I (Self-)Published a Book!

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you may have already seen the news, but I wanted to let anyone who was still subscribed know that I self-published a book! My 2012 NaNoWriMo work-in-progress (that I first blogged about here) is now a real, live novel. You can purchase it on either CreateSpace or Amazon.

Obviously, I don't update this blog anymore, but if you want to keep up with my noveling adventures, here's where to find me:
Website: rebekahnbryan.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebekahnbryan
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RebekahNBryan
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11880945.Rebekah_N_Bryan

Literary Stylings - Flowerantha

This is the last time I'll mention my NaNoWriMo novel for awhile, I promise. I admit, it's a little (a lot) presumptuous and self-serving to use my own unpublished book for Literary Stylings, but the alternative was Nick Carter's self-help book, and I didn't want to make light of his situation. Plus, I'm still jazzed I finished a first draft of the thing, so I wanted to share a bit of it.

In one scene, the male main character's mother lent dresses to the two girls traveling with him. One of the dresses was pink with puffy short sleeves, and the girls wore tall leather boots.

Dress; H&M; Blazer: Narciso Rodriguez for Kohl's; Boots: Madden Girl; Necklace: c/o Blue Nile (giveaway coming tomorrow!)

When Bridget saw me in my pink dress, she insisted on matching.

Novel Excerpt:

Bushraal’s mother looked slightly agitated. “You may borrow some of my things. I am not sure if we will be able to find anything to fit,” she said, eyeing Beverly in particular, “but at least you will be clothed. Follow me.”

Beverly and May Lynn followed Bushraal’s mother up the stairs and into her bedroom. A giant canopy bed stood against the back wall with a dressing table on another wall and three wardrobes lined up side by side on the third wall to the left of the door and across the room from the bed. Bushraal’s mother dug around in a trunk at the foot of the bed first. While she dug, Bushraal wandered back in and sat backwards in the dressing table chair. She looked over at him. “Have you no decency, son? There will be women changing in here.”

His cheeks turned a little pink, but he said, “I am simply making sure you do not pick anything too fussy. They need to blend in and look like Floweranthans.”

“Bushraal, I am a Floweranthan,” his mother reminded him. “They will look just like me.” She returned to her digging and pulled out a long, green dress with white lacy ruffles at the sleeves and neck and an empire waistline. She looked at the dress and then at Beverly. “You may be able to squeeze into this. I wore it when I was pregnant with Bushraal. I was absolutely huge back then.”

“Mother!” Bushraal hissed under his breath.

Beverly’s face was beet red. She took the dress and mumbled, “Yeah, I’m really tall. Thanks,” and she disappeared behind the dressing curtain beside the wardrobes in the corner of the room.

Bushraal’s mother left the trunk open but rose from her knees to open the middle wardrobe. “Here are some more things I kept from when I was younger in case I ever had a daughter. I want to keep the nicer things for Rosie, but I am sure we can find something in here.”

“Anything is fine,” May Lynn said. Bushraal shot her a sympathetic glance, and she returned it with a sweet smile. 

Bushraal’s mother pulled out a dress similar to the one she had pulled for Beverly except that this one was much smaller and had short sleeves and a lower waistline. “Here, try this one,” she said, handing it to May Lynn. Taking the dress, May Lynn joined Beverly behind the curtain. Bushraal averted his eyes, looking anywhere in the room besides that direction.

When the girls walked out from behind the curtain, Bushraal stood. The pink dress suited May Lynn perfectly. Beverly’s green dress was a little more of a problem with the hem falling to the top of her boot and sleeves hitting just below her elbow instead of her wrists as intended.

“Well, these look better than expected,” Bushraal’s mother said. She stood up from the bed and fluffed out May Lynn’s sleeves more and smoothed the waist of Beverly’s dress, tugging it down a little. “Really, other than the length, you look lovely in this,” she said, looking up at Beverly and trying to atone for her harsh earlier comment.

***

By the way, I recently saw a tip on Twitter that said that "look" is one of the words overused by novice writers. I used it nine times just in that tiny excerpt. If you didn't notice, bless you. If you did notice, and if it made your eyes bleed like it did mine, I apologize, and I'll fix it in the rewrite. Heh...

I'm also linking up with the Fashionista Style Hop.

NaNoWriMo Wrap-up

Another year of NaNoWriMo has come to a close, and I can officially call myself a winner again!

Thank goodness for write-ins because I'm not sure I would've caught up otherwise. I was too shy and too busy last year to attend any write-ins (which are basically a bunch of NaNoWriMo participants in a room together with laptops), but I'm so glad I made it to three this year, including the one I hosted! I met three creative, like-minded ladies (who are all writing very different novels, which is a good thing) that live nearby, and I hope I get to read all their finished products in print some day very soon. At the write-in on Friday, they even gave me a great plot idea when I got stuck. Thanks, ladies!

Sunday, I attended the Happily Ever After party, and it was a lot of fun! Going into it, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I'm really glad I went. My s'mores bars I brought were a hit. (They always are, even when I forget to add the vanilla, d'oh!) I'm already look forward to next year.

I also got to FINALLY finish a work in progress that I began when I was 11 years old. Except this time, I wrote it from a different character's point of view, and I think it took the story in a completely new direction that I was pretty happy with. My brother (who remembers me writing the story the first time around) said I should put it out on its 20-year anniversary next year. So maybe I'll give the self-publishing thing a try.

But for now, my next plan is to go back to last year's novel and continue revising because I think that one has better potential to actually become something. Then I have to decide if I'm going to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo in the spring and summer...one thing at a time.

Here's what I wore to the party and for Inspiration Monday. I did consider wearing leather leggings like the inspiration picture shows, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Not in broad daylight. I went with studded instead.

Sweater Dress: H&M; Leggings: Target; Boots: Payless

Milwaukee Public Museum Outing

Yesterday, I visited the Milwaukee Public Museum with my husband and daughter (both of their first times!) and my mom. I can't remember the last time I was there - maybe for a field trip in grade school - but I forgot how cool that place is. My favorite part is still the Streets of Old Milwaukee.

Source: Wikipedia

Bridget's favorite part was either the butterfly exhibit or seeing the lions in the Africa area. We actually had a very helpful security guard show us where the lions were because Bridget was on a mission. We went through the whole museum rather quickly since obviously my almost 3-year-old had no interest in reading all the plaques. My mom compared it to how quickly I got through the Louvre...when I was 22. But what can I say? Art museums aren't really my thing even though I appreciated the experience.

Anyway, I wish I had taken more pictures while I was there because some of the environments they have set up would be great inspiration for my novel. In fact, I wish I could just sit in there all day on my laptop and write in different areas of the museum. I wonder if people ever do that. It was pretty dead on Sunday because we went during the Packer game, so it was really nice. The only part I didn't enjoy was the live butterfly exhibit. I was hiding behind my husband the whole time while my daughter was living it up.

Big creepy bug right outside of the live butterfly exhibit

OMG I just saw while poking around their website that they have sleepovers in the museum. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, anyone? I could live out my blog's namesake, which might be awesome. Maybe when Bridget gets older.

After the museum, we grabbed a late lunch/early dinner at AJ Bombers, and I had my usual - the bacon burger with chunky peanut butter on it. Soooo gooood, but I actually prefer it without the bacon.

Speaking of my NaNoWriMo novel, it took me basically all day except for the 3 hours we were in Milwaukee, but I wrote a little over 3,000 words yesterday and got back on track after hardly writing anything on Saturday. And honestly, I could wrap up the story today, so I either need to come up with more twists or figure out how to write a really, really epic battle scene.

For those of you who are here for the clothes, I promise my next post will be an outfit one. No mention of my novel there!

Literary Stylings and Another NaNoWriMo

I haven't been doing many outfit posts lately, but I do have a stack of books I'm trying to get through (very slowly). I'm reading Fangirl now; then on deck I have Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It, which is written by Nick Carter about overcoming his addiction, and Longbourn, which is basically Pride and Prejudice mixed with Downton Abbey. I accidentally purchased a Barnes & Noble membership, so I'm trying to make the most of it. Looks like Bridget's getting a lot of books for Christmas!

Also, I thought this particular book was appropriate for Gracey's Literary Stylings linkup this month since I've decided to embark on another year of NaNoWriMo. The author, Rainbow Rowell, wrote the book I'm featuring during the 2011 NaNoWriMo session. You can read her pep talk here. Pretty awesome and inspiring!

Fangirl is the story of Cath, a Simon Snow (think Harry Potter) fanfiction writer making her way awkwardly through her first year of college. I couldn't spoil it for you even if I wanted to since I haven't finished it yet, but it's pretty good so far. It's exactly the age group I wrote my last NaNoWriMo novel for and about, so it was good research for me to compare the tone of her story to mine to make sure I'm on the right track. Present tense, meaning my novel I wrote last year is not any more done than it was a year ago. No surprise there though. After I finish my current NaNo project, my goal is to pick last year's back up and wrap it up by summer of next year.

Source

I have two Slytherin Harry Potter shirts (I know), so it was pretty easy to come up with an outfit for this one. Plus, the book said that the only things in Cath's closet were T-shirts, cardigans, and jeans. I thought about posing with my Malfoy wand, but I couldn't bring myself to nerd it up that much.

T-shirt: Wizarding World gift shop at MCO airport; Cardigan: Forever 21; Jeans: New York & Company; Sneakers: Converse

I Never Stick to Anything

But I stuck to this! I have completed the NaNoWriMo challenge! Eighty pages (well, 80 pages in Google Docs...74 pages in Word) containing 50,018 words in a month, baby! Now let the editing begin. I already emailed it to my subject-matter expert BFFs, and I'm excited and anxious to hear what they have to say about it!

Let's celebrate with a Style Imitating Art interpretation:

Sweater: Kohl's; Scarf: Boston Store; Skirt: Narciso Rodriguez for Kohl's;
Shoes: Target

It's crazy how silver this skirt looks in these pictures. In real life, I think it's more gold with blue in it, hence the mustard and blue on top. Oh yeah, it was really cold out.

NaNoWriMo - Day One

Well, I'm doing it. I didn't want to say anything until I started, but I'm doing it. I'm officially participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

Up until yesterday morning when it began, I still hadn't decided A. if I was going to participate at all, or B. if I did, what story was I going to write. I had two ideas in my head - two stories that I had already started awhile ago. You're not supposed to work on works-in-progress for the challenge, but I planned to start afresh anyway, so I figured it was fine. Planning and outlining a story ahead of time is a-OK and encouraged. Anyway, lately I've been having dreams that finally made me decide to go one way instead of the other for my first stab at NaNoWriMo.

Here's the beginning of what I wrote yesterday. Keep in mind, this is a first draft. It's bound to suck in places. I may change the names when I'm finished, too. Those are just what I have for now.

***

This was the most important outfit of my entire life. No, I’m not getting married. I’m halfway through college and newly single. I’m definitely not getting married anytime soon. Besides, this is more important than a wedding dress. This is the outfit that could maybe, possibly, someday lead to a wedding dress. You know, in a perfect world and all. Am I delusional? Maybe a little. OK, maybe a lot. This is the outfit I’m going to wear to meet my favorite band.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for years. And finally, tomorrow it’s going to happen. I just wish I had planned ahead better, but with school and work and sleep, I just didn’t have time to come up with something to wear until now. Now, as I’m looking in my closet and the pile of laundry, some clean, some dirty, on my floor, I realize that I really do have nothing to wear. At least nothing worthy of this day. The day.

I could always borrow something from my roommates, but I really wanted something new. This kind of occasion calls for something special. I pushed another small pile of clothes and some school books off of my desk chair and sat in it backwards, with my knees on the seat and the back of the chair facing the computer. With a vague sense of optimism, I logged on to check how much money I had in my checking account. $16.81. I put my hand up to my forehead. I can work with that. In the back of my mind, I seemed to remember I needed to pay for something, and I knew I needed to go grocery shopping, but that all can happen later. I get paid in a few days anyway.

I grabbed my purse from on top of the desk and reached in to retrieve my keys. I felt nothing metal—mostly gum wrappers and receipts and my cloth-covered wallet. I stood up and began flinging clothes into new piles until I found my backpack. No keys there either. Opening the door, I walked into the kitchen, which was a stark contrast from my messy bedroom. As opposed to my messiness, my roommates were both very tidy. Unfortunately, they were both at class, so I couldn’t ask them if they had seen a stray set of keys lying around. I scanned the kitchen counters and stuck my hands in the living room couch cushions but still found nothing except a nickel and a Starburst wrapper.

Minutes of searching later, roommates Liz and Kim came in to find me crouched down, trying to see things at floor level.

“What are you doing?” asked Liz.

“Looking for my keys. They’re not anywhere. Have you guys seen them?”

“Yeah, I hung them up,” Kim responded casually, gesturing to the key hook beside the door.

I groaned and snatched my keys from the hook. Flustered and sweaty from my frantic searching, I tried to keep calm and invited the roommates to join me for a trip to Walmart to look for an outfit.

***

Don't worry. For those of you who don't care, I'm not going to update you on my progress every day. For those of you who are interested in following along, you can do so here.