Hello there! Yep, I disappeared for a bit there (I blame work), but I’ve got a huge backlog of blog posts to get through (I’ve been given so many tags that I want to do!) so here I am today to do a random blog post!
So, Emily over at E.K. Seaver created a blog tag for writers, called the Disney Character Blog tag and she tagged me for it a few weeks months ago. Basically, here’s the rules:
Link back to the tag’s creator
Link back to the person who tagged you
Pick 10-12 of your favourite Disney Characters
Chose which of your cast of characters (whether from your current or a former WIP) reminds you of those princesses and tell us why.
Tag 4-7 other people
(Optional) Use the graphic I created for the tag
So…I don’t really know that many Disney characters. Weird, aren’t I? I didn’t really grow up watching Disney movies so the only ones I’ve seen are the ones my younger siblings enjoy watching. With that in mind, I decided to use the original Disney Princesses, with a few exceptions. I honestly couldn’t think of any of my characters to compare to Aurora, Snow White or Cinderella, because, if we’re being honest, they don’t have much in the way of personality. So I’ve replaced them with three other characters I like from movies I’ve actually seen.
Also, I think I’m supposed to choose one novel/cast of characters, unfortunately, I’m a rulebreaker and I don’t want to choose just one of my novels. So anything I’ve written so far is fair game! Now, let’s get into it!
So I saw Christine Smith do this tag over on her blog a few days ago and it looked really fun! It also reminded me that I haven’t really talked about myself in a while, so I thought this tag would be fun for you all to get to know me a little better, whether you’ve been around for years or are a new follower.
And yes, I know its not August anymore, but who cares? Not me.
) Introduce Yourself!
Hello, I am Chelsea! I’m a slightly crazed young woman who is two weeks off being twenty years old. I’m a dog trainer by profession and a writer by hobby. I enjoy hiking, knitting and playing with my dogs in my spare time 🙂
2.) Tell us about your work-in-progress and your August goals!
Well, I’ve currently got a few works-in-progress, but they’re not all in progress right now as I speak. My main projects are my dystopian novel, The Stars Fill Infinity and my WW1 historical novel Southern Cross. I dearly love both of them, but I’ve been working onTSFI since I was sixteen, so it has a very special place in my heart. Essentially, it’s a retelling of Les Miserables (Les Miserables meets The Hunger Games is my official pitch), and it follows two sisters as they navigate an unjust and cruel dystopian future. There’s lots of heartbreak and angst, you know, all the good stuff. Southern Cross is similar, but its definitely New Adult, rather than Young Adult, and it follows three young women, Amy, an Irish Catholic orphan, Pearl, a German governess, and Charlotte, an Aboriginal woman. It primarily focuses on the plight and strength of women during the war while their boys were overseas fighting.
Since August is actually almost over, let me enlighten you on my September goals.
For TSFI, I hope to finish off my revised character profiles and my revised plot outline so that I can begin work on completely rewriting it.
For SC, I hope to do a few character profiles and read three books for research.
3.) Introduce your characters!
Let me give a one sentence introduction to all five of my main characters from the two above mentioned projects:
Chessy//TSFI//A sparky seventeen year old with more than her fair share of trauma to live through, clever, kind and passionate.
Sapphire//TSFI//A nineteen year old introvert and single mother, broken, sad and courageous, willing to give up anything to save those she loves.
Amy//SC//Eighteen year old Irish Catholic with no money and no marriage prospects, cheerful, spunky and struggling with the then-unknown diagnosis of ADHD.
Pearl//SC//Twenty-one year old governess with knife-sharp intellect and wit, could have gone to university if she’d had the money.
Charlotte//SC//Twenty-four year old nurse, compassionate, ambitious and highly motivated, illegitimate daughter of a white farmhand and a black mother.
4.) What are you currently reading?
The Wisdom of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton and The Blue Salt Road by Joanne M. Harris. Not sold on either yet, but I’m not very far in, so we’ll see how it goes.
5.) Favorite genre to read and write.
Toss up between fantasy and historical fiction. I love both so much and couldn’t imagine my life without one of them. There’s also this sweet spot called historical fantasy and that really floats my boat 😀
6.) Three fun facts about your work-in-progress.
TSFI was my first “serious” novel. It’s also the first novel I’ve written with the intention of getting published one day.
The title came from a passage in Les Miserables where Marius first visits Cosette in her garden.
I have about fifty other classic novels I want to retell set in the same universe, but I doubt I will ever write them 😦
Southern Cross is my first foray into the world of New Adult, which has intrigued me for some time now.
I have wanted to write a big, epic WW1 novel for about five or six years now, but its never really come together until I read a few books recently that cemented my dream for it.
Amy is one of my oldest characters. She came to me when I was thirteen years old and has already have three drafts of a middle grade novel written about her.
There we go, three interesting facts each!
7.) You get to spend the day in your story’s world. What do you do?
Both of them would be pretty horrible to spend a day in…However, I think I would use the time wisely to research the time and the culture, so I could write about it better. I’d also have to keep from dying as best as possible.
8.) A favorite kind of character to write.
Um, quirky, awkward boys who are incredibly passionate about something–usually something strange.
I also like wild, crazy girls with messy hair, no make up and an inability to listen to other people’s advice, but also probably an anxiety disorder.
9.) What is your writing weakness?
I often find it hard to describe exactly what’s going on in my head, which I think leaves a lot of my writing shallow and vague. I think the fact that I can’t expand any further on this topic proves my point 😛
10.) What is your writing strength?
I hope that is writing interesting, fleshed out characters as well as thoroughly researching little used and interesting settings and time periods.
11.) What are your hobbies outside of writing?
I mentioned a few already, but here we go again. I really enjoy dog training of various sorts, knitting (this is my Sunday afternoon unwinding hobby, it’s very good), sewing (occasionally), screaming at the tax office about my end of financial year tax returns, choreographing dog dance routines (yes, this is a thing) and listening to an eclectic range of pop music, musicals and movie soundtracks.
12.) Your favorite villain trope.
Villains who believe so strongly in an idealistic goal that they will die for their beliefs. I don’t know why this trope appeals to me so much, but I really love it and my villains often fall into this category. Villains like Javert from Les Miserables, Madame Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities, Mrs Clennam from Little Dorrit, Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame etc. To me, there’s something especially tragic about these sorts of villains, because imagine if their loyalty and faith was put towards a noble cause? Imagine what good warriors they would be! And yet they’ve dedicated their lives to misguided beliefs and evil and they are unable to change.
13.) A favorite book you’ve read so far in 2020.
I’ve read so many! Here’s a few.
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. 10/10 recommend this to anyone looking for a good adult historical fiction. Beautifully written, wonderful themes, compelling characters. Absolutely loved it.
Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd. Fantastic non-fiction book about the life and work of a forensic pathologist. Not for the squeamish, but absolutely brilliant.
The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter. The best fantasy book I’ve read in ages. West African inspired, brilliant writing and thrilling plot. Definitely an Adult book though.
14.) Writing playlist
This is my generic instrumental writing playlist. I do sometimes make playlists specifically for a particular novel, but I’m much more likely to listen to this playlist than I am a specific one. Because that’s just the way I am.
17.) A side character you love in your work-in-progress.
Side characters are always my favourite things! And there’s so many that I love in both of my books. In The Stars Fill Infinity, the side characters are definitely my favourites. First of all, there’s Rain. She’s a sparky street girl with a traumatic backstory that she never full reveals, and she’s got blue hair and wears denim overalls. She’s honestly one of my favourite characters ever to write because she has such a wide range of emotions. I just love her, ok?
Also in TSFI there’s Quillon. Quillon is an extroverted introvert, he’s friends with everyone, he loves his friends, he’s passionate and caring. I just love this boy. As all my beta readers are well aware.
And of course, there’s other characters in TSFI I love, Justice, Zac, Jonas, etc. But Rain and Quillon are my favourites.
In Southern Cross, my favourite side characters are all the boys! SC centres on the girls and women who were overlooked by war and I love them, but there’s a special place in my heart for the boys that go off to war. There’s the twins, Frank and Henry, who’ve been split apart by their differing political and moral opinions. Frank believes that defending his country by going to war is a noble thing, while Henry is horrified by the idea of killing other humans in the name of self-defense. There’s also Curt, who has been rejected from the army four times because of his medical issues, before finally being accepted into the fledgling air force. He’s been sent white feathers, and dumped by his girlfriend because of his inability to join the army, and he’s broken and angry. And finally, there are Andrew and Sam. Andrew’s possibly the illegitimate son of Mr Ashford, the station owner, though no one will admit it one way or another. He’s half Aboriginal and ostracised from society, but somehow still kind and wise and talented. Sam is also of uncertain parentage, but he’s Chinese. He’s also ostracised, but he’s incredibly clever and rather overlooked. Both of them go off to war in order to “prove their worth” to a white majority society and they have varying results.
Anyway, nobody wants to read ten more blocks of texts, so I’m going to stop talking about random side characters now.
18.) What is the best part about being a writer?
Being able to have a wild, overactive imagination and claim it as work, and being able to obsessively reread childhood favourite books and claim it as work.
19.) A genre you want to write.
I desperately want to write a literary historical novel, something like Burial Rites,The Blue Rose or The Dictionary of Lost Words. The sort of book that brings overlooked people into the spotlight. And I’ve never written anything like that, so…
20.) You’re an author on a Q&A panel! Which authors are sharing the stage with you?
Hopefully some other popular YA authors. I think it would probably be like Cressida Cowell, maybe Nadine Brandes, Suzanne Collins, etc. They are all authors who write similarly to me.
21.) One way you’ve grown as a writer + one thing you want to improve on.
This one is really hard because I know I’ve grown a lot as a writer over the 10+ years I’ve been doing it. However, if I had to choose just one way, I think that I’ve been able to grow a lot in the realm of theme. Obviously, this has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve been literally growing up as well. As a ten year old, I didn’t really have beliefs or morals or ethics. I believed what my parents did, and that was that. And because of that, my stories only had shallow themes and messages (friendships are good! Be nice to each other!). As I’ve grown up though, I’ve developed my own beliefs and values that I hold dear and the more that’s happened, the deeper the themes and messages I include in my stories have become. The exciting thing for me is that I know I will continue to change and grow (I’m only twenty, people!) and that my themes will continue to change along with that.
And one thing I want to improve on? I think I want to improve my worldbuilding skills. They are woefully inadequate for the type of books I write and I need to get better at it.
22.) Goal check-in + a snippet!
So my goals for 2020 were kind of all over the place, but let’s have a look at what my writing goals were:
-Edit SFI within an inch of its life
-Polish SC and (hopefully) submit to a competition
-Write a new first draft and/or compete in NaNoWriMo
So far I’ve done none of these.
Okay, now for some snippets. I love sharing snippets 🙂
From SC:
Frank tries to laugh at Sydney’s story, but he doesn’t have it in him. Nothings funny on the front lines, but everything must be made into a joke. If it isn’t, they’ll go crazy. The whistle of another shell overhead jerks his mind away from the darkness surrounding him and all he thinks about for a moment is his own safety, making sure the sound of that whistling shell isn’t the last thing he’ll ever hear. It explodes some way off, and the shrieking of dying horses—and dying men too—makes him cower down, clenching his teeth. Sydney just sits where he is, his face blank. A moment later, a sergeant appears from the other end of the trench. His face is grim, his mouth set in a deep frown. “You boys,” he says. “You’re going out as soon as the sun sets.”
“So, buck up. Do what you can. Don’t worry about it. Here, I’ll say some prayers with you.” I get up and go to my room, coming back with my rosary beads. Pearl gives me a look and through her tears manages to say, “I’m Lutheran.” I shrug. “Its the same God, isn’t it?” Pearl smiles for the first time.
From TSFI:
“You are accused of assaulting a member of the upper class. That alone is worth a year’s hard labour sentence. Upon that, you are also accused of riotous behaviour against the government. That is another year and a half sentence. That is excluding evading the police and preventing the course of justice. Things do not look good for you. But, a full confession to the ignorance which your youth has blinded you with and a solemn promise to adhere to the law in future events would halve your sentence very effectively. Do you understand now?”
I nodded, the silence still threatening to crush me. I needed birds, the wind, people’s voices, any voice other than Caderousse’s, any noise other than the grinding of my own teeth and the drumming of my own heart.
My hand broke the surface. I felt the cold wind blowing against my wet skin for one brief heartbeat before I sank underneath the water again.
And then someone grabbed my hand.
And I was hauled, dripping and spluttering and still choking, against the side of a boat.
“Justice?” I gasped.
“Would you look at that! I didn’t expect to catch a pretty girl when I went fishing today.”
I scraped my sodden hair out of my eyes, blinking through the haze of water that coated my eyes. Nope, of course it wasn’t Justice. Justice wouldn’t haul someone from a dirty river and then refer to them as a pretty girl. “Quillon?” I amended. “The one and only,” Quillon returned. “At your service.
What about you guys? What are some great reads you’ve found this year? How have you grown as a writer? What are your writing weaknesses and strengths?
Hey guys, I’ve been absent again, but I’m back and the reason for my two week absence will be partially explained as I give you guys some exciting life and writing updates.
First things first, let’s get the most exciting news out of the way.
*Drumroll please*
….
….
I was chosen to become an intern with Kingdom Pen!
This is so overwhelming and awesome for me. Kingdom Pen literally changed my life when I was a wee little fifteen year old, lonely and convinced there was no one as weird as me in the entire world. I found KP and I found a little family of people who were passionate about good storytelling and about God. I made firm friends who I still love and admire to this day. And I hope that by being an intern for six months, I’ll be able to give back, even if it’s only in a small way.
Anyway, you can see my super professional bio over on this page and hopefully I’ll being having a few articles/short stories coming out in the next few months. 😀
So with that out of the way, let me chat to you a bit about my current writing projects.
I haven’t really done any writing in the last year or so, mainly because of time. I got my first job a little over a year ago, and that, along with studying, working my dogs, seeing friends who I hadn’t seen in ages (university makes maintaining friendships hard, but I’m glad to be seeing them regularly again! It’s been the best) and general life, I hardly had any time for writing. However, I’ve finished studying (yes! Freedom!), I’ve got a pattern/schedule for seeing my best friends, and I lost my job two months ago. Which means I’ve got time.
Of course, I’ve been applying for new jobs left, right and centre, but so far, nothing has worked out. It’s not a good climate for job seeking at the moment, but thankfully I still have my family to live with, I’ve got family friends who I’ve been delivering groceries for twice a week, which provides a little bit of money, and I’ve got household chores to do. So if God decides now isn’t the time for me to get another job, I’m cool with that.
Which leads me to…I’m writing again!
And I’m working on The Stars Fill Infinity again. I hadn’t done any work on TSFI since receiving beta feedback on Draft 3, which honestly knocked me for a six. I’d thought I’d done a really good job tightening up the plot and fleshing out the characters, but the feedback made me realise that I’d taken the story further from my original desires for it, instead of clarifying the messages and stances I had in the beginning.
So I’ve decided to go back to basics. I know what I want to say, I know the criticisms that popped up in patterns over hundreds of pages of feedback from all three drafts. And I’m going to start Draft 4 pretty much from scratch.
Hey guys, I’ve been absent again, but I’m back and the reason for my two week absence will be partially explained as I give you guys some exciting life and writing updates.
First things first, let’s get the most exciting news out of the way.
*Drumroll please*
….
….
I was chosen to become an intern with Kingdom Pen!
This is so overwhelming and awesome for me. Kingdom Pen literally changed my life when I was a wee little fifteen year old, lonely and convinced there was no one as weird as me in the entire world. I found KP and I found a little family of people who were passionate about good storytelling and about God. I made firm friends who I still love and admire to this day. And I hope that by being an intern for six months, I’ll be able to give back, even if it’s only in a small way.
Anyway, you can see my super professional bio over on this page and hopefully I’ll being having a few articles/short stories coming out in the next few months. 😀
So with that out of the way, let me chat to you a bit about my current writing projects.
I haven’t really done any writing in the last year or so, mainly because of time. I got my first job a little over a year ago, and that, along with studying, working my dogs, seeing friends who I hadn’t seen in ages (university makes maintaining friendships hard, but I’m glad to be seeing them regularly again! It’s been the best) and general life, I hardly had any time for writing. However, I’ve finished studying (yes! Freedom!), I’ve got a pattern/schedule for seeing my best friends, and I lost my job two months ago. Which means I’ve got time.
Of course, I’ve been applying for new jobs left, right and centre, but so far, nothing has worked out. It’s not a good climate for job seeking at the moment, but thankfully I still have my family to live with, I’ve got family friends who I’ve been delivering groceries for twice a week, which provides a little bit of money, and I’ve got household chores to do. So if God decides now isn’t the time for me to get another job, I’m cool with that.
Which leads me to…I’m writing again!
And I’m working on The Stars Fill Infinity again. I hadn’t done any work on TSFI since receiving beta feedback on Draft 3, which honestly knocked me for a six. I’d thought I’d done a really good job tightening up the plot and fleshing out the characters, but the feedback made me realise that I’d taken the story further from my original desires for it, instead of clarifying the messages and stances I had in the beginning.
So I’ve decided to go back to basics. I know what I want to say, I know the criticisms that popped up in patterns over hundreds of pages of feedback from all three drafts. And I’m going to start Draft 4 pretty much from scratch.
Despite what seems almost like an insurmountable amount of work, I’m really excited to be back with my beloved characters again. Chessy is sort of like my long lost sister, and I adore Sapphire and Quillon and all the rest of them. I’ve missed them a lot. I also realised the other day, while I was reading through my old drafts that I’m now older than all of my main characters, excepting Justice. That’s slightly terrifying, since they all used to be older than me
I’m also doing some tentative work on Southern Cross. Southern Cross was my NaNo novel last year, however I didn’t get it finished since my nan died very unexpectedly and life was crazy for a few months. I ended up scrapping that draft as well, but I’m now sort of getting ready to write it again, maybe to revisit it as my NaNo novel this year.
Southern Cross has proved a little elusive to me and I’ve had a hard time pinning down what I really want it to be about, but over the last few weeks I’ve been able to decide what I want my general theme to hinge on. It’s the story of Australia’s participation in World War 1, but focused on the struggles of women during the war. So often I see them overlooked, used only as love interests, or completely absent and I want to give them a voice. It requires a lot of research yet though, so I won’t be doing any actual writing anytime.
Anyhow, I think that pretty much sums up everything I wanted to say! What about YOU? Do you have any exciting news to share? Open
Despite what seems almost like an insurmountable amount of work, I’m really excited to be back with my beloved characters again. Chessy is sort of like my long lost sister, and I adore Sapphire and Quillon and all the rest of them. I’ve missed them a lot. I also realised the other day, while I was reading through my old drafts that I’m now older than all of my main characters, excepting Justice. That’s slightly terrifying, since they all used to be older than me
I’m also doing some tentative work on Southern Cross. Southern Cross was my NaNo novel last year, however I didn’t get it finished since my nan died very unexpectedly and life was crazy for a few months. I ended up scrapping that draft as well, but I’m now sort of getting ready to write it again, maybe to revisit it as my NaNo novel this year.
Southern Cross has proved a little elusive to me and I’ve had a hard time pinning down what I really want it to be about, but over the last few weeks I’ve been able to decide what I want my general theme to hinge on. It’s the story of Australia’s participation in World War 1, but focused on the struggles of women during the war. So often I see them overlooked, used only as love interests, or completely absent and I want to give them a voice. It requires a lot of research yet though, so I won’t be doing any actual writing anytime.
Anyhow, I think that pretty much sums up everything I wanted to say! What about YOU? Do you have any exciting news to share? Have you been doing much writing lately?
So…I disappeared for a bit, didn’t I? Well, a lot has happened in the past three weeks and I don’t really want to disclose it all here, but suffice to say that life went mad and NaNoWriMo has gone down the train because apparently personal tragedy must always strike during the month when all I’m trying to do is write.
Anyway, I thought I’d duck in at the end of the month to do the next part of Christine Smith’s Know the Novel Link up. Even though I’ve given up on NaNoWriMo I’m still more than happy to chat about my current project, Southern Cross.
1. How’s the Writing going overall?
You’ve had the low down on this already. I got to 11,000 words and then life struck and I’ve only written 1,000 words since then.
So, Not great but that’s how life is sometimes.
2. What’s been the most fun aspect of writing this novel so far?
Ooh… I’ve loved writing about Charlotte! She was a surprise favourite character for me and she’s just been so much fun. She’s a nurse and I have so much respect for the WW1 nurses and everything they went through and I love not only Charlotte but also all the research on nurses that I’ve done for her chapters.
3. What do you think of your character’s at this point? Who is your favourite to write?
I just answered this! I love Charlotte. I also like Curt and Andrew and Charlotte’s “boyfriend”, Sydney Black. They’re all fun!
4. Has your novel surprised you in any way?
Not really? I can’t think of anything at the moment.
5. Have you come across any problem areas?
I’m having real trouble moving from the set up into the actual story. It’s just dragging a lot and also I didn’t write much of an outline so all the pacing is out of whack. Those are my problem areas at the moment.
6. What’s been your biggest victory with writing this novel at this point?
Being able to use literally years worth of knowledge and research about the war has been hugely rewarding. I hope I’m doing it at least a sliver of justice. Definitely finishing it and being able to hone the information and fact into a readable, believable and entertaining story will be a huge victory for me.
7. If you were transported into your novel and became any of your characters, which one do you think you’d be? Would you have taken any different actions than they have?
Hmmm…this one’s difficult. I’m a lot like most of my characters, but if I just randomly became one, it would probably be Amy. Amy and I have a different approach to life, though we’re both pretty humorous (I think?) And self-depreciating with a healthy disregard for authority unless they’ve earned our respect. If I was Amy I’d probably be doing even more worrying than she is at the moment.
8. Give us the first sentence or paragraph and then 2 (or 3) favourite snippets!
First paragraph:
A few snippets:
9. Share an interesting tidbit about the Writing process this far! (For example, have you made any hilarious typos? Derailed from your outline? Killed a character? Changed projects entirely? Anything you want to share)
I decided to change the format, tense and person of my story 11,000 words in, just on a whim. Originally, I was writing in first person present tense, and then I decided to change to third person past tense. I also decided to make letters from the boys who these girls love–Amy’s brother, Curt, Charlotte’s brother, Andrew and Pearl’s friend, Frank–the opening for the chapters. I like this format and it promises to be fun.
10. Take us on a tour of what a normal writing day for this novel looks like. Where do you write? What time of day? Alone or with others? Is a lot of coffee (or another drink) consumed? Do you light candles? Play music? Get distracted by social media? Tell all!
I haven’t really had any normal writing days. But on a general normal writing day for a generic novel, I’ll procrastinate for some time, then finally drag myself to my desk, light one of my scented candles and write for ages. Or at least spend ages on the computer 😛 I’ve had some great word wars with the folks at Story Embers too! Those were great fun.
What about you guys? How did NaNoWriMo go for you? Did you win? How’s your novel going?
an ordinary pen 
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