October Update: No Rest for the Wicked

Despite thinking I'd take a break last month, I actually did quite a bit of stuff. Lots of pictures were taken with my fancy new camera, of course, but I also managed to find time to do some writing project stuff.

I finally closed out my query for Tirgearr Publishing after waiting for 120+ days of no response. That was two weeks ago, so I think it's safe to say I'm not going to hear back from them.

Then, a couple days later, I took the next step. The last step, actually.

I submitted the book the DAW. I'd waffled back and forth on that, knowing in a few months all I'll probably get from them is a form rejection. But I decided I didn't care. This was a bucket list checkbox. I put together my query and sent my submissions packet their way.

And, strangely, the email I got thanking me for submitting was all I wanted from them. It gave me the fulfillment I needed. I worked hard to get to this point. Everything that first book went through. The writing, the beta readers, the editing, the second round of beta readers, more editing, struggling to write books two and three, more editing, and finally the submission process. I didn't jump in line to get here. I did each step as I laid out in my submission plan, and this submission to DAW was the final step.

It is the end of a journey. I have made it to the top of this mountain. Now, of course, I need to go scale that mountain over there, but I'm going to enjoy the view from this one for a minute.

The next big adventure, now that book three is written, is to start the self-publishing process. But I have to wait three months, at least, during DAW's exclusivity period. I mean, I will probably wait until I hear back from them, as long as its not more than 120 days (because apparently that's my limit for pretty much everywhere), but I already know who I'm going to for covers, and I'll probably get a quote from an editor Rachel recommended. So I'm ready to start the process, when the time comes.

That's the biggest news for the month. The rest of the news isn't all that exciting.

I participated in the 24-hour short story contest. The story I wrote for it isn't very good, but I powered through my doubt and disgust, finished it, edited it, and submitted it. I'm even looking forward to when they announce winners, because I think Amanda and Dianne both have good chances of winning something, if only honorable mention. And it helped me come up with a character and premise I really like that I will probably use to write a longer short story. Or maybe a novel. Hard to say at this point.

I also wrote a Cafe story for October. It's also not the best story I've ever written, but it's mainstream fiction without any fantastical elements, which I am pretty impressed with myself about, since the prompt lent itself to magic. And it had a bully in it, and it was bully awareness month or whatever, so that was timely.

I didn't have much luck with SP, but I did finally find the plot and the steps in the treasure hunt for the current adventure. And found a way to make sure more of the regular characters are in it. The first adventure in the second season is a huge deviation from the rest, but it also meant that one of the main characters only got a few lines at the end. It should be fun next time I sit down with it.

I also started a copy edit for Kevin, brainstormed for NaNo, and toyed with putting together a query for SP. I'm considering maybe floating it by Carina Press. I may change my mind, but I wrote up a very rough draft of a submissions packet. I'll make a decision on that next year.

Overall, I got my 15k words written. Most of those were within the first three days of the month finishing up book three, but in general, I did better in September than I thought I would once I wrote "the end."

This month, I plan to focus on Druid Wars and NaNo prep. I promised my siblings I'd have Ghosts of the Grove ready for them for Christmas, so no more putting off those edits. I've also got to finish up Kevin's edits and beta read for Ashes. I don't anticipate having any time leftover after all that, but if I do, maybe I'll throw a few more words at SP 2.2 I imagine it will be a low word month and a high editing hour month. Which will be fine. If I do manage to write 50k next month, that'll make up for all the months I didn't make it to 15k.