12/5/19

I just had a moment of realization.  It's December!  I knew the month had arrived, given Thanksgiving just passed, but somehow it just didn't quite compute.  For some reason, I'm mentally still thinking it's early November, but somehow nearly two months have passed since I last posted something!  I'm so sorry for vanishing like that.  I will try to do better from now on. 

That said, I don't have much to share.  I'm still in the waiting game for everything.  Edits for Ge-Mi: Nevada and Dragon Consultant should arrive any day now.  I'm hoping they'll be fairly straightforward, given they're reprints.  I am expecting more substantial edits for Ge-Me: Taylor, which should be the third set of edits I receive.  Hopefully that process will begin to move forward very soon. 

I am eight weeks into the 16 week timeline for when I could hear back from NineStar regarding my submission of my Wizard Wars series.  Given how many of my books they have already, I'm glad for the wait, but at the same time I want to know!  Fingers crossed I'll hear good news soon! 

I have been writing, of course.  For some reason, I got a really good idea for how to finally get Yani and Aaron out of the basement and therefore complete the prologue for Codified, the third and final book in my Magnified series.  I went ahead and cleaned up Magnified and Justified, so I can submit them to NSP whenever, but I'm hoping to make some real progress with Codified before I submit this series.  So far, I'm 1/6th of the way through writing Codified.  I still have some planning to do, but now that they're out of the basement I can hopefully start moving forward to the long-awaited final battle with Cain. 

Other writing has all been focused on trying to get my fairy tales complete.  There's just the last two to finish, both of which are completely planned out.  Mina needs a final push to get to the ball in A Heart's Dream, and then I can get that story moving again.  The Beast is flowing smoothly, but I had to stop to write down my amazing idea for Codified.  Once I have to pause Codified for some time on the planning board, I'm sure I'll return to my fairy tales. 

12/2/18

I don't know what sort of crud I've got, but it's been a slow recovery.  The fever finally broke, but I've still got a bit of a cough.  The problem is, I'm still finding it hard to concentrate.  My body just wants to curl up and sleep it off, while I wanted to spend this weekend writing instead.  That's just not going to happen.  I need this crud to go away so I can get back to a regular routine that includes getting some writing done. 

I was able to get a last edit of Wounded Alpha completed and I went ahead and submitted it to LT3.  The call doesn't close until the end of January, so LT3 won't take a look until then, but now it's one less worry on my plate.  I can instead focus on all the other things I know will be coming, including a lot more edits.  Until then, I am going to continue plucking away at all my stories to see if I can get some completed. 

One thing I was able to take a look at was Thunderbird (one of the stories I'm hoping to submit with my fairy tales), and I'm concerned about it.  Way back when, I submitted it to LT3 and they rejected it.  They were kind enough to provide a reason why and after looking through the manuscript again, I can see that they were right.  I need to add a few more scenes in order to smooth out the issue, but I'm not finding that an easy task.  The problem is, as the story stands now, it flows nicely.  The plot and the world building both work as they are.  I just need to make a few tweaks to one of my characterizations, and one or two additions to the romance, yet I can't  decide where to cut into the story to start adding those changes.  Anywhere I try, I leave blatant hatchet marks in the plot and the flow immediately dies.  I don't want to scrap this story as I think it's the most unique one in the bunch, but I can't resubmit it as it stands, which means I've reached an impasse.  Does anyone have any suggestions? 

Aside from fixing Thunderbird, I have two other stories in my fairy tale bunch to finish.  A Heart's Dream started out as yet another Cinderella rewrite, but I'm trying to get it to go more of a Sleeping Beauty route.  I think that will fit better with the characters, but planning that out has been really slow going.  Trip Trop Trail, my Billy Goats Gruff rewrite, hasn't been worked on at all.  I was trying to get A Heart's Dream completed first, which has left Trip Trop Trail patiently waiting.  Unfortunately, it's going to have to continue to wait as I have a few other things I need to get done first.  Only once all three of those stories have been completely worked out can I start looking at final edits and formatting, which is months away.