Whew!

Look at that! The monkey says I won!

I made it to 50,000 words at last--it was touch and go, moreso than previous years. At least, it felt harder this year than previous years. This is my sixth time playing and my sixth time crossing the finish line, and the first time I didn't have one dedicated project to work on.

I made the most of my time, though. I finished the steampunk Goldielocks story, which is edited and on submission now. I also finished the (short) rough draft of the untitled romance. After that I was going to work on Christopher Kaplan, and in fact I did write a few thousand words on it, but then I stalled out. As I mentioned last week, I've been reading nothing but murder mysteries this month, and since my brain is bathed entirely in murder-mystery juice as a result, I've been thinking about the Darla Dare mystery I've been wanting to write. In desperation to get my last several thousand words in for nano, I started the book. So far it's pretty good. Of course, I'm now to the point where I actually have to work out the plot, so I doubt I'll be continuing at the same pace. Still, it's going to be fun.

Now I have edits coming in from stuff I've sold this year--perfect timing, too, since I can now concentrate on them. I also want to revise and edit (and title) the romance so I can get it out hopefully by January or February. Lots of stuff to do!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My mom has her first published short story up at Every Day Fiction, "Turkey Shoot." She's very excited about it, and I think it's an awesome little story.

I stayed up until 1 am this morning to finish the (very) rough draft of my untitled romance novel. I still need to go back in and add about 10,000 words, but that shouldn't be too hard. I'm still not done with NaNoWriMo yet, though. Next project is work on Christopher Kaplan. Starting tomorrow.

Today I have a feast to eat! Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the U.S.! For everyone else, Happy Thursday.

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.

I am totally not dead

I don't know why blogging has become my lowest priority this month. But I am totally alive and doing the same old boring things as always, and on Wednesday I might actually have time to blog about that.

Right now I have to do laundry, type up all this handwritten stuff I've been scrawling in a notebook, and finish reading this murder mystery. I've been home from work a whole half hour and all I've accomplished so far is eating leftovers!

I'm actually writing (and enjoying writing) my untitled romance. Possibly I have been abducted by aliens and replaced with a cunning replica who enjoys writing romances. I mean, how would you know if I was an alien replica?

(Upon rereading this post, I realize I sound like I'm drunk. I'm not, promise. Unfortunately.)

Coming up for air

Whoa, I haven't updated here all week! I've been typing. Er, writing.

I'm 7,500 words into NaNo (well, nearly--something like 7,300), so I'm doing great. Of course, my mom is over 20,000 words, but she's retired and is racing with another retiree, so there's no real way I can compete with her. She's writing short stories with weather themes and plans to go past 50,000 words because she can. I think she's inspired because she sold her first story to Every Day Fiction (still her first story because the market she sold the same story to last year folded before it was published). It'll run on Thanksgiving day!

Anyway, I'm currently working on the steampunk Goldielocks story. It's going extremely well, but it's also going to end up much longer than the limit of 12,000 words. I'm just going where it takes me; once it's done, I can trim it down under 12k if I can; if I can't, I'll call it a novella and see if I can sell it somewhere.

(oh, btw, if you want to buddy me for NaNo, my username is Saanen.)