Category Archives: The Writing Life

Help! I NEED A TITLE…

Finding Verity has received the bulk of my attention this week. I am pleased to announce that the word count on this novel has surpassed 15,000 words and I’m happy with the progress. For those of you who don’t know, “verity” means “the state of being true”.

Current Novel needs a title. Right now I’m considering Perspicuous Dreams. Perspicuous means “clearly expressed” or “lucid”. I know a lot of people won’t know what perspicuous means but I have the same problem with verity. I am also considering Lucid Dreams.

Any thoughts on these two titles?

I Entered MoviePoet’s 2012 Logline Contest

In January, MoviePoet conducts their annual logline contest. For those of you who do not know what a logline is, think “blurb” from a t.v. guide. A logline is a sentence or two that hopefully entices us to want to watch the movie. For me, writing a logline is more difficult than writing a screenplay. It is difficult to condense 110 pages into a couple of sentences.

Because I’m so busy with two novels, I wasn’t going to enter this year’s contest but this morning I woke up with an idea I couldn’t turn my back on.

The MoviePoet logline contest is the first stage of a feature-length screenplay contest. The top 30 loglines advance to the second stage where the first ten pages of their screenplays can be submitted. The top ten writers in this stage advance to the third stage, where the entire screenplay is presented.

I have entered this contest twice before and my logline has NEVER advanced.  I have always considered three my lucky number so we’ll see if my logline progresses to the second stage of the contest this year.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest

This week-end will be spent getting my entry ready for Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Contest.  Amazon will accept entries on January 23rd.  When they have received 5,000 entries they will not accept anymore. If they do not get 5,000 entries, they will stop accepting submissions on February 5th.

Yes, I’m entering Windfall. The manuscript is ready… I just have to get the files ready to upload. In addition to the entire manuscript, I will upload a 3,000-5,000 word excerpt and a “pitch”. The files have to be in an accepted format (.doc, .docx, .rtf, or .txt.).

Winners of this contest wil get a contract with the Penguin Group (U.S.A.).. And, yes, I would love to win. Finalists will be announced in May and the winner will be announced in June.

A New Blog… Faith’s Thoughts

I like to write fiction: novels and screenplays. 

And, I like to write about writing.  So I have this blog.

But, sometimes I’d just like to write about other things, things that are on my mind.  Like politics, health, being the mother of a teenager, aging, etc. I didn’t want to write about those things on this blog because this blog is, afterall, about writing. So, this week-end I set up a new blog. 

In case you’re interested in taking a look, go to Faith’s Thoughts. You never know what I’ll be thinking about! In fact, it might surprise you!

Fox Writing with Quill Pen

What People are Saying about WINDFALL

I keep hearing one thing over and over when it comes to WINDFALL.  Everyone seems to be having a difficult time getting “into” the story because there are so many characters. But, the readers all admit, once they get about half way through the story, they can’t seem to put down the book.

Here is what my sister told me in an email: I read all of Windfall this past Tuesday. It took me about seven hours to complete. I had a hard time in the beginning with all the characters and I almost stopped reading it. However once it came together I couldn’t put it down. Thumbs up Sis!

All I can say is, “hang in there.” At the beginning of the book,  the characters seem unrelated, but their stories overlap and most questions are resolved at the end.

Today, I got some good writing done on FINDING VERITY.  Almost two hours worth at the laundromat and then another couple of hours when I got home. 

Current word count on FINDING VERITY is 15,634.