Happy Friday!

That moment when you've been on vacation for 2 months and forgot you needed to post today.

That other moment when you decided to change up your schedule and forgot what you're supposed to be posting about today.

Oh, yeah. Hey, y'all!

I'm 66% done culling through the mentors on the Pitch Wars Mentor Blog Hop. I read the first half in one day, and man, my eyes are still weak. There are a LOT of great mentors of all age groups and genres, so if you're interested, I'm sure there's someone out there for you. You can choose 5 mentors, and even that is hard! I mean, there are 100 mentors after all. I'm still claiming that this is my year, and I'm praying that this is the beginning of something great for my story.

Now, onto Fast Five!

This little bloghoplet was created by the Cover Girls, Dani and Jackie, who also bring us Express Yourself Weekly. This week, they would like us to rattle off our 5 favorite couples. If you participate, don't forget to let them know in their comments.

In no particular order, the first five that came to me, (because there are so many more):

1. Katsa and Po (Graceling by Kristin Cashore)
2. Oree and Shiny (The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin)
3. Desi and Edna (Mr. Spaceman by Robert Olen Butler)
4. Ben and Tien (A Deep Green Sea by Robert Olen Butler)
5. Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen (A Song of Ice & Fire by George R.R. Martin)

"Wait, wait, wait," you should probably say, because #5 is more of a ship and a hope, but let's pretend, okay?

Let me know if you're participating, too, so I can visit your page!

IWSG: Changes

Happy...whoa, *ctrl+B* Happy August! lol Welcome back to the Insecure Writer's Support Group, created by the blogfather himself, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

I went through a few changes for my blog and myself while on my 2-month blogosphere hiatus, and I think it will help refresh my writing energy and query trials.

Blog Schedule. While I was on my hiatus, I returned to express my desire to change my schedule, so I did. After 1st Wednesdays, I'll only be blogging twice a week. This will help me free up some more time for writing and revisions.

Pen Name. You may have noticed (maybe not lol) that my real name is sitting up in that little space by my face now, because I wanted to change my pen name. Partially because I feel like Debra McKellan no longer fits me, despite the awesome reason I chose it in the first place. Partially because I picked it for reasons of neutrality (just like when women writers choose initials because it comes off less female), but in the world of We Need Diverse Books (and all its various social media) and Write Inclusively, I decided I need to be me sans any inclination that I'm someone I'm not.

There's not much about my birth name I'm cool with, to be honest, but nothing else really fits. On Twitter, I expressed that I may just go with my first and middle name (Debra Renée) and went on a spiel from there. Even wrote out my signature to see if I like it (I love it). So, I believe that will be it. Of course, now when I list publications, I'll have to say "Origin" was published under Debra McKellan, but well, I believe other people have done that before. Blah. Still stoked that it was published.

An Opening that Hooks an Agent. I expressed just yesterday that I planned on adding a new scene to my opening. I basically added a whole new chapter from bits I mention later in the story and a short prequel that may or may not ever see daylight. I'm hoping this new opening will wow more than my previous opening so I can stop getting depressed when I check my inbox. Two agents I was pretty nervous about querying and finally did passed. That hurts.

It is now midnight, and I said I would be going to bed 2 hours ago. Fail. Have a happy IWSG Day!

Pitch Wars and Random Words from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere

(Futurama - Bender "I'm Back, Baby.")

(Smooth McGroove: Final Fantasy VII Victory Fanfare A Capella)

I hope everyone is having a good summer and had a great June and July. I enjoyed my break, but I was itching to get back to blogging (hence my random blog in the middle of my break). And [in my Bill Nighy Viktor voice:] we have much to discuss...Selene and I.

Pitch Wars is around the corner! I believe I participated last year, because it was a label in my list of labels. The blog-hop of all of the participating mentors went up yesterday over at Brenda Drake's blog. You can research all of them and ask questions on Twitter via the hashtag #askmentor (I just learned you can link Twitter searches). I hope to get picked so I can see if a mentor is thinking what I'm thinking about changing my opening. I'm almost sure I need to, but I want to make sure.

On that note, I think I do because the agents I've queried aren't wowed by my opening. In my first drafts, I began in the thick of the action and received critiques asking, "But who are these people?" So, I added an opening scene showing who the people were, but I guess the calm before the storm is failing at the moment. If I make it, I definitely know what scene will be the new opening.

So that's what I'm doing with my writing. Now...

What am I reading? First off, I reached my goal of 20 books read this year! Many of them were graphic novels, but if I keep going, I might reach 30!

That being said, I'm trudging my way through Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I don't know why. It might not just interest me the way I thought it would, and it was a spur of the moment pick-up in the library. All of the books I bought at random waiting on my Kindle have a right to be mad.

Anyway, I'll still be using Random.org to show you all a line of my current read. There are 337 pages in Neverwhere, and Random has chosen page 126. I won't be randomly picking the line anymore. I'm returning myself the freedom to pick that myself. So here's a little bit from page 126.

There was a faraway screaming noise, thin and mindless, like an idiot child deprived of its toy. The smoke-tentacle let go of Richard's ankle and slid back over the edge of the platform, and it was gone.

Reading anything good right now? Are you thinking of entering Pitch Wars? Let us know if you're a mentor! See you tomorrow for IWSG!

I'm Brainstorming Some Things

I know I said I'd be taking a break in July, too, but this is the only place where I can get my thoughts out in more than 150 words, so I thought I'd drop by to think.

My Blog:
I want to revamp my blog topics. My current schedule is:
Tuesdays (blog hop)
Wednesdays (what I'm reading/IWSG)
Fridays (blog hop/potpurri).

I might condense it to:
Tuesdays (what I'm reading/something writing related)
First Wednesdays (IWSG)
Fridays (blog hops/something writing related)

So then I'd only be writing twice a week and thrice on that first week, and having more content on less days might keep my mind open to my writing.

My Pen Name:
So, I have this issue where after a certain amount of time, I want a new e-mail address. I never thought that I would be looking at my pen name and thinking, "Do I still like this name?" Especially after all the brainstorming I went through just to get to this name!

Maybe, I'll use different pen names for different genres. Speculative, this name. Contemporary, maybe my own name. I hate my name, though. It's so boring. I'd use my mom's maiden name if she hadn't "not" named me after my aunt. I'd rather not add to the confusion. For poetry, I almost committed myself to S.B. Hawkins (a lady at church calls me Songbird, and I love that), but something in my head said, "Isn't there a Sophie B. Hawkins?" There is, and why do I know that? (Googling, Googling...Oh, right. "As I Lay Me Down").

My Unofficial Sequel & My one Beta:
My little sister has been my one steady beta reader since like 1994. I couldn't get her to read my Fantasy, but she made a deal to read my unofficial sequel to Octavia Butler's Fledgling, which I named Birthright. Honestly, I thought she had forgotten to read it, and I was losing faith, but out of the blue this weekend while we were sitting on the couch at 1 a.m, she said, "So, I have questions about Ruby [the original name for it]." I was bursting with glee that she had actually begun reading it. She's halfway through (it's a novella, only 100 pages), but she noted some good things that I need to fix, one of which being (and as someone who reads sequels sometimes before I read the first book, it's very important) that I have to consider the fact that the reader may not have read Fledgling, so things I left out that I knew because they were explained in Fledgling, I have to explain in Birthright.

I'm just glad she started reading it. Now, I'll have to go through and flesh it out more so I can start the process of finding out from whom to get permission to actually publish it.


So that's it. See you later!

IWSG: Enjoying This Break

Hello.

I'm writing this on Tuesday night with a little bit of red wine in me, so I don't have much energy for my normal greetings. I will say thank you to Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosts because they deserve it.

I decided at the end of May that I wanted to take a break in June. July was also on my mind, and to be honest, I'm for it. I know blogging is good to build networks etc., but it's exhausting and sometimes tedious to me. I have actually written a LOT this past month, and I feel like a lot of it is BECAUSE I haven't been blogging.

I'm also back to querying agents. One said she was drawn by my query but not hooked by my first pages, so I know if I get the same sentiments from the next couple of agents, I need to do something about those first pages...AGAIN. I have friends getting their songs on tv shows, other friends getting into the careers they want. My cousin is finally branching out and doing solo performances at churches. I'd really like to be one of the successes soon. This life of working jobs I don't love just to get by is draining my soul.