Hello NaNoWriMo

It's that magic time of year again, folks. I don't mean the countdown to Christmas, though it is my favorite holiday. The madness that is National Novel Writing Month is upon us. While I should probably have started the sequel to last year's novel, I decided instead to start something new. I just wasn't feeling my Neverland vibe this year.

I find myself writing another YA book. It seems to be my go to when I plot ideas. I'm not sure what this says about my maturity level. Or attention span, really, as YA novels are usually a bit shorter than adult fiction.

A lot of authors offer advice and pep talks as the month wears on. Here's a link to a fun one from Chuck Wendig. If you've never read his blog, give it a look. He's got a potty mouth, but there's a lot of fun posts there.

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016/10/31/nanowrimo-pep-talk-the-pure-fucking-joy-of-getting-it-all-wrong/

So, I'm ready to make all the mistakes and get everything wrong. Hopefully by the end of the month, I'll have another rough draft of a novel ready to go.

Contests Continued

Yesterday marked the deadline for round two of the flash fiction contest. I'm fairly certain I won't make it to round three. My genre for this round was crime caper. Mysteries are so not my forte. I gave it my best effort, but I'm not very optimistic about advancing.

As you many know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo. I'm hoping to begin planning an outline for this year's novel. I went in with a rough outline last year, and it made reaching 50k so easy.

I've fallen out of a daily writing habit, so I'm hoping to find my writing rhythm again before November hits. A target goal of 1667 words per day is daunting if you aren't accustomed to writing daily. I need to work on that.

If you've never heard of Nanowrimo, you should check out this site.

http://nanowrimo.org/how-it-works

Take a look around the site. It will answer any questions you might have. If it sounds like something that interests you, sign up! It's a fun challenge, and even if you don't hit 50k words, you've still got more written than you did at the beginning of November. It's an all around win. My user name is gabbyg if you want to send me a buddy request.

The Benefits of Contests

Friday marked the beginning of NYC Midnight's annual flash fiction contest. I've competed in it for the last few years. It's quite possible that I write a contest post every year around this time because I'm reminded how fun and beneficial contests are. NYC Midnight's contests are particularly good at getting me to write outside of my comfort zone.

While many contests accept submissions that allow the author to select that nature of their work's contents, NYC Midnight gives the authors restrictions. This year, my round one requirements were: genre: fairy tale, setting: a barn, object: crystal ball. I was also limited to one thousand words and had forty eight hours to submit my piece. The deadline forces me to focus and the time line is just long enough for one round of edits and not long enough for me to overthink anything. I'm usually very proud of my entries for this contest.

Not every writing contest is so rigid or such a whirlwind. Many give you months to enter and only limit the word count for entries. The crazy deadlines of NYC Midnight's contest may not work for you. That doesn't mean there won't be other contests that will.

The internet is filled with resources to help authors find contests worth entering. Here are a few helpful links for those looking for a place to get started.

http://www.pw.org/grants

https://www.dystopianstories.com/writing-competitions-2016/

http://www.writersdigest.com/writers-digest-competitions

http://www.freelancewriting.com/creative-writing-contests.php

http://www.writermag.com/writing-resources/contests/

I'm sure there are many more, but this is a handy short list to get you started. I may have to take my own advice and see what other contests there are to throw myself into. SO, go forth, find contests, write, and, most importantly, have fun!

Celebrating the release of Because I Love You!

Blaze Publishing is happy to announce the release of the YA Contemporary Romance BECAUSE I LOVE YOU by Tori Rigby! You can get your copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or you can order a signed copy from our website

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Sometimes, love is sacrifice.

Eight weeks after sixteen-year-old Andie Hamilton gives her virginity to her best friend, “the stick” says she’s pregnant.

Her friends treat her like she’s carrying the plague, her classmates torture and ridicule her, and the boy she thought loved her doesn’t even care. Afraid to experience the next seven months alone, she turns to her ex-boyfriend, Neil Donaghue, a dark-haired, blue-eyed player. With him, she finds comfort and the support she desperately needs to make the hardest decision of her life: whether or not to keep the baby.

Then a tragic accident leads Andie to discover Neil’s keeping a secret that could dramatically alter their lives, and she's forced to make a choice. But after hearing her son’s heartbeat for the first time, she doesn’t know how she’ll ever be able to let go.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Adopted at three-days-old by a construction worker and a stay at home mom, Tori Rigby grew up with her nose in a book and her fingers on piano keys, always awaiting the day she’d take her own adventure. Now, she goes on multiple journeys through her contemporary and historical romances. She longs to live in the Scottish Highlands, and her favorite place in history is Medieval England—she’d even give up her Internet and running water to go back in time! Tori also writes high-concept genre fiction as Vicki Leigh, and when she isn’t writing, she’s kicking butt in krav maga or attending classes to learn how to catch bad guys.

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Book Review: The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids

Amra is a thief, and a very talented one at that. She has a small pool of acquaintances, and an even smaller collection of friends. When one of those friends winds up dead, after giving Amra something for safekeeping, she takes it personally. Armed with an expansive wit and an admirable armory of knives, Amra begins a quest for revenge that will lead her into temples, brothels, pawn shops, and manors, with a little bit of prison thrown in to keep things interesting. She finds that her friend got himself into something dark and dangerous, and that if she sin't careful, she will likely end up just as dead as he is.

There are so many wonderful things about this book that I'm angry with myself for letting it sit on my to-be-read shelf for so long. Let's start with the characters. First of all, Amra is female, and a bad ass. More amazingly, there is no lovey-dovey subplot to mire down her badassery. It was refreshing and very welcome to read such a strong female character. Kudos to you, McClung, for making Amra so incredible. However, the supporting characters are all just as well-written. Holgren is a mage with a million secrets and a soft spot for slobbery dogs. Bosch is steampunk cyborg warlock necromancer that oozes villainy. The list of memorable characters could go on to include them all. Seriously, they're all amazing.

Lucernis. The place where everything goes down. The world building is so subtle it's hard to even notice that the details are there. McClung doesn't give a single info-dump paragraph to give readers a sense of setting. It's all done as the story moves forward. He creates an utterly believable, gritty world where magic exists, though the world doesn't revolve around it. There's even a handy appendix in the back for any details you might miss as you read through.

I always feel like I'm taking a huge gamble when I buy something that has been self-published, but this story blew me away. I was left feeling unfulfilled because I wasn't ready to leave that world, where the gods are not as dead as they are supposed to be and trouble is looming beneath the surface, ready to emerge at any moment. I've already bought the second book, and will most likely be rearranging my reading list to make sure it rockets to the top. Do yourself a favor, and buy this book. Absolutely five out of five stars.

National Poetry Month

April has come and gone, and with it has passed another successful Poem-a-day challenge. Since April is National Poetry Month, I try to write a poem a day. So, I've got 30 new poems. Some of them show a lot of promise. Some of them will never see the light of day again because they are beyond saving.


Daily poem writing is amazing for stirring up the creative juices in my brain. It's a huge shift from fiction, which is what I had been focusing on, but it's a fresh way to explore words.


A lot of people in my life are currently expecting babies, so motherhood and fertility were a very common theme in my poems. As a wonderful bonus, one of those poems about fertility will be published this month in the Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review.


I'm hoping to submit some more pieces to various literary magazines this month. Fingers crossed that a few get accepted. I'd like to hope that this is a trend and not a fluke.


My monthly writing group focused on sonnets, so I've penned a few of those in the past weeks. Here's one of my NaNoPoMo sonnets. It's a twist on a story you're probably all familiar with.



The Real Story


You met me at a ball and it was fun
to dress up and play at something that I'm not,
but midnight comes for everyone,
and all that fun comes screeching to a stop.

Beneath the gown and glitter, I am plain,
and dirty, and unloved, and overworked.
You make promises of love, and joy, and games,
and a castle full of other little perks.

But I'm not buying what you're trying to sell.
I know some things are too good to be true.
You can deck me out in silks, and jewels as well;
remove all that, and who am I to you?

Just a kitchen maid in a pretty dress,

too tired to be your damsel in distress.

Book Review: Because I Love You by Tori Rigby

Andie has her whole life planned out. She's going to be Homecoming Queen and then she's going to medical school to become a doctor. Then, she professes her love for her best friend and sleeps with him at a party. A few weeks later, she's puking every ten minutes and worried that her religious mother is going to disown her. Andie is pregnant, and scared, and loses everything she thought she wanted. Both of her best friends disown her. She is bullied so much at school that she has to drop out. Her mother becomes a surprising source of comfort, as does her ex boyfriend Neil. As she faces difficult decisions, like whether to keep the baby or put it up for adoption, Neil rescues her again and again until Andie can no longer fight her feelings for him.

Poor Andie just cannot catch a break. I don't want to give any spoilers in this review, but let's just say the world dumps on her time and time again. I actually felt like she faced too many obstacles, that her luck was too bad to fit naturally into the story. That being said, it's one of the only cons I had with this story.

There is an undercurrent of religion throughout the book, but I feel like it never gets preachy, and it's not so heavy that the book becomes unreadable.  I would also recommend not reading the book at work as your co-workers will begin to wonder why you keep crying at your desk. Also, the epilogue was a wonderful way to bring everything to a close.

The book is well-paced and the characters are likable (except for those that aren't supposed to be). Rigby captures the distress and confusion, loneliness, and frustration of a young, pregnant girl really well. Andie's emotions are a bit of a rollercoaster, but that's to be expected when your hormones are raging out of control because not only are you a teenager, you also happen to be growing a new human. This was a quick read, but an enjoyable one. I give it three out of five stars.