Look What's New!

I just finished the cover art for "The Wolves of Langoor" today when my dad and I got home from church. What do you think?

A few weeks ago I got a bit antsy to see TWOL finished and in book form, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to begin working on the cover. :)

(Click on the picture to see a larger version)

TWOL is coming folks, it is coming! :)

God bless.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

The Wolves of Langoor–A Preview

"'Now!' He roared and pushed himself rapidly up from the mud.

"Fifty other men rose up from their places all around him, appearing as swamp monsters in the gloomy twilight. With their heads held high, and their once shining armor dented and streaked with mud and grass stains, they ran, their feet slipping every other step, up the slope and into the battle."

–The Wolves of Langoor, chapter 23

(picture taken of Storymill–my faithful computer writing program)

The 23rd chapter of The Wolves of Langoor is finished, the word count meter is nearing 50,000 (I still need to update the one on the sidebar of the blog), and I think that the book is about halfway completed! Over this Christmas and through January, a good friend and I are having a little writing competition. . . . Whoever has the most words written by January 31st is the winner. This has given me the extra boost I needed to get over a hard spot in the book, and I am now reenergized and have the familiar feeling of blood rushing to my fingers and my brain beginning to spin at the thought of picking up my pen each time. I feel sorry for my characters right now, as they are having a pretty difficult time of it. . . . But I'm loving the heart pounding moments of thrill, and I hope that you all will too once it's published and out for you to read! :)

Assr vísa ykkarr brand.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

The "Once upon a times" of a Writer

"Once upon a time". . . . Ah! The magic that those words hold! The possibilities of what lies in wait to be spoken, or written, directly following.

The endless wonderment.

The endless enthusiasm.

The never ending intrigue!

. . . Or so it would seem.

But "Once upon a time" can be a rather frightening phrase, for a writer. . . . "Once upon a time," what? "Once upon a time" there lived a duck. . . an ogre. . . a princess. . . a prince? You are the one left to decide. . . .

The endless possibilities. . . .

The endless indecision. . . .

The never ending banging of the forehead against the wall!

. . . Or so it would seem, should seem. . . . But for Christian writers, what would seem. . . should seem correct, may not always be so. Our stories and tales, our ideas and thoughts all teem from another source, a much better source, a source with:

Endless prospect.

Endless decision.

And never ending stream of enthusiastic ideas!

. . . So it would seem, and so it would be. Except that we writers often choose to take the "banging our forehead against the wall" route to solve our "Once upon a time," problems, instead of going to the source of our story idea, the one who gave us the writing talent, and handed us the idea to write this story in the first place. But if we go to our Heavenly Father, our "source," with our problems, our writer's blocks, then perhaps, perhaps we may once again discover the wonder of the phrase "Once upon a time," and again be able to say with full honesty and passion:

"Once upon a time". . . . Ah! The magic that those words hold! The possibilities of what lies in wait to be spoken, or written, directly following.

The endless wonderment.

The endless enthusiasm.

The never ending intrigue!

God bless.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

When Life Speeds Up Without Warning. . . .

You know that feeling?? When all of a sudden it feels like you're running at break neck speed just to keep up with yourself. . . . Well, I'm just getting into the downward slope of that feeling right now. I'm thinking that it must have been toward the end of last month that life started speeding up for me. I successfully went through my first ever production week for a short film that I wrote, produced, directed, and am now editing. My hope is that it will get into this up coming San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival (some of you may remember last year when I was an extra in a short film that was a semi-finalist in that same film festival, if you don't, you can find that post here). Making a short film like that was SUCH an amazing experience!!! Even with the stresses that it caused, and even. . . even as we sat there all stuck on the beach that we were filming on, huddled under towels and the few beach umbrellas that we dared have open, trying to keep both ourselves and especially the equipment dry while a big storm was raging over us. . . even then, I could very happily tell myself, that this was where I belonged, this was what God had created me to do, at least at this point in time.

Since that experience of a lifetime, my mind has been overrun with exhilarating thoughts and plans for future films (short AND feature length!), but of course I've had to make myself leave those as mere ideas running around in my head and occasionally over notes to pick up later, so that I could work on completing the editing for this short film. Knowing me, if I started writing a screenplay for one of those others, I would probably never get back to finishing this one. . . . So, they shall just have to wait patiently on the sidelines for the time being. :)

I've been able to work farther on "The Wolves of Langoor" as well, during this time, and the plan is to get myself back into a schedule of writing every single night. If I did that, I think that I should easily be able to make my goal of completing the first draft for TWOL by the end of November 30th (that will take me through NaNoWriMo).

And so, for the most part you are caught up on my life. . . . I'm continuing to work on character development for my role in the short film that the sister of my friend is making (see here for a bit more details on that), so that is always fun. :) The second read through for that is this Saturday, and then Burns Family Studios announces their next film project this Friday!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D So I am very eagerly awaiting the weekend! :D

Amorette 99 (who was just barking rather obnoxiously in a brave "I will defend everyone!" sort of way–as much as a 4 pound puppy can–at a prop still sitting in my bedroom from filming week) greets you all. :)

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

The Sword of Teneraz: The TRAILER!

I'm am very excited to announce that the The Sword of Teneraz book trailer is now complete!!! :D However. . . I am not going to show it to you, yet. You may thank my dad for the wonderful advice of waiting until closer to the books publication date to place it out in public. And I think that I'll keep the reasoning to myself and he: it may ruin it's affects on you otherwise. ;)

So keep your eyes open for the trailer to be released soon, with a great amount of hullabaloo and confetti.

And with that announcement, I think I should let you know how progress on my books are coming.

The Sword of Teneraz– is still in the editorial process. My mom is on her second run through, at the completion of which my dad will go over her notes and see if he has anything to add or such. My cousin has had–as he put it–an evil {crook eyebrows evilly} semester in college these past months, but his plan is to get TSOT edited over his Christmas break.

The Wolves of Langoor– is about 1/3rd written if my estimations are correct–which they seem to be known to not be, so we shall see just how far I truly am. The fantasy of completing NaNoWriMo's required 50,000 words in one month hasn't turned out to be a reality this year. :( All though I HAVE been able to make a great dent in the mass of writing to be done in order for this book to be called complete. So that has been exciting in itself. And I feel, that if I can keep up even just the amount of consistency that I've gotten in writing this month, I MAY (just possibly) be able to get the first draft done in a few months. (Don't hold me to that though, what with Christmas coming up and all. . . . It can be a great time to get lots of writing done, because of getting a break from other things; such as school. But on the other side of things, it's very possible to not get any writing done over the Christmas holiday, because you're so busy spending time with family.)

I hope that you feel U.T.D on all the latest happenings with my books now. Oh! And that reminds me. . . once NaNoWriMo is finished, I WILL be typing all that I have so far of TWOL into the computer so that I can put some numbers into the word count for it on my side bar; which, to my chagrin, still very clearly says "COMING SOON".

Thanks for following! And happy (late) Thanksgiving!!!! :)

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

Brought To You By: A-99!

Wow! It sure has been a LONG time since I last even got onto blogger. . . not counting that one time that I just opened up my blog page to listen to the music on it while putting dishes in the dishwasher. :)

A lot has transpired since my last post. . . . "Anne of Green Gables; the Musical" is done (I never did tell you what part I got in it. . . I ended up being Tillie Boulter–which meant that the summer before I almost drowned in the lake, AND I got to dress up as an igloo. ;) It was a super fun role.), I'm also in "Meet Me In St. Louis" now, as a ball room dancer (which means I get to learn to waltz. Which is super fun! :D ).

On the writing side of things, everything is going pretty well. :) I really need to get back into some kind of schedule here. . . really, just any kind of schedule would work. But you'll be glad to hear that that hasn't kept me from writing! I'm somewhere around chapter 7 or 8, I think, on "The Wolves of Langoor", and my mom is nearing completion of her editorial run through of "The Sword of Teneraz", my cousin is working on his copy right now, and my dad is going to start as soon as my mom is finished. Over all, things are moving closer and closer to getting that first copy. {fans face, and reaches for a paper bag to breathe into}

And now. . . (drumroll please). . . I have what I believe to be a very (and when I say "very", I mean extremely) important introduction to make. So now. . . before further ado, I would like you to meet Amorette 99; also known as Amorette, also known as 99, also known as A-99:. . .

in other words; my little chihuahua puppy. :) My friend breeds chihuahuas, and her dog had puppies, so after discussing with my parents, I decided to get one of her puppies and start breeding her myself to make some college money (since I kinda dug into it to buy her in the first place. :} ). But I am very proud of my little baby. . .

I just need to work on her not chewing on erasers when she writes. . . . tsk tsk. ;) Of course she's a little too big now to sprawl across my desk like that, though she still likes to dig at my writing papers when she wants to get on my lap and it's in her way. lol.

But I guess I'll say so long for now! Hopefully I'll be able to post more often now, but we'll have to see.

God bless.

Assr vísa ykkar or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~