August 10, 2008

Another New Book

I've been putting off writing an entry about this because I wanted to be sure I was really going to do it and now I am.  I have started a new book for my pirate series so it's no longer just a trilogy.  Big Grin  It happened on July 4th.  That morning I finished my first edit of A Captain's Heart and realized how much I was going to miss my characters and writing about that time period.  I was writing in my journal about it and then the ideas slowly started coming to me.  This new book takes place eleven years after Every Tear and is about one of the girls from that book.  I just began writing chapter three last night and have the whole story pretty much planned out.  I think I might call it "Facing the Waves" which comes from a conversation between two of my characters later in the book.

July 08, 2008

My Future Book Plans

After they read The Pirate Daughter's Promise, I've had people ask me when the next two books, Every Tear and A Captain's Heart, will be available so I thought it would be good to answer that question here.  Right now I really don't know when Every Tear will be available or even when I'll be able to submit it for publishing.  Being almost twice as long as TPDP, Every Tear will probably be almost twice as expensive to publish so it will be quite a while until I save up enough money to feel like I can pay for it.  It all depends on the book sales for TPDP.

 

If you want to support me and my future writing, I'd be very grateful if you bought my book from the WinePress online bookstore.  It is only a couple dollars more there for shipping than other websites and that is how I receive the most profit for each book.  However, if that couple dollars would stop you from buying TPDP at all, then please, go ahead and buy it from somewhere like Amazon.com.  My greatest goal isn't to get the money, it  is to get TPDP to as many people as possible and hopefully God will use it to reach some of those people so if you've read it and enjoyed it, I would be delighted for you to recommend it to others.

 

WinePress Online Bookstore

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

June 26, 2008

Weekend Concerts

Last weekend we got to go to two concerts and I don't think anything this summer is going to be able to top how much fun we had. Happy  It was great!  Friday night we saw NEEDTOBREATHE and Saturday night we saw Building 429.  It was so much fun to watch NEEDTOBREATHE perform "Washed by the Water" live.  It's such a great song.  Building 429 performed all my favorites of their songs: "Fearless", "You Carried Me", and "Glory Defined."  After the concerts we got to get all their autographs and something we have always wanted, a picture with each of the bands! Big Grin  It always amazes me how nice the people are from the bands I've gotten to meet.  Everyone was so open and nice to us.  I really felt blessed just to be able to be there and spend even a little bit of time with each of them.  It makes me look forward to when we are all together in heaven and I can spend much more time with them.  Happy

 

Us with NEEDTOBREATHE

uswith_needtobreath

Us with Building 429

uswithB429

 

I really loved seeing everyone's smiles.  They were so wonderful.  It changes everything when you get to meet the people who create the music you like to listen to.  It's so much more fun and enjoyable.

 

We took quite a bit of video of the concerts.  I'm really glad because it is SO fun to re-watch.  Here is a video that Jake took of Building 429 performing "Fearless."  It's the only video I've had time to get uploaded so far.

May 24, 2008

My Books

We went on vacation at the beginning of this week and when we came home Wednesday, my books were here waiting for me!  Big Grin  It was such a huge, amazing moment opening the box and seeing The Pirate Daughter's Promise as a real book.  When I started writing it again back in 2006, I had always dreamed of getting a book published, but I had no idea it would be the one and it would actually happen.

 

Here is a picture that Mom took today of me with my books.

books1

May 14, 2008

TPDP Available Now!

I just got home from work and what did I find awaiting me?  An email from my project manager saying he got the proof copy of my book and it is now in print!  It is now available to purchase through the WinePress online bookstore. Big Grin

 

Click here to purchase.

 

Now I will get my free author copies in about 5-7 days.  I can hardly wait to finally hold my book in my hands. Happy

It's Getting Close!

The Pirate Daughter's Promise is very, very close to being available!  It went to the printer last week and as soon as my project manager gets the proof copy and approves it, he'll officially mark the book as "In Print" and it will be available for order!  That could be as soon as this week or early next week.

May 13, 2008

Loving Music

As I've said in my past posts, music was not my thing at all a couple of years ago.  I hated to have the radio on . . . I guess it seemed distracting to me, especially when I was writing.  I've gone completely the other way now.  I LOVE music.  Lately, I've been listening to music all the time.  I don't have a lot of favorite artists, but I am so into the ones who are my favorite.  StorySide:B, of course, is still my favorite and now within the last couple of weeks I've really been getting into Jeremy Camp.  His songs are so powerful and mean so much to me.

 

Because I love music so much and love to watch music videos, I wanted to share a YouTube playlist I've made and will be adding too.  It's just a bunch of my favorite artists, either performing my favorites of their songs or talking about their work.

 

April 25, 2008

Authorization to Print

This afternoon I received the form to sign authorizing Pleasant Word to print my book which means as soon as I sign it and send it back, my book will go to the printer!  This is the final step!  I'll probably get my first books in about three weeks.  I still can't quite imagine what that moment is going to be like, opening the box and getting to see my completed book for the first time.  I've been working on this for so long and to have just about reached the end is amazing.  In just a few weeks I will have gone from working to get my book published to trying to sell it.  I look forward to starting all the plans I have to promote it.

April 22, 2008

Being Used by God . . .

. . . it is definitely one of the most amazing experiences in life.  Turning my writing over to Him and asking Him to use me and what I write is one of the best decisions I've ever made.  It's given me wonderful experiences that, no matter how small, always fill me with awe.  Experiences like coming up with the title for Every Tear or being given the perfect line for an important part in a book when I've prayed for it.  It's amazing how God can speak to you even if you don't even realize it at first.  I am a Christian who admittedly has trouble witnessing verbally, but I feel God has given me the power to do it through writing.  I never felt I could come up with the right words to explain faith and other things to people, but many times, especially lately, I find myself reading over what I write and thinking, "Wow, I didn't know I could write something like that or explain it that way," and I know it's all coming from Him.  Now that I've begun writing Makilien which is an allegory of becoming a Christian, living a Christian life, and battling the forces of Satan, I've had so many of those wowing moments and I've only just started.  Seeing the ways God has directed me into using my fantasy stories, that once had no meaning, to paint a picture of life with and without Him is very awe-inspiring and satisfying.  One of my favorite verses is: Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed. - Proverbs 16:3 NIV  I always keep that verse before me when I'm writing because when I do commit my work to God and ask Him to help me write in a way that glorifies Him, it's then that my writing is at its best and I am able to write better than I first thought I could.

April 02, 2008

About Me

In case you want to know a little bit about me and the things I like here it goes. Winking

 

mollyevangeline I began writing when I was eight years old. At the time I just loved the Babysitter's Little Sister series and wrote stories like that and they always had something to do with a girl and horses. I also got into The Pony Pal Club series, which I'll always remember as one of my all-time favorite book series. They greatly influenced my writing as well. The stories I wrote at that time were the last modern day stories I ever wrote. After I saw The Lord of the Rings I began to write fantasy and now I mostly write historical fiction. I always say I couldn't write a modern day book to save my life. lol

 

I'm a homeschool graduate and I still live at home with my parents and two younger brothers. I'm not a girly girl. I have a couple different styles. I'm a cowgirl at heart, I love the outdoors, I'm quiet (except when really excited, lol), and I love both being alone and spending time with good friends. I'm not a thrill-seeker, but I like a little adventure sometimes. I'm very creative, a daydreamer, and I'm hopelessly romantic. I have four lovely, precious cats and our family dog, a yellow lab named Barley.

 

I didn't used to, but now I enjoying listening to music, especially my favorite artists. My favorite band is Storyside B, a Christian rock band. I got to meet all the guys recently and was really impressed with all of them. They are a great bunch of guys. Two of my other favorite artists are, of course, Casting Crowns and Jeremy Camp. I also like to listen to Daughtry and Rascal Flatts.

 

Probably my next favorite hobbies after writing are sewing historical costumes and historical reenactment. Some other hobbies of mine are horseback riding and hiking. I've loved horses all my life and though I don't own a horse at the moment, that is one of my goals this year. I love to journal. In the winter I like to snowboard even though I'm still really terrible at it. lol I don't feel I'm very musically talented at all, but I am learning to play bass guitar and am enjoying it immensely. I love photo editing and painting on the computer with Photoshop. In the summer I love to go fishing, rafting down the river, and playing Airsoft with my brothers and cousins.

 

I love movies, especially action/adventure movies. Some of my favorites are Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lord of the Rings, Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator, Master and Commander, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Prince and Me. As I'm sure you can probably tell, my favorite actors are Orlando Bloom and Russell Crowe. Other than movies, I absolutely love BBC's TV show, Robin Hood. It's just as good and exciting as any movie.

 

And I am addicted to cream cheese, cheese, and chocolate. Big Grin

April 01, 2008

God Has Different Plans

It seems that God wants me to put off writing my western for a while.  I'm not at all disappointed because I'm really enjoying His new plans.  This is what happened.  For a couple of days now I've been praying for a good story plan for a western novel, but instead all the ideas that kept coming to me were for an entirely different story.  Years ago when I was writing my fantasy stories, I was working on a series of five books (I completed three).  They were the typical "modern day girl ends up in a world like Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings."  They were completely for my enjoyment and the enjoyment of my cousins who loved them and they were always very special to me because they were the first books I ever completely finished writing.  I always wished I could do something with them, but since I used everything from The Lord of the Rings, I couldn't and, I admit, they weren't that well written anyway.

 

God actually started giving me some ideas for this a month or two ago.  One morning I was thinking about my fantasy books for some reason and wondered if I could rewrite them completely using my own imagination and give them a Christian message.  It sounded fun, but at that time I was right in the middle of A Captain's Heart so I wasn't thinking about starting any other stories and I honestly thought it would be way too hard to rewrite my fantasies.  So, for the last few days, I've really been struggling to start writing again.  I hate when I don't have a book I'm working on.  Like I said, I was praying for a good western story plot, but all I kept thinking about were my fantasies and how I could change them.  Then, yesterday morning just before I got out of bed the whole thing came together for how I could rewrite them and give them a Christian message.  What I'm doing is combining my first two books into one and my last two into one so there will be two when I'm finished.  They are kind of a cross between my original stories, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Pilgrim's Progress.  I'm already half done with the first chapter and it's going very well.  I think I'll be able to write it pretty quickly since I know almost exactly what is going to happen throughout the book because I'm mostly following my original storyline with a few changes.  This two book (and perhaps more, we'll see) series of mine is called Makilien, the name of the book's heroine.

March 28, 2008

Today's Work

I am the kind of writer who writes everything in a notebook.  It's funny, not too long ago I wrote everything on the computer.  I rarely had anything on paper unless I didn't have access to a computer, then I always had a notebook with me.  Just before I started writing A Captain's Heart, I started feeling like I could concentrate much better writing by hand.  Pretty much everything I ever wrote for A Captain's Heart is in a couple different notebooks.  I like doing that, but then I have to copy it all onto the computer.  So my work for today is to try to get the rest of the book onto the computer.  I have at least five chapters to do . . . a daunting task.  It's always one thing I dread, but the good thing is I can edit and change things at the same time.

March 27, 2008

Finished

I did it.  I finished my third book last night.  Now my trilogy is complete.  It's always so satisfying to finish a book.  I've finally decided on a title, A Captain's Heart.  It fits the story and I think it sounds interesting.  So now the trilogy altogether is The Pirate Daughter's Promise, Every Tear, and A Captain's Heart.

 

ist2_3001780_cowgirl_and_her_horseI'm already making plans for a new book.  I'm pretty sure it will be a western like I was thinking.  I do have a tiny little idea already for some characters, now I just have to build on it to get a whole book.  I even found a very inspirational picture on iStockphoto that makes me want to write that kind of book.  Perhaps, someday, it will end up being the cover photo.

March 26, 2008

Stories of My Books

Since I don't have much information on this blog about how I started writing my books, I thought I should write down the stories behind them. 

 

I actually first started writing The Pirate Daughter's Promise in 2003.  Before that I had never written a book with a Christian message.  I was really into the fantasy writing because I loved The Lord of the Rings.  TPDP also became my very first "romantic story."  Being the tomboy I was at the time, it took me a while to want to write a story like that.

 

I can't remember now how I decided to make TPDP a Christian story because it just started out as the usual pirate adventure story.  I remember feeling a lot of opposition when I changed it to be a Christian book, that might be why I quit.  I got to about chapter five and then I just stopped writing it for some reason and returned to my fantasy writing.  I hardly thought about it until May 2006 when I started writing it again.  Unfortunately, I can't even remember what made me start again, but once I started I couldn't stop.  At one point I managed to write a whole chapter everyday for a week!  Now I can usually only manage a half a chapter on a really good day!  In all it took about two and a half to three weeks to completely finish all seventeen chapters.

 

It was during early spring last year that I started thinking of publishing it and in March I found the WinePress website and looked into self-publishing with Pleasant Word.  After that came the work of getting the book ready (which meant hours of editing for me and Mom) and finding a way to pay for it.  Almost as soon as I began praying for God to provide the money I got hired for my first job and after a few months had what I needed.

 

After I finished writing TPDP I immediately began trying to think of a sequel.  I'm the kind of writer who loves writing sequels.  I can never seem to give up my characters that I've come to love so much after just one book.  :)  Trying to come up with a story for a sequel was not an easy task.  Finally, almost a month later, I had the beginning of an idea, but it was only a very vague idea that I would have to really build on so I continued planning. 

 

A couple weeks later I started the prologue and first chapter.  I still didn't have a complete plan, but I thought I could figure it out once I got far enough.  That was also around the same time I came up with the book's title, Every Tear.  The story of how I came up with that is one of my favorite memories of writing the book.  We were driving home from shopping one afternoon and I was specifically trying to think of a title because I like to have the title as soon as possible.  I had one or two ideas written down, but nothing I really liked.  As I was doing this a certain song just happened to be playing on the radio.  Praise You in This Storm by Casting Crowns.  I'd heard the song so many times, my brother even had the CD, but I was very NOT into music at that time and hadn't listened to the lyrics before.  However, that afternoon I heard the lyrics, ". . . every tear I've cried, You hold in Your hand."  They fit my story perfectly and immediately I wrote "Every Tear" in my notebook.  The title stuck.  It reminded me of a verse that became the main one for my book.

 

You have seen me tossing and turning through the night. You have collected all my tears and preserved them in Your bottle! You have recorded every one in Your book. - Psalms 56:8

 

It was only after that that I listened to all of Praise You in This Storm and realized how the whole song reminded me of my book.  It was a huge inspiration as I got further into the story.  To me it was such a wonderful and amazing sign that God was guiding me in writing it.

 

Still, it wasn't easy.  For the longest time I couldn't think of a good ending for the book and I couldn't really get into it without knowing where my characters were going to end up.  Finally, in August 2006 I figured out my ending and really started writing.  I had more difficulty along the way, but eventually I got it finished in May 2007 the very day before I started my job to pay for publishing The Pirate Daughter's Promise.  It was another small sign of God's help because after I started my job I lost much of my writing time and it would have probably been another couple of months until I could have finished.

 

When Every Tear was finished I already had some thoughts for another sequel, this one about the grandchildren of my original characters, but I just could never get into it and work out the story plan.  For months I wasn't writing much because of work and because I didn't have a good idea for a story.  It was sad for me because for as long as I can remember I've had a story I was working on.  Finally, in December 2007, after I switched jobs and had more time, I was working on my laptop thinking about what to write about and the image of a young sea captain came into my mind and I thought about how fun it would be to write about a character like that.  In just a couple hours I had the whole skeleton of the book planned out.  I started the first chapter the next day and I've been working on it steadily ever since then.  I am now only a half a chapter away from finishing.  Sadly, I still don't have a title for it . . . it's really irritating me.  lol  That's one of my things.  I want to have titles as soon as possible. 

 

My first two books were focused on trusting in God even when everything is going wrong around you and you're put through things you never thought you could handle.  This book I'd say is focused a lot on patience and watching God gradually work on things in your life that you want changed.  I'd also say this one is more a romance than an action/adventure book like the first two.  Oh, there's still action and adventure just not as much.

 

The interesting thing about this book is it takes place about a year after Every Tear and is about completely different characters, but some of my old characters still show up here and there.  Getting to show their lives after the struggles they went through and how they effect these new characters has been very fun to write.

 

So what's next for me?  I haven't quite decided yet.  I think I might write a western.  I have always loved the 1850s to 1860s.  I'm very surprised I've never written that kind of book yet.  I also really want to write a medieval book.  I love castles, knights, ladies with beautiful medieval dresses . . . all that great stuff.  I'm actually slowly working on a book like that along with my others.  It's called Andrian.  I can't really call it a fantasy book, but all of the places and names are made up.  It's a storyline that I've played around with for years and I'm quite pleased so far so we'll have to see what happens with it.

February 13, 2008

Every Tear Cover

ist2_4501152_crying_eye_blue_highkey_version This morning I found the perfect photo from iStockphoto that I can use for the cover of Every Tear when I get it published too.  I just love it.  It's a close up of a young woman's eye with a tear rolling down.  It's perfect because she has blue eyes and dark hair like Skye.  It's a beautiful picture . . . in a sad sort of way.  The whole thing has a blue tint that I love.  I was so excited when I found it.

 

I still have to decide what I'm going to call my new book.  I'm working on chapter thirteen now.

February 06, 2008

Full Cover Layout

fullcoverlayout Three days ago I received the full cover layout for The Pirate Daughter's Promise!  So I was able to see what the whole thing looked like, front and back!  It was absolutely amazing.  I love it.  I thought the back would be just a solid color, but it looks like old paper.  It is so cool.  I was so excited.  It was just amazing to see.  It's getting so close.  Hopefully it won't take much longer.

 

I'm getting really close to finishing my third book.  Only about three chapters left.  I could finish it this month.  Then it will have taken me only four months to write.  Of course, that's nothing compared to the two and a half to three weeks it took me to write The Pirate Daughter's Promise.  That was amazing.

January 01, 2008

TPDP Back Cover Text

This is the back cover text for The Pirate Daughter's Promise:

 

Skylar McHenry knew the love of her parents and a doting grandfather until her sixth year was marked by the tragic loss of her mother. When her father’s secret past as a pirate came to light, father and daughter fled to a life at sea. Although Daniel McHenry’s life had changed and he now robbed pirates to return the stolen goods to their rightful owners, his ship was captured by authorities, and he was hung for piracy.

 

Skye grew up in an orphanage, little more than a servant and shunned by everyone around her. Now a young woman, each day Skye faces is marked by some new struggle. Her only hope has been to rely on her heavenly Father’s care and comfort and the solace of her best friend Will, who has become more than dear to her.

 

Just when an unexpected encounter with her grandfather gives Skye a small glimmer of hope that things might change in her favor, her world is shattered. She is awakened in the night by cannon blasts. Pirates storm the orphanage, drag her away into the night, and force her aboard their ship. The cruel captain’s intentions are clear. He will extract from her, through any means necessary, the location of the hidden treasure rewarded to Daniel by those whose belongings he had returned. For Skye to divulge the location would mean breaking the last promise she made to her father. She’s certain she never will, but what happens when the lives of those dearest to her are at stake?

 

The Pirate Daughter’s Promise is full of daring high seas adventure, sweet, wholesome romance, surprising discoveries, unlikely new friends, and the rewards of trusting in God even when life seems impossible.