As some of you may or may not have noticed, the projects page of Working Title has received a serious overhaul. Now it is not simply a page for Blood Bound and a few other short pieces: instead it is about Blood Bound, The Superhero Diaries and a third, secret project, Mirror, Mirror.

So check out the projects page, read up on The Superhero Diaries and Mirror, Mirror and, of course, check out the opening scene from The Superhero Diaries!

And for those of you wondering about Blood Bound… my beta is currently on the last few chapters in the first round of editing and should be complete in the next few days.

So what does this mean for BB? Well, the first round is smoothing out sentences, cutting out bloat, keeping things in line with previous statements, and Ameripicking (one thing I love about TSD is that the narrator is a kiwi, so I get to keep my natural “writing accent” you might say :P), amongst other things. As for the second round we get to go in more heavily… JK probably can explain better than me - she’s beta’d published stuff before. And since she’s been ill these last few days, please go ahead and give her some comment love. She deserves it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the little snippets here and there. I promise to have the spellchecked-draft of Mirror, Mirror’s prologue up soon. It’s almost done.

Originally published at Working Title. You can comment here or there.

One of my biggest fears about starting The Superhero Diaries is that Georgie/Gaia (the main character and narrator) would sound like a Delia clone.

It took me a while to get into Delia’s voice - my wonderful beta says it is because I was doing exams at the time, and so my head was in essay mode - but once I did her voice was clear to me. She’s very sweet, and what you might call an old soul. Despite the weirdness of the world around her, she’s used to it, and it doesn’t faze her much.

Despite being the same age as Delia (give or take a few months) Georgie comes across as being much younger - she’s going through the period of forced growing up that Delia went through several years earlier. Unlike Delia, who is an observer by her position and nature, Georgie is a world-changer by the nature of both her personality and the position/powers that have been thrust upon her as the newest Supe. She’s much drier in tone than Delia, plus I get to have fun using New Zealand slang and the like when she’s speaking. No more having to type “trunk” instead of “boot” and the like.

While I am enjoying writing The Superhero Diaries there is just one thing that really is a hassle: having to go Ctrl + I whenever I want to write fragments of a telepathic conversation.

Oh well. Writing the scenes and conversations between Georgie/Gaia and Santiago/Morph is worth it.

You okay up there?

The voice was in my head, but it wasn’t mine. I jumped just a fraction at the sound; I still wasn’t entirely used to being able to send and receive telepathic communications from a few certain people. A few months ago my mind had been mine, and mine alone, so it was still definitely a little awkward to have other people invading it.

Yeah, I sent back. I paused to wriggle my way through a dense part of the crowd. I guess you could say I’m still not used to this skin, even if it is mine.

Laughter echoed through the telepathic link. I hear you. I still get that feeling now and again.

You’re a shapeshifter, Morph. Of course you feel so out of place in your own skin – you’re in and out of so many of them I almost forget which ones are actually yours.

That earned me more laughter. Okay, okay. Time to get serious now. Can you spot me?

Not with Andre the Giant’s sister in front of me.

Originally published at Working Title. You can comment here or there.

Of the first draft, at least.

As of this writing, I have written 77 000 words of Blood Bound, and am on the final chapter on the first draft. From the way everything looks, my target of 80 000 words looks to be about right. Right now I am dealing with the aftermath and wrapping up loose ends but at the same time making sure there is enough open for a (planned out) sequel.

After that, it’s onto editing. I have two planned scene additions, and a rewrite to the earliest part of chapter one. Then it’s onto betas’ opinions to see what can be improved.

And then I guess it’s query time! I’ll let you know when that actually is (so you can wish me luck) but I promise you I will be keeping busy while Blood Bound is making rounds to agents.

My next project is… well, click on the image to find out.

Originally published at Working Title. You can comment here or there.