I’ve tried to write an update a number of times over the past year, but always ended up getting waylaid along the way. Lots has happened in my life, good and bad, and I won’t be able to touch on all of it in this blog post, so here are some of the highlights (and lowlights):
We lost our oldest cat in late October 2017. Yes, the one that has graced my blog posts and the one that used to sit on my manuscripts when I was trying to write. Cali was a very sweet cat and her companionship will be dearly missed.
In June, I also lost my grandfather. He was so supportive and kind, always there and always willing to help, whether advice or (in my younger, college-bound years, with money). It’s been hard but I think Grandma and I have grown closer after his passing. I tend to write heavy things, so those two losses have really impacted my writing. There were a few scenes that were much harder to write than anticipated, because of this, but I think things have been slowly returning to a steady place. Just got to get through the holidays and then it’ll be smooth sailing for a while.
I finished Arkaya, Draft 5, in June, right around the time that grandpa started getting really sick. There’s a few things I could change and edit in it, but I really think it’s good enough (and the thought of doing ANOTHER draft has me crying and eyeing the pile of dirty dishes with enthusiasm, so…).
And following that, I ended up submitting to the Pitch Wars competition. Pitch Wars is an incredible competition where you submit your query letter, synopsis, and first # pages to mentors (other authors in the business, mostly) who, if you are chosen as a mentee, will help you revise it and get it the best it can be. Working on the query letter and synopsis was a terrible experience, although to be fair I don’t know of any writer that actually enjoys writing their own query letters… Dreadful things, those!
But when I didn’t get into Pitch Wars: I STARTED QUERYING ARKAYA! As of this morning, I’ve sent queries to 14 agents. I don’t know how many I will send, but for now I’m slowly working through the list of agents I’ve accumulated. Querying is very much a hurry-up-and-wait experience. You can hear nothing for weeks, or you can get three query rejections in a single day (I don’t recommend that last part, it was not fun). You definitely want to have a new shiny project in the wings while you’re querying - something to numb the pain of all that rejection!
So, that leads us to November, and NaNoWriMo! I had been working on a few other projects in between June and November, but most of my attention was on getting ready for Pitch Wars. I hadn’t written anything NEW in nearly a year, since the last NaNoWriMo, and I was eager to get back into it.
So I set a ridiculous goal for myself… and as you can see by the fancy chart below, I knocked that goal out of the park! (Well, more the goal crawled over the finish line with me on Nov. 30 but hey.)
Yes, I did 150,000 words in November! (150,051 words, to be precise… but who’s counting?) I finished Culled early during the second week, and then wrote a few scenes of Bulletproof (more on Bulletproof in a minute!) but after finishing Culled, I focused on a completely new project, tentatively called The Stars Lead Me to You. I’ve been referring to it as Captive Prince meets Ancillary Justice - enemies to lovers trapped in a no-win situation in deep space. I wrote about 3/4ths of the story in November, and hope I’ll be able to complete the first draft at some point soon. (If not, there’s always NaNoWriMo 2019!)
But now that I’ve recovered from NaNoWriMo… it’s Bulletproof time. I started working on Bulletproof Draft 2 in between querying for Arkaya - I’m adding a whole flashback arc. I’m aiming to finish Draft 2 by June 2019, to get it ready for Pitch Wars at the end of August.
This is an amazing commission I got for Bulletproof, featuring Larodia and her best friend Corteo, who is missing at the start of Bulletproof Book 1.
So that’s where I’m at - going to continue querying Arkaya through the middle of 2019, hopefully finish up Bulletproof in time for Pitch Wars… and then, we’ll see! :)
Time to get back to writing!