Audely Bensen Writes

This weekend I read Zoraida C ó rdova's Incendiary , the first in a new duology set in a magical version of Andalucia. I have to say upfront that the only thing I disliked about this book is that the sequel isn't out yet and as far as I know doesn't have a release date yet. I! Need! The next book! The setting in this story was absolutely magical. C ó rdova somehow created multiple cities, multiple cultures, a palace with distinct areas, all without any noticeable exposition that took you out of the story. The information I needed to picture the scene was sprinkled throughout the whole book. This is a masterwork in world building. I might just read this again this month to study it. The next thing that left an impression was the Voice - although this is a new series, a new set of characters, this book felt like a Zoraida C ó rdova book. I'm still looking for the language to describe this, and I have no idea how she does it. But every book of hers I've read, ...

In January I posted about a host of writing challenges I meant to try. To my surprise, I actually managed to complete them all, and then some. RSS's Winter Writing Festival : This writing challenge spans from January 10 - the end of February each year. The goals-posts are flexible, so you can tailor it to whatever best motivates you.  In past years I've set word count goals for this challenge. Since I was working a round of edits (Draft 2 of the most recent Nano MS), this year I set a challenge to myself to write for one hour each day.  To my surprise, I did it. I did not finish the whole draft during this time, but it set me on my way to getting there.  #20Kin5days : This was my first time participating in this challenge. While the benefit of the WWF is to help establish a writing routine, 20Kin5days pushed me in new ways. By the end of this week-long challenge, I had a 15,000 word zero-draft plus another solid 6,000 words towards my Nano draft 2. Before this c...