my system now.

Teeheeee!!

Okay, no really, I’m done.

*focus, Tracy, focus*

Overwriting.

That’s the number one complaint we hear from editors, agents, fellow writers & sometimes even ourselves. They say the fastest way to kill a great idea is to overwrite it.

What they don't do is tell us a surefire way to spot when we're doing it.

It’s not always about using an abundance of adverbs & adjectives, or spending too much time describing the scenery. Sometimes we try so hard to put a fresh new spin on things we create convoluted sentences that would sound much better if we simplified them.

I wish I had some steadfast rule to dole out on how to avoid going overboard, but I can be just as guilty as the next person. I’ve only found, for me, one tried and true method for detecting when my writing crosses the line into too much.

I read it out loud . . . and if I start sounding like a stand-in for the movie trailer voice-over guy, odds are good I've run into some serious overwriting. No lie.

In a world where Tracy tries to drum up too much drama, in a time fraught with good thoughts that fall short of reaching their potential, only one thing stands in her way. . . Over-Writing.