Three Years of Jamie and P. J.

I have been having a really hard time with getting The Circle of Confusion to be what I want it to be. I've started three versions and written quite a bit only to get stalled. One version is almost 32,000 words long, but it just wasn't going in the direction I wanted. So what am I going to do, go back to the beginning. I decided to go back and read all of the entries I'd made about Jame and P. J.'s continuing story and figure out where I really wanted to start the story and where I really want it to go.

As I started going back through my blog posts, I realized that I actually started working on this story before Suddenly was even published. That was a year and a half ago. I spent a year and a half writing Suddenly so I've spent the past three years with Jamie and P. J.. I haven enjoyed every minute. It's been really fun to read my entries and realize how random they are.

Ultimately, I've decided to go back to the point where the original blog entries started, back to the beginning of the Jamie and P. J.'s second year in school. The story is going to be told from Lori Weaver's point of view because this is her story, but my goal is to give the readers a lot of background information through dialogue. That is going to include how P. J. felt about how things happened between Jamie and her. I'm sure there are several of you out there who want to hear that.

I'm going to build my storyboards while I finish up two other projects. Judge Not is almost complete and should be available by Valentines' Day 2014. And, Second Chances has been picked up by my publisher, Itoh Press and we are in the editing process with it. Hopefully it will be released sometime around the end of April  2014.

I will be posting tidbits of The Circle of Confusion as I'm writing it on this blog. If you have any comments or suggestions please email me at mxtudor08@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.

While you're waiting for The Circle of Confusion to come out. I have another new adult lesbian romance to suggest for you to check out. The Gravity Between Us by Kristen Zimmer

Happy New Year!

Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty

Happy New Year! I hope 2014 has started off well for all of you. I'm stoked about everything I've got planned for this year. Because I'm going to be spending so much time re-thinking and re-working The Circle of Confusion. I'm going to go back to writing the continuing story of Jamie and P.J. I'm going to have to read up to where I stopped before I can start again. I won't be able to do that until next week, unfortunately. But I hope to have new posts on here soon. So please check back. 

Reworking :(

I've discovered that I really don't have the first clue what it is like to be a student athlete. I now how tremedous respect for student athletes and the sacrifices they make to play. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to portray a student athlete correctly so I think I may have to make some serious changes to Lori Weaver's character. I'll be re-reading all that I've already written over the next few weeks and making a decision about Lori's character. If any of you have an opinion about that, I would love to hear what you think so feel free to email me. mxtudor08@gmail.com

I am hoping to post new information on my webpage today so be sure to stop by there too. www.metudor.com

I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for all the fans who have bought my books and continue to follow my stories. I hope all of you have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays in whatever form you may be celebrating this time of the year. Peace and love to you all, M.E.

More Rewriting

It's funny, but I swear I've taken out more than I've added to The Circle of Confusion. I've re-written chapter one like four times now. But, I want it to be a really great chapter that captures the reader and makes them want to keep reading. Here's the current first three paragraphs of the story. What do you think?

I watched Carrie Davenport approach the plate pulling her blond ponytail tighter. She tapped the plate with her bat, and then turned to me expectantly, blue eyes blazing. I bent forward, the softball behind my back. Our catcher, Leshana Jackson gave me the signal to go a little high with the pitch. I knew she was right. Carrie had a weakness for the high pitches.

Winding up my pitch, I let the ball go with extra speed. As Leshana and I expected, Carrie swung and missed the high pitch. Carrie glared at me. I guess she thought I’d go easy on her after last night, but she should have known better.

Striking Carrie out ended the last round of games with Murray State. It also marked the first shut out of my college pitching career. Carrie threw down her bat and stomped back to her dug out. Leshana and the rest of my team rushed out to hug me.

NaNoWriMo!

National Novel Writing Month started November 1st and I started working on The Circle of Confusion the sequel to Suddenly again. I had written over 30,000 words of it during the summer NaNoWriMo camp and I am hoping to get another 50,000 done during this month.

I am interviewing a student success advisor at WKU who deals with student athletes. So I'm really excited about that. I plan to start posting tidbits here again as the story starts moving forward so please stop by often. :)

Stalled a Little

After I finished Chapter One, I have been a little stuck because I hadn't really laid out the ground work for Lori's classes and how they work with her friends. So, I'm having to work on that before I can go again. I hope to have that done by this weekend. I definitely have to have all of my ducks in a row before the first of November when I jump back into this story with both feet. I plan to complete at least 50,000 words of this story by the end of November. I will definitely be post word counts and snippets from what I've written.

Until the, I hope you all can be patient with me. There is so much more to this story than I originally planned, funny how that happens. So, I'm going to have to set up some background stuff for myself so I can keep all my people in the story straight, figuratively only. Most everyone is gay. :)

Changes to Chapter One of The Circle of Confusion

Originally, when I started The Circle of Confusion, I wasn't going to put too much information about Lori's family in until later in the story, but I changed my mind about that. I want the readers to know right away what Lori is up against. 

I also want to make it clear that I am not anti-Christian or anything like that. I believe in God and I believe His love is unconditional. Sadly, too many LGBTQ youth face what Lori is going through in this story. And I want to create a story that makes all of you know that It Gets Better.

Okay, so here is a little bit of the changes I made to Chapter One.

 

My father cleared his throat. “Hut hum, Lora, you mother and I are very concerned about these friends you’ve been hanging around with.”

I sat up straight, concerned about the direction this conversation seemed to be headed. “I don’t know why. My friends are good people, good students. They don’t drink or party.”

“Well, um, it has been mentioned that they might by homosexuals,” he said, looking from me to Mom. His hazel eyes were just like mine, more green, than brown and they turned a deeper shade of green when he was upset.

“Really?” I said, looking at Jana. “Where’d you hear that?” I knew Jana hadn’t told them. Jana knew I was gay, and she knew how flipped out our parents would be if they found out.

“Someone from our church knows one of the girls’ mothers. She told your mother that we should be careful letting you hang around with those girls because they will try to convert you,” he said, looking directly at me.

“Convert me? Being homosexual is not like Judaism, Islam, or some other religion. Gay people don’t convert people. Either you’re gay or you’re not.”