Brooksdell

Hey! Looks like I was on time this week! I've managed to get most of my stuff organized and mostly finished, so I finally have time to do some of my own work! Woo! Can you believe that it's already June? This is crazy! The year is already half over! Hmm... I seem to be using a lot of exclamation marks tonight; I didn't realize that I was in such a good mood...

~

Well, I'm not in a great mood anymore. I am extremely busy tonight, so I had written today's post last night and I saved it in my drafts so that I could actually post on time this week, but when I returned to my drafts today, only the above paragraph had been saved, even though I hit save about five times before turning off my MacBook last night. Sigh. Oh well, I'll start it again.

I'm sure that most of you are going to be reading this tomorrow since after two weeks, you're going to have gotten used to me posting a day late, and when you see this post, two thoughts are going to pop in to your head. The first will be "Woah! She actually posted on time!" and the second will be "What the heck is up with this week's title?" Well, I'm about to tell you! Surprising, isn't it! On a side note, I'm feeling kind of sarcastic at the moment; can you tell?

In earlier drafts of Promise, I had introduced Sara by saying that she was from Kingston, Ontario, but I changed my mind a little while back because of Treason. A lot of the second instalment of the PTSD series takes place in Sara's home town and I think that it would have been hard to place the story in a town that I knew nothing about. Hence, Brooksdell.

I stayed up late on Saturday trying to put together a name for a town that sounded realistic but didn't already exist in Canada, and preferably not at all. Around midnight, I came up with Brooksdell and after checking Google Maps, I found that it didn't exist anywhere - other than a street named Brookdell Drive somewhere in New York - and so Sara's home town was born. I fell asleep shortly after that, but the next morning I set to work drawing a map of the town so that I could have everything in order. The picture you just saw is a rough sketch of the town including some of the major key points that will be found in the novel including Sara's house, her school, the police station, and the diner where she works.

I have also found a name for the camp, and I drew a map for that, too. I decided that Camp Windon Lake seemed like an appropriate name for a summer camp. I placed it geographically west of Algonquin Park where there are many other lakes and summer camps. I'm sure that Windon Lake and its camp will fit right in. 

I was browsing through some pictures on the Internet the other day while procrastinating and I found this picture:

It seems like even the Avengers want me to get my lazy butt to work and finish writing my second novel. I don't know if I want to set myself a goal, such as having the first draft done by the end of the summer, or if that would just be setting myself up for disappointment. Thoughts? Leave them in the comment section.

Well, I am off! See you all next week!

Love you,
Di

This week's song was sent to me by a friend and I couldn't help but think of Sara and Nick's first night alone on the island. I think that this may be my song of the summer this year. Take a listen to Summer Paradise by Simple Plan featuring Sean Paul!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjHlgrGsLWQ