Hope Engel 📚

Out of this list I have only read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks but it was a great one!

Amazing!!

MMC is like sweet thanks
FMC is mad because I’ve put her through hell until she realizes I gave her her golden retriever boy to go through life with

I feel like I would if the character was telling the story from a perspective where they knew everything that happened. Or third person would be fine, but I prefer first

I was so out of it this morning and I also feel like the day is passing so quickly???

yes! 100% - sometimes a name jumps out. I have one that jumped out for an idea of a novel I have and I have no idea how popular or uncommon it would be for the year this character would be born. So I definitely make exceptions!

Subbing "ground" for "soil" but they are outside in an apple orchard so it would be dirt/grass/earth of some kind in this scene!

Apple picking in fall so opposite vibes to spring.

One character is Iris, who would have been born in 2005. Iris was 357 for popularity then but as of 2024 was 74.

This is a go-to tool: www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/baby...

This way I don't give my characters names from an outdated generation - I am a millennial writing Gen Z characters

I write contemporary romance so I look up the popularity of names for the ages the characters would have been born based on their location, and for surnames same thing but with the racial/ethnicity factored in. I like names that were less popular when they were "born" then got more popular

I’m an onyx storm Stan

I have name picked for an important character I hadn’t named and it fits the characterization and popularity of this character’s sibling’s name!!!!!!! Small wins

I am intrigued!!

I have not thought about this enough, but there’s not a huge antagonist presence in my contemporary romance. Probably social media stalk her family members lol

If I saw this without context I wouldn’t immediately think “womb” but in context I totally get it!

It's been a struggle but I got 1,300 words done. Chapter's not done, but I realized this chapter is tough to write because we get a little bit of a mom consolation scene - recounted after, since it's not the MC that gets consoled - and I must have been putting it off. Damn grief subconscious.

Time and energy. Like I said yesterday I work in marketing full time. I write to escape that. Doing more hours doing the stuff I do for my day job is draining. I do it, because I want to make a career as an author so gotta hustle, but I hit my limit at some point

did my obligatory short form video algorithm feeding posting, discussed cover art tweaks with my husband, now time to get this chapter drafted!! #amwriting

incredible. thank you for your service

Amazing! Congrats

It is! We are doing the coloring now and let’s say my first pass at Emerson’s skin color had my husband joking “he looks malnourished” - I’ll share in a roundup eventually

Image of an iPad with a black and white line drawing of a baseball player

I actually just have the beginnings of my cover as of yesterday :) hehehe this the MMC Emerson, a 20 year old college player!

We got a substantial enough tax refund to cover most of the interior painting we want to do on our condo and I’m so happy we will get rid of sludge dishwasher gray from the walls :)

Thank you!! Tackling filing taxes now so we can have more free time tomorrow!

I am a marketer for my day job so it doesn’t bother me and I feel equipped to do it when my pre orders and book is out but I would have more energy for it if I didn’t do it full time already.

I did a similar thing tracking my job hints and wrote up a report on my corporate blog before I took the site down 😅 I do need to do a chart on word count for chapters and breakdown between the 2 perspectives in the sequel

Oh wow! I just go off vibes and memories for this lol

What is that spreadsheet???

No so rooting for you and getting motivated to tackle some writing tomorrow!

Happy, however not every character gets exactly what they want because I do want some realism!

ooo good swap for pursue. such good characterization on the "if it's important they'll call back" though I hate people like that