I did pretty well this month, not as good as I was hoping, but definitely made some headway against the lost time so far.

The ending of Nothing Charming was a bigger mess than anticipated >.< I needed to rewrite the final scene into two heftier scenes (I summarised some of my final points too hard and fast, my beta readers were unanimous in response to that), but in the end I managed to finish the structural edit. All events and structure are as they should be. I still need to do a fact check, a line tinker, and a proof read, but I’ll save that for after I’ve written the next one so I can cross check facts across all three books.

  • Complete edits on Nothing Charming: as established above, done.
  • Prepare the plot outline for ‘The Handrell War’: 90% done. I have an event outline perfected, but there’s a few conversations I know characters need to have to resolve somethings and set other things up for later books, but i don’t know precisely where to fit them. I think when I’m elbow deep in the story I’ll be able to feel it out.
  • Write two new short stories: I wrote two new short stories as hoped, ‘Apple Knight’ (3,000 words) and ‘Spinning Gold’ (500 words).
  • Get all my back catalogue stories back out there: I got four more of them updated and out there, not as many as I would like, but not shabby either
  • Read through the current Written by the Stars draft, lift plot points, rework with Story Equation to create new plot outline for use in Camp NaNo in April: I changed tack in the last week of March, figuring I need to focus on just the Charming series right now, once that’s all done and out I’ll let myself look at other things. I feel like the focus will ground me better, and if I move with the right amount of speed I can still get it all done. so instead i made ‘The Charming War/Handrell War’ my NaNo project for April.

Throughout March I attended a couple of webinars and read 5 craft books, that’s plenty of ticks for my year long  learning goal ;p

For April my goals are:

  • Write 50k of The Charming War/Handrell War (and figure out its title ;p). 50k might be all of it, not sure, should be in the ball park though.
  • Get the rest of my short fiction back catalogue out there

At the start of the year I set myself a goal to read 100 books this year. I’ve just finished the first quarter of the year and I’m within spitting distance of halfway to that goal. I went too easy on myself – that or I’m doing too many chores and therefore reading heaps more audiobooks ;p

Books I read:

  • Save The Cat – finally ;p
  • Stormdancer – a reread to remind me what happened before finishing the series at last
  • Kinslayer – no saggy middle in this trilogy
  • Endsinger – a quality end to the series
  • Deep Point Of View (Busy Writers Guides) – a thorough explanation and an easily usable plan of action!
  • Save The Cat Strikes Back – because why not read the whole series when the first two have been so helpful ;p
  • Reindeer Boy – a squishy one-shot full of cuties with antlers ;p
  • The Last Fifty Pages – because I needed an extra push to wrap up my ending right and this book released with perfect timing
  • Shadow and Bone – I wish I hadn’t read King of Scars first, totally ruined the big mid-point twist, and I know I would have freaking died over it without the advanced warning. I totally cheated myself,
  • Siege and Storm – very happy to have my second trilogy this month also not suffer from saggy middle syndrome. Tight and trim here.
  • Ruin and Rising – Bringing the trilogy home well 🙂
  • How To Write Short Stories – doesn’t sound like a book I really need ;p but I read it because the author is good and it never hurts to gather up a few extra tips to polish myself 🙂
  • Six of Crows – a romantic entanglement novel hiding itself as a dark fantasy heist novel ;p (seriously tho, everyone is paired up, it’s hard to miss for a chronic shipper like me)
  • Crooked Kingdom – so good, but why’d you have to kill him Bardugo >.<