Another month bites the dust

Nov1

I can’t believe how fast they are going by. It’s crazy, crazy I say! As a kid you feel like a year drags by – except of course for your summer, and winter holiday breaks. Those blast past at shockingly high speeds. Then as an adult you’re finally able to “enjoy” life, pick a pace, and do your thing. No one ever mentioned that the older you get the faster the years speed past. And I’m pretty sure it’s picking up speed at some horrific rate.

That said I definitely need to get some time in on my book, and finish the sucker. This weekend is when I’ll be spending a good chunk of my time writing it. I’m all set too. First cup of coffee into the system, a movie on the TV that I’ve seen a few times so I’ll use it as background noise save for the couple of scenes I have to stop and giggle over. Fridge is full of snacks, and pizza will be the dinner of choice tonight so I don’t need to stop to cook anything. Barring anything catastrophic occurring *knock on wood* I should get in several solid hours of writing.

Now, before I get down to business I want to give a shout out to my winners from the Evernight Halloween Facebook Party. I had a fantastic time chatting with everyone during my hour, meeting new folks, and basically having a spooktacularly good time discussing all the fun things we do on All Hallows Eve. The winners were, as follows:

1 copy of a Back List Book – Kimberly T.
1 copy of my upcoming ARC for C&M Security 4, Dangerous Circumstances – Liz C.
And the flash giveaways for the $5.00 Amazon Gift Cards were – Lynne R., Kat B., and Marie M.-W.

A huge thank you to the winners, and everyone else that participated. It was a blast, and a half of fun to say the least. Now I need to get to work on the next instalment so I’m off to other parts of my computer. Have a great weekend ~ Moira

Edits are completed

Sep6

C&M Security book 3, Dangerous Lines, has been officially through round 2 of the editing process and is now back in the hands of my publisher. This also means that the excerpt is now up on the Dangerous Lines page for you to read.

It was a pretty quick run through, thanks to my amazing editor, Laurie Temple. The woman is great and I can’t ever thank her enough. I think she loves these characters nearly as much as I do. A good thing, and very helpful to the editing process. That and the fact she’s been my editor since day one – I got super lucky in having her assigned my books to be completely honest.

Now I can focus on writing book 5 of the series, something I’ve been a little lax on of late. Too much crap at the day job to get my mind relaxed enough to write. A sad, sad state of affairs really. But I have the rest of the weekend now, to write and plot my face off. Something I definitely need to do with these characters. It’s a different flow to book 5 than the previous ones, so I have to remain quite focused on the “end game” as they say. Since I started at the ending, I can’t have anything go awry during the “catch up” phase of the book/story line. Otherwise I’ll have to rewrite a bunch of things, all of which I really don’t want to do. So, focus is the name of the game.

Oh, shiny! Ha! Just kidding. I think I’ll throw on a movie, settle into the zone, and get a few thousand words out on it by the time Monday rolls around. Although, the fact the weather is fantastic is definitely making it hard to stick to my guns on that one. It’s so sunny, and nice out there. Argh! What’s a writer to do? Focus. Gotta focus.

Well, I’m off to focus on the sunny weather…uh, my story and plot line. Have a great weekend ~ Moira

Sunny Saturday

Aug30

Well, it’s nice to know that the weatherman can even be wrong about bad weather occasionally too, lol! We’ve been getting plenty of sunshine today. A lovely bright blue sky, with a few very non-threatening fluffy white clouds floating along, all around a perfect day to be out and about. In my case though, it was the perfect backdrop for writing my face off.

C&M Security book 5 has been trundling along nicely. The characters, and I have been getting this puppy going. I’m only a few thousand words in, but it’s been pretty smooth overall. Had to rein them in a couple of times here and there. They were trying to get a little too far ahead of things for my piece of mind. After all, you need to set the scene, build the tension and the mystery into the story before you show all the cards in your hand. Okay, yes I’m mixing metaphors. Shush! LOL!

Basically I’m trying to say that today was a damn good day for writing. Over 4k words added, with more bubbling in my head. I may get down some more tonight, not sure yet, depends on how it all coalesces in the old brain. May need to step back for a few, and see what comes of everything that’s rumbling around. To that end, I’m off to make dinner, and maybe make a bevvie as well. To that end, I’m out of here.

Before I go though, a heads up that Evernight Publishing is having a huge Labor Day Weekend sale on the website this weekend. It goes until Monday, and all titles are 25% off. As well, All Romance is also having a huge sale on specially selected titles – including all three of my titles that are currently out, and many of the other Evernight authors. So go and take a look, maybe you’ll find something to read this weekend.

Hope you all have a wonderful night. ~ Moira

Another one off to the Publisher

Aug23

Yup, you read that right, I’ve sent off another book to Evernight for consideration for publication. This would be book 4 of the C&M Security series. Amidst some not so minor heart palpitations, and mild hyperventilating I managed to hit the “send” button on the email. And away it went. Good gawd it doesn’t get any easier.

But, it’s off and in their hands now. Which means it’s all a waiting game of thumb twiddling, and inbox stalking. Not that I do that, the thumb twiddling I mean. Too much to try and get out of my head, and into a document after all. As soon as one is done, it’s onto the next in line. In this case it’s book 5 which will start out practically at the end of the story before I very drastically rewind to give the readers all of the details as to how the characters ended up there. It’s a different structure from the other books, but I like that about this series. Mixing up how I go about revealing the bad guy, how I tell the story the characters have to share, and how I end up getting everyone out of whatever mess they have found themselves in.

Though I will admit it occasionally makes my head ache. I’ve found myself in the proverbial corner a couple of times in the four books so far, and had to backtrack to figure out how to get out of said corner, or had to do a bit of rewriting to ensure it all worked out as planned. Not that I really “plan”. I mean, I have an idea of what I’m going to write, have a clue where the story is going, and even know who the bad guy is. But the characters are the ones that really drive the story. They tell me if I need to go left, or right, and what’s coming next. They are also the ones that usually get me stuck in that damned proverbial corner then abandon me to go off and do whatever it is that characters do while their author is pulling out her hair.

I think that’s it, I’m off now to get working on book 5. I can already hear the incessant chatter of that set of characters. Until next time ~ Moira

Just relaxing

Jul26

Not sure what all I plan to get up to today. Relaxing is at the top of my “to do” list for sure.

I do plan on doing some writing, C&M 4 is still in the works with the crescendo scene quickly approaching. It’s one of the few books of this series that won’t have an immediate bad guy being shown for the readers to get behind. This bad guy’s totally hidden, and will remain so until… Well, I can’t tell you that because that would just ruin the surprise. Which if the characters play along as they should, should be pretty fucking amazing. Course, they do seem to have a mind of their own, so we’ll have to wait and see if they are willing to continue playing ball or not.

Other than a little bit of shopping for me, my b-day gift to myself, I have no other major plans outside of reading a couple of new books that I have awaiting me in my Kindle. Today though will be pure laziness. Lots of movie watching, lots of chocolate eating and some writing. Beyond that I plan on doing nothing strenuous. Though I think I may need to go and beef up my chocolate supply. Only downside to living alone, you can’t blame anyone else for eating your chocolate stash lol!

Well, that’s it folks. Hope you all have a lovely weekend. From a sunny Calgary, hope you all have a marvellous day ~ Moira

Day one of a four day weekend

Jun28

Yup, that’s right! I got me a four day weekend. With Canada Day on Tuesday the boss said to hell with it, we’re not working Monday. The reality is, he didn’t want to work on Monday since he wanted to go out to his trailer to spend the weekend on the lake. Don’t blame him, the weather today is freakin’ fantastic! From the forecast, except for a “possible chance of precipitation” the four days look like they will be stellar.

Which means I have four days to write, write and write some more. On day one, today, I slept in. I’ve been battling a bit of a head cold on top of my yearly bout of allergies. It’s been a challenge but with my buddy the Kleenex box at my side, I’ve been making it through. Beyond a bit of sinus ache, it’s actually not all that bad this year around. We’ve had just enough rain to help with the dust issue that always arises right around this time. It’s one of my bigger allergy issues, that and the dry crap that’s kicked up when people mow and de-thatch their lawns for the first couple times of the year. Yes, I’m horribly allergic to the dust kicked up by mowed lawns. If I even get a whiff of a freshly mowed lawn at this time of year I will travel four blocks out of my way to avoid it just so I don’t have the wonderful seizing in my lungs. Can’t avoid it entirely, but I damn well try for the first bit. After the first month though it doesn’t much affect me, unless I’m the poor sucker out there doing the mowing. Which, as I have no lawn thanks to apartment living, I don’t ever have to do.

Up to bat on the writing front is C&M book 3. Still need to finish this sucker off. So I have my TV playing softly in the background, coffee at my elbow, and this sucker is getting done this weekend. Come hell or… Okay, given where I live, I’m not finishing that. Since we had high water’s last year and I’m not temping Fate or anything else. *knocking on wood*

With all that in mind, I’m off to do some writing. Hope you all have a lovely weekend ~ Moira

Sunny Saturday…

Jun21

It’s actually sunny out there, not kidding in the least! It’s a miracle really, given I was starting to feel like I was living in Vancouver (hehe!) after the last couple of weeks of nearly constant rain, and drizzle. I love my neighbors to the West, but seriously, keep the rain over there. Those of us living right across the Rockies are still feeling a little twitchy from last year over anything more than a couple hours of rain.

If I didn’t feel like such a pile o’ shit right now, I think one of my co-workers gave me her cold, I’d be out enjoying it. Instead I’ve been cleaning furiously in an effort to sweat some of it out. Now that I’ve exhausted myself though I think I shall write for a while before I go shopping. Nothing exciting though, just some food for my relatively bare fridge. Not bare-bare, but definitely lacking more than a few beverages, bread, butter and eggs. Need something for dinner, something with a bit of substance, maybe a nice thick and juicy steak. Oh god that sounds good! Of course, if I’m still feeling crappy when I go shopping I’ll likely just get a bunch of comfort foods instead, lol! It’s always that way.

On the writing front I’m stuttering through a bit of C&M Security book 3. I’ve been playing around with getting my hero and heroine back into town to confront the bad guy after they made a necessary, and strategic, retreat to recover from what he’d done. Now I need to get them back onto the playing field, quickly, so that this guy goes down – hard. Not really sure how I’m going to do this, but we’ll see. I’ve got a few ideas that I’ve been playing through, seeing how they’ll come to a conclusion. So far only two really seem to work, but I’m not really sure if it fits them. Oh well, it’ll work out, always does.

I think that’s it from me. I’m going to watch a bit of backlogged TV – Games of Thrones and 24 – while I write. Maybe I’ll be hit by some inspiration ~ Moira

Happily plotting

May31

It’s Saturday, a bit overcast, but quite pleasantly warm. So I figured I’d set up out on my balcony to write for a while. Fresh air, sounds of the city around me, and just enough sun not to freeze to death. It was an awesome plan. Got a lot of writing done on the new C&M Security book. Book three for those keeping track. Got just over 3500 words down on the page and already my lead female character is in shit up to her eyeballs.

Unlike the other books so far in this series, this one my lead character is heading straight into danger, willingly I should mention. She’s a police detective so that’s kind of her gig. Unfortunately for my leading gal, no one actually has much of a clue as to just who they are going up against, who they are rescuing her from. Neither did she until it was too late. Much too late.

Muahahaha! Yeah, I’m evil. I just LOVE putting characters into precarious positions and then trying to figure out how to dig them out. I do a bit of plotting ahead of time, more or less enough to know what the bad guy is after -his ultimate goal- but let the characters guide the story for a good portion of it. I like seeing where they pull things, often it’s to places I never would have been able to think up sitting there staring at a blank word doc.

I’m not saying that where they pull me is always the best place. Hell no! For instance, in book two of this same series, my lead male character nearly had him and those he was with, doing something highly questionable, and very illegal. I had to kibosh that right quick. Can’t be having any of that, especially since that isn’t who they are at their core. While the staff of C&M Security might play a little loose and free with the law, they can’t break it. So, after a knuckle whack or three, I got them back on track with a slightly less dramatic, but much better for the overall storyline, path. They were happy, no criminal records or jail time, and I was happy, no supporting of illegal activities just because you can. Don’t need to be setting that sort of precedent.

Now, had I written about a thief, totally different standards there. I can’t write about a thief that never steals anything, that would go against who I was writing and the story I was creating. But these guys work with law enforcement so, bending a little is okay, outright breaking is very, very bad.

Well, that’s enough of a break, back to writing now. Need to see if I can make about 5k words before dinner. Have a good day everyone ~ Moira

Not a thing was accomplished today!

May24

I did absolutely nothing today. Well, not exactly nothing, I have been watching a LOT of TV today. I found the entire (very short) season of Graceland and have been soaking it in. I sort of meant to watch it when the season was actually on but, well, I forgot and then it was over. [Insert pouty face here.]

But! Redemption was mine when we had it show up here as an all day thing. Taped them all and then just needed a weekend to myself to watch it. I have thoroughly been enjoying this show I have to admit. Lots of great characters, lots of wheelin’ and dealin’, lies, cover stories and shit that’s just waiting to hit the fan! I’m nearly done the season, I think it was ten shows in total, and I’m approaching the finale. Get to see if some of the lies are finally revealed and if the head guy, Briggs is the characters name, is found out. Sooooo exciting!

Haven’t done any writing this weekend, just haven’t felt the need yet. I might tomorrow if the weatherman continues to be right about the up and down weather though. We had a bit of sun today interspersed by hellish rain showers. Damn, that shit could’ve stripped paint off a car it seemed to be coming down so hard. Just glad I did my run to the store before it hit otherwise I’d likely still be wet.

That’s it! I have more TV to watch so I’m out of here ~ Moira

Long weekend

May17

Well, so far weather wise, this long weekend kinda sucks. I’m very happy I have three blissful days off from the hell I call my day job. But really, some sunshine would not be amiss here Mother Nature.

On the plus side though I got my second instalment of the C&M Security series finished and submitted to Evernight for consideration. We shall see if they want to take it on and keep the series going. I have a feeling I won’t hear right away as I know most of the staff is off in NOLA for a conference there. From the sounds of things they are all having a blast and that’s marvelous. I may just have to join them next year wherever it might be lol!

In other news I’m working on another new story since my paranormals aren’t working out quite right and I’m thinking of coming at that from a different direction entirely. The new story may be a short, not sure yet. It will be a standalone for sure, that I do know right now. It just sort of popped into my head and I’ve been getting it down as fast as I can as accurately as I can manage. Should be a fun little read I hope.

Well, that’s about it from under a bunch of cloud cover. I’m off to keep plotting ~ Moira

Moira Callahan

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