Happy Birthday, Mama Bitchstress!

Today is a very special day for the Evil League of Evil Writers.

Besides our founding anniversary, the anniversary of our beloved co-founder's birth is one of the ELEW's High Holy Days.

You think I'm joking, but I'm not. We don't joke here at the ELEW. If we're laughing, you should probably be running.

I looked at last year's post to make sure I didn't repeat myself with this year's acknowledgement, and found that I could pretty much say exactly the same thing, only with a few changes to the amount of money our Bitchstress Dreamkiller has raised for charity this year.

Our anniversary month (April) this year was dedicated to one of our own. Senior Pie Coordinator and Clubhouse Keeper's husband had a serious accident involving a chainsaw fought off a grizzly bear and racked up some absolutely hellacious medical bills (and I'm not talking the fun kind of "hellacious" either). The ELEW stepped in, and, with the help of a metric shit-ton of people, made that bill GTFO.

You know who was the driving force behind that fundraiser? That's right. Skyla Dawn Cameron was the Indiegogo campaign leader. I (Gothic Goddess Dina James) was the co-pilot.

I'm not even going to count the other awesome stuff she does for charity in her total raised this year. It's over $12,000 with the Evil for Julie fundraiser alone. She also does stuff for cats (because she's a Crazy Cat Lady) and takes her beautiful dog Sophie to the hospital to visit inpatients, as Sophie is an official Trent Hill Therapy Dog. I'm pretty sure when things are totaled up, Skyla has raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 this year, and guess what?

This year ain't over yet.

Who knows what no-goodness she'll get up to the remaining three months? She'll probably invent time travel or cure cancer or get that "world domination" thing off the ground. Oops...did I say that out loud? Whatever she does, it will be awesome. And I don't mean that in the mundane way. I mean that in the evil way.

Our Bitchstress Dreamkiller isn't just an evil writer...she's a person whose awesome you should aspire to.

Happy birthday, Skyla!

The big reveal

Don't worry, I'm not getting naked, or anything. I'm talking about covers. I love cover reveal day on Twitter, when authors finally get to show off their shiny new covers to the world. It's like giving birth, except a whole lot less painful, I imagine.

And no, I'm not going to reveal a cover to you either. But I just got sent a draft cover and I was thinking about that moment. Even if you're not revealing it to the world, there's that moment of anticipation before you open the email... Am I going to love it? Hate it?

It's all personal preference really. I mean, some people like CGI people, others like cartoony covers. Some people even enjoy symbolism, for some reason. I kid. Symbolism is awesome, yo.

You never really know if you and your cover artist are going to mesh. Of course, with some publishers, as the author, you get to have input on what your ideas are for the cover, but unless you're an amazing graphics artist along with being an author (I hate you, Skyla), you don't get to see your vision appear on your book. Or maybe your cover artist is psychic. Who knows?

At any rate, I'm not super creative visually, so I have to try and explain, with words, to the cover artist what I think is relevant to the story and what the characters look like. Sometimes the artist gets me and my vision, and sometimes they don't.

On the cover of my first book, I had a naked lady holding a gun. I loved her and the rest of the cover, but it didn't seem like the greatest in gun safety ads for her to be running around naked with a gun. Fortunately, modern computer geewhizy stuff is awesome, so they gave her a dress and we called it good.

Artists are awesome - in the awe inspiring sense. I can't even imagine doing that - creating a picture based on words described by a (probably crazy) author. So impressed!

I guess the moral of the story here is consider your cover when writing your book... and maybe be an artist yourself  :)

- Skye

Happy Birthday, Skyla!

Today, we here at the Evil League of Evil Writers celebrate the anniversary of the birth of our dear co-founder, Skyla Dawn Cameron.

Skyla is more than our beloved Bitchstress Dreamkiller. She is an icon. (No, really, I mean it.)

She is a tireless force of evil. I would not deign to insult her eviltry by labeling her with words like "kind," "giving," or  "charitable," but I will say she's a fundraising superstar (she's closing in on $10,000 raised for various charities THIS YEAR ALONE...what are YOU doing with your life, slacker?), as well as a fantastic editor and graphic designer.

You would be beyond fortunate to know her and have her in your life - those of us who do recognize this fact and take pleasure in your jealousy. (Note: I, the Gothic Goddess, am the only existing holder of exclusive stalking rights to Skyla. If you want them, you'll have to fight me to the death for them. *points to Thunderdome*)

The Evil League of Evil Writers would not exist if not for Skyla, and several charitable organizations and people would be poorer for her absence.

Lift a glass in her honor today. (She prefers vodka.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BITCHSTRESS DREAMKILLER!

NaNo Then Versus Now

by: Seleste deLaney

I did my first NaNoWriMo in 2007 (aka--very pre-published). I started with a bang, finished with a whimper, then took the next 10+ months to finish the draft. NaNo 2008 (still pre-published) was more of a slow and steady thing. Finished, won, completed the draft in December (I did eventually sell this one as well, under my other pen-name). NaNo 2009 (still pre-published) was like chewing off body parts to finish. I loved the idea, hated the manuscript, but I won anyway. Shelved the manuscript for a few months, then completely re-wrote it and sold it in early 2010. (It was Badlands, for those who care about such things.)

I went into NaNo 2010 as a published author, but at the time I only had one short story (Of Course I Try) out. I had a couple other holidays shorts coming in December and Badlands in February, but I wasn't on deadlines and didn't have a ton of things going. (Badlands was done on my end, and the others were short enough that edits weren't killer.) This year, my NaNoNovel soared and finished up pretty quickly. Granted, I took a year to tweak it and sub it, but that's when Kiss of Death happened.

By NaNo 2011, I had a backlist, I'd won a couple little awards. I was starting to think I was a big deal. So I took that year to write a book that I loved but I knew might be unpublishable because of the plot. (I've let it sit for a year, but I do plan to go back to it and look again.) But once again, I wasn't on deadlines. Everything was easy.

Now, in 2012, I feel like I'm finally doing NaNo as a published author. The lead up to November involved releases in August and September. I have another holiday short coming out in December. And I had a submission due in the middle of November... that I didn't have drafted until the end of October. Uh... this is when the panic-heavy music should be cued. Because of all that, I barely had an outline for Kiss of Life when November 1 hit.

I do not advise doing NaNo this way (published or not)--especially when dealing with a sequel. However, I digress...

I wrote on Kiss of Life for the first week of November and really floundered. I mean hard-core, thought I was going to drown in the suckitude. Then the second week, I took the book I finished in October and spent a week revising it. Once it was subbed, I looked at Kiss of Life and actually groaned. I'd had such a hard time staying on target the first week, the I couldn't fathom how I was possibly going to catch up from missing a week.

Then I remembered how last year Skyla abandoned her first NaNo project half-way through the month and started another one...and finished it. And it hit me--that's how a real author behaves. Writing is our passion, but it's also our job. We get up, dust off our whiny pants, and do the job. So, I sucked in a deep breath, choked on my fear, and remembered that I love these characters and their story. As of 8pm on Tuesday, I have just over 9,000 words left to write to win NaNo. I'll get at least 2,000 of those before I go to bed, hopefully more. That means unless something horrible happens, I'll win NaNo. By the skin of my teeth, but I still did it (or will).

It's weird how I have a bunch of contracts for books sitting in the filing cabinet next to me, but this makes me feel like a real author. The pressure, the deadlines, more than one of them... and busting ass to make sure they happen.

Am I certain this version of Kiss of Life is worth the time I put in? Nope. But that's what I have my awesome beta reader, Janelle, for. She's volunteered to look at the early draft and kick me if I'm way off-base. That means come December 1, I'm sending her what I have and taking a much-needed (and recently ordered) break. Said break doesn't mean I won't be writing, but I'm going to write something for me for a week or so while I wait on Janelle's feedback. Because that's the other thing this year's NaNoWriMo has taught me--that sometimes an author has to write what they want rather than what they should.

Because that, my friends, is what makes it fun and magical and keeps me coming back for more. It's time to re-discover the magic, if only for a little while.

Then it's back to work, because I have the best damn job in the whole world. <3