One Hot Mess

So! It's the last day of November, which means Anti-Nano ends tonight *sob* But Winter-Write-a-Thon is here to pick up the slack! Like Anti-Nano, WWAT is now housed over at squidathon, and everyone is welcome to join in. We check in on Mondays and Fridays and post writing snippets on Wednesdays. If you're working on something and would like some company over the cold, dark, lonely winter weeks, come and say hello!

My goal for Anti-Nano was to work on Undertow and Halflife. I was half-successful, in that I worked on Undertow. I'd like to have the first draft done by the end of December now, which is perfectly do-able if it works out at the same length as DEMONIZED (about 40k). I have a feeling it might be longer, but I'm planning to try out this technique to see if I can increase my wordage output. I'm not usually a planner when it comes to writing, but I toyed with this a little last week, and although I was a long way off 10k, I was definitely more productive with notes to work from. So we'll see.

I'm also planning to write an Ethan Christmas Special. It'll be one of the Ethan Banning Files - a short, self-published story, but festive! So there's a slim chance something nice might happen to Ethan. Look, it might, that's all. Hopefully I can get to work on that over the weekend (I have a novel to finish editing for Damnation Books, and a house party to avoid going to).

October is nearly over and November is just a few days away, so it's your last chance to sign-up for Anti-Nano!

If you're new to the Anti-Nano family, here's the gist of it:

If you love the idea of Nanowrimo but know 50k is an impractical target for you, never fear! Join the cult, and dedicate November to writing as much (or as little) as you want in the company of like-minded writers. We'll be doing bi-weekly check-ins throughout November (Mondays and Fridays), and once a week there'll be excerpt postings (Wednesdays).

(I'd like to add that if you're doing Nanowrimo but still want to stop by the Anti-Nano community and share your progress, you're very welcome!).

If you want to participate, head over to squidathon and join up. This is now HQ for Anti-Nano, so go and make yourselves at home, read this post to see what we're all about, and I'll see you in November for hardcore (but self-governed) writing action.

Oh, and Happy Halloween!

So I'm still hard at work on a million things. Night Breed is coming along nicely, although it feels like a very different book to the other Urban Wolf novels so far. It's a lot more of a slow burn, lots of twisty plot threads, and I'm worried I won't be able to pull it all together. It's not the book I thought it would be, and I don't know yet if that's in a good way or a bad way. Still, I'm on track to have the first draft done by the end of September holy shit is that really only two weeks away? What the hell am I talking about? so then I can send it to my editor and let him tell me whether it works or not.

Speaking of Urban Wolf, we're looking at an October release for DARK HUNT! I've done the blurb and some extra fun bits and pieces, and am pretty excited about the second book being out in the world. It really doesn't seem that long ago that SILVER KISS was released, and now I'm writing book three of the series. Eek!

In other news, as October is rapidly approaching, let's talk Anti-Nano. I'm hoping/assuming everyone who's doing springathonwill be up for it, and maybe some of the people who did wwathonlast year too. I'm planning to throw open my blog in October for signing up - both for returners and any newcomers that might have found their way here since last November, so there'll be an inaugral blog post about that soon.

In other other news, I think I mentioned before I've been thinking about implementing a blogging schedule, like Writerly Wednesday (so I could finally get round to those short story posts), Random Monday... I don't know. I like the idea of it, because as much as I just like blogging random crap as it comes to me, I think I need to get more structure into my writing career instead of just flailing wildly and hoping for the best, and this might be a step in that direction. I'm interested in whether people like that approach from writers or if they don't care either way?

I remembered the other stuff I wanted to blog about. It's actually not that interesting, but it involves making lists, which I like.

So Kyle is going to stay with his mum for a week soon. Not sure when yet, but early July as we have a wedding to go to in late July. I'm hoping if the timing works out, I can take that week off work and have some "me" time. I'm supposed to give two weeks' notice for holiday, so ideally Kyle needs to book his train tickets on Friday for the second week of July. Even if I can only get a long weekend, I'll take it. I need it.

I have a ton of writing commitments going on right now, and I need some extra time to get back on top of those. First priority is obviously Night Breed, which I have fallen behind on.

Immediate urgent stuff alongside Night Breed is:

Queered Fiction horoscopes (will do those tonight).

Wicked Witchery - the anthology is at the lower word count limit for publication now. I'm waiting for one more author who's doing some revisions on a story, but I'm thinking I'm going to put the end of June as the deadline for submissions. I'm going to take a break from editing any more SM anthologies until Night Breed is done.

Critiquing - I've got two pieces from writer friends I'm reading over and I'd like to get them wrapped up before much longer. Happily for me, they both seem to be fabulous thus far.

Other writing stuff that is not urgent is:

Snakeskin, a novella I've been playing with as a sequel to a novella called Snakebite that I submitted to Damnation Books a few weeks ago
(21st of May, as it happens, not that I'm anxiously counting off the days or anything). Snakebite clocked in at around 13k, so really short, but I liked it and I'm interested to see if someone else likes it, so I thought, why not submit it somewhere? So I did. I imagine Snakeskin will be around the same length, and if the first part gets picked up, I'd like to have the second part ready to submit straight away. I'm about 6k in at the moment.

Blood Romance - a longer novella set in the same world as THE NECROMANCER'S APPRENTICE. It's really low down the priority list, but I do want to finish it and, at some stage (probably next year now), write a second novella featuring Morrow and Evanthe.

Blood and Bones - ideally I'd like to finish that off this year, but having assessed my schedule and thought about where I want to focus my writing efforts, I don't plan to publish it until February 2012, a year on from NIGHT AND CHAOS.

Halflife - I'm planning to pick this up as my next "big" project after Night Breed is done, and hopefully crack on with it during Anti-Nano this year (I'm doing Anti-Nano again, regardless of whether anyone else is).

Other writing stuff I haven't actually started yet but am planning to:

Caged - the second Vargulf book. This is almost definitely going to have to wait until 2012.

Another Ethan Banning novella - I have plans for Ethan. Possibly evil plans.

Two more Theo Kane short stories - PAINLESS is roughly 5k, I think I could manage two more stories that length this year.

Around all that, there will be edits for DARK HUNT (we're aiming for a late summer/early autumn 2011 release as far as I know). I will have to crush my desire to write Arkham Horror fanfiction until at least 2013.

Can you believe this is the last Anti-Nano Excerpt day? Luckily, by the power of Cthulhu...



wwathon starts next week, so nobody needs to cry! Huzzahs!

So, I've not been working on Night and Chaos this week because I'm thisclose to being done with the second draft of BLOOD HUNT. However, I do have a snippet from Night and Chaos from the weekend. Enjoy!

 

 

( Snikt! )

 

I await everyone else's snippets eagerly!

It has been brought to my attention that Anti-Nano is going well, and that some of you are enjoying it. Me too! I'm loving reading everyone's excerpts, and seeing everyone's progress, not to mention the warm glow of satisfaction I get from running a cult. So, shall we keep it going?

out_totheblack has suggested we run Anti-Nano past the end of November and turn it into a Winter-Write-A-Thon (or WWAT, which seems appropriate). I am totally up for this - I'm getting loads of work done this month and would love to keep that momentum going, and nothing motivates me as much as other writers getting stuff done too. So how about it? I suggest we keep going until either the end of December or the end of January. I know December gets to be busy what with holidays and Christmas and families and all that pesky stuff, so having January there to pick up the pace again suits me.

Let me know what you all think - and if you're not Anti-Nano-ing but you are jealous of how awesome we all are, feel free to join the WWAT!

 Cthulhu fights for your attention!



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