Month: May 2019

the first Retailored Fairy Tales novella is already available

After reading Eat That Frog, Turning Pro, The War of Art, The Successful Author Mindset, and listening to quite a few different writing related podcasts recently I’ve been thinking I need to focus more on a single series, or at least the universe that series is in. So now, in my quite early mid-year goals check-up, I’d like to announce I’m going to be focusing almost exclusively on my Retailored Fairy Tales universe for the forseeable future.

This will of course lead to some adjustment in my goals for the year.

My goals previously stated, with revisions following are:

• Rewrite Written by The Stars – for the sake of focus I’m cutting this one for now. I really love this story and i know a complete rewrite will save it from the editing purgatory it is currently languishing in, but I want to focus completely on my Retailored Fairy Tales universe
• 

  the latest Retailored Fairy Tales short story, Groundskeeper, is available in Stupefying Stories v 22

  Complete edits on Lovely/Lonely – same story as above, I love it, but I’m trying to focus. I may still work on one or the other of these two noves if I start feeling a bit ‘burned out’ on RFT but I’m essentially relegating these to ‘stretch goals’ now

• Get the Charming For Hire series ready for publication and release it – this is now my number one focus, though the release part may change, I want to have all but the very final book first draft and the first four at least professionally edited before begining my release schedule, that way I can do a rapid release. If necessary that may mean release won’t start until next year and I am zen with that (I can explain the whys of this more but it goes into book marketing and the current market a bit and might be boring to those of you who aren’t also writers ;p )
• Continue writing and publishing short fiction for traditional markets – I’m not cutting this one completely. I’ll continued to edit(and re-edit ;p ) and send out my existing shorts, but for the rest of the year I’d like as many of my new stories to be in my RTF universe as possible
• Work on my fiction podcast – staying about the same, but might just change it to making my own audiobooks. i still love this idea though, I want to narrate some of my fiction so much XD
• Write at least one new novel – I still will, but they’ll be all be Charming For Hire ones ;p
• Work on more Retailored Fairy Tales stories – lol, unchanged
• Continue learning – I’ll never cut or change this one. Ever.

So a little bit of cutting, a little bit of modification and some stay perfect just as it is. Sounds a bit like editing ;p

And for any fans of The Troll’s Toll, you’ll be happy to know I’m going to refocus on writing the second of The Troll’s Troubles Trilogy and finally outlining the third book too. No ETA right now since Charming for Hire is my number one focus, but if you’re keen let me know and I might shift to The Troll’s Troubles instead.

I fell just short of my goal of writing 50k words of The Charming War/The Handrell War.  47.5 k so close! But between school holidays, all the public holidays and a bad case of ‘I got a video game for my birthday’-itis to have managed to get that close is Herculean in my opinion.

As happens with NaNo novels I know there’s a lot of chaff words, characters getting excessively verbose for no reason other than to up my word count and doing more highly introspective navel gazing than I’d typically write, so I’ll have plenty of words to shave. However unlike other times, I’m not feeling burned out on the project. I’m confident I can finish it and do my word trim pretty quickly and start working on the next Charming book.

I was so hyper focused on getting the Charming book done I didn’t touch any of my short story back catalogue.

For May my goals are:

• Finish the first draft of The Charming War/The Handrell War
• Get at least three more back catalogue short stories back out there
• Prep thorough outline for next Charming book (‘The Glass Witch’)
• Start process of hiring a professional developmental editor for Charming Rivals
• Write one new short story (ideally set in the Retailored Fairy Tales universe)

You might notice most of my goals are still centered on my Retailored Fairy Tales universe. There’s a reason for that which I’ll go over in a blog post tomorrow, my ‘Quite Early Mid-Year Goals Check-Up’ ;p

And as usual, if you’re curious as to what I’ve been reading through April, here’s the list with links to my review on Goodreads if I made one:

• The Language of Thorns – Bardugo’s fairy tales from the Grisha-verse were obviously right up my alley
• Tribes – an interesting idea worked up. Not sure exactly where I belong in my tribe…
• You do You – makes me want to actually read her other books
• The Song of Achilles – a lovely romantic angle of the Achilles legend
• The Fire’s Stone – a cool older fantasy novel which is wonderfully inclusive, but suffers from head hopping-itis
• TransMission: My Quest For A Beard – another cool trans memoir
• It Burns – technically an ‘audio program’ but it was still a very interesting listen. Also currently free on Audible if you read this fast enough ;p
• The Power of Body Language – an interesting read to expand my knowledge of kinesics, so much fodder for my writing 🙂
• Eat That Frog – a good but fairly simple time management book
• Turning Pro – an inspiring follow up to The War of Art