Meeting Authors

    Remember last November when I got to meet Shannon Hale and get my Books of Bayern series signed? That was an awesome day.
    July 2012- Husband of Mine (at the time he was Boyfriend of Mine) was in Oklahoma working for his great-grandparents, and I was working in California for the summer. It was my birthday, and a package from him came in the mail. I opened it, and inside sat three books- Dragon Slippers, Dragon Flight, and Dragon Spear by Jessica Day George.

    I had been asking for these books for a while, and he gave them to me for my birthday! I, of course, immediate sat down and read the whole trilogy. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? (He also gave me a stuffed R2-D2 that makes noise, but that's not relevant to this post.)
    The books were great. I loved them. I highly recommend them to all fantasy lovers because DRAGONS.

Recently

    I've been up to a lot recently. First off, if you missed my Youtube debut, you can check it out here! And if I'm not as entertaining as my dog, you can at least watch more of her antics here. We all know she's the real star of the show.
    Second, I'm sporting a new look!

What is Hypergraphia?

    I was up late last night trying to fall asleep, and a lot of things were swirling around in my mind. Things like- Why can't I sleep? Why do I get so much energy at midnight when I'm so tired throughout the day? Why did I ramble for so long in my video? Who has time to watch me for 30 minutes? And why is my Hypergraphia hitting so hard right now?
    Mostly those last two questions were bothering me. I almost got up to film another video at 2 am just to waste some energy, but I didn't want to bother Husband of Mine because he has school early in the morning. I finally fell asleep around 3 am (though I was up off and on between 4 am and 6 am), and I woke up feeling horrible this morning. Headaches bordering on migraines, exhaustion, etc. But I still gathered enough energy to film a video explaining one of the things that bothers me most.
    I get a lot of confused assumptions about what Hypergraphia is, and it drives me crazy so I'm here to clarify what the symptoms are and how it affects my life.

    I make a lot of weird faces when I talk. *facepalm* If you have any questions about Hypergraphia, please ask! 
    ~Allie

My Writing Process

    I thought I'd try something new today! I recorded myself talking instead of writing it all down for you. I talk a bit more about the "A Day in the Life of..." series, and then I talk about my writing process. I'm highly distracted (thanks, Astrid!) and very rambly, but it was still fun! Tell me what you think!

I'm testing out videos for my blog (www.alliemayauthor.blogspot.com) to see the difference between me rambling in video form versus me rambling in writing form. Tell me what you think! If someone could keep track of how many times I say, "Umm" or "So, yeah", that would be awesome.

Identifying Excess Characters

    In every story, there are main characters and then there's everyone else. Sometimes those other characters are just there to fill space and don't have names. And then there are those other characters who have names, lines, and even contribute to the advancement of the story. 
    And every so often, there are those other characters with names and lines who play no role in the overall story. Very frequently, readers don't mind those characters because they stay in the background and in real life, we encounter plenty of people who have names and speak to us but have no effect on our life story. 
    I am one of those people who are super picky about excess characters in a story. Every character needs to play some role in the story, because stories are not real life. Stories- whether tv shows, books, movies, etc.- are all about details. If something is mentioned, it better be worth mentioning. Otherwise, you're wasting your audience's time.
    First you need to identify whether or not the character plays an actual role in the story-

• Do they advance the plot?
• Do they influence the main character?
• What would be missing if they were removed from the story?

A Day in the Life of...Allie May!

    I announced a few weeks ago that I was planning on having some guest posts on my blog. I want to hear about different writer's routines! But instead of all that edited advice we always hear from famous people, I want it to be honest. What do you actually do when you're trying to write? How long do you actually spend writing? And if you say you don't get distracted, then we know you're lying and we're all judging you for it.
    But it doesn't seem fair at all to embarrass everyone else and not myself, so I'm giving you my daily routine as an example. Starting with when I woke up, what music I listened to, and an hourly play by play of my day so you know how often I was distracted and interrupted.

Things I Should Be Doing

Things I should be doing:

• Editing Powerful
• Critting on Scribophile
• Blogging helpful tips about writing
• Sharing witty and insightful tweets about writing
• Walking the dog
• Eating healthy
• Crocheting
• Reading
• Cleaning up Christmas decorations
• Cleaning up everything else

Book Covers

    There are lots of different designs for book covers. I've done a lot of research on this because while Husband of Mine was on break, he was putting together my design for my book cover. Today is going to be the grand reveal! Yay! 
    So here it is. My design for the cover of Powerful.

Currency in World Building

    Last week, Magic Writer shared another post about World Building, this time about currency. I got to preview this post before it was finished, and I gave Elise some tips for it, but she had so much more to say than I even realized went into creating currency for a book. And now I'm finding myself checking off things from her post as I'm editing Powerful because I needed to go back through and fix the tidbits about currency in my own WIP.

    The most commonly seen type of currency in fantasy writing is coins. The type of coin is not usually specified unless important to the plot, but it's also not the only type of money used because it may not be the most logical currency for your writing. Some societies may skip currency altogether and simply barter. Depending on what you're writing, though, currency may be necessary.

    But how do you decide what type of currency to use? You figure out which material is available in the region, and go from there. When someone mentions "coins", typically people picture metal coins (gold, silver, bronze, copper, etc.), but there are other materials that could be used as well. Wood, stone, shells, paper, etc. The currency has to be abundant enough to replicate, but not so abundant that it loses it's value because people can find it on their own.