Tag Archives: Word Count

The R.A.N.C.H excerpt

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I had to place an excerpt of the project I was working on with the Camp NaNoWriMo website that I joined. I thought I would share it here also.
The R.A.N.C.H. Project
Research Agency of the Neural Cerebral Hemisphere
The Ranch’s Objective: Growing humans for political projects and creating human weaponry for personal and national gain

Laying in the cold dampness of the cellar dungeon, soaked and dried in their own blood lay Jase and Colin. The maniac that roamed around upstairs treated them no better than stray pets that were a nuisance. The difference being, the man keeping them captive wanted these men alive, but why?

Colin was still concerned that Jase was dead. Enough light had peered in from upstairs that now he could see Jase’s limp and bloody body in the corner adjacent from him. He would watch as the man upstairs would periodically check on his ‘pets’ and this made Colin think that Jase was alive, at least for now or their captor would have not continued to check on them both. Jase must of suffered some sort of head trauma, maybe rest was all he needed? At least this is what Colin had prayed for.

Colin knew he needed to break free. Possibly start a dialog with the man when he comes to check again. Something he had avoided till now. He wanted to break free, check on Colin and give his captor a surprise he would not see coming. He had tried every which way to break out of the chains. Whoever this crazy man was, he knew how to hold a prisoner tight.
That’s when Colin saw it, his snow pants, hanging from a hook above a wooden workbench. At least that is what he thought he saw. He could be wrong, but they certainly looked like it. This gave him more hope than he had since the plane took its final dive into the treetops.
The transceiver that he had turned on the morning Jase dropped him off was in those pants, a tiny compartment that zipped near the bottom of the right leg. Was it still there? He had never turned it off and now he was hoping that if this lunatic had saved his snow pants, his gun and other belongings would be close.

Colin heard a moan come from his battered friend, “Jase! Jase can you hear me?” He heard Jase take a deep breath and he went silent once more. This waiting and not knowing if Jase was brutally injured was more torture than Colin wanted to remember. Scenes like a movie reel kept playing through his mind of his time he was a POW and when he didn’t know the status of his men. He could do this, he thought; he would get Jase out of here alive.

The man upstairs must of heard Colin call out to Jase and immediately rushed to the trapdoor. Jase could hear a series of locks being turned and twisted out of their steel casing. Soon the mysterious man descended into the makeshift prison.

Copyright © 2014 by Neasha Hill

Word of the Work Week Challenge 5/19/14

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A word to take to the Cube Farm!
Earlier this month I started a new thing on A Brunette’s Reflection, a word of the week. Not just any word but a word you can wiggle into your work week. I will be doing this once a week and asking followers to apply it in a conversation or meeting at work. Hope you have fun with it! Last week’s word was EXCULPATE. So for the week of 5/19/14 I came up with a HARD WORD– at least I hope it is one you haven’t heard! 🙂

MAL·A·PROP·ISM
(măl′ə-prŏp-ĭz′əm)
Example: A word that is misused incorrectly that may sound similar to the word that was meant to be used. (President Bush is great at this and so is my husband!) The word has quite an interesting history and you can read more about it here on Wikipedia.

Have a great Work Week!

Does your book sales on Amazon dwindle during the summer or is it just me?

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Book Sales on Amazon

My book Junior Size Faith was published in May of 2012.  When it was released I had a goal of thirty reviews on Amazon.  I am not sure why I had this goal set at thirty, it seemed like a high number for a ‘never before published author’ but that was my goal.  This goal was reached in close to a year.  A steady climb to the number thirty review and that is where it has set for at least three months.  Something I noticed last year during the summer months- I hardly sold any books at all for about two and half months.  I also noticed the same thing this summer.  As soon as school started I noticed the sales picked back up right away.

Odd or are readers just being able to hear themselves think again?

I’ve chalked it up to normal summer activities keeping the average reader busy and away from books.  I myself was busy with kid’s activities, my husband, family, vacations and just household duties.  Now that they are back in school I have spent time reading and actually adding about fifteen thousand words to my word count on writing projects.  I have lofty dreams to keep this word count high now that I have days that I can dedicate to writing without kids needing chauffeured around town (I don’t really mind this), multiplying summer laundry (this, I do mind), or just plan fed (they really can eat a horse) every ten minutes (we have teenage boys).  Hours I can dedicate to daydreaming up new plots and forming the perfect sentence.  I do cherish every minute we get to spend with our boys, I really do.  I also put all my writing on the back burner during the summer months so I can focus on them.  I love my children and I make them a great breakfast and dinner, leaving the lunch time and the other seven to eight hours spent in the school system while this momma writes.  I remember my mother saying to my sister, brother and I when we had pushed every button she had, “I can’t even hear myself think”. I  would hear her say this and think to myself, “Wow, she is sooo dramatic!”   No, no she wasn’t.

There will be some of you that say maybe the time I spend marketing suffers over the summer because I put it away for 3 months…  Maybe… But, I don’t really market anytime of the year.   I actually just started this blog (because I can hear myself think now in complete sentences).  My Facebook page that I created over a year ago advertises free books that I find on Amazon and has never really received a lot of traffic.   I advertise this page in the Kindle edition of my book.  The truth is  I just like passing on good deals for the fun of it.  Maybe I should market more during the summer months but then I would miss out on all the things I listed above with our kids.  I would rather my writing suffer than quality time with my children.  I do not have an attention span long enough to manage my marriage, children,  household, daydreaming and writing.  Kudos for you that do, I am envious!

I don’t think it is just me that this sales drop during the summer months is happening to.  Now that my sales have resumed this fall all I can assume is ‘this feeling overwhelmed’ during the summer months has to happen to others and as their (like mine) reading lists get longer they long for the end of August so they can once again, “Hear themselves think,” and get to read a book and get lost in its pages or add to their word count.

Have a great day!!!

Writer’s Block or Stubbornness??

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I have been working on 5 different writing projects and have been at a standstill for about 4 or 5 days. I found myself wasting time on some writing blogs today when I came across something so simple and back to basics that I thought ‘this may just be the key’. I never (or hardly ever) write an outline of a chapter before I write it. I will write down ideas, how I want the plot to flow, or even a sentence I like but never a complete pre-chapter outline. There are a list of creative reasons I don’t like doing this, mostly dating back to Mr. Gober’s writing class (blahhh). I took a deep breath and picked up a pen and pad and wrote an outline of one of the projects and it flowed out of me in minutes. I guess there is really no such thing as writer’s block– just stubbornness 🙂