Camp NaNoWriMo

All of the essays have been graded and returned for the 2014-2015 school year, and all final course grades have been submitted. So, I AM DONE!!!! YAY!! :)

I will be teaching an online Fan Fiction class with Brave Writer during the month of July, but the class is a piece of cake compared to the other classes I taught during the school year; my last class topped 1100 posts in four weeks, nearly all of which I responded to point by point.

But July also marks the return of Camp NaNoWriMo--a more relaxed version of November's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Instead of the 50,000 words-or-bust scenario of writing a new novel as we do each November for NaNoWriMo, in Camp NaNoWriMo we set our own goals and write in different genres, if desired.

Cover by Chantelleexx at Wattpad

I plan to work on two novels alternately during Camp NaNoWriMo with an overall goal of 30,000 words--one thousand words per day, skipping the July 4th holiday. One novel will be a sequel to my first novel Evening Star, a Twilight fan fiction which has been titled In the Night Watches (for which the lovely Chantelleexx at Wattpad has created a beautiful cover!!), and the second will be a Jane Austen Fan Fiction (JAFF), a continuation of Pride and Prejudice (currently untitled), starting with Bingley and Darcy's return to Netherfield after the Lydia/Wickham fiasco near the end of the novel.

Austen Variations Blog Header

I have spent nearly a year absorbing JAFF (as can be easily seen by the list of books I've read this year as posted in the sidebar of this blog), especially from the wonderful site Austen Variations which features the work of some incredibly-talented writers of variations and continuations of Austen's novels. I've become a devoted fan of their work, especially that of Abigail Reynolds, Monica Fairview, Mary Lydon Simonsen, Kara Louise, Jack Caldwell, Jane Odiwe, and many others. I've been able to borrow many of their novels through the state-wide California public library system called "LINK +," with the vast majority of the books coming from San Francisco and other Northern California public libraries. I've also invested in a few Kindle books by these authors when their books are not available through the library, plus I've been reading additional JAFF on FanFiction.net, especially by Astonishment, AnotherSentimentalFool, SophieTurner1805, Shaelelina, and DarcyFan1. So I am really excited about starting to write my own JAFF!

If anyone else is doing Camp NaNoWriMo, please feel free to "friend" me under the user name Cassandra Lowery, and we can encourage each other along the way. The beginning of my Jane Austen Fan Fiction novel can be read from the Writing Project Info page.



Happy Writing!

~Cassandra xxxooo

A Significant Switch...

Yes, it's been months and months since I've posted here, and that's for a significant reason. I've put Only by Moonlight on hiatus and have stopped reading all but a few ongoing Twilight fan fics, namely Nolebucgrl's "Getting Blitzed" and HopeSparkles' "He Came Along." (Oh, and one ballet one that I thought was called "Balancoire" but can't find under that title.) And I'll always read the work of ladylibre and Tardis19. But that's about it. 

The reason for this major change? 

I've kind of switched fandoms. 

Last May I wrote a Twilight/Regency (Jane Austen's time period) fic called "An Enchanted Evening" that bridged the two fandoms, and since then, I've been wrapped up in the world of Jane Austen. 

Especially since the school year began in mid-August, I've escaped from a tremendously-stressful teaching load through reading Jane Austen Fan Fiction (JAFF), mostly those based on Pride and Prejudice. I have become addicted to the novels written by the incredible writers at Austen Variations and have been reading their ongoing stories as well as tracking down their novels through our library system (especially those of Abigail Reynolds!) and reading them voraciously. I've also been reading P&P fan fics through FF.net, and if you're interested, here are a few of my favorite JAFF authors on FF.net:

Sophie Turner (who also blogs at A Lady's Imagination) 

Astonishment

DarcyFan1

Shaelenina

I have started to write a couple of JAFF stories--just an outline and a few pages thus far. I hope to write more over the summer when I'm only teaching one online class, a Fan Fiction course at Brave Writer where I have been teaching since 2002. I've reduced my teaching load a bit for the 2015-2016 school year by asking to teach less-intensive online classes at Brave Writer, and I'll probably be teaching high school writing for my final year at our homeschool co-op next year as well. 

Plus, we're graduating homeschooler #3 in June (I can't call him "a child" at 5'9" and 210 pounds--he's more of a linebacker and works in landscaping/construction three days a week and does his schoolwork for our homeschool and the community college on Tuesdays and Thursdays), so next year I'll only be homeschooling our youngest. But he is learning-challenged and needs lots of my time to keep his workload at grade level. I spend 3-4 hours/day schooling him directly, in addition to teaching my co-op essay-writing class and nine online courses each school year. I also have my own essay grading service, so I'm grading the work of other homeschooled kids across the country via e-mail. 

In other words, I hope to have more time to write after June, but no guarantees; my pain levels from chronic autoimmune diseases have increased significantly due to this unusually high-stress school year, so I'm going to have to rest a good deal over the summer in order to recover. 

Perhaps I'll return to finish Only by Moonlight. Or perhaps I'll return to pursue the sequel (for which I've written a few chapters) to Evening Star (which for some strange reason is evoking a ton of reads and comments on Wattpad where it's approaching a million reads and Pinned but Fluttering is nearly at two million reads). 

Or I may pursue writing some real JAFF. We'll see.... 

Anyway, this is my life right now, and I just wanted to let you all know. 

Take care, my friends!

Warmly,
Cassandra xxxooo