Manic Moments and Quiet Moments

Hi there and welcome to another moment of the mania! I'm Ann Shannon, the manic writer. I blog about PTSD, encouragement and write book reviews and romantic fiction. I love that you stopped by, grab a drink and make yourself at home. Leave a comment or find me on social media, I'd love to meet you and get to know you.

I usually blog about PTSD and if you come here for that don't be discouraged by the different topic, this is what I do when I'm not talking about the subject that fills every corner of my life. I will be continuing to blog even while I write. It helps, a lot, to have something that I love to do and for me that's writing love stories! Even my husband gets in on the action, discussing books ideas, plots, and characters with me for hours. My work is available for free right now, just check out my links to the right. And make sure you make time for fun too!

Halfway through May today and I've been typing my little fingers away as I prepare for JunoWriMo. I am coming up on a very busy week and I wanted to be well prepared for a week off. This Sunday I will attend a local event here called CloverCon with my family. Three of us will be leaving from there for a field trip to Washington DC and returning later in the week. All that to say that I will be taking an enforced week off of writing as I don't own a laptop and I think I'd find it difficult to write away from home effectively.

We are looking forward to CloverCon. The girls went last year and had a blast. This year they will be cosplaying, both as characters from Naruto Shippuden. I will probably tweet pics of them so follow me on twitter and Instagram to see them.

Courtesy of Flickr

Then we will leave with friends of ours directly from the convention and head down to DC for a homeschool field trip. My husband will be home taking care of the dog and working, poor him. We are looking forward to our trip, but I think I will find it hard to not work.

One aspect of my writing mania is that I am compelled to write. I see a lot out there about making yourself make a habit of writing, and writing every day. Writing for me is like breathing, I can't not do it and taking almost a full week off will be challenging for me. As it is I take the weekends off and feel guilty despite working almost an 8 hr day Monday through Friday, all writing or writing related.

In the meantime, I've been preparing blog posts, editing my WIP and pre-writing my JunoWriMo project as when I return from DC I will have slightly more than a week before it begins. And another trip to prepare for before it.

Courtesy of Flickr

Ahh, the life of a writer! So romantic! Don't I wish?!

It is my goal to end the stigma that comes with PTSD. I blog about PTSD once a week, searching the mountains of information out there and bringing you the best of what I find. I review a book on PTSD every other week and I publish a weekly encouraging reflection and tweet encouraging quotes for PTSD survivors daily, follow me to be encouraged. Together we can make a difference.

We're almost done with CampNaNoWriMo with only a week left to hit our goals. I've been hard at work revising Catch a Falling Star and I'm still making good progress on The Compromise which I have yet to post a page for. I have been falling behind in my goal to blog weekly on PTSD though. My word count is just above 70K so I have a week to hit my goal of 90K and I think I'll do it despite the challenges that lay ahead of me in this final leg of my camp journey.

I usually blog about PTSD and if you come here for that don't be discouraged by the different topic, this is what I do when I'm not talking about the subject that fills every corner of my life. It helps, a lot, to have something that I love to do and for me that's writing love stories! Even my husband gets in on the action, discussing books ideas, plots, and characters with me for hours. My work is available for free right now, just check out my links above. And make sure you make time for fun too!

Catch a Falling Star is right on target. I have 36 of 41 chapters revised and I expect to finish it today. Once it's done I will compile it, put it on my Kindle and read it through for the first time, making notes about what I'll change in the second revision. I'm looking forward to the read-through, up to now I've only interacted with it a few chapters at a time. The total word count for Catch a Falling Star rests at just over 88K which is about 1K less than when I began the revision.

The Compromise is almost done and I'm sad about that. I've enjoyed visiting with Davis and Amanda on their journey. The next step for the series will be to migrate the first two books into Scrivener and begin their revision. Because it's a trilogy I need to watch for continuity and be sure each book stands on its own as well. I'm looking forward to the work but dreading it at the same time. The total word count for The Compromise is about 35K. Each book is a little longer than a novella but they will work well as a trilogy for that reason.

When I'm done with CampNaNoWriMo I will work on making pages for the Trust and Obey trilogy. I have to decide how much to reveal since they fall under the erotica category and I want my blog to remain family friendly. Not sure if I will post links or not. 

That's the update for Camp this week, late again.There is another camp in July, I think, that I will participate in and of course the parent event NaNoWriMo in November. Can you believe I am already stressing about having a story idea for it? I'm sure it will be fine. Anyway, subscribe to me, or add me to your feed and watch me grow!