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