Welcome!

A big shout out to everyone joining us from the internet today! Welcome to Writing Emer, a new blog by Emer d'Ange: a struggling student/aspiring writer with plenty of quirks to go around and a desire to see the world. Like all novelist wannabes, I've got a touch of arrogance, a love of my work, and the occasional bout of insanity (far more often than I'd like to admit). And you, my lucky guests, get to experience it all with me.

Here, I plan on musing and rambling on art in  general as well as writing, in specific, books I've been reading, school, the horrors of the slush pile, finding an agent, bits and pieces of writings-in-process, questions, advice I receive, advice not to follow, helpful websites or books, and whatever else comes to mind. In other words, follow me long enough and I'm sure you'll get to know the inner workings of my mind almost as well and my characters and I do.

So, for this introductory post, I suppose I'll start with some trivia. I'm a senior at Alaska Pacific University at the moment, planning to graduate in April (so keep your eyes peeled for some graduating posts in a few months). At the moment, I'm shopping a manuscript to agents--more on that later.  My pseudonym actually has a story behind it: Emer was a queen of Irish mythology, the queen of the great hero Cuchulainn, said to possess the six virtues of womanhood; d'Ange is French for "of the angels." All in all, much more appealing and unique than my legal name, which shall remain a mystery. I am, indeed, a woman, but I prefer writing male characters--females are, for some reason, a challenge for me. One I'm attempting to battle head-on. My publishing credits at the moment include a few short pieces in my high school's literary magazine, various short stories online (mostly via fictionpress and DeviantArt, which don't really count), and a few thousand forum posts. The manuscript I'm shopping at the moment (I'm sure you'll also get to read all about that process) is a young adult fantasy with a working title of Savior that I've been perfecting for six years now. Long story about that; it'll all become clear at some point, I'm sure.

To be honest, though, I'm new to the big, wide world of blogging. I've read a few, of course, and I know the theory behind it, but this is my first attempt. If anyone who stumbles across this has any advice for a novelist-turned-blogger, please don't hesitate to throw it my way. I'd be eternally grateful. For now, I believe I'll leave this prologue as is and begin throwing ideas around for the first chapter of this Writing Emer experiment.

Oh, one more note before I go: the words I plan on wrapping these posts up with are my own elvish, meaning, roughly, "good day." For those of you remotely interested.

Oljiru kovy.