Mountain Girl

It's Writing Tip Wednesday - on a Friday!  (Because I forgot to write it when I should have...) Which brings me to my tip:  Schedule Shit. Weekly Disclaimer Thing :  Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. Scheduling is Like the Outline of Your Life. I know.  So deep. But it really is.  I don't know why this didn't occur to me ages ago, since it's so damn obvious, but I think the perspective shift is good.  It is!  Because outlines are important, as we know (even if they're loose ones), so scheduling shit is important too.  The level of it is, of course, up to you and what you're comfortable with....

Miscellaneous Monday Wherein I Babble About Random Things THE BOOKS HAVE GONE WIDE! Well, at least two of them have.  The third is still waiting out its term in KU, but as soon as that's done...Woo!  So, Snowed In  and Smoked Out  are both available on multiple platforms now!  Including Kobo SUPER PRETTY LINKS: Snowed In Smoked Out So yeah.  Check them out, if you want.  They're both still available on Amazon, of course, as paperbacks as well. Cherry Update I've washed, pitted, bagged and frozen...40 cups of cherries so far.  Which is approximately 10 L of them.  I'll use about 4cups/batch of whatever it is I'm making (jam or pie filling or whathaveyou), so I'll have a lot of canning to do.  Especially since I've still got another ~10L left to pit. And apples to pick. Speaking of jam, I used the raspberries from the garden and some blueberries from the store to make jam today.  I friggin love the col...

Weekly Disclaimer Thing :  Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. So, last week was a little bit about Fiddling, and the bare bones of my editing process.  This week will be...Outlining.  (Dun dun duuuuun!) I know people hate outlining.  It can be frustrating.  But you really should outline your stories.  Really.  Even if you're a born Pantser, you should still outline just a little bit.  It makes things so much faster . Which reminds me, I really need to re-outline my current WIP, since I'm getting lost in the middle. And that's the thing - the outline can change.  If you're in the middle of writ...

Trudie Rowland (c) Aug 8, 2017 Cherries, Cherries and...More Cherries! So, Hubs has a boss who lives near by, and he has a cherry tree in his yard.  He also doesn't have time/energy to pick the cherries, or know what to do with them, so for the low, low price of All The Cherry Pie He Can Eat, he lets me do it (I also get to keep whatever I make out of them, which this year is going to be mostly jam). This year, we got ~ 20L of cherries - again.  That was about the yield we got last year.  It's a lot of cherries.  I also used last year's pic, since the lighting was better (this year, everything's smoky and gross owing to forest fires out west). Now I have to pit them all, so that's going to be fun.   Last year it took me about a week solid, by myself, one at a time.  This year... Will probably be about the same, actually.  Which is going to be such fun, because by the time I'm done pitting and canning all of these, it's time for apple...

So, I got it into my head to do something for Fridays too...so...Photo Fridays.  I'm normally all about the alliteration, but...well, I'm also all about spelling and I can't bring myself to spell 'photo' without the 'ph', so...it's...yeah. Anyway, please enjoy these pictures of my "backyard". Note, it's not actually  my backyard, but it's still within a five minute drive of my house, so that counts. Pics by me, unless noted otherwise. A beautiful mountain lake.  Also the background for the top graphic thing with the words on. It's a good, quiet spot to sit and contemplate life.  Also where I got married, so...yeah.  Very tranquil.  Late evening is the best time for lack of other people, worst time for bugs.  It's a trade off.   Axe in Firewood So, this one has a humorous backstory in which I was trying to get a "noble woodsman" shot of my brother chopping wood.  Which wasn't working...

For this Wednesday, I thought I might go over my editing process. The Weekly Disclaimer:   Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. So, last week it was Finish - then Fiddle.  This week it's the Fiddling Bit. I do three passes: 1) Read It Through - I will sometimes fix little typos I find along the way, or at least make note of them so I can get them on the second pass.  But mostly I just want to get a sense of whether or not the scene/chapter is complete. 2) Add What Needs To Be Added And Fix What Needs To Be Fixed - Sometimes it's just a sentence or two, sometimes its whole paragraphs of exposition or dialogue or whathaveyou....

Because why not...? Inane Stuff First: I have discovered that I can indeed make good sandwich bread, using this recipe .  Before, I'd been struggling to get the damn thing to rise a second time, so while it was tasty it was also squished.  But, not any more!  I made four loaves yesterday, and another batch today to (hopefully) become buns.  We're already down to  three loaves.  It's that good. So, I couldn't be more pleased with myself.  It's fluffy, and light, and doesn't fall apart when you look at it sideways, and smells AMAZING. Someday, I'll be brave enough to make sourdough. Writing Stuff... WIP is...well, I'm working on it.  Now I've got family visiting on top of having 3 kids to watch, so my writing time has...diminished.  Still plugging away at it, though.  I'll get there!  Eventually.   I feel bad, thinking that it's not going to be done when I'd wanted it to be (I really should be ...

My first one!  Yay!  I did up a little graphic thing and everything.   The Weekly Disclaimer:   Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. My Tip For This Week:   Write.  Just write it out.  Get the bare bones down, and when you come to the end, go back to the start and add in the flesh.  The details and the adjectives and the rewording of awkward sentences.  You get to do as many passes as you want. The other side of this is, of course, that you need to know when to stop obsessing over every phrase.  Otherwise, you'll never move on to the next bit and you'll get stuck fiddling with details tha...

Hey, everyone!  It's time to show you the cover for Book Three of the Olsson's Pass Series - TRACKED DOWN. I hope you like it, and the book that will come attached to it! No pressure :P Anyway, first things first... The Giveaway It's my first one!  I have no idea what I'm doing!  Yay!  Here are the things! A signed copy of SNOWED IN: The Shifters of Olsson's Pass Book One, by Trudie Rowland (me) A $25 Amazon Gift Card A TrudieRowland.com tote bag in which to carry your stuff A bookmark, featuring Angel in wolf form A couple awesome stickers from Society6 I did everything through Rafflecopter, so you can find the giveaway HERE .  I'll be posting a link on the social medias too, for any of those interested :) Now onto.... The Book! PreOrder will be available as soon as it's live.  I'll update with links and stuff. *Live! You can PreOrder it here  for $0.99 USD until May 31st, 2018 About Tracked Down : In a n...

First Things First: Book Three is...almost done!  About 75% done.  Well, at least the writing part.  I'll still need to edit, but I've got some time set aside for that (obviously).  But it feels good to be coming up to the finale of the story and mostly  on schedule too.  I'm excited to publish it.  Hopefully you guys will like it as much as I do :P ARC List! I've set up a sign up form for ARC Readers on my website ; there's also an external link.  As soon as the book is ready, I'll let everyone know so they can go to the hosting site (in this case, BookSprout) and download from there. Ooooo, things are moving along! Misc. Stuff The usual reminders...got stuff if you want stuff, at CafePress and Society6 .  I ordered some stickers from Society6 for the giveaway that's coming up - I'm quite happy with them.  Kinda want to keep them myself...but I won't ;P Also...<spooky ghost voice> BUY MY BOOOOOKS </spooky...

Well, I've fallen a few days behind in my word counts...I haven't stopped writing (except on the weekend, when I took a couple days off as Burnout Prevention), but yesterday was a doozy of a day.  Whole bunch of irritating things happened, one on top of another...and then I almost got hit by a car.  It was one of those "if I hadn't had STOP AND LOOK ingrained in me at a very young age, I'd be dead right now" moments. And, most frustrating, it happened at a crosswalk , in a province where pedestrians have right of way at all times .  And yeah, some unrelated douche canoe had parked too close to my side of the crosswalk, blocking not just my line of sight but the line of sight of the approaching vehicles, but that's why I stop and look.  The guy who just blew through the crosswalk wasn't even looking, was going way too fast (and had deliberately accelerated too, since half a block up the road is a controlled intersection, so he was going way too fast...

I have a new logo!  I'm quite proud of it, since I have the graphic design skills of a dead squid.  It's nice and simple and looks good on a shirt, so I think I'll keep it around for a while. Camp NaNoWriMo 2018: Well, it's now April. This year is going waaaay too fast. Anyway, I decided (somewhat last minute) to use Camp NaNoWriMo this month to write Book Three.  I already had an outline written out, just need to fill in the blank pages of the chapters now.  It's day four and I'm...actually pretty much on track, as long as I make my word goals for today.  If I exceed them, even better. I'm gonna need some tea... But, the story is progressing nicely.  Covers and blurb are actually done and don't suck, so that's nice.  I'll reveal them closer towards the end of the month. Other Things: Once the book is mostly done I'm going to be running an ARC sign up for those that want.  My first one!  Hopefully it'll go smoothly....

So.  Updates.  Yay. The elder two kids are outside, in splash-pants and rain coats.  It's not raining (it's actually supposed to snow later, got a storm warning and everything.  Yay for March in the mountains.), but everything is wet as hell on account of the snow finally melting.  It also smells of camping because there's a fire going near by. ...I want to go camping so bad, you have no idea... Anyway - I started a Cafe Press shop .  It's named after my fantastically non-witty blog because I couldn't think of anything else, It also hasn't got much in there right now (and what there is is kinda cheesy), but I figured...what the hell.  Someday, someone might want a shirt that relates to my books/website/brand thing I'm trying to build for myself.  Or a stainless steel water bottle.  Or an interesting sicker.  Someone like...well, me. And maybe my mum. Or maybe, someday, one of you guys.  One can hope. Plus, I'm thinking o...

Spring is finally in the air... One of the theoretical downsides about living in the Rockies is that spring is usually late - the snow doesn't go completely until it's pretty much May, and even then it doesn't really get warm until the middle of June.  So no garden for me until May 24th weekend at the earliest, and even then I still have to watch out for sudden and random frosts. Even so, it's been above freezing for the past few days.  The snow is melting.  The prescribed burns are...burning, so everything smells of camping and wood smoke, and it's nice.  The goddamn elk will be moving out of the neighbourhood soon (well, not the pregnant ones...those we get the honor of running from until the end of June, when the calving is over). As for myself, I've finally  gotten the better part of an outline for Book Three.  I know I say 'finally' as though everyone's been waiting for years* and years, when it's really only been a month since the las...

So, I got some physical copies of Smoked Out  (and one of Snowed In, because I had updated the cover and reformatted a few things to make it prettier) in the mail yesterday...they look good!  Smoked Out's cover turned out a little dark, but it's legible and - more importantly - it's here . Squee! Anyway, having the physical copies seems to have lit some sort of fire under my backside - Book Three has been sort of languishing, half formed, in the back of my head.  I started outlining it a couple weeks ago, and every time I try to sit down and write it, the excuses start popping up.  I just need to do more research... It's not fully formed, I'll work on it later... Oooo!  Twitter!  Shiny! I'm not in the MC's head yet... Which are all just poppycock, of course, since the secret to getting the book done is, of course, just writing the goddamn book and editing it afterwards.  I don't have a date in mind (strictly) for publishing...maybe I shou...

Ebook Paperback Also available are the ebook  ($0.99 USD) and paperback  ($10.00 USD) versions of Snowed In: The Shifters of Olsson's Pass Book One.

Thought I'd have a go at one of these.   Challenge was to search "Strange Photos" and pick one, write 1000 (or 1146, in this case) or so words of whatever comes to mind because of it.  My dip into the 'strange photos' section of Google Images dumped me right in the lap of the Merrilyn Cryptid Museum  which is full of the apparently re-discovered remains of various mythological creatures, all preserved and displayed all scientific and stuff. Anyway, here is... dun dun dun... The Collector Photo Credit: Alex CF 2016 In the basement, the boxes lie. A rustling of parchment.  Flicker of the gas lamps.  Scratching of nib against paper.  But otherwise, silence.  And a forest of boxes. The man at the desk put down his pen and blotted the ink.  He surveyed his handiwork, double checking for mistakes.  There were none, so he spread a layer of paste in the appropriate space and pressed the label into it: Homomimus ...