Category Archives: #am writing (and all things writing related)

A is for… (#AtoZChallenge 2012)

A is for Angela Marsh

Welcome to my first A-Z post on my Work in Progress (WIP) – A Young Adult (YA) novel called ‘Training Time’ about a girl (Jane – we’ll meet her properly later in the month) attending a Time Police Academy. I plan for it to become the first in a series of books about this group of characters.

The 25 Word Pitch (see Write a Great Synopsis by Nicola Morgan [Amazon Affiliate link] for helpful hints on synopsis writing of all lengths) for this first book is ‘Joining the time police academy gives Jane the chance to prove she is more than her mental illness, and to discover who killed her stepbrother.’

The posts will introduce some of the main characters, look at how the time police academy works and examine elements of the writing process. I don’t want to give away everything so the length of some of the posts may be fairly brief. I hope it leaves you with questions that you want the answer to. I’ve not yet plotted out all of the posts so if you have any particular questions you’d like me to answer please do ask and I’ll try and accommodate them if I can.

Angela Marsh was a 16 year old schoolgirl and the girlfriend of Jamie Trainer when she was murdered. The circumstances of her death shared similarities with those of three homeless teenage girls. These serial killings have remained unsolved.
However, driven by the grief of losing his first love, Jamie and his best friend Dylan Roberts use their scientific know-how to create the technology to enable people to travel through time. Jamie’s father is a police officer who recognises how this technology can be used to support traditional policing and so he mentors the two in their efforts.
In effect this makes Angela’s murder the catalyst for this whole series. Will we find out who killed her?

I imagine Angela looking similar to this – image from stock.xchng

The Alphabet Starts Tomorrow

As I indicated at the end of January, in this post, I have signed up to take part in the April A-Z Blogging Challenge again. The 372 of us that had signed up then have grown into over 1500!!

Here I am the day before the challenge starts with 26 blank blog posts scheduled so I best get thinking about what I’m going to write in them.

I am planning to stick to topics relating to my work in progress – A YA Novel – ‘Training Time’. I don’t want to give too much away so the posts will be relatively short. But I hope you find them interesting.

I’ve just sent the first chapter and synopsis into a competition and I’m looking forward to picking this back up again and adding to the 60,000 words I stalled at in November.

I’m also looking forward to reading some new blogs (sorry don’t think I’m going to be able to manage to visit all 1500+) as well as those of my Besties taking part in the challenge again. Good Luck everyone. Happy Alphabet Blogging.

Comments on my pitch gratefully received

I sent in a short pitch of my WIP to Nicola Morgan at Help! I Need a Publisher!

It’s up on her blog today, along with two other YA pitches, and I’m sure all three of us would be very grateful for your constructive feedback. The comments so far have already picked on my undue fascination with commas so maybe I should send out a call – Help, I Need an Editor!

I’d already shared this with another pitcher Debby and she gave me some very helpful pointers. Thanks Debby. It’s always good to hear a range of opinions though.

Luckily I won Nicola’s ‘Write a Great Synopsis‘ (sponsored Amazon Associates link to the Kindle book) competition for a full synopsis critique and your comments will help me develop this short pitch into a longer synopsis to send for some Crabbit advice. I will of course be having another full read through of Nicola’s wonderful e-book too – I highly recommend it.

And by a wonderful coincidence or divine intervention – Nicola did have an e-mail addressed ‘Dear God’ this morning ;o) – the rest of my prize arrived today too. Huge thanks to Nicola for giving me the spider warning for Chapter 5 – I will make myself a calming cup of camomile in my new mug before tackling that one.