Achieving Goals by Misha Gerrick

Hello, dragon friendly people. If you perceive a strong perfume, it is the red carpet made with over one thousand roses. The dwarves are wearing their best (and cleanest) clothes because they want to make a good impression. Misha Gerrick is visiting the cave as part of her blog tour for The Vanished Knight and she'll tell us a bit about achieving goals. After that she'll be answering your comments, IF the dwarves don't overwhelm her with autograph requests and possible marriage proposals, that is. (Don't worry, Misha. This is perfectly safe. If you need a dwarf repellent, the Ninja Muse is at the ready.)

Thanks for hosting me today, Al! Since you asked me to write about achieving goals, I thought I’d tell everyone how pretty much the entire production of The Vanished Knight was about achieving goals.

Before I started on this WiP, I’d written seven other drafts for various stories. Including a few typed chapters for Doorways (which would go on to become The Vanished Knight and its sequel). Each of these drafts sort of drifted off early into the stories, pretty much as soon as the first inspiration buzz wore off. My record was nine chapters.

I think the reason for this to be three-fold. First, the other drafts weren’t meant to be my first books. Second, I still lacked the writing knowledge needed to follow through on the first idea. The last was that I’d written without any direction before. I used to plot, often in detail, but as soon as the first inspiration wore off, I stopped.

Doorways was different, though. I knew that from the beginning, so I read up on writing, wanting to see how I’d get past that first inspiration barrier. As soon as that was done, and I knew what I’d done wrong, I felt almost ready to get going. Almost.

I also knew that in my world full of distractions, I needed to find a way to focus. What I did was to start a blog. Not just any blog. One about getting my first book published. And then I went about making sure as many other bloggers as possible knew about this goal. I also made sure to post updates on my progress regularly, as well as to post on writing method. My reasoning was simple, if I wrote blog posts on what I’d learned, and wanted the blog to survive, I’d have to keep learning, and keep writing.

When my first draft was finished, I had about 300 people reading my blog, so I figured it’d be a good idea to make my self-imposed rewrite deadline public. I put up my first count down timer, and repeated the process for revisions and edits.

It definitely worked! If I even vaguely felt like not working on my book, an image of that count-down timer would pop up in my thoughts, and I’d get going. I finished the rewrite three months ahead of schedule, and the edits about a month late, due to circumstances beyond my control. But all and all, I finished faster than I’d thought I could.

These days, the count-down timer has returned. This time, for my biggest, longest term goal yet. And yes, I still feel the seconds ticking by. The stakes are higher, and there are now over a 1000 people who can either watch me fail or succeed. My choice.

Anyone else have goals? 

Blurb

Since the death of her parents, Callan Blair has been shunted from one foster family to another, her dangerous secret forcing the move each time. Her latest foster family quickly ships her off to an exclusive boarding school in the Cumbrian countryside. While her foster-brother James makes it his mission to get Callan expelled, a nearby ancient castle holds the secret doorway to another land...

When Callan is forced through the doorway, she finds herself in the magical continent of Tardith, where she’s shocked to learn her schoolmates Gawain and Darrion are respected soldiers in service to the king of Nordaine, one of Tardith's realms. More than that, the two are potential heirs to the Black Knight—Nordaine's crown prince.

But when the Black Knight fails to return from a mysterious trip, the realm teeters on the brink of war. Darrion and Gawain set out to find him, while Callan discovers there is more to her family history than she thought. The elves are claiming she is their princess.

Now with Darrion growing ever more antagonistic and her friendship with Gawain blossoming, Callan must decide whether to stay in Nordaine—where her secret grows ever more threatening—or go to the elves and uncover the truth about her family before war sets the realms afire.

Bio

M. Gerrick (AKA Misha Gericke) has basically created stories since before she could write. Many of those stories grew up with her and can be seen in her current projects.

She lives close to Cape Town, with a view over False Bay and Table Mountain.

If you’d like to contact her, feel free to mail her at warofsixcrowns(AT)gmail(DOT)com, Circle her on Google Plus or follow her on Twitter. If you'd like to see her writer-side (beware, it's pretty insane), please feel free to check out her blog. You can also add The Vanished Knight on Goodreads.

Links: 

Amazon

Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

All Romance Reads

Amazon France

Amazon Germany

Thank you for being with us today, Misha, and thank you, my friends, for visiting the dragon cave. The dwarves will get yet another bath because another lovely woman and writer is coming. On Monday, the stop for Mary Pax's blog tour is here and she'll tell us about dragons in the sky. I would love for you to join us. In the meantime, I leave you lots of dragon hugs!