good because you can use that time to write ;p

Oops, forgot to actually tell you what my month specific goals were ;p Oh well, here they are and how I fared with them:

  • Finish ‘Alone Time’ first draft: completed at 5,700 words, but its going to need a bunch of trimming
  • Send Lovely/Lonely to beta readers: successfully sent out
  • Start submitting Mermaid In A Jar: it’s out there ;p
  • Start submitting Not Human, Not Alien: also out there
  • Finalise the print copy of Darkest Depths anthology for Vision Writers: done and proof copy is on the way
  • Complete first draft of Nothing Charming: I’ve written 8,600 new words, but I’m sill around 10-15k from the end. I got stuck in a frustrating scene that bogged me down but once I escaped it I set a cracking pace
  • Complete rewrites on Foxworth per the rewrite request: I’ve done four passes so far focussing on deepening pov and inserting bad moods/days. the publisher reopens for submissions in February so I hope to do one final pass and fingers crossed they like the rewrite and ask to buy it.

I also started some revision on ‘Light In The Deep’ (my sequel to Hans Christian Andersons’ The Little Mermaid, following the story of one of her sisters in her greif over the little mermaid’s death) and submitted the first 5,000 words to my critique group for feedback.

January was a tumtltuous start to the year: a wedding, a funeral, school holidays, the Yahoo group boards collapsing on my writers group(and my trying to create work-arounds when the ‘help’ department turned out to be forums) – I’m surprised I got anything done ;p

Here on the website I put a few new things on the books pages, like badges for awards/ honourable mentions, shortlists ect. and plan to add some testimonials/review snippets next month. I also added three of the four missing anthologies to my sidebar(which involves making those 3d images myself, hence the delay ;p ). I also finally became an Amazon affiliate, so if you’d like to support me click this link and buy a million things on Amazon an I’ll get a little bump from them but your purchases don’t cost you anything extra(you don’t have to buy my book either, just don’t exit Amazon completely, simply jump into your wishlist or the search bar from the link).

Books I read in January:

  • The Devil’s Only Friend: the 4th John Cleaver book and one of the best examples of putting in enough info to cover the previous books but not so much as to bore or spoiler your reader I’ve seen.
  • Over Your Dead Body: the 5th John Cleaver book
  • Nothing Left To Lose: the 6th and final John Cleaver book – a satisfying conclusion
  • The Cruel Prince: my first five star of the year – and so early!
  • Romancing the Beat: a writing book focusing on beats in a romance novel/story/subplot
  • Unmagical Girl: (manga) I couldn’t resist, but the story I imagined was more interesting to me than what I actually got (not that it was bad, just I got soooo excited about the other concept, I’ll probably write it myself ;p )
  • The Barefoot Investor: this was given to me by a friend for Christmas. It might sound like a weird Christmas gift but when you know he used this book to buy a house on a disability pension it’s far less so.
  • The Fifth Season: a quite stunning fantasy I’m eager to read the rest of the series
  • The Reason I Jump: a book by a 13yo autistic boy in Japan. A very quick read, but insightful and inspiring
  • Turtles All The Way Down: a cool YA book about mental illness, the lines between rich and poor, and friendship and romance.

I am already well adapted to listening to my non-fiction podcasts in 1.5x speed and have listened to most of my fiction podcasts in the last three weeks at 1.5 speed. I even listened to several books at 1.5x. I think this was a lot easier to adjust to than I feared. Some narrators and hosts can’t be listened to at 1.5 though, they already speak fast enough ;p Also if I am using my bluetooth speaker and my husband comes in the room he always mocks the sound of it and me for wanting to pack more into my day. I recentl posted on this matter, you can check that post out here.

My goals for February are:

  • Write flash fiction – I’m going to call it flash fiction February ;p I’m pushing myself to write at least four new flash pieces, one each week
  • Revise and continue getting feedback for ‘Light In The Deep’
  • Complete first draft of Nothing Charming, revise, and send to betas if time
  • Check places that pay for reprints re:my older sold short stories

Stretch Goal:

  • Outline ‘The Handrell War’ and commence draft