Blog – Page 4 – Kit Campbell Books

NaNoWriMo Wrap-up

Yes, I realize there’s still a day left in the month, but I don’t think anything especially interesting is going to happen in the next 26-ish hours.

So, yesterday I hit 50K words. In reality this is about 25K of actual words, with the other 25K being paper edits, readthroughs, tweaking, and other revision-related work that doesn’t equate to straight word count. It’s four or five complete chapters (I don’t remember what chapter I was on when the month started) which is a pretty good clip, especially since several of them required massive streamlining.

So I feel pretty good about how productive I’ve been this month! Definitely made good progress, and I’ve hit the halfway point in the story, so everything delightfully gets to fall apart now.

Something that I’ve done this year that I’ve not done in previous years is work at least a little bit every single day. This is no doubt helping with the progress. And it’s certainly less stressful than during the summer critique marathon, where I had a similar level of progress but was doing a chapter over two days a week.

Are the revisions actually good? Hopefully! I like revision in general but sometimes when you’re deep in the middle of it, it just feels like you’re making changes without making progress.

That being said, I did go through Cpts 11 and 12 with my critique group this past weekend, and so far so good. And on Friday, the group that runs the marathons is doing a December mini-marathon, where we post four or five chapters all at once and then have all month to do the critiques. I’m debating between starting where the summer marathon left off (so posting Cpt 9-14), or starting at where my critique group has gotten to (so posting Cpt 13-18). I’ll probably do the first, so people have seen the whole story thus far (also I’m not done with 17 and 18 and may not be before the 1st, but both are shorter chapters and so it is possible).

But I do need to put together a chapter summary of Chapters 1-8 to remind people what has already happened. Yay.

Another section of Across Worlds with You also needs to go live on Friday, and I still need to do my follow-up stuff from MileHiCon. Those are relatively easy, just need to do them.

And then the Winter Marathon starts in January, so if we maintain progress and don’t run into any major re-writes during the marathons, by the end of the winter marathon we could be through Chapter 22, which is about two-thirds of the way through the book. Not too shabby. We may finish this thing yet.

On the other hand, though, I’m not impressed with Nano’s handling of their current drama. The Board did send out an email to everyone so the entire userbase should know about it now, which I thought was good, but some of the language in it was pretty dismissive. And to continue to get standard Nano emails at milestones, asking for donations and acting like everything is fine when they’re facing allegations of turning a blind eye to grooming minors, is off-putting.

Human beings suck. This is why we can’t have nice things.

So, there we are. Another Nano and November in the bag, and on we blindly stumble, hopefully being at least a little productive around the holidays.

How was your November, squiders? Any big plans for December?

Thanksgiving Landsquid! (+ WriYe and Fellow Writers)

Happy Thanksgiving to my American squiders! I drew you a Landsquid in celebration. I haven’t gotten to do much drawing lately and this blog has been decidedly low on Landsquid.

I hope everyone has a lovely holiday without too much family drama and with plenty of mashed potatoes, which are, of course, the best of all Thanksgiving food.

Anyway, the WriYe blog prompt for November is: Shout out another writer!

I did have to think about this for a minute, since I do know so many lovely writers, but in the end I decided to do my fellow Turtleduck Press writers: KD Sarge, Siri Paulson, and Erin Zarro. TDP launched in 2010 and we’d been working on it for a few years before that, so we’ve been together and creating stories for probably about 15 years.

KD writes science fiction, fantasy, and some ghost stories. Her latest is May the Best Ghost Win, about dueling ghost hunting teams, but my favorite of hers is Even the Score, which is a scifi mystery and the third book in her Dream’verse series. Her website is kdsarge.com.

Siri, too, writes across the speculative genres, often lyrical stories that are much prettier than I can ever manage. We, of course, wrote City of Hope and Ruin together, which was a great experience. Her latest is Voice of the Sea, a post-apocalyptic retelling of the Little Mermaid. Her instagram is here.

(Also, if you liked City of Hope and Ruin and want more Fractured World content, I have a short story here, Siri has one here, and TDP also has the prequel Love Shines Through anthology, which Siri and I both have stories in.)

Erin writes romantic fantasy primarily, though also some science fiction and horror. Her latest is Bound, which was originally published in the TDP anthology To Rule the Stars (about space princesses). Aside from fiction, Erin is also an accomplished poet, and her Without Wings chapbook is one of the best I’ve ever read, about the darker side of love. Her website is here.

TDP has been very good to me over the years, helping me stay productive and stretch my writing skills, and I owe it all to these wonderful writers. So shout out to them for being awesome writers and awesome writing friends!

See you next week, squiders! Don’t eat too much!

WriYe and Ideal Readers

Good evening, squiders! It’s been an interesting week, hasn’t it?

First things first, if you have Prolific Works, Hidden Worlds is part of a Hidden Magic promotion for the next month.

Secondly, it seems like there’s drama over at Nano HQ. It is a sad state of humanity that we can’t have nice things, and eventually someone will come along and ruin anything. Someone on one of my writing Discords has been tracking this (and trying to get people to deal with it) since the spring, and after months of inaction people have gone to the board, and the board is Not Happy.

I guess they’ve locked down the forums while they do a thorough investigation, which to be honest affects me not at all because the new site/forums are an unmitigated disaster and I only ever use them if I have to. Seriously, they are so user-unfriendly, and maybe if anything comes out of this we can at least get usable forums back.

But seriously, people, stop being awful.

Enough of that. Back to WriYe prompt catch-up.

October’s prompt is: Your ideal reader

Which is…not a complete thought. But anyway.

If you’re an indie or small press writer, you’ve probably come across this concept of an “ideal reader.” It’s a marketing idea. Basically, you picture a reader who would love your book. You create a whole personality for this person. And this fictional person is your ideal reader.

And then you use the concept of your ideal reader to figure out where said ideal readers hang out, so you can target your marketing to those spaces in the hopes of snagging the interest of said ideal readers and becoming a bestseller.

This is one of those concepts that goes around the writing community that drives me batty. I cannot wrap my mind around it. I’ve sat down to do it a few times, for the principle, and have gotten nowhere.

The examples are always like, Mary, 45, likes knitting and cozy mysteries, so you know, reach out to knitting communities and advertise where women in their mid-40s hang out.

But I always feel like I’m guessing when I try to make an ideal reader concept for myself. Fantasy is a genre that tends to be fairly wide in its readers, and they’re not particularly uniform, and aside from fantasy-specific spaces (which tend to be for specific series or movies or media) I can’t point to a particular place, online or off, where they’re going to be hanging out on a regular basis.

I’m sure I’m doing it wrong.

Anyway, I assume the prompt is “tell me about your ideal reader,” so, uh, likes fantasy, will buy my books?

Hm, yeah. Needs work.

Anyway, see you later in the week!

WriYe and Challenges

Good morning, squiders! Still on track for Nano, still kind of feel like I’m cheating. I’ve completed two whole chapters and am starting on a third, though, so making great progress. Chapters are a little longer here in the middle of the book. Should definitely hit halfway before Nano is over, so huzzah!

(In the book, I mean.)

I realized, once again, that I’d gotten behind on the WriYe blog prompts for the year, so we’re going to play a bit of catch-up again.

This is September’s prompt, but oddly appropriate for now: Do challenges help or harm you?

I’m assuming we mean writing challenges since, you know, writing community.

In general, I am pro-writing challenge. I’ve done a ton of them to varying success. The most common ones have word count goals in certain time periods (Nano, the now-defunct April Fool’s, WriYe itself), but I’ve also done ones that are writing prompts, exploring different craft aspects, building up to certain other goals, etc.

When we moved to California right after college, I went through a few months of serious depression. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have a job, I was in a new city in a new state that I’d never been to before, etc.

(I did eventually get a cat, and then a job, and then things got better.)

While I was sitting at home spiraling, I dove into my writing to help. I’d done Nano for the first time about two years before, but I was only doing Nano and not really writing outside of that. Right after we moved is when I decided I wanted to write for real, with the goal of getting my stories out into the world.

But I didn’t know how to do that, and I ended up joining a bunch of writing challenges for inspiration, advice, and companionship.

Am I always successful at challenges? No. Success varies on a number of factors.

Challenge Length – Shorter challenges are better if I’m doing something new or something that doesn’t tie in to a specific project. I can do longer challenges (quarterly, yearly) but they need to be directly tied to my own goals and not something I’m experimenting with.
Challenge Appropriateness – We did talk a bit about this in relation to Nano this year. If I am trying to do a writing goal on top of a revision project, I’m doomed to failure. If I pick a big word count goal without a project in place, same deal. If I’m working on marketing or publishing or whatever, a challenge is rarely appropriate. (Though if there are marketing challenges out there, maybe I should look at them.)
Real Life Obstacles – Writing challenges were easy peasy until I had kids, full stop. I could manage around college, full-time jobs, what have you. And people just kind of let me. I remember several Thanksgivings where, after the meal was over, I would go hide in the basement and type out a couple thousand words. Sometimes real life gets in the way, and there’s not much you can do about it except not beat yourself up.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I can judge whether a challenge is going to help me or hurt me, and I can usually tell going in whether or not I’m going to hit my goal. I do sometimes do it anyway, or pick a higher goal than I’m likely to hit, just in case.

I think you just have to be honest with yourself, kind if things go sideways, and know that, in the long run, whether you won Nano or EdMo or whatever matters absolutely not at all.

See you next week, squiders!

MileHiCon, Nano, and Assorted Sundries

Good afternoon, squiders. Hard to believe it’s November already, isn’t it? Let’s catch up.

Saturday and Sunday we did get a foot of snow, but driving home from the con Saturday afternoon was the only bad time (though admittedly it was quite bad), and I was half an hour late on Saturday morning because someone had flipped their car in the middle of the interchange. But Saturday went well–I had quite a few people come by while I was at the co-op table who’d gone to the indie publishing panel the night before (and a handful from the twists panel), and the -punk panel midday went well too, and then I had some people come by and want to talk about that while I was at the autograph table in the afternoon.

Friday and Saturday felt really nice from a “I know what I’m talking about and people respect me” standpoint. Bit exhausting–definitely more socialization than I’m used to–but definitely good overall.

Sunday was the dreaded living in space panel, which was supposed to be four panelists (including Mary Robinette Kowal) and a moderator, but ended up just being Ms. Kowal, me, and the moderator. Maybe everyone else saw the snow and gave up, I don’t know. It went decently–having that aerospace engineering degree tends to be useful for science fiction concepts–but it definitely felt a little weird.

I also had to bring the small, mobile ones with me on Sunday, so between the living in space panel (10 am) and the Nanowrimo panel (3 pm) we hung out in the board game area and played Machi Koro 2 and Tea Dragons. Also I made the mistake of letting them in the vendor room. Ahaha.

For Nano, as I said last week, I did sign up with my revision. I’m at about 5K as of yesterday (I’ll work today later), so it almost feels like cheating. I mean, this current chapter has been a bit of a mess so I’ve been doing a lot of streamlining and reworking (and also going back through and making sure things are making sense) but the fact that I’m following the old draft is making it feel easy. We’ll see if it stands up over time.

Other sundry. Uh. Part 6 of Across Worlds with You is up over at Turtleduck Press.

I finally got one of my SkillShare classes back up–the Tracking Writing Ideas one (and I just noticed I put the wrong cover image, so that’s fun. I’d better fix that) and nobody has yelled at me about it, so huzzah. It’s here.

That’s it for sundries for now! See you next week, squiders!

A Compromise of Sorts

Hello hello, squiders. I started writing this post on Wednesday before realizing that I was a day late on my promo post and switching to that instead.

(Very embarrassing. I’ve been doing promo posts for years but have never been late on one before. Alas.)

That was Wednesday, and now it is Friday night, and the bulk of the post, which was about how MileHiCon is this weekend and how, instead of doing prep for it (and which needed to happen on Wednesday, as that was my last day off of work before the convention) I was instead descending into existential dread brought on my imposter syndrome.

But I did eventually prep at least a few of my panels (the one causing the most dread, my Sunday morning one about moon colonies or some such, is as of yet untouched), get everything together, discover that my point of sale app that I’ve been using for the last ten years was discontinued in Sept (the dangers of only doing one con a year), find and set up a new point of sale app, and so forth and so on.

Today was very stressful in general–the small, mobile ones had their Halloween parade at school, and then we had a meeting with the special education team, and then I had to go to work and finish up a major project (and everybody came to “help” and had to add in their two cents, which made it more stressful), and then I had to drive across town through a traffic jam and arrived at the con about an hour after I meant to.

But the con itself went quite well today. I got all checked in and learned I could stay and do the indie publishing panel I thought I wouldn’t be able to. My first panel was on plot twists with Connie Willis and Rick Wilber, and it went much better than I feared (my first thought when I looked at who was on the panel with me is that I was wildly outclassed) and Connie was very nice to me, and I ran into some friends I haven’t seen in a while. And the indie publishing panel also went quite swimmingly.

Tomorrow and Sunday we’re potentially getting a foot of snow, so that does put a bit of a damper on things. Fingers crossed for safe driving conditions.

Anyway, I suspect from what I titled this post that I wanted to talk about Nano. I did find my novel idea document and update it, and put it on the cloud, and cross document the other files so everything’s nicely in one place. And I added a few more ideas. For when I am ready to start something new.

And I did sign up for Nano. But the idea is that I will do my revision and count the words there towards my 50K. I really can’t justify starting something new right now. (And, of course, because I’m ignoring them, the other novel ideas have started offering up plots and characters and whatnot. What is up with brains?)

Not sure I can get 50K on the revision. The document is at, oh, 42K right now, and that’s with working on it for the last six months. (I did redo some chapters during the marathon, so we may be closer to 50K, but the point still stands.) Arguably you can’t rush a revision–the point is to make sure you’re fixing everything, after all, but I’ve put together a system. I always paper edit before I start the rewrite, and I’m going to count that as a day of writing (so 2000 words) when I do that. So we’ll see.

If it’s not working, we’ll abandon it and go back to our normal program already in progress. I want this to be the last revision of this book, after all, and if I feel like I’m rushing, I’ll stop.

Anyway, see you guys next week!

Promo: With a Blighted Touch by J. Todd Kingrea

Good morning, squiders! I have a promo for you today! Another spooky story for spooky season (and I am a sucker for books with a Kit as the main character, not going to lie). Scroll all the way to the bottom for an excerpt!

Horror

Date Published: 10-24-2023

photo add-to-goodreads-button_zpsc7b3c634.png

In Scarburn County, Tennessee there is a small mountain community called Black Rock, known for its unusual and prevalent blight that affects all vegetation . . .

When an unexpected death forces Christopher “Kit” McNeil to return to his small hometown in the Tennessee mountains after eighteen years, he must confront his past and a secret he’s kept since he was twelve.

A talented guitarist with a history of bad choices and even worse luck, Kit soon reunites with an old friend and learns about recent disappearances and mysterious deaths in the area. They begin to wonder if it’s connected to what they witnessed in the woods when they were kids and if a creepy local family is involved. Stranger still, almost half of their high school graduating class has died.

When more shredded bodies begin appearing, Kit becomes a suspect. But what he discovers is even more frightening—evil has set its sights on him and his friends and it won’t stop until it gets what it needs.

Can Kit and his friends band together in time to stop this ancient evil? Or will a new reign of terror that the Cherokee once called Uyaga be unleashed to roam the earth once more?

About the Author

BHC Press has published the first two books in my post-apocalyptic epic fantasy Deiparian Saga, “The Witchfinder” (which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize) and “The Crimson Fathers.” The final installment, “Bane of the Witch,” is slated for release in 2024. If you’re interested you can find out more on my author’s page at https://www.bhcpress.com/Author_J_Todd_Kingrea.html. I am a member of the Horror Writers Association and write Blu ray reviews for “Screem” magazine. I have also written short stories and game material for the “Call of Cthulhu” role-playing game.

Contact Links

Purchase Links

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Excerpt:

CHAPTER 1
Within Arm’s Reach

To twelve-year-old Christopher “Kit” McNeil, summer was the greatest time of the year.
It was even better than Christmas. Sure, there was a lot of buildup to Christmas Eve and the
anticipation of Christmas morning, but it was just a single day. On December 26, everything
pretty much went back to normal. By New Year’s the tree, brown and shedding needles, lay
beside the road like an accident victim no one had bothered to help. Cardboard boxes held
together with masking tape were stuffed with lights, tinsel, and ornaments, and stored away in
the attic.

But summer was different. It lasted three whole months. The days stretched together,
filled with bike riding, and ice cubes made from cherry Kool-Aid, and the unmistakable tang of
chlorine from the town pool. Most families took vacations during that time.

Other people’s families. Not Kit’s. Too expensive, his father always said.

His friend Troy Wallace’s family did though. Sometimes he’d bring Kit a T-shirt from St.
Louis or a bottle of sand from Destin, Florida.

If summer held one drawback for Kit, it was being stuck in Black Rock without Troy. Kit
had few friends, and when Troy was away on vacation, he felt lost. That week seemed to drag on
forever. He slept in when he could, mowed the lawn when his father ordered him to, and rode his
bicycle to no place in particular. At night Kit watched reruns on television with his mom or sat
by his open window putting together plastic model kits. He drew a red star on the calendar to
mark Troy’s return.

Which had been four days ago.

Tonight was the first time in over three weeks that Kit had gotten to sleep over at his
friend’s house. Kit didn’t like having Troy over to his house, because he never knew what kind
of mood his father would be in. Albert McNeil had made it clear he didn’t care to have any more
kids around.

Troy’s mother had taken them to Moviehound Video & Tanning in Black Rock Plaza to
pick out two movies. “Only two to make it fair,” Mrs. Wallace always said. “One for Kit and one
for Troy.” On the way home she’d picked up a pizza for them at DiVeccio’s Italian Kitchen.
After the double feature of Terror Train—Kit’s choice—and Alligator (which was the best Troy
could find after his mother nixed The Gates of Hell), they had gone out to the green Coleman
tent set up in the backyard. They’d walked around the neighborhood after Troy’s parents went to
sleep and had only just gotten back into the tent when Mrs. Wallace called to them.

“Kit? Troy? Are you boys awake?”

The boys heard the back door close and footsteps cross the yard. They pushed the flaps
aside and watched her approach in her housecoat. She stopped in front of them.

“Kit, your mother is on the phone. She needs to talk to you,” Mrs. Wallace said in a
concerned tone.

“Huh? What for?” Kit asked.

Her mouth pinched and she motioned him out of the tent. “I-it’s important.”

In the kitchen, the receiver lay on the counter, the white spiral cord coiled like an albino
serpent.

“Hello?” Kit said.

“Hey, it’s Mom. I— Hold on.”

Kit heard her talking softly to his father in the background. “Mom? What’s going on?”

“Honey, I need to come and get you. We’ve got to go to Murfreesboro. Your uncle
Arnold… H-he’s been in an accident. We’ve got to go.”

“Right now?” Kit asked. Selfishness flared in him. He didn’t want to leave. As far as the
boys were concerned, the night was just getting started. Kit still wanted to go bike riding around
town in the early morning hours like they’d planned. He didn’t want to go to Murfreesboro for
something that didn’t sound all that urgent to him.

“Can I just stay here with Troy?”

Kit’s mother cleared her throat. “Mrs. Wallace was kind enough to offer, but no, you need
to be with us. It’s…it doesn’t sound good.”

“Please, Mom?” he pleaded.

“No, this is something we have to do as a family. I’ll be over to get you in a few minutes.
I’ve got a lot to do in a short amount of time, so be ready.”

“But I’ve got my bike over here.”

“You can get it when we get back.”

“Lemme just ride it home. I can be there in ten minutes.” He twirled the phone cord
around his finger.

“I will come get you.”

“I can ride home while you’re doing all the other stuff you said you had to do.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, followed by more muffled voices in the
background. “Okay, fine. But I want you on your way as soon as you hang up. You’ve got ten
minutes.”

Kit accepted the minor victory. “Okay.”

“Be careful. I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

He handed the receiver to Mrs. Wallace. Troy followed Kit back to the tent and helped
him collect his things. It was a little after one o’clock in the morning when Kit rode down the
driveway and into the deserted street. The wind pushed his hair away from his forehead as he
zipped down the hill out of Troy’s subdivision.

I wonder what kind of accident it was, Kit thought.

He had always liked Uncle Arnold. Sometimes he wondered why he couldn’t have been
Arnold’s son rather than Albert’s. His uncle had always treated him with kindness and love, and
he seemed to enjoy having Kit around. Kit felt guilty about his attitude on the phone. The more
he thought about his uncle, the faster he pedaled.

His route took him straight through downtown Black Rock. He crept past the old brick
buildings that lined the street on either side, guarded by silver parking meters. There were no
cars parked along the sidewalks, and none moved on the street. The traffic lights blinked yellow.

Kit coasted to rest his legs for a moment. He looked toward the nearest building and
realized someone was watching him. The person stood in the shadow of a recessed doorway that
led up to a set of ramshackle apartments.

Probably one of the town winos his father was always griping about or somebody who
couldn’t sleep.

Kit turned to face the road again and noticed another person in front of the furniture store.

And another in the doorway of the department store.

And the doorway after that.

And the one after that.

A figure lurked in every alley and entrance on both sides of the street. All had hooked
noses and wide-set eyes. Everything else about them was indistinct, like a group of cookies made
with the same cutter. Yet something about their features sent a chill through Kit despite the
muggy night air.

He heard footsteps and looked over his shoulder. The figures were disengaging from the
shadows after he rode past. They crossed the sidewalks and merged into a group that walked
stiffly down the middle of the street after him.

Kit pedaled faster as the street began a gradual uphill climb. Another glance showed the
group was getting larger. Breathing heavily, Kit stood and pedaled up the incline. He didn’t
remember this hill being so steep before. His wheels slowed; his momentum lessened. It was like
riding through syrup.

His pursuers drew closer. Footsteps increased in speed and rhythm. Kit knew he
shouldn’t, but he looked back anyway.

The group, thirty strong by now, started to run toward him. The distance between them
closed.

“Leave me alone!” Kit yelled over his shoulder.

His bicycle was barely moving forward. Sweat covered his brow as he stomped the
pedals. He knew he could get off and run, but something held him to the seat. Then his
momentum was gone. The bicycle wobbled.

Dozens of identical hands reached for him.

Poking at Everything

Good morning, squiders. We’re having new trees put it to replace the seven (7! 50 ft or more tall!) trees we lost during the tornado. Only four (my arborist says we have to wait a few years to put trees back where there were ones growing, so the root system can decay enough that a new tree can establish itself), and relatively small (between 8 and 12 feet tall, though taller than we thought we were going to be able to afford) but it will be nice to have some trees again. Fingers crossed that they all survive and establish themselves and are happy campers.

I ordered books to sell at MileHiCon and most of the copies of Hidden Worlds arrived damaged. Because of course. I tried to return them with the thought Amazon would just replace them and send me some new ones, but apparently because they’re author copies, they don’t do that, and shipping costs almost as much as the books themselves. If I ever get a free minute I’m going to go bother Amazon customer support but I don’t maintain hope. Sigh.

Also looked more closely at my panels for the year, and I had to email the programming director and ask to drop the indie publishing one, which is tragic. Why are the best panels always the ones I can’t make? But I have a charity gala that night and I’m already going to miss a chunk of it with a different panel (though I would have kept this one if I could). Alas.

I also got another reading panel this year, this one on -punks, and I did have a -punk story published earlier this year, so I can read that, though I don’t know how long the story can be. Hooray for not having to find a story a few hours before. But I did realize I hadn’t gotten paid for said story so I had to email the editor for that too.

Anyway, I did make a to do list for the convention, which mainly consists of making sure I know where everything is and packing it up, and–oh, cripes, I never requested a co-op table spot. Did I? Good grief.

Okay, now I have done that.

Yes, packing things up and printing out some things if I don’t have any more (flyers and business cards), making sure people can give me money, and getting ready for my panels. (I am on a panel with Mary Robinette Kowal! I may die.)

Otherwise, Chapter 11 is going okay. Needs some rework in the middle but I haven’t gotten there yet. May need to ponder Malana’s motivations in general. I’m afraid I may have left some of them in the dust as we’ve moved into Act 2 so I’m going to stare extra hard at those. Critique group on chapters 9 and 10 this weekend, so we’ll see what they say on the non-marathoned chapters (and also if I did drop some of Malana’s stuff in Cpt 9).

I did very briefly poke around and see where I was keeping potential novel ideas, for Nano, which I am not doing despite all my brain seems to not understand that. And the answer is…I don’t really have a good system. What I seem to have done is to make a Google Doc for a story idea when I have it (“Backyard RPG story idea,” “Maze Story Idea”) and they are all separate and hence impossible to find if you don’t remember what you called the document.

(Ask me how long it took me to find my planning document for the story that became Across Worlds with You)

So I think, if nothing else, I need a better organization system. A master document, with links to the other documents. And I KNOW that somewhere I have a big long list of novel ideas but apparently that is NOT on the cloud so now I’m going to have to go looking for that stupid thing. (And hope it’s not on the external hard drive that I currently have no way to access because I lost the power cord.)

Looking back over these documents has been somewhat good for the “help I haven’t had an idea in years” existential crisis I had last week. Because in most cases, the idea is just a premise, or maybe a setting or some characters. They all need to be built up. Very rarely do I get the whole story in a dream.

(Though I did have a story-y dream last night. Will ponder. Or forget it, as dreams go.)

In one case, the document is literally a list of Arthurian texts with the sentence “If I ever get around to doing an Arthurian based novel” at the top.

My writing forums and groups are all in Nano mode, so I have had other ideas as well. Someone mentioned rewriting a novel, and I do have one that I need to do that for–full rewrite, not a revision. But you do have to, you know, plan that stuff out, or you get a rewritten novel that’s just as bad as the first time you do it. Another friend has been using a Discord bot to get writing prompts, some of which I might steal because they did set off delicious ideas in my head. But not necessarily to write for Nano.

Because I’m not doing Nano.

Seriously.

I may consider a compromise, though. Maybe a novella? 20K-30K words on something new. A collection of interconnecting short stories. Something like that.

We’ll see how I feel after I organize my ideas.

Happy Friday, squiders. See you guys next week.

Chapter 10 Took a Week and a Half

Howdy, squiders, how’s your October going? Mine has so far featured two deaths, the failure of my furnace right before it got cold, and yet somehow is still better than September was.

My family got me a recurve bow and some arrows for my birthday last week, so I’m hoping to finally go back to my archery hobby some time soon. She said, laughing in her head, when she hasn’t gotten an off day in three months.

(In theory I don’t work Mondays and Fridays and should be able to do whatever I want those days. In practice, I don’t get to.)

I finished Chapter 10 this morning and started Chapter 11, meaning Chapter 10 took less than a third of the time to revise that Chapter 9 did. And I sent both chapters off to my critique group, so we’ll see how this goes. These are the first two chapters my critique group is getting that didn’t get run through the Critique Marathon, so we shall all wait and see if the quality has dropped off sharply.

(But seriously, fingers crossed.)

MileHiCon is in a week and a half. I did remember to order new books, but I do need to sit down and actually think about what else I need to do and make a plan for it. Dates attached, all that jazz. Just not sure when that’s going to fit into everything else, hahahaha.

That’s not hysterical laughter, I swear.

Nano is still floating around, not like anything has changed. No ideas. Still not a good time. I think I will go to the kickoff though, just for fun. I’ve done that before without actually doing a real Nano, and it’s like 10 minutes from my house for my region.

I just…I feel like I’m always playing catch up lately, but not actually getting anywhere. Like, I haven’t had time to deal with SkillShare, I just now got my newsletter out (two months late), I don’t have any time or energy for marketing. I am making progress on the revision, which is the most important thing, but so much of being an author these days includes juggling in marketing and business stuff and I’m just…not managing that. At all.

Oh well. Things are what they are, and we keep on keeping on.

See you later in the week, squiders.

Books by Kit Campbell