Tuesday, December 23, 2014

A Masterpost of Release Dates for 2015/2016

Here are ALL my currently scheduled releases for 2015/2016. I’ll be celebrating each one with an in-depth blog post about the book and links to the book on amazon, goodreads, and createspace.
You can also join the facebook events over at http://facebook.com/emmalinewestlund


  • June 19, 2015: Forgotten Melodies
  • July 15, 2015: Fearless
  • August 28, 2015: Sins Of The Mother 
  • October 14, 2015: Into The Night
  • November 11, 2015: Stella’s Saga: Book 2
  • December 1, 2015: Albuquerque
  • December 25, 2015: Word Crimes
  • February 29, 2016: Sing
  • March 27, 2016: Slime Creatures From Outer Space
There’s ONE more release to be announced on Thursday this week. I’ll add it below once the announcement’s been made.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Progress

This time next month I will be nearly done with yet another draft of Albuquerque. Hopefully close to the last. I think I’ve got a handle on the characters now and I’m fairly sure I know the story well enough to tell it the way it’s meant to be told.
This time next month, I’ll be knee-deep in draft two of Fearless, my NaNoWriMo novel.
This time next month, I’ll be starting to outline Forgotten Melodies, my Phantom of the Opera novel.
This time last month I was struggling to write anything.
This time the month before that, I wasn’t writing at all.
This time next month, progress will be made.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Release Date Madness!

If you’ve liked my facebook page (http://facebook.com/EmmalineWestlund), you may have noticed I’ve announced a few release dates recently.
Four books have been announced, with eight more still to come before Christmas.
Be sure to RSVP to the facebook events for the latest news as we get closer to the release dates! The next book to be released will be Forgotten Melodies, which is a retelling of the classic The Phantom of the Opera.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

NaNoWriMo 2014

Wow I’m kind of terrible at keeping up on this blog even when I say I’m gonna. I haven’t been doing very much lately in the way of anything interesting, but I will be doing a bunch of writing starting November 1st. I’m already in the middle of a 12 month long writing challenge I’ve put on myself, but I’m also doing National Novel Writing Month.
If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, it’s a challenge that many people take during November to write at least 50K words on any one project (or multiple, but the true spirit of the challenge is to write a single fictional story).
If you’re also taking part in NaNoWriMo you can add me as a writing buddy on nanowrimo.org. My username is grissomissom. I’ll add anyone who adds me.

Monday, September 01, 2014

I Hate Coming Up With Blog Post Titles

Unless I have one very specific topic to talk about, I suck at blog post titles. Considering just doing song titles or something. Whatever.
It’s appalling how little writing I’ve been doing lately, but I have at least been plotting out a couple of very large projects. I’m still working on that whole ‘don’t announce things until they’re ready for publication’ thing so I’m not gonna go into more detail about those big projects just yet.
Nor am I going to confirm or deny that I’ve been tossing around ideas for Stella’s Saga Book 2 recently.
Nor will I confirm or deny the final installment of Sketchbooks within the next two years. (Yikes, that one got away from me.)
But I will confirm that the next few releases will be packed with characters and settings and verbs. Many verbs. Probably some adjectives and a multitude of nouns as well.
My next release will be on a day that end with the letter ‘y.’
Actually what I can tell you about is the sudden surge of people reading Confessions of a Fangirl. Or buying/borrowing it from amazon. It was my bestselling book in August. I’m still wondering why exactly it’s gotten so popular as of late.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Rest in peace, Robin Williams

This week, I think my generation suffered its first real loss. That’s not to say that the mourning is restricted to the millennials, but I do believe that his death has been the first real instance of my generation being old enough to actually understand and mourn the death of someone who was so integral to so many of our childhoods.
Personally, I’ve been thinking of Aladdin, humming “you ain’t never had a friend like me,” under my breath, for more than a day now. When I heard the news, I was sitting in a parking lot watching the clouds drift by. My friend Sara had tweeted about it, but I didn’t want to believe it. Part of me still doesn’t. It didn’t really hit me until last night, just as the clock was about to strike midnight, that he’s gone. He’s never going to say anything again. His family will never hug him again. His fans will get a few movies that have yet to come out but then that’s it. He’s never gonna be on another show doing his special brand of comedy.
But that doesn’t mean we’re gonna forget him. The utter shock at his death is evidence enough of that. He touched millions of lives with his comedy and his acting. His memory will live on likely longer than most of us on earth as I write this will.

Rest in peace, Robin Williams. I’m so terribly sorry that you lost your battle with mental illness. I sincerely hope that there is an afterlife of some kind, and I know that if there is, you’ve been welcomed with open arms and thunderous applause.

Sunday, August 03, 2014

Virus Alert Release Info + Excerpt!

Virus Alert is my latest book! At 25xxx words, it’s the longest non-fanfiction work I’ve ever published, and they’re just gonna get longer. Inspired by Weird Al, Virus Alert begins my newest series: Project: WEIRD.
Here’s where you can buy Virus Alert:

Please enjoy the first chapter of Virus Alert here absolutely free!

~~

“Don’t get too involved, dinner will be ready in half an hour,” my mom called after me as I headed upstairs to my bedroom. “Remember, no social media until after your homework’s done! No excuses, young lady!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled as I tossed my backpack across the room onto my bed and flicked on the overhead light. My room lit up with the strange glow of two black light bulbs, which make the posters on the walls and the fun patterns in my rug glow. I went around and turned on my lava lamps and my disco lamp, and soon my room had just enough light for me to be able to work on my homework-
-But there’s always time to check my email at least, right? I mean, Mom only told me to stay off the social sites until I’m done with my homework. What if one of my teachers sent out an email about us not having to do a certain assignment? I probably wouldn’t spin it that way if I had to justify my time spent on the computer to my mom. I flopped down on my bed and opened my Hello Kitty backpack. It took me a few moments to locate the charger cord before I pulled out my laptop.
I snagged the cord with my toes and pulled it up to where I could reach it and I plugged it in. I checked the battery level as I logged in. Twenty-seven percent of battery life remained, and now it was charging. How the hell did I use that much battery? All I did was take notes during Bio and show that music video at lunch, I wonder as my desktop loads up.
My poor old computer was on its way out; Dad and I had already been in talks for months about a shiny new computer for my upcoming seventeenth birthday. We had it narrowed down to either an extremely beefy gaming laptop, or whatever the current most-powerful Macbook Pro is, but the Daddy stopped talking to me about it. He keeps saying it’ll ruin the surprise if I’m involved in any more of the decision-making.
“I don’t hear studying!” Mom called up the stairs and I rolled my eyes.
“I’m checking my email to make sure I’ve got all the right assignments!” I shouted back.
“What?” she asked after a few moments. With a deep sigh, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed her cell number, knowing she’d just get mad if I texted her. She was the only one left in the family that hadn’t upgraded to a smartphone, and she was still trying to figure out the phone she had!
“What?” she repeated as she answered my call.
“I said I’m checking my email so I can be sure I’m doing all the right homework. I don’t want to miss an assignment.”
“Be quick about it. No social media, Kyle Marie,” she said. I could practically hear the eye roll in her first sentence.
“I’m just waiting on my computer to load up,” I said. She seemed pleased with that response, because she hung up. I opened up my mail program and pulled out my math and English literature textbooks while I waited for it to load up. The familiar chime of an incoming email hit my ears four times before I was finished setting up my textbooks. When I finally looked at the screen, I had six messages waiting for me.
Two of my t-shirt orders shipped while I was at school. Good! I’ve been waiting for those shirts since the first week of school, and it’s almost the end of October now. One of the emails is from my boss from my summer job, asking me to take an exit survey about my time with the company. The other three are from school: one from the principal about the dress code with the upcoming Halloween dance; one from the gym teacher about taking gym uniforms home at least once a month to be washed, and one from SeƱora Filbert, my Spanish teacher.
It was the email from Sra. Filbert that caught my eye immediately. I was used to her sending emails every so often, she had done so since the school started allowing teachers to communicate with their classes this way four years ago. But this didn’t look like her normal emails. The subject read ‘STINKY CHEESE,’ and it there was a little paperclip symbol next to it, meaning she’d attached something.
Normally, I would’ve deleted the message and emailed whoever sent me a strange message, but considering that it was from a teacher who had never sent me anything shady in the past, I opened the message, only to find that it was completely blank except for the attachment.
I hovered over the attached file, ‘STINKYCHEESE.PDF,’ and debated clicking on it for a long moment. She sent out worksheet .PDFs all the time. Maybe she downloaded it from an external website and forgot to change the filename? I thought, or maybe that’s what it’s called and it’s supposed to be some revolutionary new teaching method.
I clicked on the file, and when prompted to confirm that I did, in fact, want to download the file, I clicked yes.
While I waited for it to download, I set my laptop down on my nightstand and turned my attention to my textbooks. Math was a fairly straightforward hell; I only had to do ten questions from the chapter we were working on. Unfortunately, they were word problems that involved showing my work.
Even as unpleasant as the math homework was, it was better than what waited for me in my English lit homework. We were working through Macbeth, which wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t already read the play four times already. I love Shakespeare but there’s only so many times one can stand to read the same story before it becomes boring.
I was about knee-deep in the second problem on the math homework when my computer started making an awful noise. I looked up just in time to see the screen flicker a few times before defaulting to the blue screen of death. That was about the time that the inhuman howl ripped itself from my throat and I grabbed my laptop off of the nightstand.
“No, no don’t you do this to me,” I shouted at it, “Computer I swear to god!”
Of course, my computer doesn’t respond to my crying, but rather continues to make this horrific grinding noise while the screen remains the blue screen of death. After a few more minutes of me begging it to do something, a high-pitched, steady beep joins the grinding sound before the whole thing falls silent and the screen goes black.
I howl and slam my hand down on the power button, pressing it again and again in a desperate attempt to force my laptop to work again, but nothing happens.
Responding to my screams, my mom came running up the stairs and burst into my room. “Kyle? Kyle, are you okay?” she cried, looking wildly around the room. When her eyes fell upon me cradling my laptop and murmuring to it, she groaned. “What are you screaming about up here?” she demanded.
“My computer won’t turn back on!” I cried, “I don’t know, I opened an email from my teacher and downloaded an assignment or something and my computer won’t turn back on! I think it was a virus!”
“Ya think?” Mom asked dryly. She stalked across the room and unplugged my computer from the wall before snatching it out of my hands. “I’ll have your dad look at it after dinner. For now you can work on your homework. I don’t want your teachers to be telling your dad and me about how you never turn in completed assignments this year, Kyle Marie.”
“I haven’t done that since sixth grade,” I said, indignant. She shrugged as she turned to walk out of the room. “Come on, you can’t seriously hold that over me forever. I’ve obviously gotten to be a better student!”
“I’ll stop riding your ass about it when you’ve graduated and you’re off to college.” With that, my mom exited my room and slammed the door behind her. She never liked to leave room for an argument when she’d said her last words on something. I stuck my tongue out at the door as I listened to her sashay down the steps and back off toward the kitchen.
Sighing, I turned my attention back to the math problems at hand. I still didn’t understand quite how I managed to be put into pre-calculus when I still hadn’t quite managed to figure out algebra. I’d been pretty good at math until letters started getting introduced into equations. Solve for x? How about no.
Still I faced the textbook with a brave face, knowing that there was at least a super tiny chance that I actually guess the right answer and the right formula. Even if it was so incredibly unlikely that I stood a better chance of being struck by lightning twice while winning the lottery, it got me through. Mr. Anderson even seemed to understand that I was trying my hardest. I’d yet to answer a question right in class or on a test, but I had a steady ‘C’ going in math.
Mom wanted better of course, but I couldn’t complain.
I was almost halfway done with my math assignment when Mom called me down for dinner. I breathed a sigh of relief as I slid my math book off my lap and stood up. I stretched and yawned as I walked across the room, not bothering to close my door behind me or turn off my lights. My lava lamps hadn’t even properly warmed up yet, so it would be pointless to turn them back off already.
My Dad was just coming in as I hit the bottom of the stairs, and he smiled when he saw me. “Heya, kiddo! How was school?” he asked cheerfully. I can’t help but smile at him.
“Hey, Daddy,” I said, “school was okay I guess. How was work?” He slipped off his shoes and set his briefcase down by the door before walking into the dining room with me. Mom was just finishing scooping mashed potatoes onto Dad’s plate as we walk in.
“Oh, you know,” he says, feigning boredom, “same old, same old. Johnson downloaded some new virus this afternoon and that kept us busy for a few hours, but there really wasn’t that much going on today.”
“A new virus, huh?” Mom asked, raising an eyebrow as we all sat down, “Anything particularly nasty?”
“Nah,” Dad replied, “Run of the mill stuff. Gave us the old blue screen of death for a bit, then his computer was down for a while. I had to go in and manually reset the fan, but after that the computer was working fine. We ran a couple of antivirus/anti-malware programs and caught a few things, and now it’s running like normal again.”
“I think I downloaded a virus,” I said as I poured some gravy on my turkey and potatoes. I wondered briefly if Mom realized that neither Dad nor I were fooled by the turkey roast she was using. She’d gone back to work finally after sixteen and a half years of being a stay at home mom, and because she was working and trying to do all the thing she’d done before she was working again, things were beginning to change. Meals were becoming lazier and she’d all but completely abandoned dusting in every room except for the living room.
She had gone so far as to form the turkey roast into chunks instead of slices, thinking that we might mistake it for turkey breast, but it was clearly one of those roasts that is both white and dark meat with the even split along the middle. One glance at Dad and I can tell that he’s noticed the same thing as I had, but Mom looks tired and she was already being kind of cranky when she’d snatched my computer away from me, so I decided not to say anything. Dad seemed to decide against saying anything as well, and we began eating in silence.
After a little bit, Mom cleared her throat, “Today at work, I got to sit in on a meeting for Mr. Jay. He was supposed to be back to the office by two, but his plane got delayed so I had to sit in on his two-thirty meeting and you know I’m pretty sure I’ve never been quite that nervous in all my life? All those old men in suits, they all sounded so angry about everything!” She shuddered as she spooned up a big bite of potatoes.
“What was the meeting about?” I asked, trying to appear interested as I pushed my food around on my plate, hoping that if I mixed the turkey, gravy, and potatoes together well enough they would taste better than they did. So far it hadn’t worked. Mom’s smile is so sincere when she starts to answer me that I almost feel bad for not being more interested in what she’s saying.
“I’m not even really sure,” she said, “something about a merger they’re trying to push through or something. I guess the company that we’re merging with isn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of being a part of the WM family.”
“That sucks,” I said.
“Did Mr. Arnold at least thank you for staying late to attend that meeting for him?” Dad asked as he finished his food. It was hard for me to tell if he gulped it down because he was hungry or because he didn’t like the taste and just wanted to get the meal over with as quickly as possible. I wished that I had the fortitude to speed-eat an entire plate of potatoes and not upchuck it all halfway through.
I shoved my plate away from me, everything except for the potatoes precisely half-eaten. “I’m not that hungry,” I lied, “and I got a whole lot of homework to do yet.” I shoved my chair away from the table. “If I can be excused, that is,” I add, mostly as an afterthought.
“Yeah, of course, little scholar,” Dad said with a sly grin, “I’ll bring your computer up in a little while and we’ll see if we can get it working again.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” I said, and I kissed Mom on the cheek as I snuck past her. She scowled at me as I disappeared up the stairs and closed my door behind me.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

August 3rd, 2014

Mark your calendars, you guys. My next proper release is going to be on August 3rd, 2014. Yes, just over two weeks from now.
Those of you who follow my facebook page (and probably got routed here by way of my facebook page) are probably already fully aware of my plan to release something on August 3rd. Well now you can finally know what the hell I’m planning on releasing!
I’m really, really excited about this release. I’m really, really excited for the collection it comes from.
On August 3rd, Virus Alert will be released through Amazon Kindle and Smashwords as an e-book. It will be an e-book only release, as it is actually a short story. (It’s a bit longer than my more recent releases, but it’s still quite short. Please bear with me, guys, there are novels on the horizon.)
Virus Alert will be the first of many stories inspired by (and named for) songs by “Weird Al” Yankovic. Also upcoming are Albuquerque and One More Minute, with release dates to be announced within the next six months.

This collection, which as of yet does not have a proper name (if you’ve got any ideas that wouldn’t throw me directly into the path of the copyright infringement bus, please do let me know as I’m at a friggin loss), will have an e-book only release to start, with paperback anthologies released annually. This is going to be an ongoing project, but it is not going to interfere with Stella’s Saga, which will be updating quite soon, I assure you.

So spread the word! New releases coming soon!
More information about Virus Alert coming soon!

Monday, May 19, 2014

Professional Ride Giver

That would be my current job title. Of course, in parentheses, I’d add “also, writer.” But I am a professional ride giver and it is a fun job. It gets me out of the house for 3-8 hours a day, 4-6 days per week. And it pays the bills.
I’ve been lucky to find a job such as this, but it makes me feel utterly lazy in my writing. I don’t have the stamina I did even just from November until April. I don’t write 2000+ words everyday anymore. And that kinda bothers me.
I’ve started to wonder if I’m settling into this job, this title that I literally just made up and gave to myself five seconds before I started writing this post. It is what I do. People ask me who I am when I arrive with my boss to places but I never really know what to tell them my role is. Usually I’ll just say “assistant” but that’s so not what I am. I’m a ride giver.
I think I’m going to try to do something again. I’m gonna come up with a list of prompts and stuff and for 30 days I’ll have to follow at least one prompt each day and I’ll have to write something pertaining to that prompt or something. I haven’t come to any real decision on it, but I know something’s gotta be done about my writing habits. Albuquerque should be more than 2100 words right now and it’s not.
I need to start taking walks again. Go outside. Write in the back of a van. Find my inspiration again.

Monday, May 05, 2014

Back To Normal?

So, apparently quite a lot has changed over my writing hiatus (which I laugh at every time I call it that). I’ve discovered now that I have to reward myself for writing original fiction again. It’s difficult! I had forgotten all the underlying reasons I no longer wrote fanfiction. It makes writing things with my own characters (and only my own characters) so much more difficult.
Not impossible, but difficult.
And so I think I’m actually going to have to keep on a schedule in order to keep me interested in what I’m writing (even though I love Albuquerque and I’m so ready to have it out in the world for others to enjoy) and that’s an entirely new thing for me.
I’m not giving myself time constraints. I have a rough deadline, but it’s not imperative that I keep with it as long as I get the book written (thank god for being my own boss!) and I don’t drive myself nuts trying to do it.
Odd days (May 5th, 7th, 9th, etc.) will be days I work on Albuquerque. If I can write at least 1500-2000 words on Albuquerque before stopping, I can work on my fanfiction as well.
Even days (May 6th, 8th, 10th, etc.) will be fanfiction/other small project days. If I feel up to it I can work on Albuquerque a bit on these days too, but they’re meant almost as “reward” days at this stage because getting even 10 words out on Albuquerque is difficult right now.
Shaking off the rust and getting my characters out of storage. Hoping that this time next week I’ll have a good 10k words written and I’ll have been worried for nothing.

Saturday, May 03, 2014

Writing Again!

Not that I actually stopped, but I did take a professional writing hiatus starting in early April. It’s up here on May 5th, and that means I’ll be back to a full workload, which is going to be both awesome and sucky. Awesome because it will mean that Albuquerque will be back on the road to publication, but sucky because it means that my already slow updating schedule for my phanfic, Something To Sing About, is going to be even slower and possibly more erratic.
I’m really excited to get back to writing my own characters a bit more exclusively, and I can tell that I missed writing my own stuff while I was exclusively writing fanfiction there for a while because I created some pretty fun and interesting original characters to inject into Something To Sing About.
(Particularly Joanna and Philippe. They’re both fantastic, even if I do say so myself.)
So I’m enjoying two more days of “vacation” and only working on fanfiction. What are you guys spending your weekend doing?

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

On Offensive Vs. Tact, Also Hiatuses

So recently there’s been an absolute shitstorm in one of the fandoms I formerly involved myself with. I no longer involve myself with that fandom or the performers behind it because of this shitstorm. But all of this got me thinking about people being offensive for the sake of being offensive (because HUHUHUHU IT’S FUNNY YOU GUYS). Basically? Don’t do it. You’re probably going to lose at least one friend, and if you’re a public figure? Yeah that’s gonna completely fuck up your image.
There’s a way to do “offensive” right, and you know how you do that? You have tact.

Please note: the following example could prove triggering if you have struggled with self-harm. Please skip to the next example if mentions of self-harm trigger you.

An example of just plain offensive: Posting a picture of yourself with your hair dyed black and hanging in your face, black eyeshadow and eyeliner smudged around your eyes, and then captioning it “I’m going to start an emo band, but I don’t think I cut myself enough to do so yet. Maybe I’ll carve a word into my arm with a nice sharp spoon.”

That is offensive. That is offensive for the sake of being offensive, especially if you are marketing yourself or your product toward teenagers.

An example of offensive with tact: Speaking candidly about a celebrity who was well-known for not being entirely mentally stable, and mentioning that had something gone wrong when they were holding their small child over the edge of a balcony by the foot, it would’ve really cemented the crazy- not to mention the baby.

It’s still offensive, but at least it’s not specifically singling out one group of people who have enough bullshit to go through.

In less irritating news, my professional hiatus (which was not announced here because reasons) ends in six days, and you know what that means? Albuquerque. Albuquerque is going to be getting its final rewrite here in just more than a week, still shooting for the original release date and everything.
So there’s that.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Life is Words

So many words.
An average of 4500 words per day this week. And I don’t see an end to this marathon of words.
I’m hoping to be done with this draft of Albuquerque by the end of this coming week. I’m working hard to make sure that this book will be done by my self-imposed deadline. I’m so far past ready to give you Albuquerque, and I’m working hard to make it ready for you.
I’m a little over halfway through the story, so I’m hoping that the next draft will go a bit more smoothly.
Tentative release date is June 23rd, 2014.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The Race is On!

So, as you can all probably guess I’ve been busy writing, writing, writing! I’m working on a fresh draft of Albuquerque right now, and I’m starting to really hold myself to deadlines! I’m hoping to release at least two new books this year, Albuquerque to be the first of those.
This draft is due to be completed by April 15th, with another (possibly final) draft due by June 3rd.
Now if I can just get all these words out I can start rearranging them in an order that will be good for my readers.

I’m also considering forming a street team. I’ve never done one of those before but I think it could probably only help my brand and everything so… Look out for more information about that on facebook as it becomes available!

Thursday, February 13, 2014

It’s been a month!

I apologize! I honestly do try to come up with something to write about every couple weeks, even if it’s a 2-sentence writeup of “Oh, working on x and y this week, hoping to release sometime next Janutober…”
And this past month I just kind of fucked that up. And for that I am deeply sorry.
I’ve been trying to get better at this blogging thing because the better I am at blogging the more efficient I am with my writing (I kid you not, NaNo I wrote the most and blogged a lot, the like four years I’ve had this thing that’s the most efficient I’ve been) and lately I’ve been having a really hard time getting words out.
Well that’s starting to turn around, so I just kind of wanted to offer you selection of words that describe upcoming releases (I will be updating the “Current Projects” header sometime in the next couple of days) that should be out within the next 6-12 months:

STEAMPUNK!
HORROR!
GORE!
LOVE!
BETRAYAL!
CHICKENS!
ROBOTS!
LASER LIGHT SHOWS!
MURDER MYSTERY!
TACO!

Thank you for reading my wonderful 100% professional blog update.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Paper Hearts

Paper Hearts is my first book release of 2014 and guess what, you guys? IT’S AVAILABLE NOW FOR KINDLE AND IN PAPERBACK!
The paperback is $7.99 and the kindle edition is $2.99. It’s approximately 26000 words and it is a re-imagining of Paper Dolls, the very first book I ever released. It is also the start of a new series, based on that first series I ever started working on. New books in the series SHOULD be released every six months, so look for the sequel (unnamed as of yet) in mid to late June 2014.


Wednesday, January 01, 2014

FIRST BLOG OF THE YEAR!

YAY!
I don’t have a whole lot to tell you except that Albuquerque has been pushed back indefinitely because I’m considering completely rewriting it. Also I took a selfie earlier. First selfie of the year!