Actual progress, I promise!

Like I said in my last post, that was not what I meant to write, but I guess I needed to get it off my chest.

Anywhoo…

I have been tending to my writing and made progress on a few fronts. So here is a rundown (all titles are placeholders):

• Dream: Written, reviewed, revised, reviewed again, revised again (including by both my alpha & beta critique groups), and copyedited. It may be ready for layout, and then I can send to be proofread. But first, I made a last submission to another press that might be a fit. If they are not interested, I will continue with my original plan to self-publish. Which means I need to figure out a schedule and get a bunch of other details sorted out. Wheee! Oh, and it's not too late to beta read Dream.

• Remembers: All missing chapters/scenes have been written!!! This sequel to Dream is being reviewed with my alpha critique group now and will shortly start being run through the beta group.

• Stones: This is part of the big news I’ve been meaning to post about. Thanks to circumstances I don’t want to go into, I wrote a short story prequel to Dream. I’d been planning to write the sequel as a novel, but instead, this is a ~15K-word short that covers the key backstory for certain characters that we see in Dream. A beta reader finished Dream and insisted they wanted more, which included asking for the POV of characters I only planned to include in Stones. That was the push I needed to hunker down and focus on the short version. I hope to finish the review and revision rounds soon and will send it through copyedit before deciding what exactly I plan to do with it. My hope is to offer it as a reader magnet and start building that newsletter list to generate some interest in Dream. The biggest issue with this being a short is that I had to compress a lot of the story I had intended to write to make it work. If, at some point in the future, I decide to write the full version, I will likely have some conflicting timeline issues with the two versions. Oh well, at least there is a story. And, if you want to beta read Stones, please fill out the beta reader interest form.

• Sands: Wait, what!? I’m actually starting to plot out book three!? I have yet to write anything, but I’ve had scenes in my head for years now that I am finally stringing together into a coherent story. When a scene from my story starts living in my head on repeat like an earworm, I know the only way to get it out is to write it. Now, I have a path forward and the journey plotted.