81% of you…

81% of people picked the cover image for Echoes of Winter. I’m not revealing which cover it is until it’s been finished now, however! I’m really impressed with the amount of votes I received this last week and a half! The hours of time, sitting to get my images up on a poll, sharing the posts and getting people to vote have paid off!

Also up for good news – at 2am this morning, I completed Echoes of Winter – all 114,450 words are currently waiting to be winging their way off to the editor! That means I’m one step closer to being able to announce a release date for you!

I’m currently physically exhausted, not enough sleep and a little too much writing…but I could even write a little more of Echoes of Winter, settle down the masses – but there are some loose ends that won’t be tied up until the next book (if it comes to that!)

My way of relaxing at the moment is to sit and do pretty art pictures…and since I know you’d all like to see them…here they are (well…three of them, anyway!)

This is a human eye, with a wolf and a moon in it, mysterious and I hope pretty!

Next up we have butterflies and a vine, inside and on an icy-looking eye.

and finally, my favourite. Just a wolf in an eye – the beast within showing itself, maybe.

All these images and little tid-bits shown – I still might go back to EoW today and make some small edits. I think that could work well!

First blog post…ever…

So…I’ve discovered just how hard it is to finish a novel you’ve been working on for so long. Echoes of Winter currently has a word count of almost 98,000 words, and I’m approaching the final run now…but I find myself slowing down and now really wanting to write the end. I know that when it’s time to FINISH it, I’m going to cry, want to rewrite it and make it longer – but I’m going to have to resist that temptation and work on something else. I have a few edits I want to make in the book, a few plans for other books that will follow this – but more importantly I have to say goodbye to the characters I’ve killed off after loving them and writing them out of danger, after writing them so vividly that they’ve come alive for me.

The characters which have haunted my dreams for the last five months might be finally laid to rest then, and I can have a break and work on the shorter stories I’ve been thinking about and putting off writing. I’ve worked out that writing Echoes of Winter has been a hard slog of sleepless nights, sore fingers, working through being ill AND up all hours – but I do think it’s worth it. I’ve written characters with flaws, some flaws are my own and I feel a lot more in common with those characters. I’ve killed characters off that have done nothing wrong, kept those alive that should be dead (the villain!). And I’ve written friends personalities into characters, along with everything that they try to hide but I’ve worked out. And even more wonderfully, I’ve found a publisher before it’s even finished who is FULLY prepared to keep Echoes of Winter as the title

Here is a small snippet from Echoes of Winter, and I hope it whets your appetite for when it finally comes out on the shelves!

‘Baker looked betrayed by the wolf, but she soon shook her head and lifted it up high, her chin tucked down over her throat as she ignored the threatening burn of tears to maintain her ‘mean’ reputation. Gaoler whined a soft apology as Draven nuzzled against the Doberman’s shoulder, growling something softly at her before he shrugged, the movement awkward upon his body.
“I‘ll follow the majority – I might as well. The more fighting experience I get, the quicker I can fight my father for leadership.”

The soft voice of Singer stopped them all in their tracks as she rose up and shook the snow off – showing that she hadn’t been sleeping as they may have thought.
“That‘s enough. For now, I have a feeling we should keep moving – we‘ll be needed soon.” A worried crease wrinkled the space between her ears, making her flatten them and look half-confused. The she-wolf sighed soon, her entire body shifting upon the snow as though restless. “We shall run until the moon rises, and then we‘ll hunt and rest. It‘ll be easier to hunt at night, we can stick to the shadows then.”

She turned without waiting for them to agree, and began to lope off as though she was an arrow shot from a bow with a destination firmly in mind. Soft growls slipped from the throats of Baker and Draven, but as one – a shoal of fish chasing the leader – they followed her without a single question. Their paws pummelled the snow, sending up small clouds of snow which obscured part of their tracks and left them unable to really talk. The thrill of running properly was firing up inside all of them, turning them into a constantly running pack that moved effortlessly.’

Aside from the writing, I’ve been having a battle of wills with my pygmy hedgehog, Rosie. She doesn’t want to be handled a lot of the time, so she has a fun habit of spiking me – which makes me bleed. But I’m persevering, and doing my hardest to keep pushing on and on with the taming her down – but unfortunately she prefers her toy mice to me! She’s been showing this lately by hissing at me whenever I get anywhere near her – but she’s my baby, and if I could tame rats, I can tame her!

I’ve also been having fun with the malamute puppy – she’s been trained now to sit reliably, walk to heel occasionally, give a paw every time she’s asked and she’s also learning to beg with both paws at once! She’s also learning (slowly!) to belly-crawl…but she’s so big she sticks her bum up in the air.

So I’m heading back to writing and getting better now, since I need to get EoW finished so it can be edited, so have fun and keep an eye out for it!

Find out the latest happenings here: http://dominiquegoodall.weebly.com/ – this includes a link to the blog!