May: It's Over!

Which is, in my opinion, cause for much celebration. May was a hard month, following on the heels of a hard month. We moved house, we moved my mother in law, I had to deal with my first batch of final grading/report writing fun, during which the computer make a vow to drive me as insane as possible by eating all my work at one point, two days before everything was due o.O Yeah, much fun. Also, I got sick :P

This is all very tragic, because autumn is usually my favourite season, and the weather has actually been quite pleasant this year. Or maybe it's just that I'm regaining circulation, living in a warm house and working in a warm office, so I'm not feeling it as much as I used to O:) :D

Either way, 'tis all behind me, and June is set to be much more pleasant - not least of which because school holidays are coming up ;)

For May Madness, however, there is not much to report: I managed a total of 4,624 words, less dismal that I initially expected, but still in the bottom six months of all time. Pretty much all of the writing was on Borderlands, my current wip. I'll pop a blurb up on the wip page soon, but suffice to say it's dark, it's adult, it's confronting, and it's fun as anything to write B-) Woo, underground cities and evil machines and elemental power! Ensnarement, torture, war and pillaging! Death! Destruction! And the obligatory (for me) shiny, shiny rainbow magic, waaaay on the other side of the desert.

Yes, I do loves my Borderlands B-)

The only other thing I worked on was yet another beginning for a Secret Breaker novel. The Secret Breaker series is my urban fantasy series about people with the psychic ability to detect secrets and lies - intentionally and not. It's a lot of fun - urban fantasy complete with kick-ass heroines, splashes of romance, and a bit of gothic-inspired fun in the shape of imposing mansions, hidden crazy ladies and the like. Sadly, I have about four beginnings for novels in this series lying around, and nothing else o.O Ah well. Not a priority at the moment; I'll finish Borderlands first.

Of course, what I really should be doing is tidying up Sanctuary :P But forcing myself to focus on editing is beyond my brain capacity right now; that's what I'm claiming, anyway O:)

But anyway, all of this has gotten me thinking about doing a post about my main series (about six, I think). Would anyone be interested in hearing about that? Or are the only people who might be interested the people who already know all about them? :D

And the ultimate question, of course: How was YOUR May? O:)

September: A Month in Review

So, it has been a month of Not Getting Terribly Much Done in the way of writing, but on the other hand it was also the month of Lots of Assessment, and that was mostly all Done, so it's not like I've been slacking :)

While I haven't written much, my word count for the month is more than the month I set my minimum standard by (last December, 6119 words), so I'm happy :)

This month I have:

* Written a total of 6,700 and something words. This has included:
* 3 complete chapters of The Project, plus bits and pieces in other chapters
* The first chapter of (temporary title) Night in the Shards, the second book in my secret assassin series. (No, book one is not written yet *rolls eyes* I'm going to work on it for some of NaNo)
* Some initial work on a non-fic book I'm writing - more on that later this month :)

I have also:

* Submitted a short story to a Christmas anthology
* Begun plotting the first Edge and Gem book, now titled Sanctuary, in preparation for NaNo
* And completely reorganised, sorted, and pared down my stories, creating a new system of tracking progress that's much more efficient, and streamlines the whole process for me :) *happyhappy*
* Oh yeah, and I got an honourable mention in Allegory for Sea Foam and Blood B-)

And now, blessedly, it is October, bringing me one step closer to my longed-for November, which shall contain both NaNoWriMo, and the End of Uni Woes for another four months :) May October fly speedily on shiny gilt wings!

Projects and Goaly Things

I am a Bad Girl...

Actually, I'm just a Busy Girl, but these days it equates to the same thing. *goggle eyes* So, I'm terribly sorry for the lack of posts last week, and I can't promise to do much better this week, but I shall try :)

And to that end, this post.

Over on Critique Circle we've been having a bit of a discussion about works in progress - specifically, how many we have. Two days ago, as per advice in Holly Lisle's Think Sideways course (which basically equates to: 'life is too short to write every idea you have, so don't waste time writing anything less than the great ones'), I narrowed down my horrendously long list of potential/in progress projects to only ones that I would truly be sad if I didn't write.

I got it down from over fifty plus universes to 15 stand alone projects plus 7 universes.

Several other of my friends followed suit, and Ardyth suggested that we record our lists as goals: projects we will see published, by hook or by crook, projects we love and will write.

And I thought, what better place to record my goals than here? :)

These, then, are the current final contenders in the 'I Simply Must Write These Stories' stakes.

Stand Alones:

Black Death: A responsible eldest daughter must save her family by killing the monster within. Dark fantasy.

Earth Shadow Rising: an as-yet illusive storyline, but one which nonetheless fills me with shivers. Involves a girl in a misty river, the rising of the Earth's shadow at twilight, and all sort of other fun, currently-completely-unconnected images. Probably a philosophicalish fantasy.

Fairytale Ending: If Cinderella were a detective...

Fever and Earth: A young earth-horse spirit, born of contaminated ground, has always been an outcast - until the community needs him.

Jessica's Room: Every girl has a secret. But not every secret can kill you... Involves relationships gone wrong and a demon or two...

Neighbourhood Watch: persists in being though of a Night Watch. MC is jealous of his brother's ability to rule the streets - until he realises what's really out there. More demons, nightmares, etc.

Prodigal: Prodigal son story, only with a daughter, a load of uncontrollable magic talent gone wrong, and a very nasty future-telling crystal...

'Thriller': forbidden cities, pyschological magic...

The Diary: Orphaned girl seeks truth about mother - and finds out in the process that she's half monster...

The Dragon Stone: a really weird, random, ecological fantasy novel revolving around reptiles and amphibians

The Jehosephat Stones: another shiny-yet-un-forth-coming idea. Something about magic stones that you use by putting in your mouth...

The Other Side: war hero finds restoration in the camp of the enemy. Exploration of attitudes towards violence. (fantasy)

The Project: As per sidebar. Cross-genre fantasy/sci fi/murder mystery.

Three Names, Three Hearts: Un-pin-downable. Questy fantasy.

Untitled 1: questy fantasy, involving betrayals, working for people who aren't who you think they are, etc.

Untitled 2: Desperate-to-stay-cool teenager is unwillingly dragged into girlfrfiend's efforts to save a historical tree - only to discover that the tree is quite literally the root of all evil.


Universes:

Battersplotch: Without Magic, Mechanical Heart
YA, magic system based on cooking. Involves cyborgy-zombie thingos.

Fairyverse: The Danger Roads, The Master Key
Series of 4-5 junior/YA novels; the fairies at the bottom of the garden take Edge places she's never known...

Magic Eyes Universe: How Not To Take Over The World, To Be An Evil Overlord..., Who Wants To Be A Minion, 'submerged sun'
Comic fantasy. Evil overlords vie for rulership in a world where the Good Guys Against Evil (GGAE) require membership fees, and have banned practical lessons in Raiding...

Portalverse: huge sprawly alternate Earth history. Involves sub-verses of Lighting (The Temple, Magician's Thunder, Lightning short), Meterologists (Lightning short, Taming the Unicorns), other worlds (Black Gates, Messiah, Liana's Choice, Logan, Toman Story) and alternate earth (all the mentioned lightning and meterologist ones, plus Hunter Hunted). This 'verse is HUGE.

Secret Breakers: Secret Breaker, Secret Dreams, 'Amelia', 'twins apart', Written Truth
Alternate Earth. Magic is psychic-related, involving ability to detect lies/deception. Multiple stand-alone novels.

Shards: Jesscapades, Night in the Shards, Shard in the Mists
Assassin school trilogy. Jesscapades is the one where the student assassin has to kill her best friend as her graduation exam...

Trilogy: may be subsumed into the Portalverse. Originally a trilogy, but now probably only one or two books. Alternate Earth; looks at what it's like to be the chosen one's duplicate.


Happily, although it is probably not at all obvious from the details given here, not only are these stories ones which I love, they are also to some degree vocally and thematically consonant. These have the potential to be a real basis for establishing a career, a voice, and a style.

Busy Girl I may be - but today, I'm also Happy Girl :)

TBAEO is... Number TWO??

So, in a random conversation over at Critique Circle, an exciting title for a story came up. And, because it seems vaguely related to TBAEO, it was shoved in my direction.

As you may or may not know, I've been trying to think of an alternative title for TBAEO for a few weeks now, and this /other/ title re-sparked the discussion about TBAEO - should I change it to match this fun new title, that will be the next book in the series?

Which of course lead to more title brainstorming... And the creation of /another/ title. (Confused yet?) Which apparently is book one.

Yes, that's right. Book one.

So, long confusing story short, it turns out that TBAEO is actually book two in a three book series. The first book, HNTTOTW, will be about Mercury and Bystar - and just exactly what did happen at the Eye - and the final one, WWTBAM, will relate the future adventures of Deviran and Mercury.

In the mean time, it's going to play havoc with my TBAEO rewrites, because I'll be thinking the whole time - but it's book two! I'm going to have to change so much again!

Not to mention the temptation to go play with shiny ideas rather than doing my homework %-)