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What's #SixSunday? It's a Twitter event where authors post six sentences from their work. Since Flying Kite, Crashing Ship releases on Saturday, here are the first six sentences from it:

Sally stared wide-eyed as blast shields eased out from various sections of the ship, covering the transparent dome that served as the vessel's hull. Invisible latches thumped throughout the ship as the cloth-like, polyalloy shielding formed an airtight seal. While the clear glass had made her uncomfortable for their trip, being trapped inside a grey, metal cage
was worse.
"Define crash?" Sally asked Lew, the ship's pilot. She sat in the co-pilot's chair, though she didn't have a clue how to operate a time vessel. She studied pre-historic rock formations, not piloting.

Flying Kite, Crashing Ship is a short time travel comedy fiction, released by MuseItUp Publishing. Interested in the full story? Download it from the for only $2.50. (Kindle users � They have kindle format available).

Hi all! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and their Tween week is going well (that's what I call the odd week between Christmas Day and NYE). For those of you on Twitter, you'll know that I caught the Death Plague from the minions and spent several days sleeping on the dog mat in the bathroom. Have I recently complained about children? Yes? Ah, damn. I was going to give a good rant, too.

So, if you notice to your left, the sticky notes have been updated. That's because I've moved my entire website () to this template. Have a tour around; in theory all of the buttons work. Let me know if they don't! There are two polls going on right now, so make sure to add your vote if you haven't already.

Also, Flying Kite Crashing Ship releases on Saturday. It's a time travel comedy and a quick read. Perfect for reading while at your inlaws!

I'm going into hibernation mode until next week. We just had our Yule dinner last, and I have a few dinners to attend over the week. So, I'm taking a little time off the interwebz.

Have a great week everyone and I'll see you closer to the new year!

Krista

My short fiction, , is being released through MuseItUp Publishing on January 1, 2011. It was originally scheduled for March 1, but the edits were done, the layout was done, and the editor and I thought, Hey let's get this thing out there!

Kite is a good choice for folks who want to read, but don't have a lot of time. It's good if you love the Regency time period, but don't want to read a romance. If you love time travel and comedy, well, this story is for you. It's well priced at $2.50 and hits 25 pages long, so a good price for a story that you can read on your lunch hour.

Here is perhaps my favourite scene from the story. I hope you enjoy it!

"Can you tell me something about this time period? I don't know anything about it." She had been studying rock formations in the prehistoric northern regions of Earth. This wasn't even close to her area of expertise.

The computer provided a tourist summary of the period, listing the technology level, commerce, cultural norms, political system, and a list of authors of the time period. "Jane Austen. Never heard of her. Have you, Lew?"

Lew was underneath the steering console, waving a glowing blue wand across the electrical work. "Even if I had, I wouldn't have read anything by her."

"Why not?"

"I only read technical manuals. All right, there's nothing wrong with the steering console. Time to crawl into the engine." He stood and yanked up a floor panel. Grabbing his tool kit, he climbed down the ladder, leaving Sally to stare at the silent, unmoving world outside.

This strange world reminded her of a meditation holo-vid. She preferred time travel. Life in linear time seemed unimaginably dull.

A flutter of yellow caught her attention. She squinted at the yellow…tarp? and the tall, dark…pole? standing next to it. The objects approached. No, that wasn't a tarp. She gasped and slammed her hand on the intercom. "Lew, get up here!"

"I'm bus�"

"Now!"

A half minute later, Lew stumbled up from the floor hatch. He smelled like burnt plastic. "What is going�? Oh God."

Sally nodded and swallowed hard. A woman stood outside the ship, knocking on the starboard window.

* * * *

Amanda did not notice the lady until she touched the smooth metal of the flying kite's hull. It was obvious the female occupant had noticed her presence as she began shouting at a gentleman who arrived from the floor hatch. The thick metal skewed their language, but Amanda recognized it as an ancient dialect of French.

"Hello?" Amanda tapped on the window. The occupants stared at her wide-eyed for several seconds before they resumed yelling at each other. They stepped away from the windows and their words became unintelligible. "Colonel, you must come see," she urged. "There is a French lady inside, with a man. I assume it's either her husband or brother, by the liberties she was taking with her speech. And look, she is wearing trousers. How scandalous!" She had never seen a woman in trousers before.

"French!" Colonel Lindsay paled. He pointed at the maidservant standing off to one side. "Girl, fetch the militia at once! The French have invaded Devonshire!"

"Flying Kite, Crashing Ship" will be releasing in January now, not March. Yay! I'll be getting the links all reset and such in a couple of weeks.

I'm redoing the website and blog, so that it's the same theme. I love this blog theme, so I'll be moving the website to this style. The Engineer will be jazzing it up a bit and making it more customizable for me (he's helpful like that). We both have holidays this month, so you'll be seeing some changes closer to Christmas and the new year.

Also, I'm adding a new theme to the site for 2011. The Author Clinic was very popular in 2010, accounting for a lot of my visitors. In fact, it was second only to pictures of the dogs. Apparently, people love corgis. Who knew!

For 2011, I'll be combining my history degree, my love of recreating lost arts, and the world of fantasy writing into (hopefully) information that will help your imaginary worlds come to life. I get very frustrated by books that seem to have their heroes eating fresh meat all of the time, no matter the season or the weather � or income level. Or, sea setting where everyone eats fresh meat and keeps their salt on the table in a shaker.

I want to bring recipes from my life living in Newfoundland, tradition foods eaten at an isolated, sea port. I want to share the domestic crafts and activities I've learned through the years from my studies, and try my hand at doing them myself.

So, if you're interested in specific things, feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] and I'll see if I can add it to the year's information. I certainly don't know everything, so I might not know how to answer your question. But, I promise to try.

And, since I can't figure out what to call this, suggestions are appreciated :)

Stay tuned!

I believe self-imposed deadlines and well-defined goals are a good thing in for a writer. Self-imposed deadlines keep me accountable to my readers, by ensuring that I am continuing to put out my style of fiction. It keeps me accountable to myself, to keep writing. I don't have contracts that tell me I have to produce a specific amount of work. I haven't been paid in advance for unwritten projects. So, if I don't make goals and deadlines for myself, I generally fall behind.

I try to make deadlines that are a bit tighter than I can manage to finish. I know my life well enough that I can predict when my energy will be low and when I'll be pestered by kids. I work with those constraints and come up with a yearly plan. It's broken down by month, identifying what projects I should be working on.

How do I do it? I make a list of "need", "should" and "would be nice". The "need" gets high priority. Whatever time I think it will take, I double. I take half of the "should" and add those. Then, I take 1-2 of the "would be nice".

I have 2011's goals and deadlines drawn up. I don't like to talk openly about all of my projects and often even just refer to things as "untitled paranormal mystery set in Newfoundland" (current project) or "Road to Hell, my SF". I lose my steam for a project the more I talk about it. So, I limit the chatter on what I'm doing.

With that said, I can give you an idea of where I'm hoping to go in 2011.

Tranquility Series

I get a number of private questions about this, so I wanted to give as vague of an update as possible. J

I submitted Tranquility's Blaze to a published back in 2009. Sadly, I opted to withdraw the novel from them last week. They hadn't accepted or rejected the book yet (so, it wasn't like I dropped a contract), but rather I felt that the series wasn't the best choice there. If it was going to remain standalone, then I would have kept it in consideration.

So, Tranquility's Blaze is sitting on my hard drive at the moment. I'm hoping to finish the second book in the series, Tranquility's Grief, late next year. I hope to begin submitting Blaze again, after having two parts of the series done. High fantasy isn't trendy right now, so I'm going to take advantage of that to work on the series.

Novellas

That doesn't mean I'm not planning anything else to submit. I plan to complete three novellas in 2011. Their first drafts are done, so that helps!

The other stuff

I'm also aiming for two new short stories and to try to sell two more reprints. I also want to try to sell the audiorights to one of my stories.

I have other projects planned in 2011, but those are all first draft writes and/or outlines, so they won't be done until 2012. Or, ever, depending how bad they turn out.  History dictates that I'll finish about 75% of my goals for the year. Without goals, I finish about 25% of the list. I perform best with a little pressure.

If you are a writer, what goals do you have for yourself for the coming year?

Since wants more corgis on my site, here is a home video aptly called "The Takeout."

I cover a lot of different topics and such here, usually it's whatever hits my fancy at the moment. So, I'd like to know if there are things that you'd like to see more often. What topics do you like, or are interested in hearing me talk about?

Let me know and I'll see what I can do!

My good friend, Chrystalla, asked a great question regarding "Road to Hell" and me calling it a "short novel." She asked,

A question has been on my mind for some time now � what is a novel? There are novelettes, novellas and novels, both long and short � how long is your short novel? Does the definition depend purely on the publisher's guidelines? Is there a standard?

Wow! That is a really great question and not an easy one to answer. I heard a definition once: A novel is something that takes you more than a day to read. Everything else is a short story.

I often use publisher and genre guidelines to determine what I call my pieces. "Flying Kite, Crashing Ship" is a short story. It's meant for folks who want a complete read. It's a great length to read in the bathtub (use a Ziplock baggie on that e-Reader!) or on the bus on your way to work. If you are busy and don't get a lot of quite time, short stories really work.

Novellas can generally be read in an afternoon. Harvest Moon falls somewhere between a novelette (long short story) and a short novella. I often call it a novella, since you'll want to set aside a couple hours to read it. Longer novellas can take a couple of afternoons to read.

And that's where the blurry area begins. A short novel can be read in a couple of afternoons, too. Middle Grade, some Young Adult, and many romance novels are shorter in length. High Fantasy novels are known to be longer and anything by Robert Jordan hits epic proportions.

As an author, I need to be sensitive to publisher requirements on length, which varies depending upon publishing format and genre. You wouldn't write a 250,000 word Robert Jordan style book for grade 4 kids. You also wouldn't have much luck with a 20,000 word fantasy novel for print through DAW books.

I have to make decisions based on publisher's wants and needs regarding length. Do I add more subplots into a story to lengthen it? Will it flush it out more, or will it dilute the story?  Will the payment received be worth the effort to keep the project at an awkward length? They are important questions to ask as part of the business side of writing.

I ask myself those questions. I also will write the best story that I can every time. If that means a story ends up at an awkward length, I will seek out markets willing to accept that genre/length combo. In the end, I want to write books and stories that entertain people. And, I want to write things that I'm proud to have my name attached to.

What's your favourite length to read? Do you like long, epic novels? Do you want shorter novels that can be polished off in a day or two? Or, do you want quick short stories to get your through a morning commute?

*collapses*

I have been working on this novel for three years. It was first a 9000 word story written in first person (i.e. "I went to the store and shot the zombies. Because I'm that good.") I hated the piece. I tried three different edits and decided that it needed to be in third person (i.e. "Katherine went to the store and shot the zombies. After all, she was that good.").  Unable to face a complete rewrite, I stuffed it in my hard drive.

Then, I pulled it out and rewrote it in third person. It was now 12,000 words and sucked. I realized that it needed to be a short novel. I stuffed it away.

I pulled it out again early this year and agreed that, yes, it needed to be scrapped, rewritten, and turned into a short novel. So, I did it.

I had planned to have the final draft done by mid-July. I foolishly thought the kids were now old enough to entertain themselves during the summer months. I was wrong. I can write first draft in any condition � noise, music, airports, screaming babies. I cannot edit when I hear words � music, TV, people. So, it got stuffed away.

The last couple of months, I've been doing to final blast of editing. And, today, it's done. All done. I'm going to give it a final read through tomorrow, to make sure that there are indeed no typos (which, there still will be), and then the book goes out to publishers. And, hopefully, one will write me back with a yes.

So, what's Road to Hell about? Here is my query letter blurb:

Captain Katherine Francis is about to disobey every Ethics Law the Union of Planets throws at her. After the Union's enemy destroys her home planet and murders her family, she makes the decision to bring an end to the war—whatever it takes. When an opportunity arises to ally with the neutral Alliance and turn the tide of war, Katherine throws aside her moral code, partners with a known spy, and risks sacrificing the very core of who she is. And when faced with choosing between her conscience and stopping the bloodshed, she realizes that, either way, she'll lose.

Hopefully, it sounds like something you'd want to read!