Ugh, updates

A new NaNo beings next month, the fourth and final book of my Chained series. As usual I'm sorry about the hiatus, but I mostly took the month off to play, rather than work.
Excited about book 4 though, we're going back to Jack as the POV character and he's a treat to work with. Hopefully I'll hear something back from the publisher I submitted to soon.

Sorry About the hiatus

Sorry for the unexplained hiatus, my husband has been recovering and in taking care of him + a bad bout of writer's block I've been neglectful of work. However, I do have a couple of updates.

• With Last Call functionally finished I can move on to the last book of the Chained series. That should have a first draft by the end of November and I am very excited. 
• Starting a new project! It doesn't have a title yet but the outline should keep me busy for a while.
• Continuing work on Lichgate! I think I've given it enough space that I can come back to it with fresh eyes and an open mind. 
• The same goes for the second half of Silver Roses, my fae urban-fantasy novel. 

So, despite being a slothful bastard who doesn't remember to update their blog, things are moving, albeit at kind of a glacial pace. 

Last Call Update

The good news: The story is finished and it only took me a week. I'm mostly happy with the pieces and the pacing.

The Bad News: It's about 20k shorter than I want it to be so the editing phase is going to suck.

C'est La Vie.

So I'll poke at it until November when I start book 4 of the series and see how I can fix it. Still very proud of myself for finishing in a week.

Where I'm at on Last Call

Last Call, the third book of The Chained is proving to be a troublesome beast. I'm writing a fine amount of words, sitting at 33,281 at the time of writing this which is not bad for a week. Unfortunately I don't think I'll get 60k out of it. I would honestly be pretty impressed if I got 50k out of it and that would involve back tracking and tacking extra scenes in, which is always a major pain in the ass.

The outline was fine! But things went much faster than I expected.

So yeah, I might have a novella instead of a novel, which is a little frustrating.

But I'm averaging 4k a day and that's pretty sweet.

Soldiering On

So we're three days into work on Last Call and it's going actually pretty swimmingly. I'm having an issue with timing, being that the first couple chapters are way, way, way to short, but otherwise it's progressing well. I'm ahead of schedule with my word count which is always nice. I've skinned the main character once which is always fun.

All told, it's coming right along.

At risk of beating a dead horse

My first NaNo thing starts tomorrow so I'm spending today prepping by thinking about my opening paragraph and not writing. I'm terribly excited and went over the outline again to make sure I won't fall into any pitfalls like I did on Wednesday.

I'm still terribly embarrassed about that.

There's always a sense of trepidation that hits me before starting off a new project, that fear of "what if this time I don't finish, what if it's not good enough, what if I'm not qualified to tell this story" and it's pretty strong today.

But the work starts tomorrow and the fear will fade. Count on it.

Near Disasters and Fixing Them

So I've been talking a good game about how well NaNo prep is going. I've got the outlines for both September's and November's projects done. I have said goodbye to my loved ones and moved into the study. I'm pretty well set for the future.

Expect that while double checking my outline today I realized that I had forgotten a whole chapter. Just, chapter 5 was not there. So I had to re-read the whole outline, re-work my pacing, and see what could fit thematically in that space.

Always check your outlines. Check your outlines compulsively.