Thursday, November 18, 2010

Just add time!

I'm awful. Not only have I not been posting, I haven't been reading my friends' blogs. It's been busy at work, busy at home, and I have been frantically reading a series of mystery books that I'm obsessed with--one more and I'm done until the next one comes out--as well as trying to scrape up enough words to keep from being defeated in this year's NaNoWriMo.

Here's what I've been doing. This is the condensed-soup version. Just add time!

I bought my membership for the 2011 DragonCon, since I checked with my coworker who is the only one who can cover me on Saturdays, and she said she can work for me that weekend in 2011 and 2012. This is what you call planning ahead.

I finished the steampunk Goldielocks story, which turned out to be 20,000 words and not appropriate for the market I had in mind initially. I edited it and sent it out to IGMS because the editor sent me a nice personal note last time I subbed to them.

One of my (few) short stories has been shortlisted at Apex!

After I finished the Goldielocks story, I intended to start work on Adventures in Zoology. Instead, for some reason I immediately began to work on my untitled romance. I've added about 7,500 words and I'm actually getting pretty close to the end. I reckon another 10,000 and it'll be done. It'll still be too short, but there are some scenes I want to add anyway, which will hopefully get it to the right length for a Harlequin Intrigue. Once I finish this blog post, I'm going to jump right in and write a steamy sex scene, ooh la la. For the romance book, I mean, not the blog.

I've decided that November should be my "read nothing but mysteries" month, in hopes that I can read without it distracting me from my NaNo projects. Instead, what's happened is that my NaNo projects have become not-fantasy. The Goldielocks story started out as fantasy but it almost immediately turned science fiction instead. And of course instead of writing fantasy after I was done with it, I went to the romance book. Apparently what I'm reading affects what I want to write. That explains why I started writing Christopher Kaplan suddenly a few months ago--I'd been reading a solid diet of middle-grade books at the time. Incidentally, Christopher Kaplan is up for finishing as soon as I'm done with this romance. I'll have to stop reading mysteries and go back to MG books, though.

And speaking of mysteries, I know what my next new project will be. I plan to plot it out very carefully before I start writing, but I have a title. It's going to be a...mystery! Bet you didn't guess! And I'm finally going to use the character Darla Dare, which I've been dying to write about for literally years but didn't know what to do with her. The title will be Darla Dare, Girl Detective and it'll use my other old idea of a mystery series with a woman who works as a temp. In Girl Detective, Darla Dare takes a temporary receptionist position with a private investigator, who promptly drops dead. Darla has to solve the murder! Because no one else thinks it's a murder!

So anyway, that's what I'm up to. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to write a sex scene.

7 comments:

Aaron Polson said...

Busy, busy, busy. Good luck in your endeavors. We'll leave the lights on for you.

K.C. Shaw said...

I swear it's the reading of this mystery series that is killing me. I've read four books in five days, which has pretty much eaten up all my free time.

Fox Lee said...

Just one sex scene? ; )

Cate Gardner said...

Goodness, I'm tired now just reading that little lot. Did I say little? Really, nothing little about any of it.

K.C. Shaw said...

Natalie--It probably won't be the last. These characters just can't keep their hands off each other. :)

Cate--Well, I spread all that out over a couple of weeks, so it's not really all that bad. My time management skills are just lousy.

Danielle Birch said...

As my old boss used to say when he was having one of his "moments" - "there's only so much of me to go around" :) We'll still be here when you return.

K.C. Shaw said...

Ha, I like that saying! I'm just hoping things calm down here soon.