The goals I set at the start of July were

  • Mudgerwokee edits – did two rounds with the editor and now all I should have to do is wait for the release in November
  • Help promote the release of the anthology Tales from The Sunrise Lands which contains my short story Hanabi to Kitsune(Fireworks and Foxes) – I did the social media, blog post, newsletter, and updated my website to include the book page. I still have another blog post I want to do about kishotenketsu story structure, which I used when writing Hanabi to Kitsune, I’ll get to that soon ;p
  • More Vision Writers work – did some website housekeeping, lots of little stuff like adding links in the sidebar to give easy access to the writing prompts and meeting lessons. I got the spine width for the cover of the print version of Darkest Depths off to our cover designer, wrote a promotional piece for the group to be featured on the Writers Group Convention website and a different one for the new version of the QWC website. I also did some more behind the scenes work too.
  • Edit and appropriately name ‘Kitsune In Spaaaaaace’ – edited as best as I can manage by myself and ready to receive the editorial critique in September, complete with new title: Not Human, Not Alien
  • Commence and ideally complete edits on Written By The Stars novel – I did the first three chapters, but honestly I only spent two days this month on it because everything else ended up prioritised. I really need to buckle down harder on it.

There were a decent number of new words written this month, a total of 10,500. I wrote the first draft, edited and submitted to my group for critique a YA magical realism short story Dressed For Success(5,100 words) about an asexual succubus who dreams of working at the daycare her father did before he passed away. It’s choc full of LGBTQ characters, sarcasm and snark, and involves a heist to steal something from a special exhibit at the Brisbane museum. I hope it sells to the anthology I wrote it for, but if not, I’m sure it’ll find a good fun home.

I finished a first draft of a short story called Mermaid In A Jar (4,200 words) about a starving artist left to care for his 8 yo niece by the wintry ocean for a few days and a discovery they make. It’s in dire need of editing though as I change tense repeatedly, which happens whenever I try to write first person past tense, I always slip back into present tense ;p

I also started the first draft for Nothing Charming getting 1,270 words down, not much, but certainly better than zero. Looking at my plan for the series, each of the stories gets progressively longer until we hit novel length for one.

On the learning side of things, I finished reading Save The Cat Goes to the Movies and read Randy Ingermanson’s How to Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method. I also binged on the whole first two seasons of Writing Excuses (I started listening at season 9 a few years back, and was too lazy to manually download the older seasons until now).

My goals for August are:

  • Focus on editing Written By The Stars
  • Finish Nothing Charming first draft
  • Edit/revise Dressed For Success with group’s feedback and submit
  • Self-edit Mermaid In A Jar and submit to group for critique
  • Apply for SAF grant
  • If the cover comes back in time, get the proof and – if time – maybe even do the print run of Darkest Depths print version.

Stretch goal(because miracles can happen):

  • Commence edits/properly title ‘Skeleton Romance’.