new name, new site, new twitter, wow!

Well, I guess later came sooner. I'm up and running as J.K. Harper! This blog will become inactive, *unless* I choose at some point to still use this name for whatever. I like to keep my options open. ;)

In the meantime, you can find me blogging at my J.K. Harper website, and tweeting under my new Twitter handle, @_JKHarper (which is just a name change from the @jesioconnell one).

Hope to see you there!

new pen name

I've firmly decided on a new pen name. Drum roll please:

J.K. Harper, author of paranormal romance and urban fantasy.

Yay! I've been mulling over this decision for some time now, and went through a lot of possibilities with a friend. Jesi O'Connell is an old name I used for some stories published way, way back in the day. I'd been wanting something new, and I'm pretty happy with J.K. Harper.

I've also been working on a new website, and will unveil that as soon it's done. So Jesi O'Connell will go away, and my bright shiny writing future will appear as J.K. Harper. Woot!

As far as different genres...well, we'll hurdle that bridge when it arrives. First, I need to keep writing...

I'm a semi-finalist!

Woot! I'm a semi-finalist in Brenda Drake's Guess My Character's Age contest! I'm so excited. Entrants had to post the first 250 words of a WIP, from which the main character's age had to be correctly guessed from voice.

You can see my excerpt in the previous post. The final one I actually emailed in was altered a bit from the original one I posted in reflection of some of the insightful comments it received. So that may have helped, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm very excited.

Guess My Age contest!

Just found out about this, and it sounds super cool! So I'm throwing my entry into the pot as well. The rules are over at Brenda Drake's site, and a bunch of writers have already signed up. But apparently plenty more can.

So you have to guess the age of the main character based on the first 250 words of the ms., without knowing genre or anything else.

different genres, different pen names?

Ok. Here's what I like to read and, therefore, write:

-Urban Fantasy
-Paranormal Romance, especially shifters and less common ideas
-a blend of the two genres above
-Cowboys!!! Hot, hot, hot. Rowr. ;) Contemporaries and paranormals.
-YA Paranormal

So...my question is, same name for them all?

thinking about story length

Been mulling over the concept of story length; specifically, the shorter lengths. What are the parameters about short stories, novellas, short novellas, novelettes? In fact, what are those things?

According to Romance Writers of America, novellas are 20k-40k, and novels are longer. (Note that these definitions are specifically for entrants in their RITA awards.)

self-publishing: I wanna ride the wave

Self-publishing...I'm in. I want to do it. With a story almost finished, I plan to put it up as a self-pubbed book. Experiment, I say! Try things on, see what works.

Self-publishing is in a huge boom period right now, and I love that. It's only going to get bigger and bigger.

the writing process

Got an email today that made me think about the writing process. Good grief, what a complicated, many-faceted beast that is. Everyone has a different system. Some people sell their writing process systems for bundles of money, some people struggle for years to find the system that works for them, some people just sit down and bang the shit out, and voila! Story.