Meet my character blog hop!

So, I’ve been asked to participate in the Meet my Character blog hop by the awesome Shehanne Moore whose next book, ‘The Viking and The Courtesan‘ hopefully won’t be far from publishing after being signed with Soulmate publishing!

First, a bit of info about Shehanne Moore:

When not cuddling inn signs in her beloved Scottish mountains, Shehanne Moore writes dark and smexy historical romance, featuring bad boys who need a bad girl to sort them out. She believes everyone deserves a little love, forgiveness and a second chance in life. Visit her blog to find out about past releases and hear more about her forthcoming time-slip historical, The Viking and The Courtesan.

Shehanne’s blog: http://shehannemoore.wordpress.com/

So first off I have two things to say before starting:

1. I’m VERY sorry to Shehanne who asked me to do this a couple of weeks ago and I just completely forgot, and she was really, really lovely to let me try it again!

2. I’m a terrible blog hopper. Because I actually forgot I had to find people to, you know, hop onto next 😀 So, I’m making a plea to other bloggers to do this and post a link in the comments? Because you’re all so lovely!

I swear I will get better at blogging one day!

Now onto the questions!

The character I have chosen is Alex Lailand from my work in progress, which is embarrassingly still untitled! 😀

What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

Her name is Alexandra (Alex) Lailand and she is a completely fictional woman.

When and where is the story set?

The story is a modern day story set in London and Scotland!

What should we know about him/her?

Alex is a very practical woman, and a very confident one. She built her business from nothing to a business that allows her to have a fancy apartment and office in the middle of London.

Though city life is beginning to wear on her, she won’t admit it.

What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

What messes up her life? More like who messes up her life!

That would be FG, her rom-com obsessed fairy godmother who appeared in her office one day and sent her life spiralling into chaos. FG believes Alex has lost her heart and passion for life including love and business, and she isn’t leaving until that’s fixed!

Though FG’s imagination runs as far as throwing Alex into her own romantic tale, flinging her and her ‘perfect match’ into an assortment of clichés she’s picked up from watching and reading too much romance, which only serve to make things a little awkward for the pair.

What is the personal goal of the character?

To be successful.

Alex is all about getting the win, even if that means focusing only on the hard facts rather than the personal when it comes to her clients.

Is there a working title for this novel and can we read more about it?

There is currently no working title! Which I should probably rectify pretty soon.

I recently posted a short, unedited teaser from the first draft. And of course I shall post more about it the closer it gets to release day (end of September!).

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Ok, now is the part where I’m supposed to link to the other bloggers participating in the hop! But like I said, I had a complete blank when it came to this hop apparently! So I really hope someone is willing to join in!

If you do, please post it next Monday and let me know and I will link to the post 🙂 If you want more info, drop me an email and I will send you the details! Email: harliqueen (at) Hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk

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Progress Report:

Status of fifth manuscript: Editing first draft.

Books read this month: 0/4

Mid-September Book Review: Currently reading.

July 2014 Round-Up and August 2014 Plan

It’s August! Yeah, I don’t how that happened. Seems every month this year has crept up on me faster than it should have.

This month was a rather hectic one, but fun!

July
– Kept completely to schedule.
– Posted every scheduled day, except one I missed due to internet not working.
– I received more great reviews for my books 😀
> Heart of the Arena: 1x 5*, 4x 4*
> Stolen Bloodline: 4x 5*, 1x 4*
> The Queen’s Jester: 3x 4*
– Connected regularly with bloggers.
– Used twitter and facebook more effectively to help support other authors.
– Read 3 books (1 below target!)- The Commons, Book 1: The Journeyman by Michael Alan Peck, The Soul by S.R.Carrillo, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
– Updated my blog.
– Set up a mailing list and newsletter- Click here to sign up!
– Released Prophecy of Stones!

One goal I didn’t reach was that I didn’t look into different forms of marketing quite enough. This is something I am going to have to do, no matter how much I dislike marketing 😀 If I want to earn enough to live on from my writing, then it is something I am going to have to think about more and start implementing.

So, now onto August!

Plan:
1st- 31st- Write first draft of next book.
13th- Book review, either traditional or indie.
29th- Indie eBook review

Goals:
– Read 4 books!
– Find new ways of marketing and implement them.
– Continue actively supporting others and look into different ways of achieving this.
– Write more short pieces for prompts.

A lot of other things happened in July:

Melissa Barker-Simpson released her new book, Hands of Evil! You should definitely check it out. I am currently reading her book, Sins of the Father, and am thoroughly enjoying it (review to come!).

Ness Kingsley has returned to us 😀 She’s a great blogger, and definitely worth checking out her posts. Very excited to hear more from her in the future.

Lost to the Aether (my best friend and one of my amazing readers!) has started posting his comic, which is great fun read!

Kimberley M Ringer achieved an amazing thing by completing the Wharf to Wharf race! So a major round of applause to her!

Shehanne Moore has been posting some brilliant and hilarious posts, worth checking out just for the hamsters 😀

The Legends of Windemere trailer was released!

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Wow, what a wrap up of this month 😀

I also want to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who re-blogged, tweeted and shared my release day post. I am so grateful for your amazing and continued support!

This weekend I will be posting some scheduled marketing posts, but I won’t be around until Monday as usual 🙂

What they don’t know won’t kill them!

The back story of my characters has been on my mind lately, and obviously on other people’s too, as there have been a couple of great posts about it, for example:

Shehanne Moore has a great post about drip feeding the back story into your book.

Rachel Carrera has an interesting post asking for opinions on how readers enjoy reading back story in books.

Knowing where your characters come from and what they’ve done to become who they are when readers meet them is important.

The way back story is introduced is very individual based on the story and the writer, but it wasn’t the technical aspect of writing back story that had me thinking. Instead, lately I have been mulling over the back story itself.

Have you ever had a piece of back story for your characters pop into your head out of nowhere, that is so random or out of character for them, but you just know that it’s right?

What I mean is, I have a group of characters and for some reason I just have this thought that 2 of these characters got together one night.

For this to happen would be rather out of character for them, but now I’ve thought of it, I can’t un-think it, and it’s stuck as being a part of their back story.

Now, this piece of information isn’t written in my story or even hinted at, and it will never be revealed to readers. It’s just a snippet of info about these characters that I, as the writer, know about them and has shaped the way they are.

It got me thinking about other bits of back story from previous characters that I know as a the writer, but that readers would never know, and how it affects the way that I write these characters.

I wonder how many characters I’ve read about in books who have back story I don’t know about.

It’s interesting to ponder, right? 😀

Do you have any interesting back story about characters that only you know about them, that you haven’t shared with readers or other people? Have you ever imagined your characters doing something really out of character? Do you enjoy creating back story for your characters?

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Progress Report:

Word Count: 3049 (39,207 total word count)
Status of fourth manuscript: Writing first draft.

Books read: 1/4

June eBook Review: Review written and ready.