Anya Bast

I’m making Devil’s Food cake today. Mmmmmm.

That is…unless something unforeseen happens to me instead and I start to crave braaaaains. Unfortunately Megan Hart MAY HAVE ALREADY SUCCUMBED! People, I cannot stress enough having zombie protocols in place. You never know when you might need them.

You can’t count on your government to save you during a full out zombie attack. Studies have show that not even the great city of Pittsburgh is amply prepared.

You’re going to need a few double barrel shotguns with lots of ammo, some heavy four-by-fours and planks of wood to board up your windows, enough food and water to last at least six months, and your basic Zombie bite first aid kit, among other things (like maybe a poison ring if all else is lost).

Be informed, people. Stay alert. Above all, STAY SAFE.

*cross-posted from The Bradford Bunch*

I love Halloween. It rivals the Fourth for me on my list of favs (I adore fireworks). Once upon a time we lived in a neighborhood with lots of houses and little kids. Every year I would decorate the yard elaborately, dress up and hand out candy. For the last several years, however, we’ve lived out in the country on a street with acre+ lots of land that prevent effective trick-or-treating. I miss the decorating and the handing out of sweets.

When I was a kid, growing up in Minnesota, it used to be so cold that sometimes my mom would make me wear a snowsuit over my costume. That was always a bummer. I can remember praying for abnormally warm weather every October. 😉 No matter the outside temp, I always ended up with a big sack full of candy at the end of the evening.

Do you enjoy Halloween? Got any good childhood memories?

Meanwhile, in the news of the weird…we’re being taken over by…gnomes?

From the Halloween files. I happened upon this footage of “gnome attacks” in Argentina this morning. Apparently there have been several sightings of an oddly moving small person terrorizing the inhabitants of a small town. The videos have been doctored to get that weird moving effect, no doubt, but it’s creepy nonetheless.

I find it amusing that they’ve chosen gnomes as the creature to terrorize.

He’s kinda cute, you know? Not very threatening at all.

Of course, I guess gnomes are related to goblins, so maybe it’s not as far off base as I might imagine. Maybe the cuteness is simply a built in weapon, allowing them to lure their victims close enough to strike. I know my friend, author Jody Wallace, has always believed gnomes to be blood thirsty. Just check out her Gnome hunting essay. Maybe she knows something we don’t. *raises eyebrow*

Further evidence — that gnome on the Travelocity commercials always gives me the heebies, man.

This rash of gnome sightings is not unlike the chubacabra urban legend or the Loch Ness monster or Big Foot.

The thing is, I think most of us want to believe that these supernatural creatures exist. We want to believe that our world contains undiscovered creatures, mysteries not yet solved. I’m too skeptical to believe, personally, but, oh, I want to.

*thinks*

Okay, maybe not the gnome thing. That’s too creepy.

What are some of your favorite unsolved mysteries or urban legends? What do you want believe in? Or what are some things you believe in already?

Tell me some ghost stories, peeps! I love them.

Just a quick head’s up before I leave to go write at the coffee place (being at home is not always conducive to non-distracted productive writing type afternoons).

Next Monday, November 3rd (the day right before Election Day. All you ‘Mericans are going to vote, right?) myself and seven other authors will be hosting a Blog Tour wherein you can win fabulous prizes!

Here’s a list of participating authors….

Me!
Jaci Burton
Lauren Dane
Megan Hart
Joey Hill
Patrice Michelle
Mandy Roth
Shiloh Walker

So make sure you stop by my blog, or one of the above author’s blogs, next Monday for details on how to get in on the fun.

Now I’m off to caffeinate myself and write up a storm.

NaNoWriMo, if you’re not familiar with it, stands for National Novel Writing Month — November of every year. The goal of the participants is write 50,000 for the month. It boils down to around 1,500 a day. 1,666 if you want to get particular.

I’m a big fan of new writers turning off the internal editor. With a monthly word count goal of 50k, your internal editor is definitely going to be off. NaNo is also cool because it gives writers a place to gather and push each other further. It gives them a common goal to meet and does it in an organized manner.

But it seems like every time November rolls around I’m in between writing projects, or am mired somewhere halfway in the second draft of a novel and unable to get the momentum up that I’d need to maintain for NaNo. This year I’m in a perfect position to do it. I have most my research done, have the synopses written, and the new world I’m writing about is alive and existing as a place in my mind. I’m all set to dive in and writewritewritewrite. I’d planned to start doing just that November 1st.

Indeed, that’s exactly what I need to do. I need to turn off my internal editor to squeeze out the maximum amount of creativity I can get from my pea brain and just GO!

At the same time, since I write on deadline (and I’m not about to miss one if I can help it), I can’t afford any huge missteps in the writing of my new novel. Also, my writing process can be strange. Writing isn’t always butt-in-chair-hands-on-keyboard for me. Sometimes “writing” is thinking, planning. Lots of times when I’m writing, I’ll get stuck in a place in the plot and have nowhere to go until i can work out the kink. That means taking a day off to think about where my characters have been and where they’re going. That means I don’t necessarily meet my word count goal every day, but I’m still doing important internal work that will bear fruit later on.

I don’t think I’ve ever written 50k in a month. If I have, I don’t know about it (normally I don’t keep track, to be honest).

So, I’m mulling it over. I might sign up for NaNo, but give myself a way out if this novel proves not to flow very easily. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

So I already asked this, but I’ll ask again. Anybody doing NaNo this year?

Hi all! I just received another great review for The Chosen Sin over at Bitten by Books. This blog is fast becoming an every day stop for me. If you haven’t checked it out, you should. I think you might like it.

Rachel says in part, “The Chosen Sin starts out of the gate with a bang and just doesn’t stop, even up to the last page! … It is Ms. Bast’s ability to portray emotions through the written word to such an extreme that it impacted me on an emotional level while reading. … The Chosen Sin had some really interesting twists that I didn’t see coming, and the storyline was extremely well laid out. Written as a stand alone title, this is a must read for this fall.”

You can read the whole thing over at the site and find some other great material too.

Oh, and look what’s up for pre-order at Amazon.com already! The last book of the Elemental Witches series. *sniffle*

I’m guest blogging over at Yankee Romance Reviewers today and I’m giving away a copy of The Chosen Sin. Pretty cool blog! It’s a new one for me. They made my post so pretty!

So my daughter is a bit under the weather and had a nightmare early this morning. Poor punkin. As a result we’re both tired and are going to take it easy today. I think we’ll watch Enchanted at some point and snuggle up on the couch.

Have you seen that movie? So cute! If not, I highly recommend it.

Enchanted is one of my “comfort” movies. You know, one of those feel good movies that will turn your mood around no matter how sour it is or how bad you feel. What are some of your comfort movies?

There are comfort reads, too, I guess. The only book I ever really reread is Honest Illusions, by Nora Roberts (love that book!).

I received a couple new reviews for The Chosen Sin!

Jennifer Ray over at Wild on Books says…

“I have never read an Anya Bast novel I didn’t enjoy. The author’s latest release, THE CHOSEN SIN, is right up there in my list of favorites by Ms. Bast. Combining erotic romance with a paranormal theme in a futuristic science fiction setting, this book blends several of my favorite genres into one unforgettable story. .. A world this vibrant and intriguing invites readers to revisit there again and again. I know this is a keeper on my bookshelf.”

Tez Miller says….

“Keep an eye out for the show-stopping, devastatingly heartbreaking scene that alerts this is not just an escapist read…It’s memorable, emotional, and I don’t remember ever having a scene in any book remain with me so long after the book’s over.” You can read the entire review over on her blog.

Today it’s pretty cold in my neck of the woods. I have a roast in the slow cooker and candles lit in the kitchen. I’m hoping to get some good writing done today. I actually slept well last night!

Tomorrow is apple picking with my mother and the tot. I’m looking forward to it. I love autumn.

Hey, how many of you are planning to do NaNoWriMo this year? Anyone?

Ugh. I’m up at 3:30am and can’t sleep. I’ve been awake since two. Figured if I can’t sleep, I might as well be productive and get some writing done.

I used to have huge sleeping problems. Once upon a time I would go for weeks with only a few hours of sleep a night. My problems seem to have been linked to the house we lived in, though I’m not sure why. All I know is that when we moved my sleep issues stopped being so frequent. These days it’s only occasional.

Tonight is an occasion.

Usually when this happens I’ll meditate. Just get up, go into a different room and meditate for about 15 minutes. Generally that clears my head of all gunk that’s clogging it up and making me toss and turn. Then I can go back to bed feeling calmer and clearer and slip right into sleep. Tonight, however, I’m feeling pretty awake and am taking advantage of a quiet household to make some progress on my novella. I’m sitting in my easy chair with a blanket, I have one of my kitties near me, and I’m ready to let this story spin out a little more.

So, how ’bout you? Ever have trouble sleeping? How do you quiet your brain and get back to sleep?

How sweet is this? He ordered a copy of every one of my books in print (No, I didn’t even have copies of some of them) and put this shelf up in our living room. See the little statue of Bast?

He’s very supportive of me. I thank my lucky stars every day that he’s this way. He’s probably more proud of me than I am. 🙂

Cross-posted from the Bradford Bunch Blog

So right now I’m building a world. (In my head I’m hearing Let’s build a word! Let’s built it! Let’s build it now! which you won’t understand unless you have a child who watches Word World on PBS Kids.) Ahem. Anyway, right now I’m building a world (and some words too).

This world is new for me, having wrapped up the end of my Elemental Witches series with Witch Fury. I’m now hard at work on my novella and the first book of my new series for Berkley. It’s based in large part on Celtic mythology and I’m breaking my brain (honestly, not the strongest organ of my body anyway) on a whole bunch of books about it.

I’m not creating a who’s who of Celtic myth, though. I’m using it as a foundation. I’m weaving in legend from many countries and then adding my own twist. My “twist” is pretty significant. I’m hoping that my world is much different than others of authors who have also used these traditions to build their worlds.

It will be. Because that’s the really cool thing about minds. They’re all different. We all interpret things differently, “read” texts differently, ect. We all have different filters through which we view our worlds that are created as a result of just about everything that’s happened to us since we were born (well, and our basic genetic makeup) It’s what gives every author her individual voice.

So I’m wrestling with some significant questions like, what kind of religion exists for these people I’ve created? How are laws made and enforced? What are the conflicts between the different types of fae within this world? Lots of questions. So far I only have partial answers for some of them, but it’s amazing how more answers evolve as I write. If I sit there with the questions in front of me, trying to answer them like the essay section of an exam, I can’t do it. But if I put myself in the world, write from inside my character’s heads…it develops. That means a bit of rewriting, of course, but whatever is most effective, right?

Sometimes I wish I could rearrange my real world like that. Just a little rewrite over here…no more homophobia! Gone! Hit the delete key and make a little change over there…ethnic cleansing? *poof* Racism? Goodbye! Famine? Disappear! People putting melamine in baby formula? Never happened! You get the picture.

Aw, it would be nice anyway.