Introduction: Part 2

In my last post I promised that I would get to the "getting to know me" stuff next, so here we go.

My name is Sarah, and I am planning to use the pseudonym Sarah J. Halter for my writing. I'm not using a pseudonym because I want to hide who I am, or anything like that. It's just that my real name is kind of hard to pronounce, and I thought that changing it a little would be a little more marketable. Of course, it's possible that I will change my mind at some point, and this whole paragraph will seem a little silly in the future.

I currently live in Carthage, MO, and my day job is working for a food production company that you've probably never heard of, unless you also live in Carthage, MO. I enjoy living in a smaller town, but I really appreciate that we are within fairly easy driving distance of Joplin, which is big enough to have plenty of restaurant options and a mall. But, I do sometimes wish that we had a Starbucks here in town.

I am married but don't have any children yet. I do, however, have two dogs that probably think they are part of the family. My family lives down in Arkansas, just an hour's drive or so. And my husband's family is up in Wisconsin. Since the company I work for is based out of Green Bay, Wisconsin, we've kind of thought that we would eventually move back up to Green Bay and be closer to his family, but that will depend on what happens with my job.

For my writing history, I used to write a lot when I was kid all the way up through college. Looking back I seemed to be a fan of rather heavy-handed morality tales featuring some form of sentient or anthropomorphic animal. One of my favorites was a story about a flying horse that discovered the joy of exploration, but also the comfort of returning home, that I wrote some time around second grade. I illustrated it and everything. It was really cute. :-)

Since graduating from college, I've been mostly wrapped up in my 'real' life, and I've been too busy to even think about writing. Then, last year I first looked into NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org). It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November.

I'd heard about NaNoWriMo vaguely in the past, but I'd never really paid much attention to it, because it always seemed like I only heard about it from 'real' writers, so I assumed it wasn't anything that I should concern myself about. Then, last year, some of my regular friends were talking about it, talking about how they had tried it, or won it, in the past. So, I started thinking, if they can do it, why can't I?

Last year, was the first year that I tried NaNo, and I won, writing 50,000 words and some change on a manuscript titled "Demon Knight". It's a fantasy romance about a girl who gets possessed by a demon and falls in love with the knight who is sent to kill her. Unfortunately, for that style of novel, 50,000 words was only about half of the story, so I spent the next 9 months finishing up the rough draft, and in August/September I finally got to write "The End". The finished rough draft is just shy of 100,000 words.

That put me pretty close to this year's NaNo, so I did a quick clean up edit through the manuscript, just looking for really obvious typos and strange phrasings, and sent it out to some of my friends to read and offer advice on. Then, I started outlining for this year's NaNo.  Going forward, I think I'll do NaNo every year, because it seems to work really well at motivating me and giving me a good deadline to work for. Plus, like I'm sure many other authors have found, starting a new project seems to be the hardest part. Once you get going, it's sitting there staring at you from that computer screen, going, "Why aren't you working on me?" pouting like a child. But at the beginning it's just an idea in your head and it's easy to ignore. So, I think NaNo does a good job of making me get started.

This year, I am working on a new novel currently titled "Beyzl: Gem Maiden". It is a YA fantasy novel about a girl who is raised to use her supernatural abilities for the government, but then finds that the government is corrupt and runs away. Then, she has to decide if she will return and fight the corruption or if she will just settle for an easy life of obscurity. At least, that's what I think it's about at this point. Currently, I'm at about 30,000 words, and about halfway through the plot. So, it is quite likely that it will change as I keep writing. Stories seem to do that.

So, now that we're through the introductions, my plan is to post updates as I write and edit each of these first two manuscripts. Then, I'll give you the opportunity to follow along with the progress of my career as it continues, hopefully in a wonderful and spectacular way. :-)